tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25621863551439237702024-03-05T10:41:07.992+06:00Farooque Chowdhury's DiaryUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger167125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2562186355143923770.post-46034138012946017602018-08-04T18:47:00.000+06:002018-08-06T18:48:43.053+06:00Road rage faces student spirit <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
ROAD rage in Bangladesh is not new. And not new is death due to road
rage. The new phenomenon is the student spirit has stood against road
rage. To the students, life matters. <br />A movement against road rage
has recently been carried on by the students in Dhaka. They stood for
life. And they stood against disregard to life. <br />It was anarchy in a
part of roads. The students opposed that anarchy. It was dominance of
lumpen culture and practice in a part of roads. The students opposed
that part of the lumpen culture and practice. The students standing for
life sent a powerful message to all concerned or to-be-concerned. They
served society — a thankful job.<br />Total inconsideration to ordinary
people is not new in profit-powered economy. There is no scope for the
Bangladesh economy to go ‘awry’ of this path — ignore the interest of
ordinary people. <br />Roads are one profit-friendly area in a
profit-driven economy. The consequence: the people passing the paths —
millions in number every day — pay price heavily. Profit-hungry roads
turn cruel under the mastership of crudely-earned capital. All, an
entire society — from tax payers to tax controllers, from petty traders
to politicians, from day-labourer, private car driver and driver’s
daughter of to film director, from pupil to policeman, from children to
octogenarian — turn victims of this arrogance-filled neo-capital. <br />‘Lion’s
share’ in the death-market on Bangladesh roads is of the ordinary
people, and especially of the poor. A look into class composition of the
deaths in road accidents shows the fact. Mostly, the dead in road
accidents are low-earning members of society. The affected families are
in the lower strata of society. Is it that the road deaths love the
low-earning people?<br />And, strangely, it is the ordinary people who
collectively pay the most part for the roads. It is the ordinary people
who keep the wheels of profit running on the roads. It is the fact seen
from any angle: whether from the angle of source of profit gathered from
roads or from the angle of payments made by the public. <br />It is a
strange ratio: death market on roads and payment for roads! The ordinary
people are the biggest payers in terms of life and in terms of money.
Or, they make payment with their money and they are paid back by their
lives taken away. It seems the more the ordinary people pay with money
the more they are paid back with death!<br />The stories of road deaths or
deaths under wheels, in any way one likes to name the deaths, are known
to all. Media reports are evidences. It has many descriptions: high
speed, reckless driving, mechanical failure, damaged road, broken bridge
railings, rules ignored, overburdened either with passengers or with
goods, fatigued driver, inefficiency, lack of training, and a few more
including role of organisations claiming to be unions. A deeper look
will find wrong design, lax in enforcement, and super-greed — scoop most
possible money within shortest possible time. A further look will find
management problem. A further look will find disregard life.<br />Problem
is not with the transport labour. Nor is the problem the owner. The same
labour will behave in a different way, in a responsible way, in a
considerate way in a different circumstance, in a different atmosphere.
Labour is not anti-people. Nor it is killer-friendly. Labour has no
contradiction with the student community, not with citizens. There is no
reason to consider labour anti-student, anti-public. A labour-student
contradiction only serves that part of capital, which is in an anarchic
spree. <br />The same owner will behave in a different way in another
situation. Owners go for money all over the world. But that does not
mean that they are motivated to kill.<br />It is a circumstance —
amalgamation of many factors — that creates a situation with particular
tilt. A circumstance grows in strength and overwhelms all around. Road
rage, to put it in a simple way, has, thus, grown brutal, taking lives,
many lives, lives of ordinary people. It has taken an anarchic
appearance. <br />Road rage is spread over, broadly, all around the
country. A classification of the spread out problem will find — village
paths tax lives least; lazy roads are lazy in driving death; the more
the speed the more the death, the more the power the more the disregard.
And, it is the poorer the weaker. <br />It is a mismatched reality with all disproportions: the poor, the powerful, the speedier, the disregard, the rules, the slack.<br />These are known to all. These are old observations. These are tiring narrations. These are clichés.<br />The
anarchic situation does not help politicians. Neither does it help
production. Ultimately, its the people that suffer, it is production
that gets hampered. And, politicians face awkward situation with
possibility of deterioration, a serious deterioration, which opens path
to further play by others.<br />The new development is the student spirit —
standing for life, defending life. It is anchored in the history of
student activism in Bangladesh. The history begins from the days of
colonised Bangladesh: Students riding revolutionary road to overthrow
colonial rulers. The days under the Pakistan rule blazed with student
activism. The independent Bangladesh also found that the student
community is not short of activism and martyrs. <br />All these student
activism conveyed messages. The messages were noticed by a group while
ignored by another. Lost was the ignorant group.<br />Student
organisations were the organisers in all student activism during the
Pakistan period. The school students’ movement opposing a book —
Pakistan,<em> Desh O Krishti</em> – in the post-1969 uprising days also had indirect or distant presence of student organisations. <br />The movement, generally identified as <em>desh o krishti andolin</em>
(movement), was significant as it was opposing the ideology the state
was formally trying to impose on young learners. The Pakistan state had
to retreat. The book, prescribed for the secondary level, was withdrawn.
A few months later, the Bengalis stood for their liberation through an
armed struggle, which was widely joined in by students from middle and
lower strata of society.<br />The Bangladesh students gained trust and
love of the Bengali people through their years of activism since 1948.
The activism centred, basically and broadly, on people’s interests. A
part of this love and trust gathered rust resulting from a number of
mal-activism or counter-activism — a loss for people’s interest, but a
gain for anti-people camp.<br />The anti-road rage movement bared parts of
a reality encompassing the state and people. There was the question of
responsiveness of the students and the state machine and attitude of the
people. The students’ response was instant. Parts of the state
responded very quickly; and the response was positive. Hostility to each
other was absent as the state machine was not standing opposed to the
protesting students, unusual signals from both sides, which need to be
deciphered. <br />A major question remains to be solved: the role of
student organisations. The question carries within it a few more
questions, answer to which will reflect the state of the overall and of
different parts of student activism. Any observer will look into the
outburst: its speed and extent, and the element powering it. Student
organisations can take responsibility to stop all possibilities of
deteriorating to anarchy. These organisations can stop play by
provocateurs with some other agenda.<br />Anarchy will harm all — the
people, production, political atmosphere and politicians. The move for
safe roads will get harmed with anarchy. And the student spirit vibrant
on Dhaka roads will lose face if anarchy sets in. The honour the
protesting students from schools and colleges are gaining will get lost
if anarchy steps in. So, that should not be allowed.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2562186355143923770.post-1281822942033832302018-07-28T10:30:00.000+06:002018-08-06T18:51:25.826+06:00Fires within the Arctic Circle <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
All these news are alarming: ‘Sweden Wildfire: Blistering heatwave sparks fires within Arctic Circle as Europe boils’.<br />
‘Two
major forest fires raged out of control Monday on either side of
Athens, killing at least 50 people, burning houses, prompting thousands
of residents to flee and turning the sky over Athens a hazy orange from
the smoke.’<br />
‘At least 44 people have died across Japan as extreme heat waves continue to grip the east-Asia nation.’<br />
‘Sweden faces “extreme” risk of even more wildfires’.<br />
‘Denmark, southern Norway and northern Finland are experiencing extreme heat.’<br />
Aircraft and helicopters were battling the forest fires near Athens. <br />
‘Intense heat wave to build up across western Europe’.<br />
‘Sweden heatwave: hottest July in (at least) 260 years’.<br />
The further a reader goes through the news coming from Japan in the east to Sweden in the west the more concern creeps in:<br />
What’s happening?<br />
Is it the Arctic Circle? Is there any error in the reports?<br />
Are the numbers of dead 44 in Japan and 50 in Greece? Is the info correct?<br />
Media
reports are almost unbelievable as none of these are coming from the
‘cursed’ south, the hemisphere that fails to provide its citizens with
adequate arrangements for a safe life. Two of the countries in the cited
news — Sweden and Japan — stand on a strong technological-industrial
base, and spend a lot of money behind arms. <br />
All the news cited say:<br />
‘Wildfires
are raging in Sweden gripped by the worst drought in 74 years. The
fires have broken out across a wide range of territory north-west of the
capital of Stockholm as the hot, dry summer continued to stir up the
flames. A number of communities have been evacuated and tens of
thousands of people have been warned to keep windows and vents closed to
prevent smoke inhalation. Rail services have been disrupted.’<br />
‘The
Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency has called the recent fires the
country’s most serious wildfire situation of modern times.’<br />
‘The
severity has caused the government to appeal for help from other
countries. Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Norway and Poland have
responded by sending water-spreading helicopters and planes, and
emergency personnel. Carl XVI Gustaf, king of Sweden, in a statement
said he was “worried” about the fires raging in 59 locations in Sweden.’<br />
‘Sweden
is experiencing an unprecedented drought and soaring temperatures which
have reached the highest figures in more than a century. Other than a
negligible 13 millimetres of rain in mid-June the country has not seen
any rain since May. Farmers are struggling to feed their animals. The
heat also arrived early.’<br />
‘The lack of rain in Sweden is now so bad
that the government is even considering state assistance for farmers
struggling with the conditions.’<br />
‘Dangerous heat will threaten millions of people across Europe this week with no lasting relief in sight.’<br />
‘A heat wave is building up from Spain to Scandinavia.’<br />
‘Locations
that may have their highest temperatures of the year this week include
Madrid, Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Stockholm.’<br />
<b>Japan</b><br />
ACCORDING to CNN, out of the 44 that have
died since July 9, 11 lives were claimed on Saturday alone, with
temperature remaining around the 38 degree Celsius mark in central
Tokyo.<br />
‘The temperature rose past 41 degrees Celsius in Kumagaya, the
highest ever recorded temperature in Japan. According to the Japan
Meteorological Agency, the temperatures recorded have been around 12
degrees higher than the average temperatures.’<br />
<b>Greece</b><br />
‘GREECE is seeking assistance from the European Union to battle forest fires.’<br />
‘A
state of emergency has been declared in the eastern and western parts
of greater Athens as fires raged through pine forests and seaside towns
on either side of the Greek capital.’<br />
‘The blaze has created such
thick smoke that the main highways between the Peloponnese and the Greek
mainland have been shut down.’<br />
<b>The real curse</b><br />
CLIMATE crisis deniers will
confidently claim: these are (1) mere accidents; (2) these are
exceptional incidents due to weather pattern; and (3) these should not
be cited as examples of anomaly in the climate system.<br />
But, shall not
the citizens in the countries experiencing unusual incidents in the
nature search for answers to the fires within the Arctic Circles and
sudden surge of death due to increased temperatures? Citizens in the
‘cursed’ South are concerned as they are experiencing unusual pattern in
the nature, and their coping capacity is almost non-existent.<br />
This reality is pushing many to search for the origin of the crisis in climate.<br />
A
few years ago, Fred Magdoff, professor emeritus of plant and soil
science at the University of Vermont and adjunct professor of crop and
soil science at Cornell University, and John Bellamy Foster, editor of
Monthly Review and professor of sociology at the University of Oregon,
discussed the issue in an essay — ‘What Every Environmentalist Needs to
Know about Capitalism’.<br />
They write: <br />
‘For those concerned with the
fate of the earth, the time has come to face facts: not simply the dire
reality of climate change but also the pressing need for social-system
change.’<br />
To them, knowledge is essential for survival: ‘Knowledge of
the nature and limits of capitalism, and the means of transcending it,
has therefore become a matter of survival.’<br />
On climate change, they write:<br />
‘Climate
change does not occur in a gradual, linear way, but is non-linear, with
all sorts of amplifying feedbacks and tipping points. There are already
clear indications of accelerating problems that lie ahead.’<br />
Fred and Foster raised the issue of living standard:<br />
‘[T]here
are biospheric limits, and that the planet cannot support the close to 7
billion people already alive (nor, of course, the 9 billion projected
for mid-century) at what is known as a Western, ‘middle class’ standard
of living. […]<br />
‘A global social system organized on the basis of
“enough is little” is bound eventually to destroy all around it and
itself as well.’<br />
They raised the issue of economic system:<br />
‘[M]ost
of the critical environmental problems we have are either caused, or
made much worse, by the workings of our economic system. Even such
issues as population growth and technology are best viewed in terms of
their relation to the socioeconomic organization of society.
Environmental problems are not a result of human ignorance or innate
greed. They do not arise because managers of individual large
corporations or developers are morally deficient. Instead, we must look
to the fundamental workings of the economic (and political/social)
system for explanations. It is precisely the fact that ecological
destruction is built into the inner nature and logic of our present
system of production that makes it so difficult to solve.’<br />
On solutions, they wrote: <br />
‘“[S]olutions”
proposed for environmental devastation, which would allow the current
system of production and distribution to proceed unabated, are not real
solutions. In fact, such “solutions” will make things worse because they
give the false impression that the problems are on their way to being
overcome when the reality is quite different. The overwhelming
environmental problems facing the world and its people will not be
effectively dealt with until we institute another way for humans to
interact with nature — altering the way we make decisions on what and
how much to produce. Our most necessary, most rational goals require
that we take into account fulfilling basic human needs, and creating
just and sustainable conditions on behalf of present and future
generations (which also means being concerned about the preservation of
other species).’<br />
They concluded by proposing a system:<br />
‘If there
is to be any hope of significantly improving the conditions of the vast
number of the world’s inhabitants — many of whom are living hopelessly
under the most severe conditions — while also preserving the earth as a
liveable planet, we need a system that constantly asks: “What about the
people?” instead of “How much money can I make?” This is necessary, not
only for humans, but for all the other species that share the planet
with us and whose fortunes are intimately tied to ours.’<br />
Current
developments in the areas of temperatures and wildfires lead us to
consider the ideas presented by Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster.
The countries — Sweden and Japan — stand on capitalist system. Greece is
another case — a capitalist country, a victim of capitalist plunder, a
country whose population has been burdened with the load of capitalist
anomalies, debt, bankers’ dictation and austerity. Sweden and Japan are
part of the world imperialist system while Greece is entangled in the
system. The three countries’ present situation shows their level of
preparedness to face the climate crisis. With so much resource in their
command, Japan and Sweden are failing to cope with the crisis. This is
the system’s — capitalism’s — failure. <br />
A closer look will find:<br />
The
amount of profit and the amount of money spent for research on weapons
system development are larger than amount of money spent for research to
face climate crisis.<br />
Profit enriches a few while climate crisis affects all — millions and millions of people.<br />
This situation leads to the question: Isn’t it the time to question the governing system — capitalism?</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2562186355143923770.post-30059045144120275572018-07-14T11:30:00.000+06:002018-08-06T18:54:55.862+06:00A Facebook post on quota mobilisation<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
THERE is no reason to imagine that a single Facebook post usually
carries possibilities of raising any question on the quota mobilization —
students demanding reforms in quota system in government jobs, which
with its long preparatory phase has been going on for weeks in
Bangladesh. <br />But the Facebook post carries the possibility —
questions and serious questions, meanings and serious meanings,
implications and serious implications. The reasons: the Facebook post
was from, as has been claimed in a number of media reports, the US
embassy in Dhaka; and, the developments are in Bangladesh, the country
passing through an important phase in its history of inter-state
relations. <br />A New Age report by the daily’s diplomatic correspondent
said: ‘The United States on Monday criticised attacks on peaceful
demonstrations of university students and observed that such attacks
were against founding principles of Bangladesh.<br />‘ “The outrageous
attacks on peaceful demonstrations by university students, the future
leaders of Bangladesh’s proud democracy, is counter to the founding
principles upon which our countries are established”, the US embassy
said in a statement published on its Facebook page.<br />‘The US
government “stands together in solidarity with those exercising their
fundamental democratic rights — freedom of speech, freedom of assembly,
and the right to engage in peaceful protest”, it said.’ (‘US expresses
solidarity with peaceful student movement’, July 10, 2018, p 1, Dhaka)<br />The
Asian Age, the Daily Ittefaq, and other Dhaka dailies, and
Bdnews24.com, a Dhaka-based news portal, also carried report on the US
embassy Facebook post.<br />The news portal said in an earlier report by
its senior correspondent: ‘The Embassy of Germany in Dhaka has said that
it has with “great concern” followed the “brutal attacks” on peaceful
protesters during the last few days.<br />‘“Freedom of speech and freedom
of opinion are constitutional rights of the citizens in this country’,
it said in a Facebook post on Tuesday.<br />‘“Attacks and repression aimed
at denying these rights undermine the rule of law and run counter to
the founding principles of Bangladesh”, it added.’ (Bdnews24.com,
‘German Embassy in Dhaka concerned over attacks on quota protesters’,
July 5, 2018)<br />The Facebook posts, one type of voice in the sphere of
public diplomacy, are related to an ongoing mobilisation by a part of
society and the mobilization is related to greater society, public life,
public policy and government. Consequently, political parties from
different positions have got involved with varying extent or have
expressed respective positions on the issue. The issue is stirring
debate among at least a part, large or small, of society. The state
machine has so far dealt and is dealing with the issue and the
mobilisation in its way. The way of dealing is also an issue of debate. <br />There
are the need and scope to continue with the debates on the issue and
the way of dealing with the issue. Moreover, there are need and scope to
express reaction to the issue and the way of dealing with the issue.<br />But
the reactions or expressions of opinion of diplomatic missions add an
element to the perspective of the entire development. The added element
is vital. It is vital from the stand point of the mobilisation, from the
stand point of the other related parties, and from the stand point of
countries getting involved in their way.<br />There is no doubt that the
countries’ reactions or expressions of opinion are a product of a deep
observation, review of all related questions, assessment of an entire
situation and all relations, and relating these to the concerned
country’s policy, geopolitical strategy, etc. <br />Words, and even
punctuation marks do not go without weighing in diplomacy. Style, mode
and timing of expression do not go without examination and
re-examination in diplomacy. The process begins prior to expressions and
is continued with in its post-phase.<br />Similarly, other countries do
not keep their eyes and ears closed to the expressions already made by
others. In this Bangladesh case, it is normal that especially the
Russian, Chinese, Indian, UK, EU and Pakistan press and other officers
will take the expressions/reactions into notice. The Bangladesh offices
concerned will also take into consideration the reactions/expressions.<br />At
the same time, quarters in Bangladesh — political parties, student
organisations, organisations concerned with and related to society and
economy will review the reactions/expressions. This will help these
organisations review respective positions, identify relations and
characters related to the issue. Any or all of them have the liberty to
look at the issue from a narrow angle or with a wider perspective, to
have an isolated view or a view with all its connections.<br />Considering
these aspects, it can be claimed that the Facebook posts have helped
take away a few confusions, have helped identify a few positions, have
provided an opportunity to review respective positions. Thence, in one
way, these were like friends or teachers — positive or negative.<br />One
can compare the reactions to other incidents, can relate these to other
developments within society and outside the border of the country — in a
few other capital cities. One can relate these to other diplomatic
developments related to Bangladesh.<br />Even, one can compare these with
incidents in other countries — adjacent, near or far away. The incidents
may be similar or dissimilar. The countries may be Afghanistan or
Syria, India or Venezuela, Pakistan or some other country.<br />If one
likes, a look-back — leaf through related history — can be done. The
history may be of this land — Bangladesh since August 14, 1947. This
land witnessed many student movements. Most of those were democratic in
all senses, not in a fake form. Most of the Bangladesh student movements
were anti-imperialist; and they never cajoled imperialism; they never
denied, discarded, satirised and humiliated sacrifices made for the
country, for the people.<br />One can recall the students protesting
imperialism’s Vietnam bombing —sorties and sorties of B-52s dropping
Napalm Bombs, carpet bombing crop lands and communities in North
Vietnam. Martyrs arose from that protest. Memories of those martyrs are
alive to many, and have faded from some.<br />The Facebook posts thus carry many messages and signals much.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2562186355143923770.post-13745834277827367722018-07-08T18:55:00.000+06:002018-08-06T18:56:52.219+06:00Marx in Bangladesh <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
MARX was not aloof in the Bangladesh
socio-economic-ideological-political reality. Incessant class struggle
in society along with development of ideas cropping up in the soil of
class conflict was a home for Marx, the scientist-theoretician of the
revolutionary proletariat. Society’s antagonistic classes compelled him
to play a role in defining goals of society, of the exploited in
society, which got manifested in the economic and political struggles
the exploited were waging in society for decades.<br />
<strong>Millions moved</strong><br />THUS, Marx has made manifold
impressions in post-mid-August 1947 and independent Bangladesh. It
ranged from analysis of ideology, socio-economy and politics to
theoretical formulations related to life around, from culture, arts and
literature to people’s organisations, charter of demands and struggles. <br />Thus,
Marx moved millions of disposed people as the philosopher-politician of
the disposed suggested: philosophy is to be realised through politics. (<em>Letter to Ruge</em>, March 13, 1843) The act of making impressions continues. At times, it is explicit, and at times, it is implicit. <br />Over
the decades, it was wide and wider, and never narrow or narrower as a
tyro-description based on a few individuals depict. Sometimes, the
entire society, other than a handful of exploiters, based its basic
demand on the ideas and analysis of Marx as masses of the people in the
land unequivocally stood for an exploitation-free society, as they made a
clarion call for socialism, which made parts of dominating segments in
society to inscribe socialism in its political document for class
collaboration — the constitution. Even, the exploiters had no guts to
oppose the demand at that moment.<br />
<strong>Working classes</strong><br />WITH irregular intervals, the
entire working people in branches of industries stood for fair wages,
better working condition and shorter working day; and the poor peasantry
stood to claim its fair share of its produce and to get rid of
interest-seeking capital in the formal and informal credit market. Marx
defined those moments. <br />Labour’s demands, movements and organisations
in Bangladesh were directly influenced by Marx. Indirect influence of
Marx was wider. The same was in many moves by the poor peasantry. White
collar employees went through similar experiences. Marx sharpened those
actions. <br />Intellectuals’ sphere, cultural orbit, and student, youth,
women and environmental activism in the country could not elude Marx’s
influence in spirit and analysis.<br />None will claim that all of these
activism/movements were completely influenced by Marx. But, parts,
sometimes significant parts, and, on occasions, the
determining/dominating parts carried spirit, ideas, analysis and
politics of Marx. <br />Obviously, there were variations in extents in
getting influenced by or carrying ideas of Marx, which depended on
historical circumstances, class-power equation, level of development of
people’s politics and organisation of classes. But Marx was always
present, directly or indirectly, in these as class struggles sharpened
at times. <br />A few scholars miss the history of the Bangladesh people,
the people’s relations/antagonisms with the production-distribution
system, and their yearning for decades — since mid-August 1947. The
existing reality in post-mid-August 1947 Bangladesh experienced by the
people led them to rise in revolt; and they found Marx as a pathfinder.
At times, they rose in arms; and they were determining course of
politics compelling some other parts of the society to move along. <br />Moments
were there in Bangladesh that found complete absence of rightist,
reactionary ideas and initiatives in the areas/initiatives of people’s
struggle. At significant moments in the history of Bangladesh, the
rightist, reactionary ideas and forces failed to influence the people.
Those were moments of changes in class powers equation within the
reality — a crossroad in the country’s politics. Marx geared up those
moments. <br />The labour took bold initiatives at the peak of the 1969
mass uprising as it initiated gherao, encirclement of management
authorities/owners of mills and factories in their industrial/office
premises, and the capital had to bow down to those demands within a very
short time. Those were unprecedented industrial actions. Marx was there
in those industrial actions. <br />Significance of those grew as the
labour that took those industrial actions was mostly young in the
factory/manufacturing process, mostly first generation of industrial
workers having ties to medieval and rural background with its
ideological, cultural and political life. Much of that first generation
labour also had connections to small landholdings and rural life with
many feudal and semi-feudal practices and relations. Much of that labour
also tried to purchase land for cultivation and homestead with the part
of their wages that they could save. But, the age, connections and
practices failed to restrain the labour from taking those heroic
industrial actions, which, in essence and in appearance, challenged and
trampled laws of the state protecting the owners of the industrial
establishments. Those industrial actions showed existing property
relations, not life, are violable, one of the lessons from Marx. Those
were advanced ideas and political actions being practised in a society
stifled by backward ideas and neocolonial rule. <br />Before to that
gherao movement, the workers and white collar employees organised
strikes in important branches of the economy and state, which included
railways, postal and telegraph services, jute and other industries, and
in banking sector. A few of those were country- (at that time the
country Bangladesh, then identified as East Pakistan, was a province of
Pakistan) and industry-wide. As a strike-breaking measure, the Pakistan
state had to deploy army on occasions. A number of those industrial
actions were of longer time-period with a historic appearance. The
Bangladesh labour, white collar employees and students, not the national
political leadership, were the first to stand against military rule.
Many of the demands of those struggles were forged by Marx. <br />However,
those moments lost their momentum, which was a very normal consequence
in that perspective, the historical, social, economic, political,
organisational reality. But, it was not a total eclipse; and, all
messages were not lost. Experiences of struggles and politics educated
the labour. Marx had a role in those lessons, struggles and politics.<br />In
the national political life, Marx shaped many political demands of the
people. However, none of these moved along a straight line, a wrong
expectation a group of pundits nurture within their heart. Similarly,
none of these were beyond the existing class power equations of the
time, a fundamental factor those pundits invariably ignore with their
genre of knowledge they stubbornly clutch. Consequently, all these
imprints were not always having a complete Marxist, revolutionary
proletarian character. That was a show of existing reality, which
included position and power of classes involved with the actions. <br />None
of the peasant movements in Bangladesh were organised by the crooked
rightist, reactionary classes or any of its parts although, at times, it
tried to mobilise part(s) of the peasantry — rich, middle and poor. All
the peasant movements, from Sunamganj and Golapganj in the
north-eastern Sylhet region to the Tanko movement in the northern
Mymensingh region to Nachole in the western Rajshahi region in the
early-post-mid-August 1947 Bangladesh were organised by the communists.
The demands these movements raised and the rights it claimed were
progressive, and anti-feudal in nature contributing to progressive march
of the society. Marx assisted in formulating the demands and
identifying the rights. <br />The state machine used its force to subdue
the revolting people. People and the organisers had to pay with blood as
the state machine stood in defence of the existing property relations. <em>Jiban Sangram</em> by Moni Singh, <em>Nankaar Bidroha</em> by Ajay Bhattacharja, and <em>Bhasha Andolan O Tatkalin Rajniti</em> and <em>The Emergence of Bangladesh</em>, <em>Class Struggles in East Pakistan</em>
(two volumes covering 1947–58 and 1958–71) by Badruddin Umar, and
similar works describe the struggles. Statement by Ila Mitra, a leader
of the revolting Santals in Nachole — a description of torture with
boiled, hot eggs, etc, inflicted on her — and the force employed on
political prisoners in hunger strikes for weeks tell a story of
brutality the state, exploiters’ ruling machine, practised.<br />One of the major political demands of the poor peasantry was abolition of <em>zamindari,</em>
a feudal system with Bengal variety, without compensation. This demand
was organised, among others, by the Communist Party; and the party,
despite deviations, was trying to follow Marx.<br />The poor peasantry actively took part in the mass upsurge in 1969. Their <em>haat hartaals,</em>
strikes in rural weekly market markets, were like flames in a seemingly
bucolic background. The fires of protest by the rural masses resembled
the days of the famous Tebhaga movement, the share croppers’ historic
movement that engulfed wide parts of undivided Bengal. <br />Participation
of the rural masses in the 1969 mass uprising was wider stretching the
entire Bangladesh, and was basically political in nature as it lent its
force to the movement’s major call for direct, universal franchise, and
opposed the existing system of truncated representation. The rural
masses routed out the rural political cohorts, crystallised in local
government structures based on distorted representation, of the state.
Marx stands for people’s representation in all levels of governance, for
a people’s democracy. <br />These local operatives of the regime were
mostly the rural rich with reactionary, rightist politics and ideology.
The peasantry’s other demands were related to lessening of land tax
burden, and abolishing of predatory credit system, profiteering and
hoarding, all of which were operated by private capital. All these
demands were political and progressive; and Marx unfurls the flag of
progress. <br />Consequently, the rightist, reactionary political forces
rotten to the core lost ground in the rural areas for the time being. As
an upshot of this successful move by the peasantry, the state lost its
rural ‘legs’ — the truncated local government system, which was
controlled by those regressive political forces in the rural rung. That
was a meaningful development in the people’s struggle for progress. The
dominating part of those reverting socio-political forces lost its
acceptability and credibility, which had an impact on the following
political developments in Bangladesh including the people’s glorious war
for liberation. Marx is always against regressive forces, which leads
those forces to not turn misers in their act of condemning the
proletarian revolutionary. <br />With dedicated work for years, bracing
persecution including long prison terms, and making supreme sacrifice
communists organised the poor peasantry. Maulana Bhashani, a
left-leaning political leader with a mass following, also had a leading a
role in rousing the poor peasantry. Dhaka dailies of the period as well
as <em>Unasattarer Gana Abhyutthan: Rashtra, Samaj, Rajniti (The mass uprising in 1969: state, society and politics</em>)
by Dr Lenin Azad present detailed description of the 1969 rural scene
with peasant actions. Marx was for mobilising the masses, for masses on
barricades.<br />
<strong>Youth and culture</strong><br />A MAJOR part of the students
and youths got imbued with progressive ideas since mid-August 1947. It
was a hard struggle. But, the ideas turned popular gradually, and the
student and youth communities actively organised democratic movements. A
part of this democratic movement was anti-imperialist. The democratic
student movement continued to oppose imperialism. They popularised the
slogan for socialism. Should one not find Marx there? A failure in that
search is nothing but presenting self as a joker with a scholar’s
identity. <br />Modern cultural movement was overwhelmingly progressive in
Bangladesh. It opposed reactionary ideas, upheld progressive thoughts;
and reached the masses, which was evident during the war for liberation
the masses of people carried forward. The cultural movement played a
substantial role in mobilising the people for initiating the war for
liberation. Much of it talked about exploitation, told about the
exploited. Marx is an unwavering warrior against exploitation.<br />
<strong>Two politics</strong><br />THE reality that generated the
concerned organisations and movements was of exploitation, inequality,
deprivation, and class conflict. The concerned organisations and
movements were shaped and articulated by analysis and ideas of Marx: a
society free from exploitation, a humane society, a society based on
equity and equality, a society marching for termination of property
relations that exploits all of human existence, a people’s democracy, a
commoners’ voice in all spheres of life. These were evident in the
programs, demands, literature, etc. of the concerned organisations
spearheading the movements. <br />The ideas with the socio-political
forces aiming progress challenged the ideology and concept of the state,
and parts of the state’s political mechanisms existing at that moment.
These reached a point of significance during the war of liberation, the
period the people rejected the ideology the Pakistan state was
upholding. The political program the leading faction of the society
during the moment adopted reflected this development in the mass psyche.<br />In
the entire scene, two politics, two cultures and two ideologies were in
existence; and all of these emanated from the economy, which was based
on exploitative property relations. One of the two politics, ideologies
and cultures never questioned the exploitative property relations while
the other consistently raised those questions, and challenged ideas and
concepts related to the system of exploitation. The first was of the
exploiters with coatings of confusion, lies and imagery figures while
the other was of those questioning the exploiters in a point-blank way —
identify exploitation with its modes, methods and tricks, name the
source of inequality and profit, question rationality of the system. The
politics questioning the exploiting system was led by the adherents of
Marx. They based their position on the analysis, ideology and politics
of Marx although they had differences in interpretation and
implementation procedure of those.<br />Even, many mainstream political
leaders very often/regularly premised their political position on the
concepts of equality and exploitation-free society. Sheikh Mujibur
Rahman’s many deliberations in the Pakistan constituent assembly based
on those concepts. Those deliberations criticised huge property amassed
by a few in the western part of Pakistan while described the striving
Bengali poor failing to arrange burial shroud for their dead dears in
the eastern part. Many rightists of the rightists profusely promised an
exploitation-free society while they approached the people. None of them
were Marxists. But they had to borrow from Marx as the people were
yearning for equality, were aspiring to get rid of the yoke of
exploitation. A number of rightist organisations had to float labor
unions, obviously with rightist ideology and politics, and obviously
escaping the question of exploitation. But those rightists had to rely
on labor although the basic concepts of those rightist forces don’t
accept the concept of conflicting classes. That was their game with a
mirage. However, with their effort to organise the labour they failed to
ignore the class question, which is a denial of their ideology. It is
an act of self-denial. It is really impossible to make Marx vanish or to
escape from the author of <em>Capital</em>, a book that stands for the exploited.<br />
<strong>An essential antagonism</strong><br />THE exponents of the
exploited, Marx and his friend Engels, once wrote: ‘[T]here is an
essential antagonism between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat’, and
‘bring the property question to the fore’. (<em>The Communist Manifesto</em>)
The people’s politics in Bangladesh persistently tried to proceed along
this line of class antagonism, and to raise the property question over
the decades. <br />Any learned scholar obviously will fail in his
adventure to find Marx in Bangladesh if the scholar begins counting the
words ‘Marx’, ‘Lenin’, ‘Mao’ in political documents of left-leaning
political parties/organisations, and draws conclusion of presence or
absence of Marx on the basis of number of the words he counted in those
documents. That type of wetting of brows will be a game, and a childish
game, or a below-novice level of search/research/scholarship, or a
futile exertion to present a broad issue with a narrow circumference.
That type of learnedness neither understands Marx nor succeeds in
looking into related history, ideology and politics the pro-people
socio-political forces carried forward over the decades. It’s a
distorted perception and practice producing a corrupt presentation, and a
rookie-level of exercise with Marx. The more serious part of such sully
effort is its belittling of the concerned people’s struggle, and
ignoring many sacrifices the people have made over the decades — a
dishonest, dirty job, no doubt.<br />
Note: Observations/comments made in the article, supplementary to an
earlier article — ‘Confusion in finding Marx in Bangladesh’ (New Age,
Dhaka and Countercurrents.org, June 6, 2018; and Frontier, June 11,
2018, Kolkata) — are based on research findings by and news reports from
the main and people’s streams, publicly accessible official documents,
and other related literature.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2562186355143923770.post-39481178389472414052018-07-04T19:30:00.000+06:002018-08-06T19:03:54.945+06:00Drug money and ambulance <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
IT IS a breeze through the Bangladesh economy. And, it tells a part of the economy.<br />A
report in Dainik Ittefaq, a leading Bangla national daily from Dhaka,
said: The number of persons addicted to Yaba, a sort of drug, is about
7.7 million in Bangladesh. They consume, on an average, two tablets a
day. Each tablet is sold at Tk 300 ($1=approximately Tk 80). Thus, the
total amount of the taka consumed daily in the form of Yaba is Tk 4.62
billion. (‘Dainik char sha bashatti koti takar yaba khachchhe ashaktara’
(Yaba-addicts are consuming Tk 4.62 billion daily), June 5, 2018, p 1)
However, the report claims the actual number is higher than what is
cited in the report.<br />Thus the total monthly and yearly amount of
money on that account — Yaba consumption — stand as Tk ‘Something’ or a
huge amount of money in terms of Bangladesh economy. The information
tells a few aspects of the Bangladesh economy, society and politics
although the political aspect tainted by class interests goes
unidentified.<br />The drug money moves further as another report in the
same daily newspaper said: About 50,000 drug addicts in Rupganj, now a
suburb of the capital city of Dhaka, annually spend about Tk 1 billion
on account of drug. The number of wholesale drug dealers is about 400 in
the area; and their trade is operated by about 1,200 retailers. Drug
trading is being done in 112 of the total 128 villages under the
Roopganj upazila, an administrative unit. A part of younger generation
is getting involved with the trade to have a huge quick money. (Should
it be named huqumo? (‘Roopganje madak byabasayi panchash hajar, bachhare
byay shata koti taka’, May 25, 2018, p 5)<br />On the next day, May 26,
2018, a report in the same daily newspaper said: Two ambulances with the
public-owned Sadar Hospital of Rajbari were not operating for the past
15 days. The reason: the filling station supplying fuel to the medical
vehicles has stopped the supply as the hospital authority owes about Tk
3.4 million to the station on account of fuel. The amount of the unpaid
fuel bill has accrued over three years, from mid-2015 to mid-2018.
Consequently, it is the public that suffer. Members of the public are to
take service of privately operated ambulances, which charge higher than
those public-owned ambulances. According to a driver of the ambulance,
rate for each kilometre charged by the public-owned ambulance is Tk 10,
and that stands as Tk 660 and Tk 4,400 for a service up to Faridpur
Medical College Hospital and up to Dhaka Medical College Hospital
respectively while the privately owned ambulances charge Tk 2,000 for
the Faridpur and Tk 8,000 for Dhaka Medical College Hospital. Moreover,
the privately owned ambulances are not equipped to carry patients with
serious condition while the public-owned are better equipped. (‘Rajbari
Sadar Haspatale ambulence seba bandha’, ‘Ambulance service is not
available with the Rajbari Sadar Hospital’, p 13)<br />There are many
similar stories. A random pick from or a purposive scanning of
newspapers/media reports presents similar info related to money — money
(mis)spent or money needed or ‘something else’. These range from rural
roads, bridges and culverts to health care to educational institutions —
all are spheres of public, the tax payers in the common category, which
is the largest segment among the tax payers.<br />These — the
infrastructures and institutions — are required by the ordinary persons —
the people. Educational institutions catering to the rich face no
problem. Those are problem-free. The usual movement pattern of the rich
produces no problem for the wealthy segment of society.<br />Money dearth
problem is usually linked to the areas linked to the lives of the poor.
It is a clear bias of the problems — inclined to the poor as if the
problems ‘love’ the poor. Even, the poor can be cursed as they ‘invite’
or ‘create’ the problems. These ‘sustain’ as long as money, to use the
term in a loose fashion, accumulation process is not affected. Any
wealthy person can claim: problems love the poor as the poor are
themselves a problem. The wealthy person’s claim will be accepted as
fact as that is the powerful voice.<br />But, serious issues are there
even someone likes to ignore these ‘silly’ aspects — ‘problems’ poor
partiality’ or the ‘poor’s problem partiality’. The issues are serious:
from where the money or the problems come? <br />Drug luxury is one of the
cases cited above; and the question is: who is creating the huge amount
of money consumed in the form of drug? Is it a win-win situation — the
consumer wins as wins the drug capital? Or, is the situation such that
many within the rank and file of the parties related to the drug luxury —
drug trading and consumption — are victims of predation? An affirmative
answer to the latter question shall stand against the drug capital,
part of the capital that dominates the economy.<br />Ultimately it is the
owner of the capital invested in drug magic — huge, quick profit by
trading types of substances. The payment — a huge amount of cash — is,
ultimately, made by the entire society; and the money paid as price of
drug is part of the surplus labour appropriated from labour in society. A
part of this drug payment also comes from the money that the Bengali
labourers send back home; and the money that the labourers send back
home is part of necessary labour time — an essential for the labour’s
survival. Thus the drug trading turns into a crueller character in
capital’s ‘drama’ with drug and drudgery. It not only harms individuals
and families, it also turns into a super-exploiter. (Other aspects of
the trading like the money’s different roles, its contributions, etc are
omitted in this lightly composed article.)<br />The rate of profit made
by the part of the commercial capital invested in the drug trading is
higher than the profit it could make in other areas of commerce and in
manufacturing. This allures the part to the trade. Its power is
perceptible as its pawns fall — a ‘supreme sacrifice’ for profit — while
the aristocrat owners of the capital behind scene stay safe — a magic!<br />Therefore, on the basis of the three news reports, a breeze through a part of the Bangladesh economy, it appears as:<br />—
The reports are not representative; but a part. Moreover, there is
space to thrust questions into the info cited in the reports, which
include source of the info.<br />— The info cited in the reports tell a
part of the economy if these are not totally falsified; and the
Bangladesh media or any other source has not yet questioned the info.<br />—
It is a part of a market, where drug and healthcare services are
traded, or of a number of markets, where private capital operates in
drug market and in healthcare market, and the market is free — free
market.<br />— These markets bring profit; a part of the profit from
ambulance service and a part from drug-peddling; alluring parts of
capital to these markets, which is an efficient performance of free
market.<br />— It is safe for the part of the capital to operate in these
markets as long as captains of the capital remain safe and pawns pay for
the mishandling of the trade.<br />— An allocation of capital is there: a part of capital to the privately owned healthcare service and a part to the drug trading.<br />—
It is a free market scene: move capital where the profit is higher; it
does not matter whether or not society, especially the poor tax payers,
suffers. <br />— Two spaces appear: one, the space owned by the public,
the public-owned health care service; and the other, the private
capital’s free ‘loitering’ – to anywhere to any trade to higher profit
without taking into consideration the cost the entire society pays for
greedy capital’s higher profit. <br />Now, the questions:<br />— Is it an
efficient and rational allocation of capital in an economy, within which
millions of working people are putting their labour power to have a
better life?<br />— Is the way capital allocates parts of it safe for society and beneficial for the poor tax payers — the majority?<br />— How much public-owned space is there in comparison with private capital; and should the public accept it?<br />The questions deserve answers; and the public, in a bold political move, shall search for answers to the questions tomorrow.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2562186355143923770.post-667404727892321972017-09-01T08:30:00.000+06:002018-02-07T00:41:07.065+06:00The disinformation campaign on Venezuela<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<img alt="" height="500" src="https://www.pambazuka.org/sites/default/files/styles/flexslider_full/public/field/image/Nicolas_Maduro.jpg?itok=nCwicQu8" width="800" /><br />
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<i><span class="cred">credits: jis.gov.jm</span></i>
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The
disturbances created by the wealthy are part of the imperialists’
intervention plan in Venezuela. The disinformation campaign carried out
by the mainstream media is a key component of that effort. So, no one
should be surprised by the profusion of Orwellian statements and the
incessant vilification of President Maduro in mainstream coverage of
Venezuela.<br />
</div>
</div>
</div>
Venezuela,
it seems, is a riddle to the audiences of the mainstream media. Yet the
riddle conceals a fact. A conflict between opposing interests is
roaring in the country, and attempts to stoke that conflict are being
intensified by the imperialist-interventionist quarter as the day for a
vote on the proposed Constituent Assembly—July 30— nears.<br />
Every day the mainstream media showers its viewers with news reports
that are partial and biased. Here are some examples from the past
several weeks:<br />
<ol>
<li>A Venezuelan diplomat to the UN has decided to break with the
government and resigned. The diplomat called on President Nicolas Maduro
to resign immediately.</li>
<li>Recent protests have led to the deaths of more than 100 persons.</li>
<li>Venezuela’s chief prosecutor has confirmed a second death in
Thursday’s protests. The chief prosecutor said she was investigating the
death.</li>
<li>Maduro has decried the general strike called by the opposition a crude attempt to sabotage the country’s economy.</li>
<li>Maduro has also denounced an opposition attack outside the offices of <em>VTV</em>, Venezuelan state TV.</li>
<li>Opposition protesters and pro-government forces threw rocks at one
another while the Venezuelan National Guard launched teargas and rubber
bullets.</li>
<li>Streets in opposition-friendly neighborhoods in eastern Caracas were
almost entirely devoid of activity during the strike. Some businesses
remained open in parts of the capital traditionally loyal to the ruling
party but foot and vehicle traffic was significantly reduced.</li>
<li>More than 7 million Venezuelans cast ballots in an opposition-led
“consultation” on July 16. Nearly 700,000 of those votes came from
Venezuelans abroad.</li>
</ol>
<strong>Other news</strong><br />
Yet there is a significant number of other news stories on Venezuela that the mainstream media chose not to report:<br />
<ol>
<li>Citing the <em>Proletarian Agency of Information</em>, a grassroots media group, on 20 July 2017 <em>Venezuela Analysis</em>
reported: In the industrial city of Barquisimeto, many workers have
made efforts to maintain production despite several cases of sabotage by
business owners, administrators and protestors. In the case of DISICA, a
private company that supplies state oil firm Petróleos de Venezuela,
S.A. (PdVSA) with iron construction material, the workers “continue
working and have not stopped operations.”</li>
<li>The same news report said: State-owned Lacteos Los Andes, a diary
company, has alleged that since early hours of the afternoon, they have
been under attack by opposition groups armed with home-made mortars and
Molotov cocktails. The groups “tried to set […] fire to an industrial
gas tank.”</li>
<li>Workers complained of delays caused by opposition barricades.</li>
<li>Opposition mayors supported the strike.</li>
<li>Working class neighborhoods have largely been unaffected by the strike.</li>
<li>Maduro told <em>VTV</em>: “The 700 largest companies in the country are working at 100 percent of their capacity.”</li>
<li>The government said: Almost all 2.8 million public employees
including employees of PdVSA turned up to work. The PdVSA management
said it was not affected by the strike. (Ryan Mallett-Outtrim and
Katrina Kozarek, “<u>Venezuela Divided Over Opposition’s General Strike</u>,” <em>Venezuela Analysis</em>, July 20, 2017.)</li>
<li>Any change to the constitution by the proposed constituent assembly, once elected, will need to be put to a referendum.</li>
<li>The death of Hector Anuel, a citizen, assaulted by opposition
protesters in Anzoategui state. Anuel’s death sparked a social media
outrage, after footage went viral that seemed to show his charred corpse
being beaten by opposition protesters. According to news outlet <em>La Tabla</em>,
Anuel was killed after being hit by a home-made mortar used by
opposition protesters. The shot itself was allegedly caught on camera.
Anuel was burned, before being pummelled with stones and other debris.
In the footage alleged to show his death, Anuel appeared unarmed. (Ryan
Mallett-Outtrim, “<a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/13250">Venezuela Shocked by Graphic Footage of Alleged Mortar Killing</a>,” <em>Venezuela Analysis</em>, July 19, 2017.)</li>
<li>The Bolivarian government made no attempt to stop the
opposition-organized “vote taking” even though it had no legal standing
(and, therefore, was no more than a circus). Initially, the show was
described as a “referendum” and a “plebiscite”. It had the logistical
support of the National Assembly, the regional governors and opposition
mayors. The propertied classes and imperialist camp also extended full
support to the so-called referendum, which should be seen as part of
attempts to organize a parallel government. Five rightist former
presidents from Latin American countries were allowed to observe the
proceedings. They made fiery speeches demanding Maduro’s exit. All these
leaders are entangled in corruption cases, and they have not hesitated
to use repressive power against workers and peasants in their respective
countries. (Jorge Martin, “<a href="https://www.marxist.com/venezuela-july-opposition.htm">Venezuela: July 16 opposition ‘consultation’ countered by a Chavista show of strength</a>,” <em>In Defense of Marxism</em>, July 20, 2017)</li>
<li>The opposition-organized show mobilized a large number of people.
However, long queues at “polling stations” in some areas of the capital
city were due to a small number of “polling stations.” For example, in
Catia, there was one polling station for 90,000 people. Moreover, the
opposition leaders have admitted: people could vote more than once.
There is already a video showing a person voting three times in one hour
in the right-wing stronghold of Chacao. Furthermore, at the end of the
day, they burnt the ballots and the registers, which demolishes all
scopes to check the opposition announced result. This is the political
force, “which has been accusing the Bolivarian revolution of election
fraud for the last 15 years!” (<em>ibid</em>.)</li>
<li>There was an official dry run of the proposed Constituent Assembly
(CA) elections—a presence of Chavismo’s strength—on the same day the
so-called referendum was organized by the opposition. The dry run of the
Constituent Assembly vote had a very high turnout, as evidenced by long
queues in front of official National Electoral Council polling stations
throughout the country. Even in big cities, where opposition support is
greatest, long queues were common. Local councils of a number of these
cities are controlled by the opposition. In many neighborhoods the
queues were so long that the polling stations had to keep open until 8pm
(four hours later than the scheduled time). There was even significant
voter presence in Petare parish, which supported the opposition in
recent elections. In Merida, many people waited in queues for hours and
finally had to return home without participating in the dry run. (<em>ibid</em>.)</li>
<li>In a poll by Hinterlaces of over 1,500 Venezuelans the majority said
they support a socialist economy, with the caveat that state-run
enterprises need to improve their efficiency. The poll asked
participants if “the best thing for Venezuela is a socialist economic
model of production, where various forms of private property exist.”
Three out of four Venezuelans agreed with this statement and only 1
percent was unsure. The results were released in a speech by Oscar
Schemel (a pollster with Hinterlaces) to local business leaders in
Caracas. Schemel said data shows Venezuelans want a socialist state with
private investment and a “mixed economy.”: “61 percent of the
population affirms that the economy must be led by the state, 86 percent
think that the government should promote private investment, 78 percent
consider that the government’s dialogue with businesspeople is more
important than with the opposition, and 63 percent distrust the
opposition.” While the majority of Venezuelans said they support
socialism, 63 percent of the respondents said the government needs to
become “more productive and efficient”, 32 percent said the current
model should “change”, 74 percent said they would oppose any proposal to
privatize PdVSA. When asked whether the electricity grid should be
privatized, 67 percent opposed the suggestion while 69 percent opposed
suggestion for privatizing state telecommunications giant CANTV. (Ryan
Mallett-Outtrim, “<a href="https://mronline.org/2017/07/23/75-of-venezuelans-support-socialism-63-distrust-opposition/">POLL: 75% of Venezuelans support socialism, 63% distrust opposition</a><strong>,</strong>” <em>MR Online</em>, July 23, 2017)</li>
</ol>
The mainstream media has failed to cover nearly all of these
stories; when they have, the message has been distorted to fit the
viewpoint of the US ruling class.<br />
<strong>Deaths</strong><br />
Since the mainstream media incessantly flaunts its “objectivity” we
can reasonably ask: how objective has their reporting been on deaths and
killings over the last four months? Is there any mention of
opposition-induced violence? Any reasonable assessment would conclude
that opposition has played little, if any role, other than to protest;
whereas most, if not all, have been murdered by Maduro and his security
machine.<br />
So far, the opposition organized unrest has left 105 persons dead
(date last updated: July 18). There is confusion over the causes of and
parties responsible for these deaths. An in-depth account by <em>Venezuela Analysis</em> (“<a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/13081">In detail: The deaths so far</a>”, July 11, 2017) showed the following:<br />
Deaths caused by authorities: 13<br />
Direct victims of opposition political violence: 20<br />
Deaths indirectly linked to opposition barricades: 8<br />
Deaths still unaccounted for/disputed: 44<br />
Accidental deaths: 3<br />
Persons dead during lootings: 14<br />
Deaths attributed to pro-government civilians: 2<br />
The mainstream media not only avoid giving any such breakdown, they
completely ignore who murdered whom. They also ignore other pertinent
details about the opposition protests:<br />
<ol>
<li>Any details on the tactics most commonly used in opposition demonstrations.</li>
<li>How opposition protestors target day-to-day civilian activities and attempt to create a sense of terror.</li>
<li>Any investigation into the class affiliation of participants in opposition demonstrations.</li>
<li>The extent to which vandalism, arson, bombings are used; or the routine targeting of public institutions (such as clinics).</li>
<li>The assassination of Chavista supporters.</li>
</ol>
Any honest coverage would compel one to ask: are these
opposition “crusaders” genuinely interested in “democracy,” or do they
simply want the right to plunder and terrorize until they get their way
by force? We simply cannot rely on the mainstream media to provide any
insight into such pertinent questions.<br />
<strong>Voting mathematics</strong><br />
The voting tabulations given by the mainstream media more often than
not conform to the viewpoint of the Venezuelan opposition leaders and
their supporters. A look into their very own figures on voting in the
much touted “consultation” (or “referendum”) is a sterling example.
Following are a few key points:<br />
<ol>
<li>The opposition has stated that they had 2,000 polling stations
and a total of 14,000 polling booths, which remained open for 9 hours,
from 7am until 4pm. A few of stations remained opened later, but most
closed much earlier. They report a total of 7,186,170 votes. When we
divide that figure by 14,000 booths over 9 hours we get rough estimate
of <em>57 votes per hour per booth</em>. In other words, just over 1
vote every minute in each and every one of the polling booths: 9 hours
straight! In one minute and five seconds every voter had to go to the
table, show identification documents, have their details written down in
the electoral register, receive a paper ballot, go into the booth and
fill out the ballot, fold it and put it into the ballot box. Surely a
“believable” estimate, commented Jorge Martin: “massive achievement for
the opposition, one which breaks all election records and a few laws of
physics”! (“<a href="http://www.marxist.com/venezuela-july-opposition.htm">Venezuela: July 16 opposition ‘consultation’ countered by a Chavista show of strength</a>”, <em>In Defence of Marxism</em>, July 20, 2017)</li>
<li>In Spain, there are 63,000 Venezuelans, according to the census
taken on January 2017. Of these 9,000 are below the voting age, leaving
54,000. The opposition claims that 91,981 participated in the
consultation. Now, there may be some discrepancies between the census
and the real figures, but is it reasonable to accept that there are
38,000 more people than are actually registered officially? Are we not
justified to doubt these figures?</li>
<li>The opposition officially declared that 7,186,170 people had
participated. Let’s assume that the figure is true. That would fall
short of the 14 million they themselves had announced would take part,
just days before July 16, and also short of the more conservative figure
announced by Capriles as a litmus test for the day. The opposition also
announced that “with this result Maduro would have lost a recall
referendum.” This refers to the Constitution, which states that for a
recall referendum to be binding on the sitting president, more people
would have to vote for his recall than he actually won in the election.
Unfortunately for the opposition, Maduro was elected with 7,587,579
votes in 2013, and thus would not have been recalled. More confusing
yet, the figure they apparently plucked out of thin air are less even
than the opposition candidate won in that presidential election, which
was 7,363,980. (<em>ibid</em>.)</li>
</ol>
As one might expect, the mainstream media have totally
misrepresented the news of the official dry run process of the
Constituent Assembly, most claiming poor voter turnout. The Spanish <em>El País</em> informed
its readers that in Caracas there was “little influx to some polling
stations […]” where a few “looked empty.” Yet the four photographs
published by <em>El Pais</em> were of very long Chavista queues, with a
false caption saying the cues were of Chavistas going “to participate in
the opposition consultation”! (<em>ibid</em>.)<br />
<strong>Interventionist propaganda</strong><br />
The upper classes of Venezuela are trying to regain their lost
fiefdom. The program of violence they are implementing, which has rocked
Venezuela since April 4, 2017, is part of that effort.<br />
Venezuelan bonds have crashed as result of the sustained unrest, with
five-year debt yielding 36 per cent. Economic problems and corruption
are wearing down the Bolivarian revolution’s social base; as leaders are
forced into a policy of class conciliation, revolutionary mobilization
are weakened; and, thus, creating conditions favorable to the upper
classes. The disturbances the wealthy elite are creating is part of the
imperialists’ intervention plan in Venezuela. The disinformation
campaign carried out by the mainstream media is a key component of that
effort. So, we should not be surprised by the profusion of Orwellian
statements and the incessant vilification of Maduro, in mainstream
coverage of Venezuela:<br />
<ul>
<li>“The proposed Constituent Assembly would disenfranchise millions of Venezuelans.”</li>
<li>“If the Maduro regime imposes its Constituent Assembly on July 30, the US will take strong and swift economic actions.”</li>
<li>Mercosur has asked Maduro to suspend his plan to rewrite the country’s constitution.</li>
<li>A group of US lawmakers has warned of a new Cuba as Venezuela is
trying to transform the country to serve its own people. Senator Marco
Rubio of Florida said of Venezuela: “This is a dysfunctional
narco-state.” Rubio also said: “How truly tragic would it be for […] one
of the most democratic societies in the hemisphere to become Cuba.”
Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey said: “We are talking about a nearly
failed state in our own hemisphere.” Venezuela is a “nearly-failed”,
“narco-state,” and yet is “one of the most democratic societies”?! Which
statement to believe?</li>
<li>Maduro is just another Fidel. [Yes, they say this.] Cuban-American Republicans and Democrats agree: Maduro must be stopped.</li>
<li>Rubio brought the wife of Mr. Leopoldo López, one of Venezuela’s opposition leaders, to the White House in February.</li>
</ul>
The US would obviously prefer to restore its allies to the
throne in Venezuela so that they can go on plundering the country; so
that surplus labor of the toiling people of Venezuela can be
appropriated.<br />
It might be argued that while most of the facts presented above are
objective, some are biased. But that would miss the point, which is the
wildly divergent narrative presented by the mainstream media. The
interests of capitalists and imperialists are stated and restated
incessantly; while those of millions of people of Venezuela are
downplayed, distorted or ignored.<br />
We cannot remain silent. We must recognize that many other countries
may face (or are already facing) the same situation. Would an
imperialist state allow some other state to decide/define:<br />
<ol>
<li>The imperialist state’s constitution?</li>
<li>Who runs the imperialist state or who should be the president?</li>
<li>Its domestic politics?</li>
<li>Type of constitution, form of democracy and form of government?</li>
</ol>
Shouldn’t people of a country be allowed to decide the issues?
These questions must be answered by those who support or downplay
imperialist intervention in Venezuela and elsewhere.<br />
No intervention should go unchallenged, whether in Venezuela or
elsewhere. Piercing the edifice of mainstream media manipulation is a
key part of exposing imperialist intervention, not least because it
contributes to the political education of those fighting similar
battles, leading to more effective organization and resistance.<br />
<strong>This article was originally posted in <em>MR Online</em> on 25 July 2017.</strong><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2562186355143923770.post-78288633462181565332015-12-16T15:14:00.000+06:002015-12-17T15:16:01.326+06:00Bangladesh Liberation War Exposed A Neocolonial State’s Failure<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<strong>W</strong>ith flawed political process, mismanagement of contradictions in body-society-polity, failures in political arrangement, incapability in handling of aspirations ingrained within the society, limitations in socio-political farsightedness of the dominating part of the society and failures in making compromises with emerging reality the dominating elites in pre-1971-Pakistan exposed its historical limits in its domain. It was a failure of the neocolonial state as well as of the imperialist power that stood by it as its guarantor and savior. The Bangladesh people’s War for Liberation in 1971 exposed the failure, a significant development in the people’s stride onward.</div>
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Pakistan, the moth-eaten country as was reportedly described by its leader M A Jinnah, was always in a precarious position since it was organized in 1947. “Pakistan has never been a country where the institutions might be stronger than personalities. The country has generally done well under authoritarian rule”. (British Ambassador in Islamabad to Secretary of State Foreign and Commonwealth Office, 1973, Diplomatic Report No. 392/73, August 16, FCO 37/1334, The National Archives, London, cited in Mahboob Hussain, Assistant Professor, Department of History and Pakistan Studies, University of the Punjab, Lahore, “Parliament in Pakistan 1971-77 and Chief Executive: An Analysis of Institutional Autonomy”, Journal of Political Studies, vol. 20, Issue - 1, 2013)</div>
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The state’s deep rooted problem is evident in the following finding and the question:</div>
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“Pakistan has been in existence for more than four decades, yet has still not […] resolved the question of its nationhood. Does Pakistan’s national identity depend on Islam, the common faith of the majority of its citizens? [….] The country’s foreign policy files contain evidence of a seemingly unending debate about the nature of Pakistan state.” (Mehtab Ali Shah, The Foreign Policy of Pakistan: Ethnic Impacts on Diplomacy, 1971-1994, I B Tauris, London, New York, 1997) Mehtab Ali Shah cites “the contradiction that exists between the country’s official status as an ‘Islamic’ nation state, on the one hand, and the reality of its existence as a multi-ethnic society […] on the other.” (ibid.)</div>
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The state dived into more perilous position in 1971. Quoting Robert LaPorte’s “Pakistan in 1971: The Disintegration of a Nation” (Asian Survey, vol. 12, no.2, February, 1972) and other Syeda Sara Abbas writes: “Pakistan was a country without a viable government, money, international policy or a constitution […] (“Deliberative Oratory in the Darkest Hour: Style Analysis of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s Statement at the Security Council”, Pakistaniaat: A Journal of Pakistan Studies, vol. 3, no. 1, 2011) The state “survived” on “fatal links”, and the “fatal links” or the “linkages of failure” are told by Tariq Ali in his Can Pakistan Survive? The Death of a State (1983) and by Ayesha Jalal in her The State of Martial Rule (1991). Both of them cite linkage to, among others, the US imperialism. Like a business organization, the state at least once, had a CEO – Chief Executive Officer, a show of the state of the state’s nefarious political arrangement and compulsion, which many of the state’s 1971-mainstream politicians failed to perceive, which itself was a weakness in its system of observation, analysis and theory related to politics, especially the state.</div>
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The last act began on March 25, 1971, and the act concluded on December 16, 1971, the day Bangladesh people formally achieved victory by waging an armed struggle. A retired brigadier writes:</div>
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“On March 25, 1971, Gen Yahya Khan ordered the army to restore the writ of the state in East Pakistan [today’s independent Bangladesh]. On Dec 16, 1971, East Pakistan was no more.</div>
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“That afternoon [of December 16, 1971] in Dhaka, the Pakistan Army lost its honour […] when Lt Gen A.A.K. Niazi (Tiger) and his Eastern Command surrendered […] — honour that can be regained only on the battlefield. Until then, the ignominious defeat will continue to haunt the armed forces and succeeding generations in Pakistan.</div>
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“After he [Yahya Khan] chose to solve a political problem by military means [….] East Pakistan, as it stood on Dec 3, 1971, was ready to fall like a ripe plum.” (Dawn, December 3, 2009, “Blunders of the 1971 war”)</div>
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The military officer admits: “[T]he people there [in erstwhile East Pakistan, today’s independent Bangladesh] had risen in rebellion against the Pakistani state.” (ibid.)</div>
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“In 1971 Pakistan suffered a near death experience: genocide, civil war, migration and territorial reconfiguration.” (Syeda Sara Abbas, op. cit.) US Senator Fred R Harris cited a March 31, 1971 datelined report from The New York Times while urging the US government to “immediately end all military and economic assistance to Pakistan” in his letter to William P Rogers, the US secretary of state: “Pakistani soldiers have been dragging political leaders in East Pakistan into the streets where they are summarily shot. […E]xecution squads led by informers are systematically tracking down and killing East Pakistani intellectual leaders so that the people of that region will forever remain without a voice.” (US Senate, Committee on Government Operations, April 1, 1971) Congress member Halpern said in his statement: “thousands of people are being killed”. (Congressional Record House, “The need to clarify the Pakistani situation”, April 7, 1971, H 2524) US Senators Walter F Mondale, Edward W Brook, Mark O Hatfield and Edmund S Muskie in their letter to William P Rogers mentioned “bloodshed in East Pakistan” and “indiscriminate killing of unarmed civilians”. Senator Kennedy’s comments in early-April are much known: “It is a story of indiscriminate killing, the execution of dissident political leaders and students, and thousands of civilians suffering and dying every hour. It is a story of dislocation and loss of home. It is a story of little food and water.” With the situation the Pakistan state created in Bangladesh since March 1971 the state was engaged in its last act of delegitimizing itself as it was conducting genocide in a part of the country while waging a war against the majority of the population under its control as the majority of the people yearned for justice and equity.</div>
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The state found no tools and mechanism for controlling and cowing down the majority of the population other than carrying on the genocide, which was a stark show of the state’s limits in the capacity to rule. The state of business in 1971 in the Pakistan-statecraft was an example of a neocolonial state’s failure; and the genocide and the war against the people was no exception in the imperialist-neocolonial system. The genocide took away the state’s all claims to rule, and denuded its barbaric character. The war the state was waging against the majority of the population under its dominance “was intricate in nature as it involved gross human rights violations [….The] murder, rape and arson were severe enough to deem it an international crisis. (Syeda Sara Abbas, op. cit.) Ishaan Tahroor referred Sydney Schanberg, an eye witness and reporter, who termed it a pogrom, and cited the rape of 400,000. (Tharoor, “Keeping Dhaka’s Ghosts Alive”, Time, September 24, 2008)</div>
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Failure of the Pakistan state began since it was organized. “Political and economic mishandling of the East Pakistan by the former West Pakistan caused deep dissatisfaction and growth of nationalist feeling among the almost entirely Bengali population, regarded as inferior by most of West Wing’s Punjabis who were the majority of administrators. […] Unrest in the East was suppressed in a brutal pogrom by the army”. (Brian Cloughley, War, Coups and Terror, Pakistan’s army in years of turmoil, Pen & Sword Military, Pen & Sword Books Limited, South Yorkshire, Great Britain, 2008) Taha Siddiqui refers to a retired major of the Pakistan army, who fought in East Pakistan in 1971. The army officer “claims the cracks in the system had started to show long before 1971” (The Express Tribune, December 16, 1971, “Remembering 1971: A retired major tells the story he’d rather forget”) “The retired major, who is a third generation military officer, says that when he was young, he used to visit his father who was also posted in Chittagong, Bangladesh. ‘The civil service, military and other high ranking government positions were all occupied by West Pakistanis, who considered Bengalis an inferior race,’ he says. Many times he saw Bengalis openly humiliated and treated like ‘untouchables’.” (ibid.)</div>
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The failure culminated in 1971 while the Baangaalee people rose in revolt against injustice, deprivation, killing, violation of honor of its women, arson and loot.</div>
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Political crisis that the state was nourishing within its head began taking acute shape since the overthrow of dictator Ayub Khan in a mass upsurge that reached its peak in 1969. A general election based on universal adult franchise was held in the later part of 1970. The days going to the election and the election results signaled the forthcoming conflict, and failure of a faction of the dominating elites of the state and success of the Baangaalees, the majority of the population, in their political fight. The following finding is only an example picked up randomly from among many:</div>
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“Between May and December 1970 the Jama‘at campaigned frantically. Competition with the Awami League and clashes with Bhashani’s supporters escalated tensions in East Pakistan and Punjab, and clashes with the People’s Party tied down the Jama‘at in West Pakistan. […] Despite untiring efforts, it won only four of the 151 National Assembly seats which it contested, all in West Pakistan [now, Pakistan], and only four of the 331 provincial assembly seats it had aimed for, one in each province except Baluchistan […] It trailed far behind the Awami League and the People’s Party […] and to its dismay and embarrassment finished behind the Jami‘at-i Ulama-i Islam and Jami‘at-i Ulama-i Pakistan. The Jami‘at-i Ulama-i Islam even gained enough seats to serve as a partner to the National Awami Party […] in forming provincial governments in Baluchistan and North-West Frontier Province. To the Jama‘at’s surprise the two ulama parties did better than the Jama‘at, although they had contested fewer seats and received a lower percentage of votes cast. […] Where the Jama‘at had won only four seats (and none in East Pakistan), […] the ulama parties had won seven seats each. […] In contrast with the Jama‘at’s four provincial seats, the Jami‘at-i Ulama-i Islam had won nine and the Jami‘at-i Ulama-i Pakistan eleven. The Jama‘at’s 6.03 percent of the votes cast in National Assembly elections had yielded only 1.3 percent of the seats, and its 3.25 percent share of the vote in provincial elections a mere 0.67 percent of the seats. […T]he Islamic parties taken together did poorly in both parts of Pakistan. This limited the political power of Islam and further constricted the Jama‘at. […] The election results dealt a severe blow to the morale of Jama‘at members. Mawdudi’s leadership was questioned, as was the party’s time-honored reliance on Islamic symbols and the putative Islamic loyalties of Pakistanis. The election results, moreover, effectively eliminated the Jama‘at as a power broker.” (Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution: The Jama'at-i Islami of Pakistan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994, “7. The Secular State, 1958–1971”, The elections of 1970 and their aftermath) Almost similar pattern was experienced by other rightist political parties including Muslim League, the party that claimed spearheading the political moves for the establishment of Pakistan.</div>
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Moreover, the Pakistan state found the ideological and theoretical basis of its existence was lost in the political fight as Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr writes “[t]he inability of Islam to keep the two halves of the country united”. (ibid. “8. The Bhutto Years, 1971–1977”) The developments of contradictions, and deepening of failures led to further developments or complication of contradictions as Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr describes in the following way:</div>
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“Driven by its dedication to Pakistan’s unity and unable to counter the challenge of the Awami League, the Jama‘at abandoned its role as intermediary and formed an unholy alliance with the Pakistan army, which had been sent to Dhaka to crush the Bengali nationalists. After a meeting with General Tikka Khan, the head of the army in East Pakistan, in April 1971, Ghulam A‘zam, the amir of East Pakistan, gave full support to the army’s actions against ‘enemies of Islam.’ Meanwhile, a group of Jama‘at members went to Europe to explain Pakistan’s cause and defend what the army was doing in East Pakistan; another group was sent to the Arab world, where the Jama‘at drew upon its considerable influence to gain support. In September 1971 the alliance between the Jama‘at and the army was made official when four members of the Jama‘at-i Islami of East Pakistan joined the military government of the province. Both sides saw gains to be made from their alliance. The army would receive religious sanction for its increasingly brutal campaign, and the Jama‘at would gain prominence. Its position was, in good measure, the result of decisions made by the Jama‘at-i Islami of East Pakistan, then led by Ghulam A‘zam and Khurram Jah Murad. This branch of the Jama‘at, faced with annihilation, was thoroughly radicalized, and acted with increasing independence in doing the bidding of the military regime in Dhaka. The Lahore secretariat often merely approved the lead taken by the Jama‘at and the IJT [Islami Jami‘at-i Tulabah] in Dhaka. Nowhere was this development more evident than in the IJT’s contribution to the ill-fated al-Badr and al-Shams counterinsurgency operations.” (ibid. “7. The Secular State, 1958–1971”, The elections of 1970 and their aftermath)</div>
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The reality the neocolonial state was facing surfaced forcefully, and concerned quarters were looking at roots of the reality. Citing ‘Abdu’l-Ghani Faruqi’s “Hayat-i Javidan,” (HRZ, 31) Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr mentions one of those searches:</div>
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“Since the beginning of the East Pakistan crisis, Mawdudi had claimed that the problem before the country was the product of lackluster adherence to Islam. He in fact blamed the loss of East Pakistan on Yahya Khan’s womanizing and drinking. The IJT echoed Mawdudi’s sentiments: its answer to ‘What broke up the country?’ was ‘wine’ (sharab). Some in the army apparently agreed.” (op. cit., “8. The Bhutto Years, 1971–1977”)</div>
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On the basis of an interview with lawyer S. M. Zafar Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr cites another similar evidence:</div>
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“In 1972–1973, the military high command uncovered a conspiracy […] hatched by a group junior officers, led by Brigadier F. B. ‘Ali [….] S. M. Zafar, who defended the officers in court, recollects that they believed East Pakistan had been lost because of the government’s “un-Islamic” ways and Yahya Khan’s drinking in particular.” (ibid.)</div>
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Answers to the questions cropping up from the circumstances the neocolonial state faced, thus, are abounding. But don’t the answers also create further questions for further inquiry? As, for example, picking out a few from many questions: (1) Why institutions are not stronger than personalities? (2) Is it factual that the country generally does well under authoritarian rule and, if the claim is factual, what’s the reason? (3) Why the state failed to solve the question of nationhood? (4) Why the country was without a viable government, a constitution, etc.? (5) Why the state’s official status faced contradiction? (6) Why a state failed to resist a sharab addicted womanizer in usurping the helm of the state? (7) Is sharab more powerful than political process or when does sharab turns more powerful than political process? (8) Does a person or a group of persons determine fate of a state? (9) Is the state defensible if sharab turns more powerful than political process? (10) Are these the real questions? The questions turn more complicated if one looks at the political fight within and around the state machine that was going around since April 1971, the reactions among a part of its allies, and the genocide the state was carrying on. Positions of Z A Bhutto/Pakistan People’s Party, and its competitors during those days help find the reality of political jockeying that the state was experiencing. Statements of Z A Bhutto, Khan Abdul Qayyum Khan, Nawabjada Nasrullah Khan, Maulana Golam Gaus Hazarvi, Maulana Mufti Mahmud, Chowdhury Rahmate Elahi and other political leaders show their understanding of the situation and factional fight within the political system while the system was facing one of its most critical hours. The banning of all groups of National Awami Party and the cancellation of national awards of 32 high ranking civilian officers in 1971 are a few more evidences of the state’s vulnerabilities. There are more evidences. Even failure of a part of mainstream political leadership related to the state to foresee the coming events or the path of political developments or the destined path of the state is an important question, which haunts political scientists and politicians. The complications thicken if the scene is compared with other neocolonial states. The complication deepens if the reality or the questions are related to the Baangaalee people’s armed struggle for liberation and its victory. It was a people’s interaction/contradiction with a neocolonial state, and their way to carry forward the contradiction with the aim of liberation. Throughout the entire course of incidents/development the Baangaalee people appeared as the hero of history, which was blindly ignored by a part of the mainstream politics of those days although this principal character of history – the Baangaalee people – shaped political destiny of many. Actions by the people were impacting not only destiny of their land, but politics of other countries, Cold War days-super power relationships, etc. also. It was a unique moment in the life of the Bangladesh people. There were dynamics, equations, momentum, relations, speed and velocity. Hence, for furthering people’s political participation/activism, and for learning, the issue demands study.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2562186355143923770.post-31952594445013335812015-09-23T09:02:00.000+06:002015-12-17T15:20:43.773+06:00DIGNITY OF TEACHERS AND AN ADMISSION TEST : THE EDUCATION MARKET EXHIBITS ………. <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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EDUCATION market in Bangladesh deserves ‘thanks’ for its exhibition of a part of its power with anomaly and tyranny. The market does not care about common benefits. It moves and it demolishes dignity of teachers and dream of young learners. It laughs in the face of the powerless, the citizens without money power.</div>
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Two recent incidents in the Bangladesh education area is a show of the relevant market: the issue of the university teachers’ dignity and the recently concluded admission tests for medical and dental colleges. With this show, it exposes the fact that market does not favour the weak, the underprivileged, the people without purchasing capacity. Bangladesh university teachers are demanding dignity. To have dignity in this society, it seems, one has to demand in a loud voice; otherwise, the question of dignity goes ignored. It is a show of real economy with its power of dominance. The dominance is such that it does not recognise the dignity of teachers; teachers are to demand it; they are to demand it repeatedly. The dominance unveils its sense of dignity.</div>
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The economy is so efficient and powerful that it feels confident with its way of bestowing dignity proportionately or without proportion on different parts of the broader society. The economy is so arrogant with its dominance that it can ignore the question of the dignity of teachers. It is its face. It does not care about the dignity of others. It cares about its dominance. It cares about its dominance in a foolish way.</div>
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It does not know that Alexander reproached the members of his suite as those ugly devils began to make fun with the philosopher Diogenes, and then, Alexander said: ‘If I were not Alexander, I would wish to be Diogenes.’ Alexander had not only muscle power. There was brain power also.</div>
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On the contrary, the dominance, it seems, relies on muscle power. It is a power to dominate the weak, the silent. And, it is a power of the weak. Hence, seemingly scholarly opinions shamelessly search and fail to find ‘bargaining chip’ of the Bangladesh university teachers as the teachers raised their voice for dignity and the opinion was entertained by a few others including media outlet considered respectable.</div>
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It is a show of scholarship on which the dominance depends. It can move with this level of knowledge. It does not need other level of knowledge.</div>
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Economy in England required an appropriate level of the knowledge of science, philosophy, history, politics, technology for its own sake as it was extracting resources from beneath the earth, transporting goods in huge quantities, encroaching on land, pushing out peasants from land, enslaving thousands in industrial centres, securing interests tied to the resources. Appropriate philosophy and literature cropped up. France had, broadly, the same history: Requirements in economy generated appropriate scholarship, logic, arguments. Hence, there is Rousseau, there is Robespierre. Material production demanded the scholarship.</div>
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There were social requirements. These pushed forward science and technology. Science was turned into productive force. There was class struggle. This, at times, turned direct, fierce, powerful. These advanced knowledge. Ideas emerged and evolved. A few lost relevance while a few proved as essential. The complex process required knowledge as issues like rates of profit, accumulation, surplus value, and crisis and decline were encountered. The complex process required violence and restraint, law to protect property, and coercion to impose law. Market was playing its game with its level of scholarship.</div>
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Bangladesh finds an education market; not a small in size within Bangladesh reality. ‘Money’ involved in note book/guide book business is a small part of the market. Its business connection is wide.</div>
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‘Money’ involved in note book/guide book business is a small part of the market. Its business connection is wide.</div>
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There are bigger organisations involved with the market encompassing an area from primary to higher education. It goes to collaboration with organisations from other countries. There are recruiting/admission centres, local centres delivering parts of course of centres claiming to be educational from other countries, regular events organised for admission in organisations claiming to be educational from other countries, diplomatic support to these marketing approaches.</div>
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There are private organisations that train children handwriting as if never in this land none learnt handwriting in primary schools. A few very costly and luxurious schools are emerging that are catering to a very minor group of the rich of the country. People claiming to be teachers are imported for these schools.</div>
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A lot of these go beyond public view and scrutiny. The issues of transparency and accountability in this area are daydreams. Even, a complete account of these is almost impossible to find out. Here, in this article, it is a very sketchy description of the business, which can produce a very long list.</div>
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At the same time, the Bangladesh journalists regularly digs out stories of ‘from zero to hero’ — a lorry driver or a petty thief active in a city market place turns millionaire without any investment within a few years, wields wide power based on connections, terrorises a population in an area, and amasses a huge property. A Dhaka gang of pickpockets regularly spent a few hundreds of thousands of takas for travelling to Saudi Arabia during the holy Hajj with the plan of pick-pocketing the honourable hajis, Hajj performers. The gang has recently been apprehended. It is an international pick-pocketing operation! The multi-level marketing scam is a repeated incident. The total amount of these scams over the years is huge in terms of Bangladesh economy. The stories of other loots — from nature, banks, public property, property of individuals from weaker parts of society, from consumers of public utilities, hardware and software projects — are much narrated as are the stories of speculation, black marketeering, smuggling. These are related to the stock market of Bangladesh variation, essential commodities, agro-products, valuable metals and drugs. Together they make a size to be ‘appreciated’. [Appropriation of surplus value is not considered here.]</div>
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What happens to these ‘monies’? What connections do these build up? What are the areas and organisations these ‘monies’ infiltrate? How these ‘monies’ behave? What senses do these ‘monies’ own? What influences do these ‘monies’ spread across organisations, masses and culture?</div>
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The way and the amount of the ‘generation’ of these ‘monies’ astonish many traders, many manufacturers, many service providers, and many industrialists in Bangladesh. It takes an ‘astonishing’ shape and character as these ‘monies’ metamorphoses and enters into the broader economy that includes manufacturing, processing, etc. Culture, institutions and politics in all areas of public life cannot stay beyond it. The required ideology is framed accordingly and appropriately. Formal and dominant education is part of the ideology.</div>
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The pattern, the character of dominance that thus gets shaped, gathers energy in market — a region of tyranny. Education cannot escape the forces in the market once it is brought to market for trading. Honour, dignity, merit, labour, all are traded and subordinated to the market where only profit dominates and profit belongs to the powerful. This finds the more the power, the higher the dignity; the more the ‘money’, the higher the honour; the more the ‘money’ power, the more the ‘merit’. The merit as an output of labour falls down on dust — it is pushed back as ‘money’ owners purchase meritorious positions. It is part of the market’s manipulation. Merit produced with ceaseless hard labour haplessly is thrown out of market as the ‘money’ ‘germinated’ through the process mentioned above does not require scientific knowledge for a time being, and at initial stage. It can carry on its business — loot, etc. — with the ‘merit’ without merit. Even, trading with seats of merit is a lucrative business for it.</div>
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A comparison makes it easy to comprehend the lucrative business: The time and effort required to introduce or to import a technology in agriculture, in garment factory, in market place, in public education area, and the time required for ‘innovation’ of transmitting answers in a recently held admission test and the device used for conducting the smart business. The device, as media reports cited an official concerned, is a hearing machine small enough to hide inside ear and it was imported. The official concerned is not that irresponsible that he will concoct a device gossip.</div>
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What is the price of the device? What is the total amount of money required for entering into the deal for admission — getting answers in an admission test for a slot in a medical or dental college. Getting such a slot is a young learner’s dream nourished for years? How many months’ labour of an ordinary wage earner is required for earning that amount of money required to enter into the deal for admission — Tk 6,00,000 to Tk 1.5 million? How many ordinary persons can afford that amount? Who can afford that? The takawala, the rich, can afford the amount of money. An ordinary wage earner of Bangladesh in a far away land toiling under hard working condition has to forgo a few months’, and for many, years’, wage or savings.</div>
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Two aspects emerge from the, let it name, device deal: (1) the poor, meritorious gets kicked out; and (2) the broader society has to bear the burden of corrupt, non-merit. On the one hand, inequality widens and consolidates; and on the other, society suffers and is going to be suffered. However, the rich, the corrupt, the powerful entering into the device deal reaps benefits. Thus, it stands as, a few money-powered benefits at the cost of many weak, poor citizens.<br />This biased reality, a corruption of reality, does not go for the dignity of teachers as the money power dominating the reality considers that money is dignity, power is dignity, everything is purchasable, merit does not matter. Goodwill and intervention of an individual leader or a group of leaders may redress the dignity issue as the aggrieved group raised the issue of indignity, but the reality of increasing inequality persists. It persists because of the character of the ‘money’ involved. With this persistence, the ‘money’ involved confirms its harmful role, and creates rational for making it irrelevant.</div>
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The students and guardians demanding redress of their grievances related to the admission test, thus, stand as part of discontent that the ‘money’ concerned creates. The discontent can be ignored temporarily but cannot be wiped out. Instead of getting wiped out, it will silently creep in and turn powerful until redressed properly. The placards that the students held during their recent protest near the National Press Club in Dhaka read: Jadi habe prashna fans, keno parba bara mas (Why shall I study round-the-year if the admission question paper is leaked), and Taka achhe bap-dadar, medical naki chorakarbar (Parents have money, probably the medical admission exam is a black marketeering). The slogans are a rejection of the money power that corrupts reality, increases and confirms irresponsible ‘money’s’ harmful role. It will impact deeply and negatively as young learners’ yearning for justice shall not go in vain.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2562186355143923770.post-77093092795117376732015-09-14T15:23:00.000+06:002015-12-17T15:29:50.354+06:00The Ambiguity: The Case Of Democracy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<strong>T</strong>he Great Financial Crisis, the Occupy Wall Street rising, Wikileaks and Snowden exposure, imperialist interventions in Iraq-Libya-Syria, the economic-political developments in Greece, and the on-going string of revelations in the US politics take away all ambiguities related to democracy, development and state. With broad and fundamental connections and character the incidents and processes – parts of democracy and development – being witnessed by the contemporary world are significant with far-reaching implications, and helpful to comprehend issues of democracy, development and state.</div>
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No ambiguity: Ambiguous and confusing narratives of democracy and development are vigorously sold in markets despite the reality of repeated exposures by the merciless incidents and processes mentioned above. However, the time is still dominated by the forces that try to benefit from confusion they create. Now-a-days even the conservatives like to “challenge the status quo”. Carly Fiorina, a runner for the Republican presidential nomination in the US, expressed similar views while she was discussing her foreign policy expertise in the first debate in early-August. (The Washington Post, August 9, 2015, “Distinguished pol of the week”) Isn’t the tact uncovered?</div>
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<span class="style1 style111"><a href="http://www.countercurrents.org/subscription.htm" style="text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" height="550" src="http://www.countercurrents.org/appeal-articlepage.jpg" width="917" /></a></span></div>
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With the same tact, a part of academia and media massively and persistently propagate (1) democracy and capitalism are synonymous, (2) democracy is the normal and natural political form of capitalism, (3) democracy can’t be conceived without capitalism, (4) democracy is an integral part of capitalism, and (5) the issue of development conceived within capitalism can ensure people’s interests, their entitlements, their empowerment, their freedom of choice. Their propaganda tries to show:</div>
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(1) democracy is class-neutral;</div>
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(2) its universal form fits all societies, economies and interests of all classes: and</div>
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(3) the issue of development can be perceived and implemented without taking into consideration the issues related to class and class conflicts within a political system including democracy.</div>
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But variations in democracy don’t support the propaganda. The bourgeois democracy is fully exposed today with the political developments in the advanced bourgeois democracies. Former US president Jimmy Carter’s response to a question about his opinion on the US Supreme Court’s decisions in the 2010 Citizens United and the 2014 McCutcheon that allows pouring of unlimited secret money including foreign money into US political and judicial campaigns tells a lot about the type and character of the democracy.</div>
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The former US president said: “It violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it’s just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or being elected president. And the same thing applies to governors, and US Senators and congress members. So, now we’ve just seen a subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect, and sometimes get, favors for themselves after the election is over. ... At the present time the incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves. Somebody that is already in Congress has a great deal more to sell.” (The Thom Hartmann Program, Jimmy Carter’s interview, July 28, 2015) Any careful reader in any peripheral society will see the same image around.</div>
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The US “story” was started long ago. Charles Austin Beard’s illustrious book An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States says: “The economic corollary of this system is as follows: Property interests may, through their superior weight in power and intelligence, secure advantageous legislation whenever necessary, and they may at the same time obtain immunity from control by parliamentary majorities.” (ch. VI, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1921) Beard’s survey of the “distribution of economic power in the US in 1787 and property holdings of every delegate to the Constitutional Convention of that year led him to conclude that at least five-sixths of the delegates stood to gain personally from the adoption of the constitution, mainly because it would protect the public credit and raise the value of the public securities they held.” (“Beard, Charles A.,” International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 1968) Chapter V, “The Economic Interests of the Members of the Convention”, of the book presents the survey in detail and says: “The overwhelming majority of members, at least fifth-sixths, were immediately, directly, and personally interested in the outcome of their labors at Philadelphia, and were to a greater or less extent economic beneficiaries from the adoption of the Constitution.”</div>
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The next chapter “The Constitution as an Economic Document” says: “[T]he concept of the Constitution as a piece of abstract legislation reflecting no group interests and recognizing no economic antagonisms is entirely false. It was an economic document drawn with superb skill by men whose property interests were immediately at stake …”</div>
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“At the close of [the] long and arid survey” that he conducted his conclusions include:<br /><br />“No popular vote was taken directly or indirectly on the proposition to call the Convention which drafted the Constitution.</div>
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“A large propertyless mass was, under the prevailing suffrage qualifications, excluded at the outset from participation (through representatives) in the work of framing the Constitution.</div>
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“The members of the Philadelphia Convention which drafted the Constitution were, with a few exceptions, immediately, directly, and personally interested in, and derived economic advantages from, the establishment of the new system.</div>
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“In the ratification of the Constitution, about three-fourths of the adult males failed to vote on the question … either on account of their indifference or their disfranchisement by property qualifications.</div>
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“The Constitution was ratified by a vote of probably not more than one-sixth of the adult males.</div>
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“The Constitution was not created by ‘the whole people’ as the jurists have said …”</div>
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Now, there’s the famous study in the US: “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens” by Martin Gilens, Professor of Politics at Princeton University, and Benjamin I. Page, Gordon S. Fulcher Professor of Decision Making at Northwestern University, in Perspectives on Politics, the journal of the American Political Science Association [Vol. 12, Issue 03, September 2014 doi:10.1017/S1537592714001595.]. Their multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impact on policy of US government while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.</div>
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The study results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination (EED) and for theories of Biased Pluralism (BP), but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy (MED) or Majoritarian Pluralism (MP). The empirical study, first of its kind in social sciences in the US, found: “The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.” The study said: “The preferences of economic elites (as measured by the [study] proxy, the preferences of ‘affluent’ citizens) have far more independent impact upon policy change than the preferences of average citizens do.”</div>
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The scientists tested, first of this type, each of the four theoretical traditions – EED, BP, MED and MP – in the study of US politics. Until recently it was not been possible to test these contrasting theoretical predictions against each other within a single statistical model. They used a unique data set that included measures of the key variables for 1,779 policy issues during the study period 1981-2002.</div>
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The study findings indicate: “In the United States … the majority does not rule – at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes.” [emphasis in the original] The research essay concluded with the following sentence: “[W]e believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.” [Are peripheral societies free of this observation?]</div>
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Recent findings and incidents show the advanced democracy today is much in favor of the propertied minority classes than those days. A close look at the US politics, especially elections in the political system takes away all confusion, and supports the above claim.</div>
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Advanced capitalist democracies are appropriate cases for debate on the issue of democracy today as democracies in variations in the periphery actually are under-developed that make the debate on bourgeois democracy inconclusive. Moreover, democracy or similar systems and arrangements in peripheral societies without experiencing bourgeois revolution or its type, and without developing their political arrangements and institutions are not comparable to advanced bourgeois democracy.</div>
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Hotchpotch business: There is lumpenocracy or lumpen-democracy, democracy for lumpen interests, characterized by immaturity, inefficiency, near-to-absolute dependency, unaware about self-interest, incapable of even carrying out its businesses with bourgeois tact, utterly unstable – sometimes behaving to a standard below medieval level including carrying out medieval style assassinations, murders and palace-conspiracies, sometimes taking moves that “strangely” touch the level of maturity but always lurk near the border of failure, always engaged with suicidal factional fights, always fighting for legitimacy but de-legitimating ruling machine, failing to secure institutions/machine for class rule, sporadically resorting to populist measures. Lumpenocracies also are not the samples to study bourgeois democracy. Deliberations within lumpenocracies, especially within its legislative and other branches of its government most of the time provide a picture of a reality which is worse than a hotchpotch business, worse than to be despised.</div>
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Many tags: Donor-driven/designed democracy (DDD), which is funded by the so-called donors, and is part of low-intensity conflict, and intervention-democracy (ID), and non-neutral position of these arrangements are starkly evident in countries that are experiencing or have already experienced these. American Democracy Promotion: Impulses, Strategies and Impacts (Michael Cox, G John Ikenberry and Takashi Inoguchi (ed.), Oxford University Press, 2002) discusses the DDD. These two types of democracies, DDD and ID, a lot other tags these carry, are not only for the peripheral countries. These have been/are being implemented in near-center countries also.</div>
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A group of theoreticians try to classify democracies into liberal and illiberal types, which don’t show the class character of these systems. Democracies considered liberal behave in illiberal way in actual terms whenever it feels the demand. In countries, political system considered liberal didn’t/don’t hesitate for a moment to resort to brutal repression and encroachment of minimum available, if any, democratic space for people, an illiberal act, whenever the interests felt threatened. These “liberal” systems don’t shy away from illiberal acts or being characterized as tyrannical. Recent exposures, and a careful examination of the systems claimed to be liberal democracy show the illiberal character of these systems. No democracy claimed to be liberal has behaved in liberal way whenever it has faced a situation that it considered to be threatening to its power, authority and interests. Each of these democracies supports respective interests, constituencies, classes and factions within these classes/interests. Citing cases from Latin America Andre Gunder Frank writes: “[T]hese very liberals were the first to resort to repressive measures and even to military dictatorship to serve their economic interests. Such was the course of events in Porfirian Mexico, in the ‘banana republics’ of Central America, and in the sugar producing countries of the Caribbean.” (Lumpenbourgeoisie: Lumpendevelopment, 1974) In Asia, similar cases are many. Europe and North America are not free from the style.</div>
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Transitional: Peoples’ struggles in countries have helped emerge types of democracies which are transitional and experimental in character, and are defined in different ways. These include, as Leslie Sklair mentions in “The Transition from Capitalist Globalization to Socialist Globalization” (Journal of Democratic Socialism, 1 (1), 2011), and Nadia Johanisova and Stephan Wolf mention in “Economic democracy: A path for the future” (Futures, vol. 44, issue 6, August 2012), economic democracy that brings private firms, or “the economy” under democratic public control, producer-consumer cooperatives playing a role in the generation, allocation and mobilization of resources, regulation of market mechanisms and corporate activities, support for social enterprises, democratic money creation processes, reclaiming the commons, redistribution of income and capital assets; social democracy, as Atilio A Boron discusses in “The Truth About Capitalist Democracy” (Socialist Register, 52, 2006) and Kathi Weeks discusses in The Problem with Work (Duke University Press, London, 2011), which along with regular election and popular participation in decision making process ensures universal access to employment, basic income, housing, health and educational services, and better living standard. The economic democracy, as Boron cites Gøsta Esping Andersen’s argument, “strengthens the worker and debilitates the absolute authority of the employers”. There’s political democracy, as Patrick Heller discusses in “Moving the State: The Politics of Democratic Decentralization in Kerala, South Africa, and Porto Alegre” (Politics and Society, vol. 29, no. 1, March 2001) that tries to find out effective ways for popular participation in decision making process, political representation and division of powers. Ben Selwyn refers a number of these in The Global Development Crisis. Ben Selwyn also mentions electoral democracy that regularly holds elections “but only acts to fill the posts of executive and legislative functions of the state who then serve ‘market forces’.” Noam Chomsky in Deterring Democracy (Verso, London 1991) describes the arrangement as “Low Intensity Democracy”.</div>
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All these and other systems and arrangements, with whatever nomenclature these are identified, show a single fact: Democracy as all other political systems is neither free from class contradictions nor class-neutral as all these move along respective class-line, as all these are/were designed to serve class interests and ensure class dominance.</div>
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Historical period & institutions: The system – democracy – does not transcend specific characteristics of historical periods. “[I]n order to be meaningful, discussions of democratic [and developmental] prospects … require a real grasp of the historically generated and limited situation.”(Bill Freund, “The weight of history: Prospects for democratisation in South Africa”, in Jonathan Hyslop (ed.) African Democracy in the Era of Globalisation, University of the Witwatersrand Press, Johannesburg, 1999, cited in David Moore, “Zimbabwe 1997-2007: A democracy of diminished expectations or<br />- Toward a political economy of renewal?”, October 24, 2007; also in David Moore, “The Weight of History, a Broad Sense of the Possible: Economic History, Development Studies, Political Economy and Bill Freund”, African Studies, Lance van Siddert and David Moover, eds., spl. issue, “Festschrift for Bill Freund”, 65, 1, July 2006)</div>
<div align="left" class="style47" style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-size: large; line-height: 32px;">
There’s no single, universal design of democracy that fits all societies, countries and all regions of the world with their respective historical phases, levels/stages of development, all classes and class alignments in the societies. This fact invalidates (1) intervention- and donor-driven/designed democracies in societies, and (2) perception or thesis that a particular type of democracy in a particular society is the standard or yardstick for all societies.</div>
<div align="left" class="style47" style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-size: large; line-height: 32px;">
Institutions embedded in interests of non-people sector of society neither serve democracy of people nor development for people; but the institutions don façade of equity, equality and democracy, which are mostly misunderstood, confused by a part in society, and are sold among people by another part. The later part’s stupidity and shallow statements come to light gradually. Moreover, institutions carry mark, characteristics, limitations of historical period. At times, institutions starkly show their incapability to carry forward, materialize and safeguard people’s rights, interests, struggles for a humane life. This nullifies the institutions, and the time delivers historical verdict: ignore the institutions incapable to carry forward people’s interests, set aside the incapable institutions, replace the institutions with appropriate institutions, and thus a rationale for radical change is constructed.</div>
<div align="left" class="style47" style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-size: large; line-height: 32px;">
These – the historical phase and institutions – are integral part of the questions of democracy and development in all societies. Mere slogans, and absence of critical analysis of these – institutions, historical perspective, etc. – don’t facilitate charting path to democracy and humane development as humane development requires humane institutions at all levels.</div>
<div align="left" class="style47" style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-size: large; line-height: 32px;">
Political system crops up from economy, and economic system can’t operate without social relations. “[T]here is not an economic system that operates without being under any social relations. Thus, it makes no sense if we talk about the rationality and viability of an economic system without considering the context of social relations. For example, given the capitalist social relations, productive forces can be developed only if the capitalists are allowed to exploit the workers, and consequently only the economic system that allows the capitalists to exploit the workers can be ‘rational and viable’. This certainly does not suggest that what is ‘rational and viable’ for capitalism is also ‘rational and viable’ for any other society. On the contrary, capitalist exploitation, by repressing the creativity of working people, is a great obstacle to the development of productive forces.” (Li Minqi, Capitalist Development and Class Struggles in China, Amherst, US)</div>
<div align="left" class="style47" style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-size: large; line-height: 32px;">
Democracy isn’t a system, which is free from an economic system, is not a system, which can roam freely without taking into account its masters’ desires, and no economic system is not without social relations; and these in turn, shape the character of a democracy – who’s served, who’s safeguarded, whose rule prevails. This contention is not limited at national level only. Rather, this should be applied at regional, local and community levels, and in all types and forms of institutions and organizations including cooperatives, educational institutions, project implementation committees or bodies, water control structure management/maintenance bodies, NGO-organized and microcredit-driven groups, etc. also. This all encompassing view provides a more realistic, full picture of democracy in a society. The full picture helps perceive the type, character and ownership of democracy, and its role – effective or ineffective – in the area for development in the society.</div>
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Absence of an all encompassing view, focusing on only a particular area, narrowing down on only top and ignoring the ground or base is nothing but hypocrisy, nothing but turning into ally of the system, and nothing but exposing self-identity – cohort of the system. Absence of specific programs for all these – democracy and democratization at all levels and in all institutions and organizations – make demand for democracy a script for a comedy. All discussions on democracy turn into idiotic slogans and statements, and fail to design a system capable of delivering a humane development if these aspects are not considered while trying to build up a system named democracy or extending support to a system claiming to be democracy.</div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2562186355143923770.post-89862027093275786922015-07-13T19:16:00.000+06:002015-08-06T19:17:55.642+06:00Blackmailing Bankers Now Stage A Coup In Greece<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
<strong>S</strong>trangulated
Greece now experiences a coup by blackmailing bankers. It’s a show of
bankers’ democracy, a worst form of democracy in the Age of Crises. It’s
an invasion by bankers.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
Honorable bankers have imposed
their demands on the people in Greece. It’s their reciprocal democratic
measure to the Greek people’s practice with democracy. They love to
humiliate people, they love to wreck countries, they love to pauperize
people. These acts make them rich and powerful.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
The conditions imposed on Greece
are already public. It’s a regime of measures aimed at punishing the
Greek people, hurting their honor. The bankers are laughing with the
pride of powerful: We can do whatever we want. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
Casting away all veils of shame
and hypocrisy they demanded Greek public property worth billions of
dollars to be placed outside of Greece. There was a suggestion that $56
billion (about 50 billion euros) of Greek public assets be placed in an
independent trust based in Luxembourg, which would be out of reach of
Greek politicians, the proceeds of which from privatizations would go
directly to pay off debts. An appropriate bankers’ proposal! The
arrogant bankers don’t bother the way their demand actually takes shape:
A robbery. Alexis Tsipras, the Greek prime minister, has said: We
averted the transfer of public property abroad, we averted the plan to
cause a credit crunch and the collapse of the financial system.” </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
The 17-hour Brussels-bargaining shows very significant parts of a part of the world capitalism and a few facts:</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
<br />
1. Division within the bankers’ camp.<br />
2. Weakness and vulnerabilities within the camp.<br />
3. Vulnerability of the eurozone project. <br />
4. The bankers’ brutal character.<br />
5. The bankers’ intolerance with people’s verdict.<br />
6. Democracy is not universal. There are bankers’ democracy and people’s
democracy. Bankers’ democracy is dictatorial in case of people.
Bankers’ democracy now dictates the legislative assembly of Greece. A
flagrant violation. But the bourgeois democratic world doesn’t find
there any trampling of democracy. <br />
7. Limit of bourgeois democracy is narrowing down in the Age of Crisis.<br />
8. Sovereignty of countries is defined and demarcated by bankers.
Sovereign power of legislative assembly? Bankers don’t bother with it.
They need money.<br />
9. There are limit to powers of bankers. They can’t demolish all
resistances. They can’t stand slightest resistance. Resistance with a
politically aware, organized people under the guidance of a matured
leadership and with united front is invincible.<br />
10. Its geopolitical aspect is very significant. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
The bankers had to make
compromise. It was difficult for them to reach a compromise. They also
had to cede a space: A 95 billion dollars (86 billion euros) aid to
Greece in the next three years to keep the eurozone intact, to keep
Greece within the eurozone.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
The hashtag #ThisIsACoup, says
an AFP report, is now trending widely among users of internet in Greece,
France, Germany and Britain. They claim: “Greece was effectively being
stripped of fiscal sovereignty.” </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
According to the AFP report
KostasKainakis, a marketing lecturer in Athens comments: “Germany is
destroying Europe once again”. From Britain, AllanSkerratt, a
non-partisan retired soldier and ex-teacher opines: “The Germans could
not do it with tanks so now they try it with banks [and are] trying to
STEAL Greek assets BrITS MUST vote to get out”. Barbara Lochbihler, a
member of the European Parliament for Germany’s Greens party, tweets:
“They talk about trust. Only to draft a proposal that is pure
humiliation. Brilliant idea.” Paul Krugman, the Nobel-winning economist,
writes: “The trending hashtag #ThisIsACoup is exactly right. This goes
beyond harsh into pure vindictiveness, complete destruction of national
sovereignty, and no hope of relief.” “It is, presumably, meant to be an
offer Greece can’t accept; but even so, it’s a grotesque betrayal of
everything the European project was supposed to stand for.” </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
It was a bitter struggle in
Brussels. There were extreme conservative forces bent on humiliating and
punishing Greece for the weak economy’s stand with dignity. Tsipras
said: “We found ourselves before difficult decisions, tough dilemmas. We
took the responsibility of the decision in order to avert the
implementation of the more extreme aims of conservative circles in the
European Union.” Nikos Filis, the parliamentary spokesman for the
Syriza, said on ANT1 TV Monday: Greece is being “waterboarded” by
eurozone leaders. He accused Germany of “tearing Europe apart” for the
third time in the past century. The observation tells the weakness
within the eurozone. It’s not the German strength; it’s the strength of
bankers as they fear their weakness that they like to hide with their
show of strength.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
A part of the Greek people’s
struggle has come to a point. The episode – fight the bankers’
blackmailing and coup – is political. Its financial and economic aspects
will appear in a meaningful way if its political aspect is not missed.
It’s bankers’ politics. It’s bankers reign. The bankers’ politics is to
be faced with people’s politics. People’s solidarity movement in
countries should be widened. Bankers reign should be exposed. The most
valuable lesson of the incident is political, the question of democracy.
The relation between democracy and economy, and control on economy and
politics are to be highlighted among the citizens. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
It was a steadfast fight waged
by the people in Greece although a part of mainstream media is
propagating the deal as capitulation. But they deny admitting that the
extreme conservative forces within the EU failed to move with their
design: Grexit. They know their weak spot. Next time, the people will
stand again with the lessons learned. There is possibility that the
awakening will be in countries in Europe. Spain is already experiencing
the trend. </div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2562186355143923770.post-74391886278552981102015-06-28T08:07:00.000+06:002015-06-30T08:08:48.218+06:00Blackmailing By Bankers: People In Greece Are Going For Referendum<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
<strong>P</strong>eople in
Greece are going to referendum on July 5 to deliver their verdict on the
question: Shall bankers be allowed to blackmail or no? </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
Alexis Tsipras, the Greek prime minister, has proposed the referendum on the Eurogroup’s austerity proposals. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
In an address to the nation,
Tsipras referred to the Eurogroup’s proposals with an ultimatum as
blackmail-ultimatum, and said: “To this blackmail-ultimatum, for the
acceptance on our part of a strict and humiliating austerity (proposal),
and with no end to it in sight nor with the prospect of allowing us to
ever stand on our feet economically or socially, I call upon you to
decide sovereignly and proudly, as the history of Greeks dictates.”</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
Tsipras’ address presented in brief the background of the creditors’ acts: </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
“For the past six months the
Greek government has been giving battle in conditions of unprecedented
economic asphyxiation, to implement your mandate, of Jan. 25. It was a
mandate to negotiate with our partners to end austerity and to restore
prosperity and social justice to our country.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
“(It was) for a viable agreement
which would respect both democracy, common European rules and would
lead to a definitive exit from the crisis.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
“Throughout this negotiation
period, we were asked to adopt bailout agreements which were agreed with
previous governments, even though these were categorically condemned by
the Greek people in the recent elections.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
“But we did not, even for a moment, contemplate yielding. That is, to effectively betray your own trust.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
“After five months of tough
negotiations our partners, unfortunately, concluded at the Eurogroup the
day before last with a proposal, an ultimatum, to the Hellenic Republic
and the Greek people.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
“An ultimatum which contravenes the founding principles and values of Europe. The value of our common European structure.”</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
Rumors of surrender by and
skepticism about Tsipras’ and the Greek finance minister Yanis
Varoufakis’ position were spread over the last few months. There was
planned propaganda to ridicule them. A part of mainstream media showed
its taste as it tried to mock and vilify Varoufakis.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
But it appears, unprincipled
compromise has still not been made. On the contrary, theirs is a
position of upholding the interests of the people of Greece. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
Tsipras’ address details the bankers’ blackmailing proposals: </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
“The Greek government was asked
to accept a proposal which accumulates unbearable new burdens on the
Greek people and undermines the recovery of Greek society and its
economy, not only maintaining uncertainty, but by amplifying social
imbalances even further.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
“The proposals of the
institutions include measures which lead to a further detribalization of
the labor market, pension cutbacks, new reductions in public sector
salaries and an increase in VAT on food, eateries and tourism, with an
elimination of tax breaks on the islands.”</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
A statement by Varoufakis makes
it clear. “Over the past days and weeks”, said Varoufakis in an
interview, “the Greek government has been making concessions
continuously. Unfortunately, every time we make a concession and we get
three quarters of the way, the institutions do the exact opposite, they
toughen their stance.” On another occasion, he said Greece has bent over
backwards in order to accommodate strange demands of the creditors. He
was talking to Irish radio station RTE. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
The situation led the Church of
Greece to appeal to all concerned: “[W]ith enlightenment by Our Lord
Jesus that it is possible to find a mutually accepted solution.” </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
But the creditors’ hearts are
enlightened only by money, not by the Lord Jesus. Creditors not only
want flesh; blood, heart and the whole body and soul are their demand.
Panos Skourletis, the Greek minister for labor, said: Every time we are
about to reach a solution they come and say bring some more pensioners
to execute. <br />
<br />
The Greek prime minister, in his address, identified the creditors’ proposal: </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
“These proposals clearly violate
European social rules and fundamental rights to work, equality and to
dignity, proving that the aim of some partners and institutions was not a
viable and beneficial agreement for all sides, but the humiliation of
the entire Greek people.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
“These proposals prove the fixation, primarily of the International Monetary Fund, to tough and punitive austerity.”</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
So, the all-powerful IMF is there with its cruelty, with its indifference to life and dignity of people. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
But Tsipras’ position is the opposite of the IMF as he addressed the people:</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
“My fellow Greeks, we are now
burdened with the historic responsibility, (in homage to) to the
struggles of the Hellenic people, to enshrine democracy and our national
sovereignty.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
“It is a responsibility to the
future of our country. And that responsibility compels us to answer to
this ultimatum based on the will of the Greek people.”</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
After concluding the
inconclusive negotiation with the Euro bosses the Greek prime minister
returned home, convened meeting of the Greek cabinet, and suggested the
“referendum for the Greek people to decide in sovereignty.” The
suggestion was unanimously accepted by the cabinet. Within a short time,
he addressed the nation. The cabinet decided to ratify the July 5
referendum proposal in the plenary of the Greek parliament. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
The referendum will pose the
question of the acceptance or rejection of the proposal by the
institutions. Even, before addressing the people, Tsipras communicated
the Greek cabinet’s decision to the French president, the German
chancellor and the ECB president. The Greek prime minister informed:
“[T]omorrow in correspondence to the EU leaders and institutions I will
formally request a few days extension of the (bailout) program so the
Greek people can decide, free of pressure or coercion, as is dictated by
the Constitution of our country and the democratic tradition of
Europe.”<br />
</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
So, the move is clean,
transparent and fair. There’s no ambiguity, no backdoor deal, no attempt
to keep people in dark. Tsipras’ address to the nation emphasizes a
number of issues relevant not only to Greece, but also to other
countries facing the world masters, bank bosses. He said:</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
“My fellow Greeks,</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
“To this autocratic and harsh austerity, we should respond with democracy, with composure and decisiveness.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
“Greece, the cradle of democracy, should send a strong democratic answer to Europe and the world community.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
“I am absolutely certain your choice will honor the history of our country, and send a message of dignity to the whole world.”</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
It’s the message of democracy
and dignity, which is sold out by leadership, lackey in character, in
countries although democracy and dignity are the “tools” to fight
command, dictation, and authoritarian rule of the world bosses.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
Emphasis on people, sovereignty and dignity is clearly spelled out as Tsipras addressed the Greek people: </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
“I call upon you all to take the decisions worthy of us.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
“For us, future generations, for the history of Greeks.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
“For the sovereignty and dignity of our people.”</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
In the struggle for building up a
prosperous life, for asserting rights over public properties and
defending those, dignity and democracy are the cornerstones. For
building up a prosperous life for the people, claiming public properties
are essential as essential is asserting the rights with the sense of
dignity. In today’s world, two trends are visible: undignified acts by a
group of political leadership in a group of countries, and strivings
for a dignified life by another group. Today’s Greece teaches dignity.
It shames those political leaders without any sense of shame. Sense of
dignity tells not to capitulate. It tells not to surrender people’s
sovereign space. It’s one of the essential elements in the struggle
against usurpers of public resources. Greece is showing this still.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
In the case of Greece, Tsipras’, Varoufakis’ and their comrades’ stand is significant in two ways: </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
(1) In this Greece, bankers
dictated and successfully made a regime change. In this Greece, bankers
imposed whatever they liked. And, in this Greece, Tsipras, Varoufakis,
the Spartan finance minister, and their comrades are standing on
people’s mandate; they are bargaining on the strength of people’s
mandate; they are going back to people to review their mandate through
the proposed referendum. Bankers have not succeeded in toppling Tsipras
and his comrades still. <br />
(2) In the countries with austerity-bitten people, the struggle Greece
is waging today will have implications. One of the implications will be
political. Another will be in mass-psyche. The rest implications include
lesson for a part of political leadership in those countries. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
Bankers will also learn from a
political leadership’s practice with democracy and dignity. Their first
attempt will be to subvert similar leadership and politics in the
austerity-battered countries.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
Greece, it’s hoped, will be
studied by political scientists as incidents in and related to the
country are connected to a number of aspects of bourgeois democracy,
state and people. A few limits, connections, roles are starkly visible.
The incidents are not limited within its borders. This perspective
generates serious questions. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
The compromise question needs
emphasis. Possibilities of compromises are always there. Compromises
vary on the basis of principled stand, and its opposite. Limitations of
circumstance compel, at times, to compromise. Sweeping comments
regarding compromise, as adventurism resorts to, leads to a wrong place:
isolation from friends, all sorts of inactivity but slogan-mongering,
misleading people, and handing over opportunity to foe. In today’s
Greece, both examples are present.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
Moves by Tsipras, Varoufakis and
their comrades are an example of political fight. The people are also
participating in the fight. It’s an example of political fight against
bankers. It’s meaningful. It’s meaningful as it’s Greece. Its past,
history, present, its types of relation with bankers over times, its
geopolitical position, size of the economy, Greece, and power of the
parties on the other side of negotiation table make the ongoing Greek
incidents meaningful. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
The developments show it’s not
possible by masters to intervene all the time or any time, and it’s not
always possible to confuse people. Still the Greek people have not sent
their trust to masters’ vault. It’s a lesson for people of other
countries. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
In an interview to the German
radio station Deutschlandfunk the European commissioner for energy
Gunther Oettinger warned: Greece may be forced out of the Eurozone,
unless the Greek government and its creditors can reach an agreement by
the end of the month. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
But, from his end, the Greek prime minister clearly conveyed his message on the Euro position: </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
“In these crucial hours, we must all remember Europe is the common home of its people. There are no owners or guests in Europe.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
“Greece is, and will remain an
indispensable part of Europe and Europe an indispensable part of Greece.
But Greece without democracy is a Europe without identity or a
compass.”</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
Euro bosses will not lend their
ears to this assertion: “Greece without democracy is a Europe without
identity or a compass”. But the people of Europe should stand to defend
democracy in Greece as it will be a part of defending democracy in home.
And, brutal austerity-dictation by authoritarian bank bosses can be
fought out with democracy only. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
With the message, Tsipras is
standing for Europe, a democratic Europe, the Europe bankers fear as
democratic practice always stands as a bulwark against authoritarian
rule. Bankers’ choice is a docile, fragmented Europe, a Europe to be
ruled only by bankers. Tsipras has signaled: Leaving Europe is not the
choice of Greece. The crisis that bankers have created is, as Tsipras
said, “threatening the future of European unification.”</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
More interesting incidents are
going to happen in Europe, and in Greece, the economy 2 percent of the
eurozone and smaller than a number of cosmopolitan cities in the world
metropolis. There’s a deadline now: June 30, payment of euro 1.6 billion
to IMF.</div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2562186355143923770.post-87190652215282138622015-06-14T08:14:00.000+06:002015-06-30T08:17:45.650+06:00The Pro And Anti-India Question In Bangladesh Politics <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
<strong>B</strong>angladesh
politics can’t escape India question. It was always there. For a long
time, it can be assumed for obvious reasons, the issue will remain live
in the politics. No one, if the person or the factor means politics in
Bangladesh, owns any sense to ignore the issue.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
History and geography, culture
and society, psyche and practice, and economy and interests have made
the question an important one in Bangladesh. All of these are entangled
while each one influences the others. One can’t deny the way history
shaped the related geographical and economic issues, the issues of
culture and society. And, culture covers practices, custom, ideas while
ideas are part of ideology, which is influenced by dominant interests.
The interests play with the ideological issue. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
In all spheres, whether one
likes or not, people are central. But people are hoodwinked, confused,
pushed aside by dominant interests. However, whatever is done, people
remain the central. The acts – bamboozling and creating confusion,
excluding and making mum – are proof of people power as those “noble”
acts would not have been required if people were powerless. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
People, silent at times under
certain circumstances and vocal at moments of historical juncture,
influence everything and everybody. None – dictators, comical characters
on socio-cultural-political stage, men with murderer’s “spirit”, shrewd
horse traders in political houses, insignificant persons in all
historical phases, powerful personalities doing and undoing a lot,
chatterers with their politically obnoxious words, man-slaughterers with
mundane mind, obedient political pied pipers seeking petty perks – have
the power to deny existence of people, most of whom are poor, most of
whom are working hands, most of whom live at the lower tier of the long
ladder of dramatically increasing inequality. This – the people – have a
central role on the issue, the India question.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
The India question was played
like an ace by a part of Pakistan politicians, a band representing a
historically-immature ruling elites, since this part of the
sub-continent was turned a neo-colony in mid-August of 1947. The issue
was virtually turned into one of the pillars of the ideology the state
was selling to survive. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
But that political-caricature
collapsed. The 1971, the period of our Great War for Liberation, saw a
tide opposite to the politics the Pakistan rulers strove to create.
Actions of brutal “heroism” and “purification” that began on the
midnight of March 25, 1971 in Bangladesh created an opposite reaction,
which was more than an exact. An episode concluded. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
And, India appeared as an ally
to the people searching a survival-ground in the face of beastly
aggression on the Bangladesh people’s peaceful life and land. Actions of
the Pakistan ruling elites accelerated the job. In those days of our
War for Liberation, tales of Pak army’s “bravery” in the Sialkot and
Khemkaran sectors during the 1965 Indo-Pak war stood as skeletons. The
undaunted Bangladesh people were writing an epic of their courage, pain
and supreme sacrifice. India, depending on wishes of none, got a place
in the hearts of millions. It was not only the ruling elites of India,
the ordinary citizens, the persons on streets in the country were
extending care and love within their capacity. Sources, or reasons of
the two, of the ruling elites and of the commoners, were different. But a
factor was emerging deep in the Bangladesh mass psyche while the
neo-colonial Pak rulers failed to perceive the contradictions. The Pak
rulers resorted to a military machination of a political problem. It was
their limit. It was impossible for them to act in a different way at
that junction of history. Failure to perceive that limit is a failure in
studying society with its class content. It’s equivalent to purchasing
or eliminating individuals with the hope of brushing out contradictions
between social classes as money or fire power can’t bury contradictions
within society. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
The India question during the
days since the historic December 16, 1971 victory of the Bangladesh
people experienced high tide and ebb. Facts and fictions, real and
fabricated stories, deals and diplomacies, water withdrawals and
sharing, border-killings and border bazaars, gradually increasing trade
and decreasing protectionist measures, Bangladesh ordinary person’s
educational and medical requirements, and, most important of all,
capitalist alliance between part of capitals in Bangladesh and India
played role in shaping the issue. Factions within the dominant part of
gradually growing up Bangladesh capital were also reckoning the issue:
Where lies the better interest? </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
Geopolitics joined those.
Aspects of geostrategy and geotactics obviously are not absent. Naked
imperialism, outright imperialist acts of intervention, spread its
Eagle-wings over the sky of all the continents, especially
Asia-Africa-Latin America. The world now bears signs of dwindling
influence of an old imperialist power. The phenomenon has coupled with a
few other phenomena: increasing global competition, emerging economic
powers and trade blocks, advancements achieved in the initiative to
replace the old world-money – the US Dollar, new theaters of military
mobilization, the Pacific-Indian Oceans are one of those, maze-like
equations simultaneously taking shape in regions. The increasing
military competition doesn’t recede with the change in terminology:
“Pivot to” or “Rebalancing to” Asia. A few of these equations are yet to
take full shape.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
This perspective now compels all
to recognize the fact: Bangladesh is strategically important.
Bangladesh is a basket case, a Kissingerspeak, is now only a “gem” in
the rugged modern political-history, a show of a lack of political
far-sightedness of political scholars from a particular school. It’s the
Bangladesh people that demolished the political assessment made
immediately-after Bangladesh emerged victorious in one of its phases of
struggle towards liberation. That – basket case – was Kissinger’s
assessment. That Bangladesh was war ravaged, victim of scorched-earth,
literally, policy of the occupying Pakistan military. Relevant
commission report of Pakistan tells a part of the fact. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
But the Bangladesh people busted the propagated myth – a hopeless people, an idle people, a dumb people, a worthless people. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
All these, the history, the
present perspective and the people, make the India question an urgent
reality, a reality all in Bangladesh politics, trade and finance have to
deal with. These, the circles in economy and politics, will define the
rest. And, the residue, whatever will be left there, will turn
insignificant.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
Expecting an overnight change of
policy of a state, especially of a state like India, is nothing but an
exercise in utopia, or a child-like perception of state machine. A state
commanded by a ruling class matured over centuries through economic and
political struggles, and having command over a huge capital that passed
its days of infancy long ago doesn’t change policy overnight other than
a dramatic life-and-death issue. Similar change, if any, is a sign of
decay within the ruling machine. Even, management or procurement plan of
a single manufacturing plant owned by a group of matured capitalists is
not changed overnight. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
An election result doesn’t make a
fundamental change in policy of a matured state if the class commanding
the state doesn’t face crisis within. A dramatic change in state policy
is found in states yet to get organized as a state with essential
institutions for dominance. Banking on election result within a matured
class is an utter failure in perception of politics and state craft, and
a self-reflection on mirror, an image of self-immaturity. Encountering
the India question, whether pro- or anti- , requires the lesson.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
Very naturally, a political
organization’s abrupt policy shift shows not only its heart, but also
its brain. It shows many aspects: (1) a long, vigorous, intensive
exercise with policy; or (2) an exigency; or (3) a desperate situation;
or (4) attempt to abandon a few allies and court new friends. There are
other aspects also. Meanings – interests – are there whatever of these
or all of these play as reason or cause of the shift. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
Interests are first of all
related to economy, and that reaches class(es) or factions of one or
many classes. A shift thus impacts class- or faction-allies. Thus any
shift turns sensitive in politics with far-reaching impact. Pro- or
anti-India position in Bangladesh is thus related to domestic politics. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
It’s not only a question of an
external ally or appeasing or befriending an external power for the sake
of political power. Its first consideration is allies or adversaries
within home. In simple term, it’s a cost-benefit analysis. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
On the other hand, it’s a
strategic question, not a tactical move. To deal a strategic question in
a tactical style is the first condition of befooling self. The
befooling will be done for the second time if a tactician considers that
a matured state can be fooled by mere moves tactical in nature.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
Turning pro- or anti-India has
some other issues to be solved. One of these is: Credibility, internally
and externally, will be lost if it ultimately turns out that the
position is not real and meaningful, but a simple opportunistic
vocalization. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
Not fake, but a real position –
pro- or anti-Indian – signifies shift in interests of factions of
capital or classes involved. It’s a real show or an indicator in the
entire politics. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
A sudden tact or quick policy
shift has the other side: the target of the shift – India. Does the
state take decisions within a short time-span? Is the machine involved
with policy formulation that immature? Are not elaborate exercises and
detail analyses done by institutions of the state over a long period? Is
memory of the machine so short that mere utterances can make it move in
another direction? Doesn’t the targeted state machine look at
connections of the tactician? Moreover, doesn’t maturity tell that an
abrupt shift is unreliable as today’s abrupt shift can abruptly make an
about turn tomorrow? </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
At least two recent
announcements by two Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) leaders on India
are thus significant. They said: BNP is not anti-India, BNP was not
anti-India, BNP shall not be anti-India. It’s significant if it’s real.
It’s significant if it’s not real. It’s significant if it’s tactical.
It’s significant if it’s a tactical move to face a strategic issue. It
shows the inner-condition of the party, its relations with its
constituents, the interests it prefers to serve, and some other
conditions. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
It’s thus a major question to
others, left and right, in the Bangladesh political arena also as still
the party – BNP – is considered one of the two major political parties.
Thus it turns out a foolish yearning as one leader claiming to be
people-oriented and left recently chided the party – BNP – for its
inactions on a number of political and social issues. An utter failure
in political learning with a theatrical posture!</div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2562186355143923770.post-10483060308252381022015-06-08T01:30:00.000+06:002015-06-30T08:25:03.468+06:00Enough Of Erdogan: Verdict In Turkey Election<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
<b>T</b>ayyip
Erdogan’s dream of turning an all powerful president has been stalled by
the Turkish voters. The just concluded parliamentary election
experienced the voters’ negation of a dreaming sultan. To many, it’s a
victory over political corruption. Erdogan was seeking a two-thirds
majority to turn the country into a presidential governing system.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
The voters’ voiced, as the
Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) co-chair Selahattin Demirtas told
journalists in his first post-election speech: All people who are for
freedoms, all the oppressed, all workers, all women and all minorities,
had won together. He said: “It’s a joint victory of the left.” HDP’s
crossing of election threshold – 10% – was a major victory for the
left-leaning party. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
The Turkish president Erdogan’s
plan of assuming all encompassing powers received a major blow in the
election as his conservative Justice and Development Party (AK Party)
failed to win a clean majority in the election. The electoral hurricane
has destroyed the AKP’s authoritarian rule for 13 years. The party was
hopeful of a smooth win, and impose a stronger strangle on the Turkish
life. But the party failed to secure 276 seats, the requirement for
single-majority in the parliament.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
The election, hopefully, is
going to begin a new phase in Turkey-politics as it jolts the draconian
domination. The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP)’s leader
Kemal Kılıcdaroglu told his supporters: The election results mark the
end of an era in Turkey. “We ended an era of oppression through
democratic means. Democracy has won. Turkey has won,” said the CHP
leader. The same expression was made by the CHP spokesperson Haluk Koc:
“Erdogan was the real loser of the election. The real winner of this
election is democracy. Turkey has won, Erdogan has lost.”</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
The AKP with its single-party
majority in parliament was imposing its repressive and divisive policy.
It was tearing down fundamental values the society nurtured for long.
Its arrogance was throwing out every consideration.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
The election was not fully
peaceful and fair. HDP was made target of violence since campaign days.
Its workers and supporters were victims of scores of physical attacks
during campaign days. One of its campaign bus drivers was murdered. A
bomb attack killed the party’s three supporters in Diyarbakır. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
The ruling party – AKP – used,
it was alleged by HDP, all state powers. Ann-Margarethe Livh, Sweden’s
housing and democracy commissioner said there were “blatant instances of
fraud” and international election observers had been threatened before
the election. Election observation team from Sweden was threatened at
gunpoint by “soldiers with automatic weapons” in the southeastern
province of Bingol. According to Livh, the Swedish election observation
team was told they had two minutes to leave the area. Livh said having
international observers threatened was also a huge threat to democracy.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
During counting of votes coming
from abroad, a group claimed that some ballots were thrown into the
garbage at the Ankara Chamber of Commerce. Police had to intervene to
stop a resulting fist-fight between party officials. Cars without
license plates were found waiting. Police said the cars belonged to
them. But Istanbul Governor Vasip Sahin confirmed the cars without
license plates cannot belong to police. The opposition camp claimed that
there was fraud in the vote counting process. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
The country’s Human Rights
Association has issued a preliminary report on incidents of electoral
fraud during the election. To some observers, Turkey’s election system
is “the world’s most unfair election system”. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
Reports of widespread fraud
across have emerged. Observers detected many attempts to commit
electoral fraud. There were allegations of unfair means in a number of
provinces including Istanbul, Izmir, Diyarbakır and Bursa. An official
in charge of a polling station in İstanbul was caught for placing
pre-sealed votes for the AKP in a ballot box. A police officer in Ankara
was caught while allegedly attempting to vote for the third time. A
group of people carrying pre-sealed ballots for the AKP were detained in
Izmir. HDP supporters and polling agents were detained. No lawyer and
reporter were allowed into a number of polling stations, and ballots
having no official seal were recovered.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
But the assaults, threats and
other unfair means failed to stop the voters’ rejection. Issues of
economy and ideology cast their shadows on the election. Playing
religious card in politics is an old AKP-game. But that didn’t paid back
dividend. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
Funny issues also cropped up.
There was allegation that Erdogan had golden toilet seats at his new
lavish presidential palace. However, the Turkish president denied the
claims and angrily asked the main opposition leader whether he had been
cleaning the palace’s toilets. Mehmet Gormez, head of the Directorate of
Religious Affairs had to return the 1 million Turkish Lira ($435,000)
official car, which was purchased for him. Public and opposition parties
strongly criticized the religious leader’s car-affair. Erdogan sent him
another Mercedes from the his fleet. Erdogan slammed his political
opponents during campaign although the presidency is a non-partisan
position. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
At a number of public events
Erdogan used religious book as campaign material. He routinely slammed
national and international media outlets, and threatened journalists. He
recently attacked The Guardian and The New York Times and German
newspaper Die Zeit. He said Die Zeit “went berserk”. He misquoted The
Guardian. To him The New York Times is ruled by “the Jewish capital.” <br />
Erdogan once threatened a journalist that the journalist would have to
pay a “heavy price” for a news story. A number of reporters were sent to
prison. Hundreds of persons including cartoonists, students and even a
model were prosecuted for “insulting” Erdogan since he was elected
president in August 2014. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
But economy was playing against
Erdogan. Massive infrastructure projects, roads and airports failed to
save the Turkish leader. The world’s 17th largest economy was worsening.
The economy expanded at an average annual growth rate of 4.5%. The 2008
and 2009 were bad years. In 2010, the annual growth rate was 9%. But it
slowed down to less than 3% last year. Unemployment has increased. It’s
now more than 10%. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
The working people in Turkey are
facing harsh condition. There is demand for raising minimum wages.
There is need for increasing employment and export in the worsening
economy. And, there is demand for freedom of expression. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
The election results may push for an early election. The ruling party may go through a leadership change. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
Two important questions are to be dealt with: the Kurdish question, and the foreign policy. The Kurdish issue is undeniable. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
The AKP’s 7 election manifesto
said: “Turkey’s foreign policy has been successful in an incomparable
way with those of previous governments.” But there is debate on the
policy. The AKP’s policy has not made Turkey a determining power in the
region although it tried to that direction. The country experienced
isolation. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
The journey began in the Taksim
Square. It began with the question of a few hundred trees, an
environmental issue. Repression, and use of force beyond proportion
failed to deter the forces of democracy in Turkey. But still there is a
long way to go as the election is an intermediate stage in the politics
of Turkey.</div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2562186355143923770.post-38919967026652566142015-05-29T10:30:00.000+06:002015-06-30T08:22:07.354+06:00Hil[l]arious US Politics: What We Now Know?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
<strong>A</strong> lot about US
politics is unknown to ordinary citizens. It’s difficult to understand
by commoners. A lot of connections, custom, cast inside and outside of
the political arena there make the politics complex to comprehend. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
However, a bit of it is known as
years passed by. Scandals, and whistle blowing courage helped widen
ordinary citizens’ knowledge about the old democracy. The famous gates –
Watergate, Irangate, the WMD in Iraq or, it may be named, WIraqD
(weapon for Iraq-destruction), the ballot paper-case have added a few
more information to the small area of commoners’ knowledge about
politics in the economy. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
In the Wikileakage or Snowdenage, it’s difficult to hide all facts. Facts unveil faces of mystery. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
It’s known, as Sean Braswell
writes in “The 10 Most Successful White House Staffers”, (OZY, December
6, 2013), one high official was advised to exact revenge upon Seymour
Hersh, the Pulitzer-winning New York Times reporter, for a story he
wrote on classified US Navy missions in Soviet waters. That was in 1975.
By that time, Hersh made him a “bad” guy for exposure of the infamous
My Lai massacre, the genocide-like act in Vietnam. No reader should feel
disturbed with the revenge-plan as this is part of a sort of politics
in the developed democracy.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
It’s also known, Sean Braswell
writes (op. cit.), one official rebuked three GOP Congress female
members “pushing ‘equal pay for equal work’” for women. To the official,
the notion of “equal pay for equal work” for women was synonymous to
socialism: “a radical redistributive concept. Their slogan may as well
be, ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to her
gender.’” The official expressed his mind in a February 20, 1984-memo.
This type of officials is part of the political mechanism in the
democracy. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
Another official advised Nixon
to burn the White House tapes during Watergate. (ibid.) Was that a
notorious advice? That was part of politics there. Nixon’s
political-destiny was decided.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
These facts should “not” make
one smile about politics in the land or one should not get scared with
the acts, advices and assumptions. Despite all these acts the democracy
possesses the power to advise others. The democracy is a powerful
political system with a lot of crook plans. Moreover, shouldn’t those
old, unloved facts of revenge and burning “lie” in grave? That’s the
“civilized” way. Life is always fresh and vibrant. Political life is no
exception. Isn’t it? </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
There are claims that during the
‘90s, the most powerful house in that country, and the executive branch
of that state were “turned into a giant yard sale”. Claims have also
been made that sleepovers in the Lincoln Bedroom, joining foreign trade
trips, permission to export of classified missile technology to China
were sold out. The buyers provided cash for election campaign. There are
allegations of bribery.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
The race to US presidential
election is provoking fresh facts to raise their heads. As the race to
enter the most powerful building in the democracy is gaining speed
exposure of strange-looking facts are also moving fast. These are
widening commoners’ knowledge about politics in the old democracy.
That’s the problem as these facts are making the democracy a
laughingstock. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
Peter Schweizer’s book Clinton
Cash presents a few facts of payments by dignitaries from other
countries to an influential foundation, favors from a government
department, exorbitant speaking fees. That was “a pattern of financial
transactions involving” members of a family. The family members were
powerful enough to influence a state policy, which could favorably
benefit “those providing the funds”. The donors ensured deals in Canada,
Colombia, Haiti. These informal deals shouldn’t annoy anyone as these
are provisions of bourgeois politics.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
There are “stories”:</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
Multimillion-dollar gift by a
politician from a Third World country to a charity foundation that
coincided with a senator’s reversal on the nuclear non-proliferation
treaty; a secretary of state involved in allowing the transfer of nearly
50 percent of US domestic uranium output to one of its competitors,
benefiting donors to the charity foundation; multimillion-dollar
contracts for Haiti disaster relief awarded to donors and friends of the
charity foundation; a former president receiving large payments for
speeches from foreign businesses and governments with matters pending
before a government department; a power couple’s visit to Colombia,
which was followed by the grant of logging rights to a Canadian
billionaire, also a top donor to the charity; a former president
receiving $2 million for speeches from the largest shareholder in the
Keystone Pipeline project while another powerful politician playing a
role in approving the project. The stories are spread over continents:
from Germany to Bangladesh to Colombia to India to Indonesia to
Kazakhstan to Canada.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
One story tells:</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
A former president flies to a
Third World country, spends time in company of a businessman, a “close
personal friend”, a deal —usually to exploit natural resources including
uranium, oil, or timber, on a large and highly profitable scale – is
made, and this is followed by contributions, by the beneficiaries of the
deal, to a charity foundation, and the former president is commissioned
to deliver a series of highly paid speeches. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
Bangladesh finds a place in the
deal-map. A report said: A diplomat to Bangladesh pushed one Bangladesh
high official to allow open pit mining including in the Phulbari Mines.
Incidents preceded the push, and there was a high stake.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
There is at least a story of
telling lie. A former president lied about hosting a meeting at his
home, and the meeting was attended by nuclear officials from another
country. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
Many stories crowd politics in
the democracy. Well-known are the facts of meetings between human-rights
abusers and leaders of the democracy although the democracy preaches
human rights. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
Another story tells: </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
Two persons pleaded guilty to
making millions of dollars in illegal campaign donations to one
candidate’s presidential campaigns in '92 and '96. The donations were
followed by favorable trade deals for the persons’ Jakarta-based
business group.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
The third story tells:</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
A CEO of a company engaged with
space and communications business was a big donor. After election, the
CEO got the president sign a waiver letting the company use Chinese
rockets to launch US satellites. The deal transferred secret missile
technology to China, and helped the emerging military power improve
accuracy of its Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
There’s another story:</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
One convicted donor to a
presidential campaign made more than 50 visits to the most powerful
house in the democracy. During one of the visits in 1995, the campaign
donor handed a high official a check for $50,000 in her office.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
A possible gold mine in Haiti
has exposed a few connections to power. That was also a power of
connection – a highly-placed kin, a deal, dinner. Corruption? “No”.
Destruction of environment? “No”. Was “not” that a simple business deal?
Does a few Haitians’ demonstration protesting the gold mine deal
“matter” in big business? Is not there a golden prospect? </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
Undisclosed accounts, transfer
of money from one account to another – an amazing, if not mischievous,
act, a secret shell company, connections between donations to charity
and armaments sales are getting exposed. Sponsors of the lectures
included armament producer/supplier/buyer. There was private email
account for official correspondence. There were persons raising money
for politicians, businesses and charities, connections to billionaire
investor and a close friend of a politician. There is a shadow of lining
of private pocket by using public office. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
Do these sound a poor-world
patronage- or corruption-story? What’s the problem with
business-politics, corruption-politics and trade-power connections in
the poor-world? Doesn’t at least a group of poor-world politicians need
money? They need money to survive and to plunder more. So they trade
political power. And, ultimately, they are simply satraps in the world
system.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
In both the worlds – the
rich-world and the poor-world – political power trades business,
contracts, procurements, projects. And, there’s “no” problem with
preaching of democracy while the trades go on as democracy-preaching
“don’t” require moral standing. It “only” requires power. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
Libya-debacle-debate in the
election race is exposing a few more delicacies in the democracy. There
were foreign influence-peddling or adventure to cash in on post-war
Libyan spoils, corruption, non-official person preparing dozens of
“intelligence” memos.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
There were, in brief,
“intelligence” coming from associates seeking business contracts from
the Libyan transitional government, involvement of friends that included
a private military contractor and a former spy “seeking to get in on
the ground floor of the new Libyan economy”, planned business venture in
Libya, a retired major general joining a newly formed New York firm to
pursue business in Libya, a company planning to put “boots on the ground
to see if there was an opportunity to do business”, “Qaddafi is dead,
or about to be, and there’s opportunities” – dreams, a trader signing a
memorandum of understanding with two senior officials in the LTG to
provide “humanitarian assistance, medical services and disaster
mitigation,” along with helping to train a new national police force,
seeking projects in Libya including a proposal to create the floating
hospitals, intrigues by foreign governments and rebel factions. These
are not jotted down points for a novel. These are exposed parts of the
Libya-“Democracy”-Plan.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
Now the Libya-issue is turning transparent: The Libya policy was influenced by lucrative projects in that oil-rich country.</div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
Probably, Transparency
International at central level will come out with a report as the
conscience-like organization has to keep its conscience clean. At least
the US office of the guardian of conscience will issue a report. Isn’t
it a moral question? Otherwise, the organization teaching right and
wrong will stand as a stooge.<br />
<br />
Explanations behind R2P in Libya, humanitarian aid there, democracy in
the country, tense diplomacy and Security Council motion, no-fly zone,
use of combatants and non-combatants, boots on the ground or only
bombing debate, secret deployment of special service forces, the
trans-Atlantic military entente, use of European military airfields to
bomb the land, and deaths of Libyans and destruction of the country are
not needed now as those are the toll the poor-world always pays. Doesn’t
history support the assertion? </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
Does someone stand like a fool
with the exposure of the acts – the libations of imperialist power? Are
not those gentlemen supporting destruction-for-democracy in Libya
respected fellows? They always swiftly re-wear their honorable mask, and
the commoners salute them and listen to their sermons. The dignified
personalities are not liars despite all the lies exposed. They are great
teachers. </div>
<div align="left" class="style1 style111">
And, none will question them.
The souls of the dead Libyans? They’ll not come back to question. The
posterity? Mechanism is there to purchase them, or to keep them busy
with trifling business or games, or to spoil them. The world-people?
Have not they been depoliticized, demobilized, de-theorized? Have not
their leadership been kept busy with other tasks? </div>
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All after these the old
democracy preaches “democracy” to the countries in the resource-rich
poor-world. But exposed facts are exposing the shameless “democracy”
preachers, and commoners are learning a few facts of the bourgeois
politics. It’s, in ultimate analysis, money: contract, deal, business,
supply, procurement, project, trade, and with that money purchase
property, be a member of the billionaires’ club. This lesson of
bourgeois politics is undeniable. The perpetrators of property-politics
teach this lesson, and commoners learn gradually. </div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2562186355143923770.post-26179047947932505812014-12-24T03:30:00.000+06:002015-01-02T22:04:05.464+06:00Cuba-“Confusion”<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="style113" style="font-weight: bold;">C</span>uba appears “confusing”. Contradictory claims, blames, assertions, imaginations, opinions are making a cloud of confusion.</div>
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Claims are being made: Cuba has compromised, Cuba has capitulated. Hopes are thrown in the air: Cuba is going to be sold out. Assertions are being made: the Castros are bad brothers, we told; revolution is being betrayed.</div>
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Even Barack Obama, the US president, is being blamed and being praised. It seems the Castro brothers and Obama have conspired together either to cease Cuba’s struggle for establishing a prosperous and sustainable socialism or to strengthen the Castro brothers’ “brutal” rule.</div>
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A look into a camp in the Empire gives an amazing view as the camp finds Cuban ayatollahs in Havana.</div>
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Right-camp in the US is divided over the Cuba question. It’s now busy with argument and counter-argument: Which is hurting the Cuban people most: the embargo the Empire imposed or the lack of the Empire defined democracy? Hot debates, even war of words are flying around as US law makers were heard saying: “I won’t shy away from battle”, and “I’m happy to finish a fight.”</div>
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Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham, two leading Republicans, in a joint statement denounced Obama’s Cuba-move: “Unfortunately, today’s chapter … is one of America and the values it stands for in retreat and decline. It is about … diminishing America’s influence in the world.” Senator Roy Blunt considered the move as the latest in a string of poor policy decisions by the US president, and greater trade with Cuba would help Castro stay in power. “I don’t think you can effectively do that as long as the Castro brothers are in charge of Cuba”, he said. “By seeking to normalize relations,” Senator Kelly Ayotte said, “the administration is rewarding the very behavior we want to end”. Senator Robert Menendez, a top Democrat, slammed: “President Obama’s actions have vindicated the brutal behavior of the Cuban government”. Senator Ted Cruz and former Florida governor Jeb Bush were also critical of Obama’s Cuba-move.</div>
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Most dissatisfied was Senator Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American. He considered the Obama-move as a victory for the Cuban government. His criticism was wider. He criticized Senator Rand Paul as Paul supported Obama’s move. Rand “has no idea what he’s talking about”, said Rubio.</div>
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Rand Paul countered: “The 50-year embargo hasn’t worked. If the goal is regime change, it sure doesn’t seem to be working”. He expressed hope: “I think trade might loosen things up and might help to topple the Castros.”<br /><br />Two religious organizations – the Baptist World Alliance, a 42-million member international alliance of Baptist churches and groups, and the Catholic League, an American civil rights organization – praised the Obama-move. A leader of the Catholic League said: “Economic liberty does not guarantee political liberty, but it does work to undermine the forces of repression,” he said. “More important than markets is the exchange of ideas that this rapprochement will bring.”<br />Some Cuban exiles, fogey anti-Castro elements, in Miami stand against Obama’s Cuba-plan. Some Cuban-Americans are deeply disappointed with the move. To the elements, Obama’s announcement gives recognition to the illegitimate Castro regime, a dictatorship. Many of these elements took part in attempts to assassinate Castro.</div>
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These elements pledged to oppose Obama’s plan. They feel let down by Obama. “When the Bay of Pigs was abandoned, we were sad. And now we feel abandoned again, betrayed by the president”, said the head of the Bay of Pigs Veterans Association, a group of diehards.</div>
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These are the CIA-backed mercenaries pressed into the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion to foil Fidel-led revolution. With death of about 100 mercenaries the CIA-organized invasion turned into a disaster. Revolutionary forces captured about a thousand mercenaries trained by the CIA in Nicaragua and Guatemala. “Americans have a habit of betraying friends and then letting them drop. We’ve all faced it, we’re used to it by now”, said a pilot, who participated in three missions to foil the Cuba revolution. It seems these elements engaged in criminal activities have now turned “anti”-imperialist.</div>
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There are dozens of anti-Castro organizations, media companies, terror gangs, drug and arms rings, lobbying organizations, aid groups floated and run with tax payers’ millions of dollars. There are the US-run Radio Marti and TV Marti. The business is being run for decades. Their target: Overthrow Castro. The anti-Castro groups include the Cuban American National Foundation, a lobbying group engaged with the job of toppling the Cuban government, and the Cuban Democratic Directorate that runs a Miami-based shortwave radio program targeting the Cuban people, and supports Cuban anti-people forces. These anti-Castro elements keep their hope on the US Congress to push back Obama’s promise to lift the Cuba-embargo.</div>
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Obama hopes his new plan gives the US a chance to influence events in Cuba as 50-years’ of non-stop attempts to topple the Castro government haven’t worked. “If we engage, we have the opportunity to influence the course of events at a time when there’s going to be some generational change in that country”, Obama told a CNN interview.<br />A motive is clearly spelled out: Foil the Cuban people’s revolution.</div>
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On the other hand, there is criticism from a part of “left”: Castro has capitulated. All is going to be sold.<br />Thus confusion is being created. Castro brothers – Fidel and Raul – are everywhere irrespective of controversy, claim and blame. The two individuals, according to “left” adventurist analysis, create and mould society. “Really two powerful” guys! “Left” adventurists consider individuals only and deny contradictions and class forces in society.<br />In between the two camps, right and adventurist “left”, Raul Castro outlined a future and a hope.</div>
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President Raul Castro said in the Cuban National Assembly: Cuba wouldn’t renounce its socialist system despite the normalization of ties with the US. Detente with the US won’t change the system the Cuban people are building up. “We must not expect that in order for relations with the United States to improve, Cuba will abandon the ideas that it has struggled for.”</div>
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Raul insisted Cuba would not give up its socialist principles. “In the same way that we have never demanded that the United States change its political system, we will demand respect for ours”, Raul told the National Assembly.</div>
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The Cuban leader said: “We always have been willing to engage in respectful dialogue on equal terms to address any issues without a shadow over our independence and without renouncing a single one of our principles.” “We reiterate our willingness for respectful and reciprocal dialogue concerning disagreements”, said Raul. He added: Cuba “accepted dialogue... on any topic about all things here but also in the United States.” It’s an assertion of position.<br />Another assertion came. It was from Mariela Castro, daughter of Raul.</div>
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Mariela asserted: Cuba will defend its socialist principles and will not return to capitalism just because it has agreed a detente with the US. She told: “The people of Cuba don’t want to return to capitalism.” She dispelled any notion that US companies would be free to roll into Cuba.</div>
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Other parts of Mariela’s statement are significant also: “We’ve been at this 56 years and ... we love saying that we are a country in revolution, trying to create socialism, and we form part of a single party called the Communist Party.” She added: “Sometimes people say Fidel is hard-headed, that the Cuban leaders are hard-headed, but experience has taught us something important, that we should never give in on our principles.”</div>
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Mariela said moves by the US president won’t lead to the downfall of the system in Cuba. “If the US thinks these changes will bring Cuba back to capitalism and return it to being a servile country to hegemonic interests of the most powerful financial groups in the US, they must be dreaming.”</div>
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With the cited statements the effort, the path ahead, and the struggle waiting keep no room for imagination. It’s, hasta la victoria siempre.</div>
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It’s easier to make sweeping remarks, formulate theories isolated from reality, ask for adventurist actions without bearing any responsibility for results and implications of the actions, have no accountability to people, and have no electorate. Adventurism thus wins a moment of present time.</div>
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But adventurism has no place in the life of people, who struggle, sustain, build up, face hardship and make sacrifice. The reality Cuba now faces, and faced for years has to be taken into consideration. Cuba’s reality doesn’t allow adventurism.<br />The Cuban people face sabotage. It’s part of their daily life, part of a “long and difficult struggle”. The Empire-imposed embargo is in place. There is international financial transaction limits imposed on Cuba. Cuba’s access to credit and international investment is blocked. At the same time, the Cuban people need respite, space for sustainably building up their way of life.</div>
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The Cuban people are struggling to properly handle contradictions within their society, in the spheres of agriculture, industry, trade, urban and rural life, political participation, etc., and in between these. The people are reckoning balance of forces within their society, and in the spheres of the continent and the world. They are to take into account the space available for maneuvering.</div>
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A straight path would have been nice. But class reality doesn’t always allow the desired straight path. The path moves in a zigzag way. All are to traverse a path repeatedly turning and bending, a compromise. Engels and Lenin discussed the meaning of zigzag path, which doesn’t allow adventurism. “Every zigzag turn in history is a compromise, a compromise between the old, which is no longer strong enough to completely negate the new, and the new, which is not yet strong enough to completely overthrow the old. Marxism does not altogether reject compromise. Marxism considers it necessary to make use of them …” (Lenin, “Against Boycott”)</div>
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One can blame the Castro brothers; one can brush off Cuba’s struggle, its journey through a zigzag path. The journey would have been better had the adventurists organized widespread Cuba-solidarity campaign among people in respective societies so that political pressure mounts on to import Cuba’s medical knowledge and medicines, so that political pressure is created to defy the embargo and enter into wider trade relations with Cuba, so that educational exchanges with Cuba are increased. It would have been nice had the adventurists organized boycott of loading fuel into warships, had they organized a ship load of cement or an oil tanker destined for Havana. It would have been nice had they made their people aware of Cuba’s efforts to heal its soil, its urban agriculture efforts, its revolutionary doctors, its achievements in the area of medical science. These would have widened Cuba’s breathing space, the country’s friends-circle, strengthened the society’s struggle, provided moral ground to criticism of the Castro brothers’ “capitulation”, and would have taken away a bit of “confusion”.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2562186355143923770.post-29563506303014731342014-12-18T04:00:00.000+06:002015-01-02T22:05:30.992+06:00Cuba-Question: A Major US Retreat<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="style113" style="font-weight: bold;">A</span> major US retreat on Cuba-question is evident in the US president Barack Obama's December 17, 2014 announcement: “In the most significant changes in our policy in more than 50 years, we will end an outdated approach that, for decades, has failed to advance our interests …”<o:p></o:p></div>
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The “failed”, “outdated approach” has compelled the US to announce taking steps for “changing its relationship with the people of Cuba.” Announcement is not everything required for any change as actual politics is determined by forces far away from announcement, and economy and politics spells out announcement.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It's an announcement of failure in an Empire's power. With the announcement it has been proved empires can't do and undo all the “things” in all the times in all the places as there is another power – people power, the power of people's political awareness, unity, sense of dignity that makes many powers crumble down. It's virtually Cuba's, the Cuban people's victory in their long steadfast struggle for creating a dignified life. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Raul Castro, the president of Cuba, reiterated this in his reciprocal statement made from Havana on December 17, 2014: “I have reiterated in many occasions our willingness to hold a respectful dialogue with the United States on the basis of sovereign equality, in order to deal reciprocally … without detriment to the national Independence and self-determination of our people.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Nostalgia was not overpowering the US president as he was briefly referring to the history of futile US policy on Cuba: “I was born in 1961, just over two years after Fidel Castro took power in Cuba, and just a few months after the Bay of Pigs invasion, which tried to overthrow his regime. Over the next several decades, the relationship between our countries played out against the backdrop of the Cold War, and America's steadfast opposition to communism.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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It was his effort to construct logic for making a shift. And, it was conceding a fact: Steadfast opposition. And, with the word “communism” he meant the political-economic system the Cuban people are struggling to build up, which is still far away from communism. It's, to quote Raul, “to build a prosperous and sustainable Socialism.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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The US president admits the US policy was “aimed to isolate the island,” Cuba. And he admits: “[N]o other nation joins us in imposing these sanctions”. It's – “no other nation joins us” – conceding an empire's utter failure. With the mightiest military machine in the world, with an efficient and experienced political and diplomatic machine, with wide economic and financial power, an empire failed to pull along any other nation against an “island”, actually, a nation. So, the US president said: “Today, Cuba is still governed by … the Communist Party that came to power half a century ago.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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It was not only a failure. The Empire was increasingly getting isolated in the world. Voting results over the years in the UN General Assembly on Cuba issue is the example.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The empire's failure comes as there are the Cuban people. Raul says in his statement: “The heroic Cuban people, in the wake of serious dangers, aggressions, adversities and sacrifices has proven to be faithful and will continue to be faithful to our ideals of independence and social justice. Strongly united throughout these 56 years of Revolution, we have kept our unswerving loyalty to those who died in defense of our principles since the beginning of our independence wars in 1868.” A people's soul comes to light: Faithful to ideals of independence and social justice, strongly united, unswerving loyalty to those who died in defense of principles.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The US president's announcement tells an irrational policy implemented for decades: “[F]or more than 35 years, we've had relations with China, a far larger country also governed by a Communist Party. Nearly two decades ago, we re-established relations with Vietnam, where we fought a war that claimed more Americans than any Cold War confrontation.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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If this is the fact, why the Empire kept on going with its policy on Cuba? The policy was followed for decades. It's not only the Cuban people; people in other lands also had to pay for the policy. The Bangladesh case may be cited. Bangladesh exported jute products to Cuba. The Bangladesh people had to pay a high price: thousands of death in an empire-made famine.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The Cuba policy had its parts spread over the entire hemisphere, and even in Africa. One can recollect organizing the Contra mercenaries, and burning of crop fields, forests, destruction of schools, hospitals, food storages in Nicaragua. One can recollect blood bath by death squads in El Salvador. One can recollect the Grenada invasion. One can recollect incidents engineered in Haiti. One can recollect deaths and interferences in Panama, Peru, Honduras, Guatemala, Colombia. Chile and Bolivia are among other examples. In all the cases, peoples in those lands paid with blood. And, all the cases were charged with the Empire's Cuba policy: Wipe out Castro's Cuba and all its vestiges. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Is the policy failure rational with the intellectual capacity the Empire commands? What's the reason for failure to identify and rectify the policy failure?<o:p></o:p></div>
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It was not a policy failure. It was not also a failure in intellectual capacity as intellectual capacity was dictated by interests. It was part of safeguarding an interest vested in large property and unquestionable privilege. It was property and privilege of individuals tied together spanning countries and companies. They all make elites, dominant classes. Cuba stood as an example of depowering those classes within its border.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The US president said: “Cuba has sent hundreds of health care workers to Africa to fight Ebola, and I believe American and Cuban health care workers should work side by side to stop the spread of this deadly disease.” The position, it seems, has shifted. Once, dirty tricks were played to oppose health workers from Cuba in countries. And, people had to pay for those tricks played by vested quarters tied to the Empire.<o:p></o:p></div>
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President Obama has instructed the US secretary of state John Kerry to review Cuba's designation as a state sponsor of terrorism. He said: “Terrorism has changed in the last several decades.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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It seems the Empire is standing in front of a mirror to have a clear view of self. It knows best the roots, the collaboration, the fund, the training, the arms, the ideological, propaganda and diplomatic support extended to today's terrorism; but it's not that, to which he was referring, that “has changed in the last several decades.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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Cuba is fighting terrorism for 50 years. There were bombings, killings of Cuban citizens including children, violations of Cuban air space, air dropping of leaflets provoking people to resort to unlawful acts, bombing of the Cuba Flight 455 over the Caribbean in 1976 that killed 73 passengers including teenage members of the Cuban national fencing team, a series of hotel bombings in Havana in 1997 that killed an Italian businessman and disrupted Cuba's tourist industry. These were organized and carried out by terrorist groups sheltered and patronized across the Cuban frontier. Is there any state that doesn't defend itself against terrorist acts? The US is the burning example.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Important question is the embargo. Raul says: “We have … agreed to renew diplomatic relations. This in no way means that the heart of the matter has been solved. The economic, commercial, and financial blockade, which causes enormous human and economic damages to our country, must cease.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Obama also raises the embargo issue: “The embargo that's been imposed for decades is now codified in legislation.” He adds: “[W]e should not allow US sanctions to add to the burden of Cuban citizens that we seek to help.” He said: “[I]t does not serve America's interests, or the Cuban people, to try to push Cuba toward collapse.” And, he assures: “I look forward to engaging Congress in an honest and serious debate about lifting the embargo.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Raul's statement makes specific proposal on the issue: “Though the blockade has been codified into law, the President of the United States has the executive authority to modify its implementation.” Raul moves further: “We propose to the Government of the United States the adoption of mutual steps to improve the bilateral atmosphere and advance towards normalization of relations between our two countries, based on the principles of International Law and the United Nations Charter.” President Raul said in his statement: “Obama's decision deserves the respect and acknowledgement of our people.” A posture is revealed. And, reciprocity is expected. <o:p></o:p></div>
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A crucial test is in the wings with the changed numbers-power in the US Congress. There are strong opponents to Obama's Cuba move. To Republican House Speaker John Boehner, Obama's move is “another in a long line of mindless concessions to a dictatorship that brutalizes its people and schemes with our enemies.” Senator Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American, and the Florida Republican, now considers Obama as the “worst negotiator” of Rubio's “lifetime.” <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="cover-c269a0013618c7f5b4b3ee15ca9773c2"></a>To anti-Castro hard-liners, “the deal is a betrayal and capitulation to communist tyranny.” The strong tone tells something.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The occasion was historic as Obama spoke with Raul Castro over telephone to finalize Alan Gross's release and the exchange of prisoners, and other related issues. Raul echoed the positive tone: “As a result of a dialogue at the highest level, which included a phone conversation I had yesterday [December 16, 2014] with President Obama, we have been able to make headway in the solution of some topics of mutual interest for both nations.” The conversation, now part of history, was the first such contact since the Cuban revolution. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">Interests including business in the US are willing to deal with Cuba. This is Obama's one area of support. There's a run for Cuba-oil. Already a few countries have gained better position about the prospective oil. The US can't ignore this. D</span><span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">iscussions on maritime boundaries with Cuba and Mexico in the Gulf of Mexico will be ensued.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">Release of the three Cuban prisoners is a major victory for Cuba.</span><span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;"> Raul's statement reminds: “Fidel promised on June 2001…: ‘They shall return!' Gerardo, Ramon, and Antonio [the rest three of the five Cubans] have arrived … to our homeland.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Raul's statement carries a significant indication:<o:p></o:p></div>
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“While acknowledging our profound differences, particularly on issues related to national sovereignty, democracy, human rights and foreign policy, I reaffirm our willingness to dialogue on all these issues.<o:p></o:p></div>
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“As we have reiterated, we must learn the art of coexisting with our differences in a civilized manner.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Now, it's for the US to decide: whether or not to coexist in a civilized manner with Cuba, an example of a positive alternative socio-economic-political system only 90 miles from the US mainland. The fear of the example led the super power to put Cuba on the chessboard of the Cold War that experienced near-hot days with the Cuban Missile Crisis.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Cuba exists as an example to the downtrodden people of the world whatever the Empire decides. It's an example of courage with dignity for the ideals of peace and prosperity. It's an example of a geographically small country's struggle to live with honor, which is possible with a politically aware and united people imbued with sense of dignity.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2562186355143923770.post-67889566352605639922014-12-16T08:00:00.000+06:002015-01-02T22:11:18.409+06:00The General Law Of Rebellion In Bangladesh<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b>Point of Departure:</b> Only with lies and conspiracy, an integral part of bourgeois politics, instead of bravery and courage, it was possible for Clive, the conspirator from Great Britain, to overwhelm the Battle of Plassey, actually, “a brief artillery duel” as Boris Kagarlitsky writes in <i>From Empires to Imperialism, the state and the rise of bourgeois civilisation</i> (tr. Renfrey Clarke, Routledge, 2014) on June 23, 1957. Following the course, Clive, writes Macaulay in his <i>Essays on Lord Clive</i>, “subdued an empire larger and more populous than Great Britain.” The colonial captains began to make a number of politically motivated claims. Baangaalees were made the first and foremost victim of the claims that were proved by subsequent developments as lies.<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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“[I]t was from Bengal,” writes Alfred Comyn Lyall, “not from Madras or Bombay, that the English power first struck inland into the heart of the country and discovered the right road to supremacy in India: To advance into Bengal was to penetrate India by its soft and unprotected side. From Cape Comorin northward along the east coast there is not a single harbour for large ships; nor are the river estuaries accessible to them. (<i>History of India, From the Close of the Seventeenth Century to the Present Time</i>, vol. 8, ed. A V Williams Jackson, 1907)<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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Lyall, a British civil servant, historian and poet, makes “wise” observations on the people of Bengal while describing the land from military point of view: “[A]t the head of the Bay of Bengal [there is] a low-lying deltaic region, pierced by navigable channels which discharge through several mouths the waters of great rivers issuing from the interior. … On this section, and upon no other of the Indian seaboard, the rivers are wide waterways offering fair harbourage and the means of penetrating many miles inland; while around and beyond stretches the rich alluvial plain of Bengal, inhabited by a very industrious and <i>unwarlike</i> [emphasis added] people, who produce much and can live on very little.” (ibid.) The people in this land are, the “brave” lords claimed, “unwarlike”.<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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Imperial observation on the people of Bengal continues with the same tone. “For Macaulay, the ultimate justification for the behavior of Clive and Hastings – and thus for the British imperialization of India – is quite simple: Indians, because of the baseness of their own social character and moral standards, deserved and needed to be imperialized. This need was especially great for the Bengalis, whose territories the East India Company first came to dominate. By their racial nature, Macaulay believes, the Bengalis are a people who almost begged to be conquered and ruled; their weakness created a power vacuum into which the bold East India Company adventurers rushed.” (Patrick Brantlinger, <i>Darkness, British Literature and Imperialism, 1830-1914</i>, Cornell University Press, 1990)<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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Macaulay, a faithful mind to imperial interest, says: “Whatever the Bengalee does he does languidly … singularly pertinacious in the war of chicane, he seldom enlists as a soldier. We doubt whether there be a hundred genuine Bengalees in the whole army of the East India Company. There never, perhaps, existed a people so thoroughly fitted by nature and by habit for a foreign yoke.” (“Lord Clive (January 1840)” in <i>Macaulay's Essay on Lord Clive</i>, ed. William Henry Hudson, George G Harrap & Company, London, 1910)<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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Macaulay is obedient to his imperial duty: Condemn the conquered land and its people. So he writes: “The physical organization of the Bengalee is feeble even to effeminacy. He lives in a constant vapour bath. His pursuits are sedentary, his limbs delicate, his movements languid. During many ages he has been trampled upon by men of bolder and more hardy breed. Courage, independence, veracity are qualities to which his constitution and his situation are equally unfavourable. His mind bears a singular to his body. It is weak even to helplessness for purposes of manly resistance” (Macaulay, “Warren Hastings” in <i>Macaulay's Essay on Warren Hastings</i>, ed. Mrs. Margaret J Frick, The Macmillan Company, London, 1900; also quoted in Sir John Strachey, <i>India, Its Administration and Progress</i>, ref: Mrinalini Sinha, <i>Colonial Masculinity: The ‘manly Englishmen' and The ‘Effeminate Bengali' in the late nineteenth century</i>, Manchester University Press, 1995)<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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In <i>History of the Military Transactions of the British Nation in Indostan</i>, Orme made another “accurate” observation about the people of this land: All natives are of “effeminacy of character”, but that the Bengalis were “still of weaker frame and more enervated character”. (Ormey, cited in John Rosselli, “The Self-Image of Effeteness: Physical Education and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Bengal”, <i>Past and Present</i>, 86, February 1980; ref.: Mrinalini Sinha, op. cit.)<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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Bishop Heber conveys similar evaluation. In the 1820s, the Bishop noted that Bengalis were regarded as “the greatest cowards in India”. He added: The “term Bengali [was] used to express anything which was roughish and cowardly”. (Heber, quoted in Ketaki Kushari Dyson, <i>A Various Universe: A Study of the Journals and Memoirs of the British Men and Women in the Indian Subcontinent, 1765-1856</i>, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1978, ref.: Mrinalini Sinha, op. cit.)<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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Masters, the colonial and neo-colonial robbers, made the “scientific” observations. For centuries, the people of this land were depicted as “unwarlike people”, “a people who almost begged to be conquered and ruled”, “seldom enlists as a soldier”, “thoroughly fitted by nature and by habit for a foreign yoke”, “physical organization … is feeble even to effeminacy”, “his limbs delicate”, “he has been trampled upon by men of bolder and more hardy breed”, “weak even to helplessness for purposes of manly resistance”, “the greatest cowards in India”, “cowardly”. A list with similar observations on the Bengal people is long with more “scientific” observations. <o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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So the “wise” masters found the formula for ruling the people of this land: “As Clive wrote later to the Company, describing the state of affairs that he found on his return in 1765, ‘In a country where money is plenty, where fear is the principle of government, and where your arms are ever victorious …'”<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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All rulers in this land followed the formula: “Fear is the principle of government” as “arms are ever victorious” here, the land of “cowards”.<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>A history was formed: </b>Consistently depicted as coward, born to be ruled, ever-loyal, hungry for yoke, etc. the Bangladesh people heroically stood up to bravely break the shackle of slavery, and courageously challenged a state as they defied the ideology the state imposed on them. They also defied the state. The people took up arms, organized their armed struggle, waged a war for getting liberated. It was in 1971. The people composed a history.<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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The world imperialism opposed the people's War for Liberation, and the opposition was of geopolitical significance. The masters stood as fools with their observations on the Bangladesh people. Imperialism failed to dictate the course of the war the “unwarlike” Bangladesh people waged for their liberation.<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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How was the history made by the “effeminate Bengali” people? Is it possible? Were the imperialist scholars wrong? There were other peoples/nations/nationalities in the state of Pakistan – Balooch, Pathan, Sindhi – not considered “coward”, “unwarlike” by the masters. Those peoples were also experiencing suppression by the same state, and were trying to organize their political movements on issues of language, autonomy, etc. So, the questions, and similar questions emerge as one looks back to the bright days of 1971, the days the War for Liberation was waged by the Bangladesh people, “the greatest coward” (!?) in this subcontinent. <o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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As the General Law of Rebellion (GLR), people don't allow fear to be the principle of government, and don't allow rulers' arms to be ever victorious. Rulers may inflict fear, as the GLR tells, temporarily, depending on historical and the prevailing socio-economic-political conditions, among a part of people. Similarly, according to the GLR, rulers' arms can turn victorious temporarily, and the length of the rulers' victory depends on the historical and the prevailing socio-economic-political conditions. <o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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A change was going on in mass-psyche in pre-independence Bangladesh as classes in antagonistic positions were in constant conflict with their interests that had political manifestations. An ideological – political, cultural, etc. – shift was active among the people. Ideas, feudal and capitalist, colonial and neo-colonial, and even imperial, and ideas, progressive, radical, with seeds and dreams for a complete change in production relations were in constant contradiction. It was a long struggle spanning years.<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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Political struggle within legislative chamber of the Pakistan state was carried on. The issues for the political struggle included electorate and universal franchise, governor general's and governors' powers, amalgamation of western wing provinces into one, state language, food problem, parity between the eastern and western wings of the state, preventive detention, abolition of<i>zamindari</i> system without compensation, budget, capital city, fundamental rights, salary of governors, equality between all citizens irrespective of belief, etc., imposition of martial law, central government's power limiting within the areas of currency, defense and foreign affairs, rights to expression and rights of press.<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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The struggle was also carried on outside the legislative house. A significant part of that struggle was extra-constitutional that made historic turning points although sometimes those appeared “faded away” to some wise scholars. A part of press was voicing the people.<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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“‘Law,' from slave patrols and courts to statutes and appellate decisions, was a tool of empire.” (91 <i>N.C. L. REV.</i> 1817, THE NAT TURNER TRIALS, ALFRED L. BROPHY; Brophy cites Morton J. Horwitz, <i>The Transformation of American Law, 1780–1860</i>, 1977, Christopher Tomlins, <i>Freedom Bound: Law, Labor, and Civic Identity in Colonizing English America, 1580–1865</i>, 2010, and others). Referring other studies Brophy also identifies law as “a vehicle of control”. The Bangladesh people experienced Pakistan law as the tool of the state and as a hostile existence that gradually got exposed.<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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“‘Law' functioned to bring order” (ibid., Brophy cites Daniel Lord, “On the Extra-Professional Influence of the Pulpit and the Bar: An Oration Delivered at New Haven, Before the Phi Beta Kappa Society”, of Yale College, July 30, 1851, in Daniel Lord, <i>On the Extra-Professional Influence</i>, S S Chatterton, New York, 1851). The Bangladesh people perceived the laws of the Pakistan state as a brazen bull as those were used against them.<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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The people were gaining political and organizational experience as they were organizing and waging their economic and political struggles. Their social being determined their consciousness. This was also a part of the GLR. It was a period of transformation, transition also, in politics, and in mass-psyche.<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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But the ruling elites with its limited capacity for cooption considered their state as an absolute form of force ever victorious over the Bangladesh people.<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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However, class struggle was getting intensified, and the state was experiencing defiance by the people. A number of contradictions galvanized class alliances while a few isolated another part, the dominating part, and the dominant ideology was losing ground.<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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A few classes/segments were taking/gaining lead in the process. So, the questions need answers: What the classes/segments were those? How the task was being carried out? What was its political manifestation? What happened to the forces that claimed working for radical change? What were the factors and forces active in all the camps, behind success and failures? There was/were law(s) governing the changes in the pre-independence Bangladesh. What was/were that/those and how were those working?<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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Historical circumstances that led to the development need identification as for further development – change in class leadership and re-distribution of property – the question is alive: What's the order of “things”? The questions are alive as a people don't stall down, don't give up hope, don't cease struggle, a part of the General Law of Rebellion. “Fight, fail, fight again, fail again, fight again … till their victory; that is the logic of the people, and they too will never go against this logic”, writes Mao. (“Cast away illusions, prepare for struggle”, August 14, 1949) The way people fight, as Mao tells, is part of the GLR. <o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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A class/segment takes leadership in war. So, the questions arise: Was it historically, and by class character possible for the class/segment that led the War for Liberation? What was the social and economic basis of the class/segment that led the war? How the class/segment won over the leadership, won over the working class, the peasantry, the mass of people as its allies?<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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The camp opposing the War for Liberation should also be searched. How the elites, orthodox and semi-orthodox, lost their grip on their subjects as the subjects were defying the elites? Losing grip over politics, and over subjects doesn't happen instantly or within a short period. <o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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Geopolitical aspect of the war was significant. The time was going through the Cold War, imperialist wars in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, and the non-aligned effort to take a stand against imperialist hegemony. The world imperialism was opposing the Bangladesh people's war. The war was made a part of the Cold War by imperialism. So, the questions come: What was the type of the war? What role geopolitics played in the war? Or, how the war utilized geopolitics in its favor? Was it successful in its tact of utilizing geopolitics?<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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Other questions requiring answers emerge as one looks back. Which issue should be considered first: the issue of national repression, repression on and deprivation of a people, or the issue of geopolitics?<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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Questions related to the people, and the classes that joined together in forming the people are there in the historic phase of Bangladesh. Class interests with historical capacity and possibilities interacting/contradicting in the prevailing reality governed the political attitude, alliances and actions of the people. Political forces representing the people, its parts, and political forces interacting with the people to uphold either the people's interest or self-interest had to move within the respective class interests and class alliances. These aspects are part of the General Law of Rebellion.<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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The questions lead to look at pattern of politics classes/segments were carrying on in the pre-independence Bangladesh, and at interaction between the classes/segments that were getting generated from respective interests. There may appear anomalies in elite politics in the neo-colonial state of Pakistan. Or, the apparent anomalies in elite politics, it may come out, was the limitation imposed historically on the ruling elites, a combination of classes/segments, leading to their failure. The limitation coming from their class/segment condition led them to the failure to perceive, identify and handle the contradictions.<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Rebellion:</b> Rebellion is defined in many ways, from narrow to broader perspective.<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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Citing Professor Richard A. Falk's “Janus Tormented: The International Law of Internal War” (in James N. Rosenau,<i> The International Aspects of Civil Strife</i>, 1964) Anthony Cullen refers rebellion as “a situation … characterized as a short-lived, sporadic threat to the authority of a state.” (“Key developments affecting the scope of internal armed conflict in international humanitarian law”, <i>Military Law Review</i>, vol. 183)<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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Heather A Wilson and Lothar Kotzsch add their explanations on the issue of rebellion. There are domestic violence, upheaval, armed activities by gangs organized by imperialism, and national liberation movements. <i>International Law and the Use of Force by National Liberation Movements</i>, (Oxford University Press, 1988) and Anthony Cullen's <i>The Concept of Non-International Armed Conflict in in International Humanitarian Law</i> (Cambridge University Press, 2010) discuss the issues.<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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Rebellion, others consider, as “<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="LF-BK0216-03pt04ch007"></a>the act of resistance by one or more individuals to lawful authority acting within the limits of its power.” (<i>Cyclopædia of Political Science, Political Economy, and the Political History of the United States</i>, ed. Lalor, John J., Maynard, Merrill, and Co., New York) And, rebels are “those who refuse to obey it.” (ibid.) It's claimed that “rebellion quickly becomes insurrection.” (ibid.)<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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However, it's agreed: “The distinction between them, consequently, exists especially at the beginning, but exact definitions are necessary in political language.” (ibid.)<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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Then, rebellion is defined as:<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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“Rebellion is, at bottom or in principle, a refusal of obedience, which manifests itself either by violence and assault, or by passive resistance.” (ibid.)<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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The definition broadens as it's told:<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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“When peace officers act outside of their right, or exceed their power, resistance is not rebellion. This principle was written in the Roman law … it was even taught in French law”. (ibid.)<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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It broadens further as it says: “These are the least serious cases of rebellion. They … constitute petty rebellion. Rebellion, in its greatest development, goes much farther than contesting the acts of a police officer; it calls in question the very government whose orders he executes; it raises against the government the same objections, of incompetency, or of exceeding its powers, which we have just supposed in the case of public officers.” (ibid.) Government is part of a state. The Bangladesh people questioned the Pakistan state, and rose against it as the state was incompetent, exceeded its powers, denied people's rights, endangered people's life, liberty and peace, threatened the way of life the people were aspiring for, and, even resorted to genocide to keep on its unlawful acts unimpeded. The rebellion thus turned just.<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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Rebellion may, as the definition tells, show itself “without violence, and be entirely passive. Thus, breaches of certain legal obligations are, in our opinion, acts of rebellion.” (ibid.) The Bangladesh people resorted to both – passive, non-violent, peaceful and, forceful – of the methods for resolving the contradictions the people were encountering. These form parts of the GLR in Bangladesh.<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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Rebellion is, <i>Bouvier's Law Dictionary</i> says, “[t]he taking up arms traitorously against the government and in another, and perhaps a more correct sense, rebellion signifies the forcible opposition and resistance to the laws and process lawfully issued.” (1856 Edition)<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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To authority/government/state, revolting against their unfair economy and politics, against their tyranny, against their unjust acts and actions is traitorous while people consider rebellion as a just, rightful, essential act to redress grievances and unjust circumstance, to safeguard peace and prosperity. To the authority, etc. all laws they impose and processes they initiate are lawful while people consider many laws, etc. unlawfully enacted as those lacked people's consent. The contradiction between views carries elements of the General Law of Rebellion. The people in Bangladesh properly handled the contradiction as relevant political process created rationale and legitimacy for the act of their rebellion. <o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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Power of all sorts energizes the GLR. With destructive power, authority of all sorts strengthens logic behind the GLR as the authority loses legality and legitimacy to rule. “That whenever any Form of Government”, declares <i>The Declaration of Independence of the US</i>, “becomes destructive … it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…” The people in Bangladesh perceived the state of Pakistan turned destructive and, at one stage, the state used carnage as a tool to subjugate.<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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The world imperialism, as recent documents and, Gary Bass's <i>The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide</i>(Knopf) show, was fully aware of the genocide. Archer Blood, the US consul-general in Dhaka, and his colleagues said in their telegram, known as the <i>Blood Telegram</i>, to Washington DC: “Our government has failed to denounce the suppression of democracy. Our government has failed to denounce atrocities. . . . Our government has evidenced what many will consider moral bankruptcy.” Kenneth Keating, the US Ambassador to India, likewise called on the Nixon Administration to “promptly, publicly, and prominently deplore this brutality.” (Pankaj Mishra, “Unholy Alliances, Nixon, Kissinger, and the Bangladesh Genocide”, <i>The New Yorker</i>, September 23, 2013) Bass writes in his book on the Bangladesh genocide: “In the dark annals of modern cruelty, it ranks as bloodier than Bosnia and by some accounts in the same rough league as Rwanda.” Bangladesh experienced, as Harold H Saunders writes, a “horrible bloodshed”. (“What Really Happened in Bangladesh, Washington, Islamabad, and the Genocide in East Pakistan”, <i>Foreign Affairs</i>, July/August 2014) There were imperialist collusion and complicity in the carnage, the least known genocide in the world. The simple and plain living Bangladesh people's perception came from the reality of humiliation, exploitation, deprivation, disparity and repression, murder at mass level, and the reality of imperialism. The logic for rebellion found its ground even before a drop of blood was shed. <o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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Thomas Paine asserts in <i>Common Sense</i>: “Arms as the last resource” when “period of debate is closed”. Paine expects a new horizon as <i>Common Sense</i> declares: “By referring the matter from argument to arms, a new era for politics is struck – a new method of thinking hath arisen.” The Bangladesh people found the period of debate closed by the Pakistan military junta in the late-March, 1971, and relevant issues were referred to arms. The period was imposed by the state of Pakistan with its treachery, betrayal, brutality, and arson and murder at mass scale, and the Bangladesh people by resorting to armed struggle heroically created a condition to make a forward march towards a new era for politics for a humane, peaceful, prosperous life, and for an equitable control over and distribution of resources. The new era for politics is long with treacherous turnings, costly compromises and backlashes; but, ultimately, it will be a people's era for politics, a part of the War for Liberation. And, the rebellion will revolve to revolution.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2562186355143923770.post-64568566915266699322014-12-16T01:30:00.000+06:002015-01-02T22:07:38.233+06:00Dick Cheney And A “Flawed” Report<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Revelations from the US are now near-overwhelming. There are not only exposures of torture techniques to “defend” democracy and peace; but intricacies, and lies and truths of politics in the land are also there. The US Senate report on tortures by CIA has done the job. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Tales of tortures and brutalities have already been narrated in the report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Brutal interrogation techniques followed by the intelligence agency reveal its power. Limit to the power has also been revealed: Tortures could not secure interests. The report concluded: CIA interrogation tactics were ineffective.<o:p></o:p></div>
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What would have been the Empire's reaction to similar reports of tortures carried by a regime considered not-friendly to the Empire? Answer to the question exposes two faces of the Empire. One is a public face while the other is the real face. The real face remains hidden till tormented by contradictions. The real face is the state's face, impersonal and imperial face. Incidents bring it out to public. Commoners get an opportunity to learn. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Reactions to the report also reveal a lot. Stakes, strengths and weaknesses, and level of moral standing, virtually zero, face public. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Despite the shivering revelations the former US vice president Dick Cheney considers “it is a terrible report, deeply flawed”. <i>Fox News</i> interviewed him. It was his first televised interview since the report's release.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Cheney's comment questions the process of the report preparation, motive behind, and the politicians preparing the report. Although Cheney had not read the entire classified report or the declassified executive summary, as he said in the interview, he said: “It's a classic example of where politicians get together and throw professionals under the bus.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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The former vice president is confident about his judgment. So he can pass comment on the report before going through that.<o:p></o:p></div>
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His statement tells a part of the state of the state: Reject a group of politicians' legal effort, incoherence between politicians and professionals in a system, claims that a group of politicians press down professionals.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But shall a group of politicians benefit by pressing down professionals? Don't they need service of professionals? When and why does a group of politicians press down professionals? Are not these related to the interests the state upholds? Is there any incoherence developing in the entire system if the former vice president's comment is correct?<o:p></o:p></div>
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Cheney's further comment was more serious: “The notion that the agency was operating on a rogue basis was just a flat out lie.” He said the report is “full of crap”.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Two jobs have been done with the statements: Cheney has defended the agency that was trying to defend the state; simultaneously, he has questioned the integrity of the report, which tried to defend the values the state claims to uphold. The Senate Committee investigators examined more than 6 million pages of CIA records. The 500-page executive summary released is based on the committee's 6,700-page study, which includes 38,000 footnotes.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But the two jobs reveal inner-condition of the state and the dominant interests. Also revealed is a trend within the state mechanism, which is not only a ruling machine, but also are formal and informal relations, understandings, manipulations, deals, ideology, approach, timing, etc. There is a combination of hardware and software. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Essentially, Cheney has redefined a few concepts. He insisted the enhanced interrogation techniques (EIT) were all legally justified and inconsistent with “torture”. However, he conceded that the practice of “rectal rehydration”, practiced by the spy agency as has been mentioned in the report, “was not one of the authorized or approved techniques”.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Thus legal justification, torture have been redefined, and a mind is exposed. This is one of the minds that claimed to uphold life and human dignity on the earth. Similar minds invented lies with WMD in Iraq. Can unapproved and unauthorized techniques involving human life turn legally justified?<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">Is it possible to identify which of the following methods of interrogation are legally justified and which are not: round-the-clock EIT (on a near 24-hour-per-day basis), 20 days of nonstop EIT, complete isolation for 47 days, interrogation taking “precedence” over medical care, person stuffed in a coffin-like box for 266 hours and an additional 29 hours in an even smaller box, which was 21 inches wide, 2.5 feet deep, and 2.5 feet tall, rectal infusion of “Pureed” humus, pasta, nuts and raisins used as a behavior control, sexual assault, intimidation with a power drill, waterboarding for at least 183 times,<strong> waterboarding until detainees turned blue and were on the verge of drowning, </strong>standing sleep deprivation, nudity, threatened with harm to detainees' families that included doing harm to the children of a detainee, threats to sexually abuse the mother of a detainee and to “cut” a detainee's mother's throat, naked detainees doused with ice water, keeping awake for 138 1/2 hours – almost six days, </span><span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">refusal to access to toilets, left hanging by wrists for extended periods of time, maintain “stress positions” even on broken limbs and although medical personnel had advised against it, and </span><strong><span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">playing Russian roulette with a detainee</span></strong><span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">There was obviously consideration. One of the improperly detained individuals was released after the person endured 66 hours of standing sleep deprivation and ice water baths, and “the CIA discovered he was likely not the person he was believed to be.” Two detainees spent 24 hours chained in the standing sleep deprivation position, until the CIA Headquarters “confirmed that the detainees were former CIA sources”, who had previously reached out to the CIA to try to share intelligence. It seems the agency was failing to discriminate friend and foe. T</span><span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">orture</span><span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;"> often led </span><span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">detainees </span><span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">to </span><span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">g</span><span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">i</span><span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">ve false information, </span><span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">on </span><span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">which the </span><span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">authorities </span><span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">acted on.</span><span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;"> These are not shows of efficiency.</span><span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<strong><span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">Humanity prevails everywhere; and all the time, humanity is not lost. Many CIA officials were disturbed by the techniques and torture they witnessed.</span><span style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 18.3999996185303px;"><o:p></o:p></span></strong></div>
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Cheney conceded a few of the interrogation technique were unauthorized and unapproved. The governance mechanism appears flawed as a state agency resorts to unauthorized and unapproved technique involving human life, not machine. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The former US vice president moves further and widens his claims as he rejects the allegation that his boss, president George W. Bush, was kept in the dark. “He was in fact an integral part of the program. He had to approve it before we moved forward with it,” said Cheney. “He knew everything he needed to know and wanted to know about the program.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Burden of blame or laurel for performance is now also on G W Bush as “He was … an integral part of the program”, “had to approve it”, and “knew everything he needed to know and wanted to know about the program.” It's being put by none other than Dick Cheney. There is a place named history if all docks fail.<o:p></o:p></div>
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One can recall a statement then-the US president Bush made eight years ago. In 2006, Bush adamantly denied that the US used torture against suspected terrorists. Bush said, “I want to be absolutely clear with our people and the world: The United States does not torture. It's against our laws, and it's against our values. I have not authorized it, and I will not authorize it.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Now, the Senate report reveals that statement was false. The report says Bush's remarks “contained significant inaccurate statements” regarding the effectiveness of the CIA's EIT.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The revelation reveals more of the inside of a ruling system or of a state.<o:p></o:p></div>
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According to the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), George W Bush, in his memoir <i>Decision Points</i>, admitted that he authorized waterboarding in cases of a number of detainees. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Waterboarding, CCR claims, is torture, a crime under domestic and international law. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The CCR and the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) in a statement said: “As Attorney General Eric Holder stated during his confirmation hearings, waterboarding is torture. […] Harold Koh, the State Department Legal Adviser, [… stated] during the US Universal Periodic Review that ‘the Obama administration defines waterboarding as torture as a matter of law' and it is not a ‘policy choice.'”<o:p></o:p></div>
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The statement said: “[N]o circumstance or excuses — including ‘national security' — under domestic and international law that allow for the use of torture.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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A number of issues and questions are revealed. There are questions related to systematic use of torture, and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. There are questions related to a state's acts, democracy's domain, trend in a democracy, hindrances in unveiling acts of torture and politics. There are questions related to power and immunity of a republic's employees, and to rights and safety of human. And, there are questions related to life and dignity. Whatever answers, explanations and legal opinions are found or innovated humanity shall continue its journey seeking justice as humanity can't exist without justice, as humanity prevails over all politics of petty interest.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2562186355143923770.post-31361039687784098552014-11-23T06:00:00.000+06:002015-01-02T22:19:20.780+06:00Inequality: A Glimpse In The Food Market<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="style113" style="font-weight: bold;">T</span>he world food market with its amazing supermarkets, alluring discounters, magnificent hypermarkets, convenience stores, small food stalls, neutraceuticals that mix nutrients and medicine, monstrous agribusinesses, small-scale farms and cooperatives, whole sellers, retailers, hoarders, black marketers, speculators, big “organic” food business, future markets spreading over the entire world bears all the ills capital produces. The market conceives all the contradictions capitalism is capable of creating. Inequality is a part of it.</div>
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Market, it should be mentioned, with all its tentacles stands opposed to democracy. Food market is no exception. “[T]he guiding principles of the market economy and democracy” … “often contradict one another and are more likely to go head-to-head than hand in hand”, says Jacques Attali, a world famous banker and diplomat, in his “The Crash of Western Civilization: The Limits of the Market and Democracy”. (Foreign Policy, Number 107, Summer 1997) Attali writes: “[T]he market economy and democracy … are more likely to undermine than support one another. … The market economy accepts and fosters strong inequalities between economic agents, whereas democracy is based on the equal rights of all citizens. By depriving some people of the ability to meet their basic economic needs, the market economy also leaves them less able to exercise their full political rights.” (ibid.)</div>
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However, democracy is an integral part of struggle against inequality. The autocracy of market ruins people’s lives as market is one of the domains of capital, which is always active for maximization of profit. The global food market doesn’t go beyond this.</div>
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Consumers, billions in number, are there at the one end of the world food market while the other end touches the environment and ecology, the producers of raw materials, the labor-power that produces commodities for the market. Over the arch, sits political arrangement for safeguarding the interests with its power of legislation and execution. In the entire kingdom, from one end to the other, people pay high prices as deceived producers fallen prey to the power of market, as victims of demolished environment and pilfered ecology, as labor whose labor-power is being appropriated, as poor consumers deceitfully connected to commodities sold in the market, as people’s brains are manipulated with a vast propaganda machine.</div>
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Inequality increases in the reality as a class owns the temple, the entire food market, while billions of people languish under the Lord’s Table, the profit. Activities of related capital are an area to find the “game” of inequality that starkly show limitless power and domains, and, at the same time, limits of the interests that dominate the area: it can harm limitlessly, but it can’t deliver wellbeing to the people. It also shows limits imposed on people that hinder their access to better food.</div>
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Capital creates opportunities to increase profit. Obesity, as example, is such a case of opportunity. “Drug companies had attempted to capitalise on obesity, but their fingers got burnt. Still, there was a winner: the food industry. By creating diet lines for the larger market of the slightly overweight, not just the clinically obese, it had hit on an apparently limitless pot of gold.” (Jacques Peretti, “Fat profits: how the food industry cashed in on obesity”, The Guardian, August 7, 2013) Ordinary persons can’t access the “pot of gold”.</div>
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Big food companies armed with elusive marketing mechanism are selling candies, cereals, chocolate milk, infant formula, yogurts, etc. that reach all corners of the world. “Many unhealthy products are very profitable. … Many firms … [are] continuing to hawk unhealthy products yet also touting elaborate plans to improve nutrition.” (The Economist, “Food companies play an ambivalent part in the fight against flab”, December 15, 2012)</div>
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To increase profit, the food market compels consumers to pay more, and consumers are made loyal to brands. And, it’s the commoners that is allured and compelled to consume tasty but unhealthy food. The profit fattens the owning class while the commoners pay, and the inequality-story survives. Products with health claims are being introduced by the power of big money advertisement: chewing gum with vitamins B6 and B12, whole grains and protein filled cereals, etc. (Jeffrey Cohen, “Food Industries’ Healthy Margins”, May 23, 2013, IBIDWorld, Media Center) Ordinary consumers, masses of people, buy, and they pay, and the inequality increases with draining out of their money, with their hurt health.</div>
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“Over the past decade sales of packaged foods around the world have jumped by 92%, to $2.2 trillion this year … In Brazil, China and Russia sales are three to four times their level in 2002. … Sales of soft drinks across the world have more than doubled in the past decade, to $532 billion; in India, Brazil and China sales of fizzy drinks have more than quadrupled.” (The Economist, op. cit.)</div>
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“These impressive sales figures look set to rise further” with new buying of companies, new products for local markets, competition for domination of the global market, investment in emerging markets, and wider spread into developing markets. “McDonald’s is now in 119 countries. Yum! Brands, owner of KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut, derives 60% of its profit from the developing world, and there is plenty of growth potential left. Yum!’s chief executive, David Novak, explains that the company has 58 restaurants for every 1m Americans, compared with just two restaurants for every 1m people in emerging markets.” (ibid.) Sarah Murray, Financial Times contributor and author of Moveable Feasts: From Ancient Rome to the 21st Century, the Incredible Journeys of the Food We Eat informs: “[B]ig retailers such as Wal-Mart and Carrefour have been building more supermarkets around the world.” (“The World’s Biggest Industry”, Forbes, November 15, 2007) Citing FAO Sarah Murray writes: “Between 1980 and 2001, the five largest global supermarket chains (all of them based in Europe or the US) each expanded the number of countries in which they operate by at least 270%”. (ibid.)</div>
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A look at the impressive geographic expansion of the market tells its lucrative nature. Ordinary consumers form most of the market, labor provides the surplus value, and people languish in hunger. The face of inequality turns “bright”.</div>
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Sales of fast-food are increasing although the food is not helpful for health. Market, claimed as free, is manipulated – deregulated or kept under control or segmented – by mongers of free market as part of competition. Roberto De Vogli, Anne Kouvonen & David Gimeno looked into fast-food sales in 25 high-income countries from 1999 to 2008. Per-capita purchases increased in all these countries during the period. (“The influence of market deregulation on fast food consumption and body mass index: a cross-national time series analysis”, Bull World Health Organ, 2014; 92:99 – 107A)</div>
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With connections, the food market is wide as the world, and the market has wide connections – from government to legislative assemblies, from small producers to big hoarders, from media managers to uninformed consumers, and many others – that apparently appear contradictory but, is fully in accordance with the character of capital.</div>
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“Global food retail sales are about $4 trillion annually … Most of the leading global retailers are US and European firms …. The top 15 global supermarket companies account for more than 30 percent of world supermarket sales. …Together, the top 50 food manufacturers’ share of global packaged food retail sales account for less than 20 percent.” (US Department of Agriculture, Global Food Industry, last updated: May 31, 2012)</div>
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At the end of 2012, the global food market was valued at US$4.2 trillion, of which fresh food and agricultural produce accounted for 52.6% and packaged foods had the rest. During the five-year period leading up to 2012, the food sector expanded at a compound annual growth rate of 3.7% (by value), from US$3.7 trillion. The global market is expected to record a compound annual growth rate of 4.4% between 2012 and 2017, and will reach US$5.3 trillion by the end of this period. (Pegasus Agritech)</div>
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In 2013, the US fast food industry generated approximately US$191 billion. More than three and a half million workers were employed with over 232 thousand fast food establishments in the US in 2013. With a brand value of almost US$86 billion, McDonald’s was by far the most valuable fast food brand in the world in 2014. Its closest competitor was Starbucks with US$60 billion. In 2013, McDonald’s was also the largest fast food company in terms of revenue. It was followed by sandwich chain Subway and Yum! Brands. (Statista, “Statistics and facts about the Fast Food Industry”)</div>
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A market difficult to grasp</div>
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Despite huge data the worldwide food market is difficult to grasp. It’s simply difficult to take an account in monetary term. By using the example of a noodle stall Sarah Murray presented the difficulty in the following way:</div>
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“The noodle stall is one of the reasons analysts get jumpy when asked to quantify the size of the global food industry.… Like the peas on your plate, financial figures for food are notoriously hard to capture.” (op. cit.)</div>
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In the market, there is any food, packaged food, food made in homes, and food sold in street shops, many of which go beyond account. There is food not sold in shops but the poor scavenge in urban centers/collect in rural areas in their fight against hunger. There is the task of defining processed food, packaged food, etc.</div>
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“Euromonitor International”, Sarah Murray writes in the article mentioned above, “reckons the packaged food industry – including everything from pasta and cooking oil to canned and frozen foods – is worth almost $1.6 trillion. Meanwhile, the World Bank puts the food and agriculture sector at 10% of global gross domestic product, which, taking the bank’s 2006 estimate of about $48 trillion, would make the sector worth about $4.8 trillion.”</div>
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It’s admitted: “Food … is a confusing commodity, and our noodle seller’s soup illustrates why. His wontons are made from shrimp, part of the global seafood market, which the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says is worth more than $400 billion. That’s simple enough. But the shrimp are covered in a wrapper whose primary ingredient is flour, which could be measured as a commodity or in its milled form. And is the dish they are in soup or noodles? Euromonitor says the market for soup is worth $12.9 billion, and the market for noodles, measured separately, worth $27.2 billion. The trouble is, food is a commodity, an ingredient, and a meal, and its value can be measured at every stage along that chain. ‘If you look at it as the output from the farm sector, it’s sold and processed, and sold again,’ says Mark Gehlhar, a senior economist at the US Department of Agriculture. ‘Then you have flour being produced and dough being produced. So you can easily double count.’ Of course, you could also lump our noodle soup seller’s business in with the restaurant trade. Euromonitor puts the global consumer food-service business – everything from cafés and fast-food chains to full-service restaurants – at $1.85 trillion. But with many restaurants operating on a cash basis, even in the US, the true value of this industry is hard to pin down. In fact, a huge amount of food is bought and sold informally. ‘When you talk about the food industry, the first thing people think of is Coca-Cola or Starbucks,’ says Florence Egal, a nutrition specialist at the FAO. ‘But of course, women’s groups in Mexico transforming maize into tortillas and sending them from house to house would also be part of the food industry.’ Despite these difficulties in measuring the absolute size of the food business, nearly everyone agrees: The sector is growing at an astonishing pace.’” (Sarah Murray, op. cit.) Intricacies, manipulations and informal type of market activities in the periphery, and unreliable data there also make the market difficult to comprehend. These have relations and implications that impact consumers. These are factors impacting inequality.</div>
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Global Pet Food Market</div>
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There is another global food market many of the poor and self-contained middle class are unaware of: the pet food market with billions of dollars. A comparison between the global pet food market and the food market the world poor fall victim to help comprehend the inequality the poor are imposed with.</div>
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The global pet food market was worth US$58.6 billion in 2011. It’s expected to reach the value of US$74.8 billion in 2017. It’s expected that North America will remain the largest regional segment for the pet food industry in terms of revenue generation, accounting for around 40% of the total revenue. The North America pet food market valued at US$21.7 billion in 2011 was followed by the Europe market. (Transparency Market Research, “Pet Food Market – Global Industry Size, Market Share, Trends, Analysis and Forecast, 2011 – 2017”, April 15, 2013)</div>
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It’s, in one sense, indecent, unjust and crude to make a comparison between pet food market and human food market as human is not equivalent to pet. But the global capital compels to resort to such a comparison as capital compares everything in market, and as capital has degraded human existence below all characteristics of humane, and, as, in real terms, human has been made a commodity sold in the global labor market. To the rich, human is less valuable than the pet of the rich. The rich love their pets, but there’s is only brutality the rich keep accumulated for the poor. An enquiry at some peripheral society will find the level of brutality: the amount of money a peripheral rich, a lumpen rich in a peripheral society, spends daily for a pair of pet’s food is much higher than 5 poor living in peripheral slums or villages, slums or villages in the periphery of the world system. Sometimes, the amount of money allotted for a pair of pets reaches to Taka 500-700 daily. Even, the poor are not aware of this “love” as a lot of information essential to them doesn’t reach them.</div>
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Poor doesn’t own drone</div>
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Inequality in food and health doesn’t come to sight with its full “bloom” if food market is not divided into the food market of the poor and the food market of the rich. There are two food markets: one for the poor with rotten or near-rotten, toxic or semi-toxic, engineered or adulterated “food”, and another catering to the hunger of the rich. Sources of commodities sold in the two markets, color, tastes and prices of the commodities, purchasing capacity of the consumers in the two markets, labor-power spent for producing the two types of commodities, sales trend, environment footprint made for producing the two types of commodities for the two markets are different. The account is difficult to get hold of. However, inquiry in societies gives the picture that can make the poor aware of inequality.</div>
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Even the two food markets in advanced capitalist societies and in the poor southern hemisphere are different. In the poor periphery of the world system, the food inequality-picture with two markets turns vulgar and appears a cartoon as one encounters food-luxury and food-wastages enjoyed by the nouveaux-riches of poor societies. Making food wastages are part of the luxury the rich enjoy as it shows their opulence and power. They are not embarrassed, not shy, not with any guilty feeling for their dirty luxury. They are confident with their control of mass-psyche, with their manipulation power with information, and manipulation of awareness at the level of ordinary mass of consumers, with their capacity of scaling down of mass hatred to improper and unjust luxury of the rich, with the ideologies marketed that ignore or blur the question of inequality, that doesn’t vigorously and consistently raise the issue of inequality, that doesn’t question source of inequality.</div>
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A barbaric character of the inequality surfaces if one compares the market of luxury commodities the rich consume and the market of the food the poor are to survive on. Prices of villas, ranches, yachts, perfumes and diamonds the world rich class owns is now a known fact. Even the rich don’t feel ashamed with their scandalous properties. Now, the rich use drone for getting delivery of champagne. The poor can’t get hold of a drone for getting delivery of food essential for their survival, not even they can imagine or dream it. The time in the life of the poor seems immobile and ever-hungry. Isn’t this a part of inequality? Isn’t inequality bright as daylight?</div>
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So, only weighing food consumed and only looking at quality of food being consumed will not provide a full reality of food inequality. It should be related and compared with other parts of economy, with the way and amount/quantity the rich consume, indulge with, waste, destroy and pilfer. The comparison leads the inequality issue to the issue of deprivation of the masses of the poor.</div>
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Inequality in the food market turns cruel if a comparison is made between the amount/quantity the poor, the toilers produce and the amount/quantity they are handed over, the labor-power appropriated from them and the food thrown out to them. A look into profit and monopoly superprofit in the food industry helps understand the amount the toilers produce as profit is a converted form of surplus value. “[I]n its assumed capacity of offspring of the aggregate advanced capital,” Marx writes, “surplus-value takes the converted form of profit.” (Capital, vol. III) And, monopoly superprofit grows out of monopolies concentrating money capital, minerals and natural resources, means of transportation/communication, discoveries and inventions, marketing, decisive quantity of the means of production. “[M]onopoly”, writes Lenin, “yields superprofits, i.e., a surplus of profits over and above the capitalist profits that are normal and customary all over the world.” (“Imperialism and the split in socialism”)</div>
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Today’s world food market is controlled by monopolies making superprofits, and, the monopolies, borrowing from Lenin’s above mentioned essay, “‘ride on the backs’ of hundreds and hundreds of millions of people in other countries.” The food market thus bears the contradictions: superprofits/monopolies versus billions of people, monopolies versus countries ravaged by monopolies, monopolies versus local producers.</div>
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A butchers’ market</div>
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The food market is used as a weapon of war against societies trying to live with honor, trying to get out of the chain of the world capitalist system. Even, energy market is manipulated to manipulate the global food market. These turn the food market a butchers’ market. Imposed economic sanction/embargo/blockade by the world imperialism is the example; Cuba, Iraq under Saddam-rule are the examples. Dumping of food commodities including sugar is the example. These steps not only increase inequality, but also bring deaths, even “award” deaths of children although the children have no role in geopolitics. A glimpse doesn’t miss this “beauty” of the food market, a creation of imperialism, although mainstream prefers not to consider it while discussing inequality.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2562186355143923770.post-66395471176341285242014-11-17T06:30:00.000+06:002015-01-02T22:09:50.749+06:00Inequality: Capitalism’s Inefficiency With Food<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="style113" style="font-weight: bold;">R</span>obbing better food is enough to deprive a people of its life and intellect. The arrangement of inequality that capitalism imposes deprives the majority, the members of “low-status households”. They are not allowed, the arrangement is so made, to afford better food.</div>
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With this arrangement, capitalism, on the one hand, is depriving humanity of food and health, and, on the other, is increasing its profit. More than one aspect is there in the business of food and health inequality capitalism engages with.</div>
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Aspect 1: Capitalism increases its profit by marketing “attractive” food, which is harmful for health. Capital finds there are cheaper foods that are not helpful to the health of labor, but helpful to profit. Reports on marketing expenditures and profit from food and health industries support the assertion. “[T]here is strong marketing from certain food companies which encourage less nutritious food.” (The Guardian, Guardian Professional, “Public health dialogue on policy: food and inequality”, February 20, 2013)</div>
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Aspect 2: Capital compels labor to resort to cheaper food as labor’s first priority is payment of, already cited studies have found, rent, interest, utilities, etc. By marketing cheaper food capital ensures payment of interest, etc. by labor. By paying interest, rent, etc. labor gives away a part of money it was paid as necessary for reproduction of capital. “Why are people eating less healthily? Large portions of the country can’t afford to eat well. Income is not rising fast enough to keep up with other costs (e.g. rent, electric bills, etc). There is less time available to prepare food. Time constraints force people to go for ready meals.” (ibid.) Capital, thus, doesn’t turn a loser immediately.</div>
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Aspect 3: Capitalism can resort to food harmful for labor as there is a large reserve army of labor. Disease, disability and death are asked by capital to prefer the poor. Capital can hire one worker at cheaper rate if its one fat worker can’t move its muscles and brain with speed, if its one worker falls sick. It’s a show of capital’s brutal face. Capitalist crisis booms the business of increasing the reserve army of labor and exploiting the situation. With wide health inequalities the poor are more likely to develop serious illnesses, they increasingly encounter psychological problems, and die earlier than the rich. Suicide rate among the poor also increases as they face crisis. Reports from advanced capitalist countries present evidences.</div>
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Aspect 4: The capitalist food inequality and health crisis sends some money to the health industry. A portion of the poor has to resort, within capacity, and sometimes, reaching the last limit of capacity like selling away whatever the poor have, to the “mercifully” costly health industry: costly medicine, prescription made with manipulated/bribed hands, costly, and in a number of societies, more medical tests are conducted than required, costly hospital fees. It’s the poor that pay with their unfortunate life.<br />Capital thus, the aspects mentioned above show, weakens labor but doesn’t weaken itself immediately. But, there is an opposite aspect that shows in the long-term capital gets hurt.</div>
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Aspect 5: Labor’s consumption of food is essential for capital. “[T]he individual consumption of the working-class is,” Marx writes, “therefore, the reconversion of the means of subsistence given by capital in exchange for labour-power, into fresh labour-power at the disposal of capital for exploitation. It is the production and reproduction of that means of production so indispensable to the capitalist: the labourer himself. The individual consumption of the labourer, whether it proceed within the workshop or outside it, whether it be part of the process of production or not, forms therefore a factor of the production and reproduction of capital; just as cleaning machinery does, whether it be done while the machinery is working or while it is standing. The fact that the labourer consumes his means of subsistence for his own purposes, and not to please the capitalist, has no bearing on the matter. … The maintenance and reproduction of the working-class is, and must ever be, a necessary condition to the reproduction of capital.” (Capital, vol. I) Capitalism, thus, hurts its interest by hurting health of people as the system requires labor able to drive its machine. But the food it provides doesn’t help body to drive the system’s machines.</div>
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Moreover, there are sickness related to workplace that harm the working people, not the property-owning class as the property owners don’t have to stay daily in harmful working condition through a long period of time. In the US, there are estimates that “50,000 people die and another 400,000 are sickened each year because of illnesses contracted in the workplace.” (The US Department of Labor, (Work in Progress), the official blog of the US Department of Labor, “The Journey to Safety Excellence Starts With You”, Deborah Hersman, October 27, 2014)] Can an economy ignore the cited figure even if the following figure is ignored: In the US, “in recent years, nearly 11 workers died on the job each day, and 5 million were injured annually.” (ibid.) “Food” related death in societies/countries in the periphery mainly is unaccounted. Data on deaths from hunger are available. It’s impossible even to imagine hunger related death from the propertied class. Hunger related death puts its “loving” touch only on the poor. Isn’t it an evidence of inequality?<br /><br />There is claim: “People are an employer’s most important asset.” (ibid.) Moreover, none disagrees: Better food contributes to national economy.</div>
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But a large portion of population in countries can’t afford better food, and they suffer with ill health. These harm economy, which is not helpful to capital. Capitalism is carrying on its curse in the area of food and health although it requires healthy subjects to ensure running of its machine of profit. Capital requires health “to encourage workers to stay in the labor force and boost their skills, and to make them more attractive for companies to hire.” Measures to “stay in the workforce”, “boost skills” and making labor “attractive” to companies are required for reproduction of capital. But, it’s failing in its goal, which is an inefficiency of the system. Thus, it can be said by copying Marx, the depriver is deprived.</div>
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The entire capitalist food and health inequality business with contradictory aspects shows the system’s inefficiency in (1) allocation of resources; (2) use of labor; (3) balancing economic activity; (4) ensuring self-interest; (5) proper handling of contradictions within the system. It, thus, nullifies its logic for its existence although its proponents stand for it.</div>
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And, the inefficiency/failure is being found in the advanced, matured capitalist economies, which are overflowing with resources, and are equipped with knowledge and experience of management. Moreover, these countries have the so-called free press, an essential tool, as at least one renowned economist claimed, for fighting out hunger. Now, there is, once again being found, famine of thought in mainstream.</div>
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A single approach doesn’t lead to the entire story</div>
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A single approach of looking only at “who gets what food” limits and narrows down the inequality question in the area of food and health. The approach doesn’t present the full scene of inequality in the area as these are connected to distribution/allocation, market, profit, class interests that show ownership and control over food and health. The monster-like inequality-reality gets a better appearance with a look into market and profit.<br /><br />Market is created for food and health industries. The grammar behind the market is loud: profit with people’s struggle for a good health. The struggle is waged everyday, in every sphere of life, at household, community, production place and market place levels, while accessing food and health related areas, and accessing other social and political facilities/arrangements/institutions related to food and health. The issue is not only limited with food, drug, and health care facilities. It, rather, is connected to related commodities with their connections, international trade regimes, politics and legislation in countries. In all the areas, related class interests define the related issues and people’s lives. These bear signs of inequality.</div>
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Worldwide power: In the present global system, societies/countries tied to the system can’t stay free from the curse of food and health inequality simply because of the system’s worldwide power.</div>
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The power is exerted with full force, with finance and trade, in markets and future markets of related commodities that includes raw materials produced in forests, mines, farms, and machines, and that are transported. In the markets, “all the necessary factors”, to quote Marx, “of the labour-process” are present. There are, again quoting Marx, “its objective factors, the means of production, as well as its subjective factor, labour-power.” (Capital, vol. I) So the factors can’t be ignored while looking into the issue.</div>
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Political actions: Legislations, political acts, in countries are framed to ensure the related interests, which are ultimately dominant class interests. Political programs that manifest economic interests of dominant strata of society are there. The political programs ensure maximization of profiteering with food and health. These get manifested in food and health inequality only in the life of commoners, people.</div>
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Neo-liberalism/austerity: Imposition of neo-liberal measures, and austerity measures increase food and health inequality and increases power and profit of capital. Countries that were/are being imposed with neo-liberal/austerity measures provide ample evidence. Europe, a continent rich with resources plundered from colonies and with appropriated surplus value, is a burning example. The banking/public debt crisis in Europe compelled all Europeans to pay. “However … it is Europe’s poorest that are bearing the greatest costs, in an echo of the structural adjustment programmes imposed on countries in Latin America, South-East Asia and sub-Saharan Africa in the 1980s and 1990s.” (Oxfam, A True Cautionary Tale, the true cost of austerity and inequality in Europe, briefing paper, September 2013) The cost is ultimately paid by cutting down food and health.<br /><br />A few facts, cited below, from the rich continent help comprehend the reality.</div>
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The European Commission approved €4.5 trillion in aid to the financial sector (equivalent to 36.7 per cent of EU GDP) during 2008-2011. (EC, “Tackling the financial crisis – Banks”, 2012) In 2010, countries including Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain imposed austerity measures on the people. The measures included deep and wide spending cuts, regressive taxes that “entrench inequality – from the loss of decent public services to the erosion of social security and the weakening of collective bargaining through deregulation of the labour market. These measures … are having a severe impact upon European societies …. As the richest in many European countries affected by austerity have seen their share of income rise, the very poorest have seen their income share fall.” (ibid.)</div>
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Referring to “Introduction: Crisis, policy responses and widening inequalities in the EU” by J Leschke and M Jespen (International Labour Review, 151, 2012) the briefing paper cited total public spending cuts in countries in 2010-2014: 40 per cent of GDP in Ireland, approximately 20 per cent in the Baltic States, 12 per cent in Spain, and 11.5 per cent in the UK. The immediate affects of the cuts include loss of millions of public sector jobs. In the UK, 1.1 million public sector jobs are planned to be cut during the period 2010-2018. There are public sector wage cuts/frozen in Italy, Ireland, Portugal and Spain, the UK. Countries have made social security budget cuts. In 2011 budgets, Greece, Latvia, Portugal, Romania made decreases of over five per cent. In 2010, health-spending recorded its first drop in decades. Ireland and Greece made more than six per cent cut. “In Lisbon, about 20 per cent of clients of pharmacies, mainly women, unemployed and elderly people, did not complete their whole prescriptions due to rising costs.” (ibid.) Countries privatized health care institutions. “[T]he gains are not being equitably distributed, as the poorest continue to suffer, while the richest remain comparatively unaffected.” (ibid.)</div>
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The rich continent found the bitter fact from Lorna, a 33 years old citizen: “It’s such a struggle. The wages don’t go up but yet all the prices for food, fares, they all do. By the time I’ve paid out all of my gas and electric, child-minding fees, shopping, fares to work, I’m maybe, if I’m lucky, left with about 10 pounds. Sometimes I will go without a dinner, or anything to eat that day, so that there’s money there for other stuff.” (N Cooper & S Dumbleton Walking The Breadline: The Scandal Of Food Poverty In 21st Century Britain, Church Action on Poverty & Oxfam, 2013, in Oxfam, September 2013, op. cit.) State of people comprising millions of Lorna is not confusing after the statement Lorna made.</div>
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No evidence from any country showing the rich die or suffer from lack of food and health care can be found. But Lorna in millions are there in countries irrespective of rich and poor to provide evidence of food and health inequality in the world system. “The long-term social cost of the economic crisis has been underestimated. More people are being evicted from their homes. More people are trapped in over indebtedness, as they face increased living costs with reduced income. Child poverty is growing and young people are being deprived from the possibility to imagine a future.” (European Anti-Poverty Network, August 2013)</div>
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A reality with contradictions: A reality with contradictions emerges: “[W]hen taxes and social security payments are taken into account, the richest have seen their share of total income grow, whilst the poorest have seen theirs fall. Other stark indications of continuing prosperity for the richest include the growth of Europe’s luxury goods market.” (Bain and Company, Bain projects global luxury goods market will grow overall by 10% in 2012, though major structural shifts in market emerge, 2012, in Oxfam, September 2013, op. cit.) Food and health care for the poor are not available in the luxury goods market for the rich, a contradiction with limits of the market.</div>
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Environment-ecology: With the destruction of environment and ecology that goes with seemingly mindless, but actually only with profit motive the poor people’s access to food decreases, even, at times, it completely gets out of their reach. The global capital’s transfer of environment-hostile technology to the poor part of the world negatively impact people’s food and health that increases inequality in the area.</div>
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Energy thirst: Similarly, capital’s endless energy thirst decreases people’s access to food, negatively impacts their income, and thus increases food and health-inequality.<br /><br />Famine: Famines, capitalist system-made, increase inequality in food and health care. The Bangladesh 1974 famine, made as part of imperialist intervention, and countries in Africa are evidences. The rich don’t starve during famines, and iterate deprivation of the poor.</div>
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Imperialism: Imperialist intervention and war, multinational corporations fomenting civil disturbance, sectarian strife and civil war not only increase food and health inequality; a large part of population, often an entire population, is denied minimum food and health. Sometimes, the denial is total. Agriculture, industries, trade, infrastructure, institutions, market places are demolished, minimum conditions for carrying on production are destroyed, a large part of population is dislodged, it is displaced internally or turns refugees crossing national border. Vietnam, and countries in west Asia and Africa are stark examples.</div>
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Inequality in the area of food and health are with connections related capital and commodities make that turn the issue into political and class question, are part of the over all deprivation capital makes, and, thus, the issue is part of political struggle, and is an area for waging and intensifying class struggle.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2562186355143923770.post-20107212606255124712014-11-09T06:30:00.000+06:002015-01-02T22:16:42.168+06:00Inequality: Food Follows Class-line<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="style113" style="font-weight: bold;">C</span>lass doesn't allow anyone and anything to get out of its clutch. Food and health are not class-neutral areas. These, rather, have to faithfully follow class-line. Inequality is one of its outcomes. It's a fact not only from one or two countries like the UK and the US , but from scores of advanced capitalist countries, and the fact has emerged over a period of decades.</div>
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<strong>It's not a single country-story</strong></div>
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Inequality in food isn't a trend found only in a country. The pattern is wide. Nicole Darmon and Adam Drewnowski in their “Does social class predict diet quality?” ( <em>The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition </em>, vol. 87, no. 5, May 2008) find diet quality follows class stratification. The fact stands as: the poor have only the bad while the rich consume only the best.</div>
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Their study was based on a large body of epidemiologic data from scores of cross-sectional studies conducted in at least 15 countries in Europe, North America and Australia . The countries covered in the studies included Australia , Canada , Denmark , Finland , France , Germany , Greece , the Netherlands , New Zealand , Norway , Portugal , Spain , the UK , the US . In their study Darmon and Drewnowski covered about 200 studies published in medical journals during the period 1982-2007.</div>
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Citing 22 studies Darmon and Drewnowski write in the “Introduction” section of the study report:</div>
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“Morbidity and mortality rates in industrialized societies follow a socioeconomic gradient. The more disadvantaged groups suffer from higher rates of obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, dental caries, and some forms of cancer. All of these diseases have a direct link to nutrition and diet. It has been suggested, more than once, that dietary factors may help explain some of the observed social inequities in health. The more affluent population subgroups are not only healthier and thinner, but they also consume higher-quality diets than do the poor. Diet quality is affected not only by age and sex, but also by occupation, education, and income levels — the conventional indexes of socioeconomic status (SES) or social class.” As SES, they consider education, income, and/or occupation.</div>
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Their conclusion includes:</div>
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1. “[H]igher-quality diets are, in general, consumed by better educated and more affluent people. Conversely, lower quality diets tended to be consumed by groups of lower SES and more limited economic means.”</div>
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2. “Increases in food availability and ongoing marketing incentives to consume large quantities of low-cost energy-dense foods may be particularly damaging to the health of lower SES groups, for whom such foods represent a source of affordable calories.”</div>
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In the section “Evidence of a social gradient in diet quality” the researchers refer to scores of studies and write:</div>
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1. “Higher values of the Healthy Eating Index, Diet Quality Index, dietary variety and diversity scores, and other diet-quality measures have all been associated with higher SES. The same positive relation with SES was observed for dietary patterns.”</div>
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2. “[T]he consumption of whole grains was associated with higher SES, whereas the consumption of refined cereals (white bread), pasta, and rice was associated with lower SES.”</div>
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3. “Lower SES groups also consumed significantly more potatoes.”</div>
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4. “Higher SES groups were more likely to consume vegetables and fruit, particularly fresh, not only in higher quantities but also in greater variety.”</div>
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Citing a meta-analysis of studies from 7 European countries they write: “[F]ruit and vegetable consumption was consistently higher in the highest than in the lowest SES group …”</div>
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They add: “In Australia , a 3-fold difference was found between bottom and top quintiles of income for not consuming fruit on the previous day. In the Netherlands , women with a basic education level were almost 3 times as likely to be low consumers of fruit than were the most educated groups. In a recent Canadian analysis of food budget surveys, the strongest positive relation between income and the quantities of food purchased was found for fruit and vegetables. … Studies from the United Kingdom and the United States suggest that SES disparities in fruit and vegetables consumption have increased over time. … The consumption of lean meats, fish, and other seafood was associated with higher SES in a large number of studies. Lower SES groups tended to consume larger quantities of fatty meats instead of the recommended lean meat items. Fried, breaded, and canned fish were all consumed in greater quantities by lower SES groups, who also consumed more stews and fried foods. Diets of lower SES groups were also characterized by more added fats …”</div>
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<strong>Children are not spared</strong></div>
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Children of workers and the poor are not spared by inequality.</div>
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Referring to a study in France Darmon and Drewnowski write: “[C]hildren of semiskilled and unskilled workers consumed significantly more sweets, bread, potatoes, cereals, and deli meats than did children from the upper SES group.”</div>
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In the US , the researchers write, “children and adolescents from low SES households consumed less fruit and vegetables and a more limited variety of produce. Children from families with lower education levels had the lowest fruit intakes and the highest consumption of sweetened beverages.”</div>
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Referring a number of European studies they add: “[L]ow fruit and vegetable intakes and a high frequency of soft drink consumption among low-SES children and adolescents.” On the opposite, the researchers write, “higher SES groups had consistently higher intakes of most vitamins and minerals and fiber than did lower SES groups.”</div>
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“Low-SES groups”, Darmon and Drewnowski write, “had the lowest consumption of vitamin C, ß-carotene, and folate, vitamin E, and plant-based polyphenols. Low iron intakes among low-SES populations were found in most studies and so were lower intakes of calcium and potassium.”</div>
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<strong>The rich can pay</strong></div>
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Other evidences found by the researchers include:</div>
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1. “[H]ealthier foods are associated with increased monetary and time costs.”</div>
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2. “The observed SES gradient in diet quality may be mediated by food prices and diet costs. It follows from economic theory that food price is an important determinant of food choice. Not surprisingly, the lowest-cost diets are also the least healthy. In general, high-energy-density diets are associated with lower costs, whereas nutrient-dense diets are associated with higher costs per megajoule.”</div>
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3. “Diets composed of low-energy-density nutrient-rich foods are more expensive than are diets composed of refined grains, added sugars, and added fats.”</div>
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4. “Food costs are a barrier to the adoption of nutrient-dense diets, especially by the lower income groups.”</div>
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5. “One recent study, based on the US Department of Agriculture Thrifty Food Plan, reported that the cost of substituting healthier foods can cost up to 35–40% of an American low-income family's food budget.”</div>
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6. “Other studies have shown that food costs are an obstacle to reducing fat intakes or to increasing the consumption of fish, whole-grain products, or vegetables and fruit.”</div>
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7. “In a recent US study, women who considered food price very important were likely to live in low-income households and to have energy-dense diets.”</div>
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8. “Several studies have emphasized that food budgets of the poor are insufficient to obtain a balanced diet. Even when low-income groups develop efficient purchasing strategies, the food budget may not be adequate to procure the recommended diet.”</div>
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9. “Poverty may lead to the selection of low-cost diets that are both energy rich and shelf stable. … The emphasis on maximum calories and least waste and spoilage is another characteristic of poverty. Because trying a new food represents a risk of waste, diets of low-income households are often monotonous. Poverty is often accompanied by isolation, boredom, and depression — behaviors that may encourage snacking, simplifying or skipping meals, and sedentary behavior.”</div>
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The rich-poor inequality, as the references show, in the area of food is stark.</div>
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<strong>A lot and a nothing</strong></div>
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The world system owns a lot for a few, and has nothing for many. An arrangement has thus been made. “Access to foods”, Darmon and Drewnowski said, “can also be a function of the physical environment. Whereas supermarkets and grocery stores may cluster in the more affluent neighborhoods, some lower-income neighborhoods have been characterized as ‘food deserts'.”</div>
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The areas the poor live bear signs of the poor and poverty. The researchers write: “Living in lower-income neighborhoods has been associated with lower consumption of fruit, vegetables, and fish. The quality of food choices was directly influenced by the ease of access to a supermarket as well as to the availability and variety of healthy foods in neighborhood stores. For example, foods recommended for the self management of diabetes are less likely to be stocked in East Harlem than on the Upper East Side .” It's not a New York-reality.</div>
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Dhaka is no exception: Jurain, Tallabag, Mugda, Basabo, Jatrabari, Madartek in the capital city are completely different from Gulshan and Baridhara in the same city. The shops with their appearance, the commodities sold in shops in the two groups of areas in the city, the names, type and quality of food the people purchase, and the cookies children in the two groups of areas in the city are happy with, the amount of money consumers spend in the shops, even the sound and noise, the smells and odors, are completely different: one, for the “unpolished” low-income persons, and the other, for the “sophisticated” well-off, and rich. Socioeconomic differences in dietary patterns are stark. In Luanda , Kolkata, Delhi , Mumbai and Manila , the same divide, the same line of demarcation dominate. It's, the line between the rich and the poor, difficult, but not impossible, to cross.</div>
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The poor can only afford low-cost foods that satisfy their hunger, and those “nice” foods are available in low-income areas. The rich don't even know names and tastes of those foods as foods of the poor are “nasty”. A slum dwelling woman in Dhaka , found a study, collects discarded rotten vegetables from a wholesale market. A portion of the collected rotten vegetables is consumed by the woman's family while the rest is sold to petty traders, and the traders sell those to the poor. (Farooque Chowdhury, “Urban poor: Neverending quest for energy”, <em>People's Report 2002-2003, Bangladesh Environment </em>) In areas in the city of Dhaka , lower part of chicken legs, chicken intestines and chicken skin are sold. These are purchased in 250-300 grams by the low-income families. Sometimes, these are sold in smaller “shares”, pieces kept together. Smaller meat pieces from cattle heads are cheaper. These are purchased by the low-income families. The fish sold at around 10:00-11:00 PM at Malibag crossing, near Shantinagar Bazaar, Nandipara in the capital city are cheaper. These are purchased by the poor. These, most of the time, reach to the state of rotting down. But, these, the near-rotten fish, the chicken skin, are the only opportunity to taste “a better food” for large section of the society living at the lower strata. Darmon and Drewnowski add: “[F]or low-SES groups, the ability to adopt a healthier diet may have less to do with motivation than with economic means.” (op. cit.)</div>
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<strong>Travel to health & kitchen</strong></div>
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None will question the connection between food, health and transportation. “Low-income families”, write Darmon and Drewnowski, “are less likely to own a car and may find it more difficult to reach out-of-town supermarkets, in urban as well as in rural areas. Deprived neighborhoods may limit not only food access but also opportunities for physical activity, because of the lack of facilities or because of security issues. Physical activity levels are lower among low-SES groups…” A visit to the Ramna Park in Dhaka in the morning will describe the same fact in a periphery-country. Sometimes, members of Dhaka-neo-elites drive to Mawa, kilometers away from the city, on the Padda, the lower part of the Ganga , to buy fresh Hilsha fish. The Dhaka-poor don't even have the time to dream it. The poor neither have the time and money required to travel there, nor the money to buy the fish while the rich have all.</div>
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Inequality is widespread. Darmon and Drewnowski write: “In very poor families, the lack of cooking equipment will in itself discourage cooking.” Kitchens, if those are considered kitchens, of the poor, of the low-income Dhaka families bear the same signs of inequality if compared with the kitchens the Dhaka rich use, the appliances they own.</div>
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It's not only lack of cooking equipment in advanced capitalist economy, but lack of kitchen in the periphery is also a problem the poor face in an unequal reality. In many Dhaka slums, one oven is shared by a number of slum-poor families. Even, many lower middle class families share a single oven. In many Dhaka slums, there are long single room with 5, 7, 10 ovens, each of which are used by a number of poor households. Sometimes, poor households rent in oven in a lower middle class household near to their place of residence. Doesn't the reality hurt food quality of the poor? It's an economy of the kitchen-poor, and an economy of inequality.</div>
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Economy determines access to food, nutrients, health. “A nutrient density standard for vegetables and fruits: nutrients per calorie and nutrients per unit cost” (Darmon N, Darmon M, Maillot M & Drewnowski A., <em>J Am Diet Asso </em>, 2005, 105) and “Nutrient-dense food groups have high energy costs: an econometric approach to nutrient profiling” (Maillot M, Darmon N, Darmon M, Lafay L, Drewnowski A, <em>J Nutr </em>, 2007, 137) discuss the issue. <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="start-of-comments"></a>“Diet quality is influenced by socioeconomic position and may well be limited by financial access to nutrient-dense foods.” (Adam Drewnowski & Nicole Darmon, “The economics of obesity: dietary energy density and energy cost”, <em>The Am J Cli Nutri </em>, vol. 82, no. 1, July 2005) They mention the broader problem of increasing disparities in incomes and wealth, declining real wage, etc. while discussing obesity and its links to the low-income persons.</div>
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Another study said: “[T]he low-income group derived fewer financial and nutritional benefits than the medium-income group from both price manipulations.” (Nicole Darmon, Anne Lacroix, Laurent Muller & Bernard Ruffieux, “Food price policies improve diet quality while increasing socioeconomic inequalities in nutrition”, <em>Int J Behavioral Nutri and Physi Activity </em>, 2014, 11:66, doi:10.1186/1479-5868-11-66)</div>
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Citing “Widening socioeconomic inequalities in mortality in six Western European countries” (Mackenbach JP, Bos V, Andersen O, Cardano M, Costa G, Harding S, Reid A, Hemström Ö, Valkonen T, Kunst AE, <em>Int J Epidemiol </em>2003, 32(5)) and “Socioeconomic inequalities in premature mortality in France: have they widened in recent decades?” (Leclerc A, Chastang J-F, Menvielle G, Luce D,<em>Soc Sci Med </em>, 2006, 62(8)) the researchers mentioned “the widening gap in socio-economic inequalities in health in Europe <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="d37515e3486"></a>, including in France <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="d37515e3490"></a>…” (op. cit.)</div>
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The link is being discussed for long although a group tries to deny the link. Nicole Darmon and Adam Drewnowski write: <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="aff-2"></a>“The links between food, diets, and incomes have indeed been remarked on by a diversity of authors, ranging from Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin in 1825 to John Boyd Orr in 1936.” (“Reply to RJ Karp”, <em>Am J Clin Nutr </em>, vol. 88, no. 4, October 2008)</div>
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They also cite Margaret Chan, the Director General of the WHO: “Food choices are highly sensitive to price. The first items to drop out of the diet are usually healthy foods — fruits, vegetables and high quality sources of protein….Nutrient-poor staples are often the cheapest way to fill hungry stomachs.” (WHO, Statement at the high-level Conference on World Food Security in Rome , June 3, 2008).</div>
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Referring to “Nutrient-dense food groups have high energy costs: an econometric approach to nutrient profiling” (op. cit.) they write in the “Reply to RJ Karp”: “Energy-dense foods that are nutrient-poor are the cheapest option for the low-income consumer.” Referring to “A cost constraint alone has adverse effects on food selection and nutrient density: an analysis of human diets by linear programming” (Darmon N, Ferguson EL, Briend A, <em>J Nutr </em>, 2002, 132) they write in the “Reply …” <em>: “ </em>Computer optimization programs, driven by cost constraints only, consistently create diets with compositions that resemble those that are consumed by disadvantaged groups. In contrast, higher-quality diets not only cost more but are more likely to be consumed by the more affluent.”</div>
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Referring to P Monsivais & A Drewnowski's “The rising cost of low-energy-density foods” ( <em>J Am Diet Assoc </em>, 2007, 107) Nicole Darmon, Adam Drewnowski write: “The recent rise in food prices that has begun to affect the middle class has helped put our earlier work in a new and much sharper perspective.” (“Reply to RJ Karp”, op. cit.)</div>
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The researchers add: “The dual burden of disease, undernutrition and overweight, now faced by developing nations is an economic issue that is directly linked to poverty and food costs. … The major policy and political challenge for global nutrition is to ensure a supply of affordable healthy foods to all.” (ibid. )</div>
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Existing glaring food inequalities, as evidenced above, raise a few “simple” questions: (1) Shall the world system eliminate the inequality? (2) Does the system posses the capacity? (3) Shall it feed all those failing to afford food? (4) What's the reason of the failure to arrange food, to get out of inequality? (5) Is there any reason/interest that stands as obstacle in formulating appropriate policies and effectively implementing those to ensure equality in accessing better food?</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2562186355143923770.post-75649729711418932162014-10-30T09:00:00.000+06:002015-01-02T22:14:20.511+06:00Inequality: A Void For Youth<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="style113" style="font-weight: bold;">I</span>nner-contradictions riddle capitalism. The system's hunger for profit prefers youth workforce as it tastes fine to swallow: young muscles, comparatively, bear more burdens, young brains easily adopt new technology, muscle and brain of the youth is lucrative for capital to exploit. But capital deprives the youth, pushes it out from job market.</div>
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“Over the four years since the onset of the crisis, young people (aged 18 to 25) suffered the most severe income losses … Across the OECD countries, average household disposable income fell in real terms by around 1% per year among youth ….” (OECD (2014), "<em>Income Inequality Update - June 2014 </em>”) In Greece , Iceland and Ireland , the youth found significant income losses. Spain , Estonia , Portugal , Hungary and the Netherlands also found large declines in the area. (ibid.)</div>
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On the other hand, the older group was relatively hit less hard. “These differential patterns of income growth are reflected in the evolution of the income-poverty risk, i.e. relative to the total population”. (Figure 1) (ibid.)</div>
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<strong>Figure 1: The risk of poverty has shifted from the elderly to the young</strong></div>
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<strong>Relative poverty rate of the entire population in each year = 100, mid-1980s to 2011, OECD average</strong></div>
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<img border="1" height="328" src="http://www.countercurrents.org/576x328xnewtemplate_clip_image002_0011.gif.pagespeed.ic.jxREGE-aGv.png" width="576" /></div>
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<strong>Source: </strong>OECD (2014), "Income Inequality Update - June 2014”. © OECD 2014</div>
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<strong>Note: </strong>OECD un-weighted average for 18 OECD countries for which data are available from the mid-1980s: Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Turkey, the UK, the US. 2011 data for the UK are provisional.</div>
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Earlier “OECD reports highlighted that over the past 25 years youth replaced the elderly as the group experiencing the greater risk of income poverty. The recent crisis has accentuated this trend. By 2011, people aged 66 to 75 faced a risk of poverty that was 25% lower than the population average, and which was … the lowest among all population groups. Prime-age adults show lower poverty rates than the entire population.” (ibid.)</div>
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The system thus excludes that part of labor, which is hard working, and which is trained with latest education/knowledge although the system requires hard working labor equipped with latest knowledge and modern training as it prefers a horse instead of a human if the horse works harder, if it's more educated, more knowledgeable and more efficient than a human, and if the cost for propagation of similar horses is less than that of a human. Capital's character is anti-human.</div>
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It appears capitalist crisis is “kind-hearted” to the older people. But actually, it's the system's inefficiency. It can't distribute properly; it can neither protect its productive force nor is it benevolent to any group. Otherwise, the older population would have experienced easy and dignified life in all capitalist lands.</div>
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<strong>Hostile market required intervention</strong></div>
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Markets that the world capitalist system has built up for the youth are harsh and hostile. The financial/banking/debt crisis made the market more hostile to the youth. Italy , Portugal , Spain and Greece experienced high youth unemployment. (Italian National Institute of Statistics, “Employment and unemployment: provisional estimates”, July 2013, & Eurostat, “Unemployment rate by age group”, 2013) “Although they were close to the EU average in 2006, both youth and adult unemployment rapidly increased during the Great Recession in Spain . Youths in particular were strongly affected by employment loss after the financial and debt crisis and the bust of the real estate bubble. As a result, unemployment rates of 15- to 24-Year-Olds soared from 18% in 2006 to 56% in 2013.” (Francesco Berlingieri, Prof. Dr. Holger Bonin & Dr. Maresa Sprietsma, <em>Youth Unemployment in Europe, Appraisal and Policy Options </em>, Robert Bosch Stiftung, Stuttgart, August 2014) In Portugal , the youth are “very vulnerable to job losses in case of a recession. Moreover, an average youth can expect to wait more than four years before finding a permanent job after leaving school which is the longest duration as compared to the other countries considered.” (ibid.)</div>
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Youth unemployment has a broader picture. The issue “is not a recent phenomenon that can be ascribed only to the Great Recession. Most European countries have faced difficulties in integrating youths in the labour market for many years, and youth unemployment rates are generally higher than adult unemployment rates.” (ibid.) “A particularly alarming feature of some youth labour markets [is] the high rates of young people that are disconnected, as they are neither in education, employment or training. In Italy , the proportion of such disconnected youths has ranged between 15 – 20% since 2000…” (ibid.) To many, these youths “are referred to as a ‘lost generation'” (Dr. Ingrid Hamm, “Foreword”, ibid.)</div>
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The precarious situation the youth faced during the recent crisis forced them to leave their countries. A reverse stream it was. <em>The Wall Street Journal </em>in a report headlined “Exodus of Workers From Continent Reverses Old Patterns” ( January 14, 2012 ) informed: “Economic distress is driving tens of thousands of skilled professionals from Europe , and many are being lured to thriving former European colonies in Latin America and Africa , reversing well-worn migration patterns. Asia and Australia , as well as the US and Canada , are absorbing others leaving the troubled euro zone. … The toll is mounting in Spain and Portugal , countries losing skilled workers to their former colonies. More people are emigrating from Spain , Portugal , Ireland , Slovenia and Cyprus than are moving to those countries, and in Greece officials worry that a similar trend is taking hold there. The European Union has no overall data on migration, but concern about the impact of severe budget cuts is growing in the U.K. , France , Germany and Italy , all grappling with losses of top research talent.”</div>
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Citing Spain 's National Statistics Institute the <em>WSJ </em>report said: in 2011 “ Spain became a net exporter of people for the first time since 1990”. Some 55,626 more people left the country in the first nine months of 2011 than arrived. “Spaniards are scattering to better-off European countries and beyond, particularly to Latin America . Of the estimated 37,000 Spanish citizens who left the country in 2010, nearly 60% emigrated to countries outside the European Union.” (ibid.)</div>
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Of Portugal , the <em>WSJ </em>report cited the government-backed Emigration Observatory in Lisbon : In 2011, at least 100,000 of the country's 11 million citizens left the country. Angola absorbed 70,000 Portuguese since 2003. In the 18 months through June 2011, the number of Portuguese in Brazil on work-related visas shot up by 52,000.</div>
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Citing Brazil 's Justice Ministry the report said: In the first six months of 2011 alone, the number of foreign residents in Brazil on temporary work and related visas rose by nearly half, to 1.46 million people, nearly 330,000 of them from Portugal and 60,000 from Spain .</div>
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Spain and Portugal encouraged job seekers to leave the countries. Portuguese prime minister urged teachers failing to find jobs in Portugal to move to one of its former colonies. Germany and Spain signed an agreement in 2011 under which German companies would offer jobs in Germany to out-of-work Spaniards, mainly in engineering, health care and tourism. Columnist Concha Caballero, writing in <em>El País </em>, called the emigrants “‘a new wave of exiles' whose departure bleeds the country of people who would otherwise create wealth, start companies and pay taxes.” The destinations of the new exiles are not only Brazil , Germany and Angola . China , Japan , Chile , Peru , the Netherlands and Belgium are also in the list. (ibid.)</div>
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About 18 months later, <em>BBC </em>in an article headlined “Jobs crisis: Europe 's great migration” said: “[T]ens of thousands of young Europeans are on the move in search of work. They are part of a great migration .… with unpredictable consequences for the countries they leave behind.” ( June 26, 2013 ) The article by Gavin Hewitt, <em>BBC </em>'s Europe editor, said: “The president of the European Investment Bank, Werner Hoyer, spoke of unemployment undermining the trust of a whole generation.”</div>
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“For many,” said the article, “ Germany is the land of opportunity and jobs. In 2012, 45,000 Italians moved to Germany . The Spanish were not far behind, with 37,000 heading in the same direction; 35,000 Greeks also left for Germany .” It cited a harsh fact: “It is … often the best and brightest who are emigrating. In the year up to April 2012, 87,000 people left Ireland . Many moved to Australia and New Zealand . Most of them had achieved high levels of education. … Tens of thousands of Portuguese are seeking work in places like Angola and Mozambique , countries which were former colonies. … [M]ore than 100,000 Spanish graduates have already left a country …”</div>
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Mighty market, the “panacea” prescribed by the status quo-economists, required intervention in the face of the situation it created with its bubble: Europe's leaders exercised with a billions-euro youth scheme and Germany invested 1bn euros ($1.3bn) in funding apprenticeships for young people in places like Spain and Portugal to help them find work in Germany. (ibid.) The billion-euro German apprenticeship, training, investment tells: capital needs trained humanpower to exploit, and labor will pay back with more than the invested money.</div>
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Thus, on the basis of the incidents not from the backward, under-developed economies, but from the advanced capitalist economies and once colonial powers, appears a system, which is old and matured enough to plunder lands, and is always looking for ways to maximize appropriation of labor but inefficient in using the younger and talented part of the productive force it controls. The system even can't use teachers. The economy, to say sarcastically, is ungrateful to its proponent-economists, who are always busy with hymns of “merciful” hands of market as the economy exposes the proponents' false theories by requiring intervention. The proponents, probably, are not owners of even shreds of shame as they courageously continue with marketing of their market-theory while market creates a void for the youth. The salesmen have sold out everything including their sense of shame in the market, their place of worship.</div>
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<strong>The old in the old economy</strong></div>
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The world system old, conservative and efficient in devouring other lands doesn't show consideration to the old citizens.</div>
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In terms of number, the old citizens are not insignificant. “The global population of people ages 60 and older is more than 500 million (close to 8 percent of the total).” (UNDP, <em>Human Development Report 2014 </em>, New York )</div>
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“Today”, ILO says, “the majority of the world's older persons live in developing countries, where retirement is a privilege of public and private sector workers who are fortunate to work in the formal economy. Globally, the broad majority of older persons do not benefit from publicly provided minimum income guarantees, have to work as long as they are physically able to for their survival, and have to rely on kinship and charity which are often insufficient to provide even basic income security. This situation stands in sharp contrast with the global social contract embodied in human rights instruments and international labour standards, under which everybody has a right to at least minimum income security in old age.” ( <em>World Social Protection Report 2014/15 </em>, Geneva ) “‘[R]etirement' from economic activity in old age … is rare in developing countries.” (Robert Holzmann, David A Robalino, Noriyuki Takayama, eds. <em>Closing the Coverage Gap, The Role of Social Pensions and Other Retirement Income Transfers </em>, World Bank, 2009) Capital doesn't allow commoners rest in their life! For most people, savings and assets “are usually not sufficient to guarantee an adequate level of income security until the end of their lives.” (ILO, op. cit.) Till death, insecurity doesn't depart from the lives of overwhelming majority of people.</div>
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The tough reality faced by the aged citizens is further narrated by UNDP: “Poverty and social exclusion are problems for those who are ageing, especially because roughly 80 percent of the world's older population does not have a pension and relies on labour and family for income.” (op. cit.) About four years ago, citing HelpAge the <em>World Social Security Report 2010/11 </em>[ <em>WSSR </em>] informed: “[T]wo-thirds of older people receive no regular income, while 100 million live on less than US$1 a day. Coverage by old-age pension schemes around the world, apart from in the developed countries, is concentrated on formal sector employees, mainly in the civil service and large enterprises.”</div>
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The overview provided above is enough to assume the condition of the old in the old economy: (1) Retirement is available in the so-called formal economy, and the size of the formal economy in the so-called developing world exposes the “privilege” of “retirement” the old citizens can avail; and (2) the “broad majority of the older persons” have to dependent on charity and kinship, or they have to rely on labor, sell self to capital. A cruel reality emerges: Sell labor as long as you can, it doesn't matter how old you are, or, in other words, labor is squeezed out by capital as long as there it is.</div>
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Condition in old age is not free from poverty. “Poverty in old age is more often chronic, since the lack of economic opportunities and security during earlier life accumulates into vulnerability in old age.” (UNDP, op. cit.) The <em>WSSR </em>also said: “The main risk when one reaches old age is poverty or income insecurity …” The world system fails to give income security to the old, who produced wealth for the system.</div>
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In OECD-countries, UNDP informs, “the old-age poverty rate is higher than the average for the whole population (13.5 percent versus 10.6 percent), and older women are more likely than older men to be poor. The situation is similar in many developing countries.” (op. cit.) The system is “efficient” enough: no discrimination between the OECD- and many developing-countries.</div>
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In this world system, poverty of the old is “blessed” with disability and abuse, violence and mistreatment. “With ageing comes a higher probability of living with a disability. Worldwide, more than 46 percent of people ages 60 and older live with a disability, and whether living with a disability or not, 15 – 30 percent of older people live alone or with no adult of working age.” (ibid.) Abuse faced by the older citizens is quite extensive. Forty-three percent of them fear, a 2011–2012 survey of 36 countries found, violence and mistreatment. (ibid.) At the same time, while “new, modern technologies and new goods and services changing the lives of more affluent groups in society” older persons with pensions not fully adjusted to inflation find their “absolute purchasing power … deteriorates and they are pushed into poverty.” (ILO, op. cit.) And, “[a]ccess to income security in old age is closely associated with existing inequalities in the labour market and in employment.” (ibid.) The powerful inequality doesn't allow the old to have a life free from inequality.</div>
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In the face of physical- and poverty-violence, what income security coverage do the old have in this system? Answer to the question is in the following paragraph:</div>
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“Nearly half (48 per cent) of all people over pensionable age”, ILO found, “do not receive a pension. For many of those who do receive a pension, pension levels are not adequate. As a result, the majority of the world's older women and men have no income security, have no right to retire and have to continue working as long as they can – often badly paid and in precarious conditions.” (op. cit.) “In low- and middle-income countries, only one in four people over 65 receive a pension.” (HelpAge <em>International, Global AgeWatch Index 2014 </em>, London ) And, “[d]espite an impressive extension of pension coverage in many countries, significant inequalities persist.” (ILO, op. cit.) Persistence of significant inequalities despite impressive extension tells the situation: Worse than now, before the “impressive” extension.</div>
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In low- and middle-income countries, contributory pension “schemes are not meeting the needs of a large proportion of their citizens” as “most people work in the informal sector where jobs are precarious and they do not have access to formal pension schemes. Incomes are often too low to save for old age. For the growing ‘fragile middle' of people who have escaped extreme poverty, few are likely to be able to save for a pension.” (HelpAge, op. cit.) WSSR found: “Incomplete coverage is a widespread phenomenon; it is seen not only in developing countries but in industrialized countries too.” It also found “a significant gender gap … everywhere: in nearly all countries …”</div>
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Helplessness of the aged citizens is part of the reality in which markets limit government's sovereign power. “Pressures of tax competition and global financial markets limit governments' ostensibly sovereign power to introduce increases in social security contributions and taxes where necessary to prevent benefit cuts.” (ILO, op. cit.)</div>
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As usual pattern in the world system, private capital extends its powerful hands. “Lobbying by the international financial services sector was successful in pushing for large-scale privatizations of social security pensions …” (ibid.) What not is handed over to private capital? Even pensions for the old are not spared. Private capital, thus, profits from even the old.</div>
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The system, thus, creates a void for the youth, fails to engage part of productive force and neglects the aged citizens. In a system based on wealth, the reality creates inequality.</div>
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<em>It's part III of an essay on inequality.</em></div>
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<strong><em>Errata </em></strong><em>: The source in the paragraph just above Figure 1 in part I ( </em>Countercurrents.org <em>, October 19, 2014), is “ </em>OECD (2014), “Income Inequality Update - June 2014” <em>” instead of “ibid.”; the last sentence in paragraph 4 in part II ( </em>Coutercurrents.org <em>, October 23, 2014), will be “ </em>Unpaid work, whether it's in home or in agriculture field, goes to the account of surplus value produced in an entire society, and capital appropriates it. <em>” instead of “ </em>Unpaid work, whether it's in home or in agriculture field, goes to the account of surplus value an entire society produces and capital appropriates. <em>”, and in the last sentence in paragraph 2 in the same part, the “ </em>is <em>” preceding “ </em>can <em>” will get omitted.</em></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2562186355143923770.post-76853275459624488282014-10-23T08:00:00.000+06:002015-01-02T22:17:58.110+06:00Inequality: The Unaccounted Surplus Value Women Produce<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="style113" style="font-weight: bold;">M</span>ore burdens are put on women than men as exploiting women has been made easier in the present world system. The tricky arrangement, a make-belief “universal” fact, is part of status quo. Advanced capitalist economies fail to discard the arrangement as the surplus value women produce is a lot, at times and in lands it's trillions of dollars.</div>
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This leads one to the finding: Even, advanced capitalist economies, many of those are matured bourgeois democracies also, deprive women. This old fact has been confirmed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and others from mainstream. “[O]n average, in OECD countries, women earn 16% less than men, and female top-earners are paid 21% less than their male counterparts.” (OECD, <em>Gender Equality in Education, Employment and Entrepreneurship: Final Report to the MCM</em>(Meeting of the OECD Council at Ministerial Level) <em>2012 </em>, May 2012) In Australia , women were among the worst affected as recent reports on poverty in the country found. In that continent-country, women were more likely to experience poverty than men – 14.7 percent compared to 13 percent in 2011-12. ( <em>Poverty in Australia 2014 </em>, Australian Council of Social Service) In backward countries, in societies without accountability and transparency, condition of women is can easily be assumed if women in the OECD-countries experience the deprivation.</div>
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However, deprivation of women doesn't deprive capital from getting service from women. “Companies”, the OECD found, “with a higher proportion of women in top management do better than others.” The fact stands as: You're paid less as you serve me better. It's the logic of capitalism!</div>
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The OECD report said: “[W]omen are doing more unpaid work than men, regardless of whether they have full-time jobs or not. Among couples where both partners work, women spend more than two hours per day extra in unpaid work, and even among female-earner couples men only do as much housework as women. The types of housework also differ: men tend to garden or engage in house maintenance, while women are more likely to cook and clean.” Unpaid work, whether it's in home or in agriculture field, goes to the account of surplus value an entire society produces and capital appropriates.</div>
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It thus stands: capital profits at the cost of women, and capital exploits not only in manufacturing plants, but in homes also. In Australia , women's higher possibility of experiencing poverty than men “is due to the fact that women tend to have lower employment outcomes and wages, and are more likely to be in unpaid caring roles, and have lower investment incomes in retirement”. ( <em>Poverty in Australia 2014 </em>) The report cited <em>She works hard for the money: Australian women and the gender divide </em>by Rebecca Cassells, Riyana Miranti, Binod Nepal and Robert Tanton. (National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling, Canberra , 2009) What the women in the Third and Fourth Worlds (TFW) countries experience in terms of wage, etc.? Imperialism has made the TFW a sanctuary for its capital with the regimes it has installed and with the retrogressive economic forces it has befriended in these two worlds. These “contribute” to generating surplus value in immense amount.</div>
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Women earning less are equal to higher exploitation of women, and that means the more vulnerable the more exploited. Even, at the top level, women face the inequality. At the lower level, in factories and farms, at construction sites and the so-called informal sector, in the TFW-countries, the inequality is harsher. It appears a beast. The reality exposes capitalism's anti-women character.</div>
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Crisis in the world system aggravated the situation related to women. In the context of the recent financial and economic crisis, ILO found, “29 million net jobs lost during the global economic crisis have not been recovered.” ( <em>Global Employment Trends for Women 2012 </em>, ILO, Geneva , December 2012) The crisis was boosted by the Eurozone crisis and the “fiscal cliff” threat in the US . These were followed by austerity measures – the mechanism to put the burden of crisis on people, and to reap profit from the crisis – in 2011-12. The impact hit women hard.</div>
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“From 2002 to 2007, the gender gap in unemployment was constant at around 0.5 percentage points, with the female unemployment rate higher at 5.8 per cent, compared to male unemployment at 5.3 per cent (with 72 million women unemployed compared to their global employment of 1.2 billion in 2007 and 98 million men unemployed compared to their global employment of 1.8 billion). The crisis raised this gender gap to 0.7 percentage points for 2012 …” (ibid.) The crisis, the ILO found, eliminated 13 million jobs for women. Women were thus forced to join the reserve army of labor that capital uses to boost its profit and power. Joining the reserve army of labor weakens labor's bargaining power. Capital thus weakened women.</div>
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Moreover, the ILO report said “the crisis saw a reversal in the historically higher employment growth rates for women, lowering them below those for men by 0.1 percentage points …” (ibid.) Capitalist crisis increases inequality. There is nothing to get astonished as the system is really a bonafide exploiter from head to toe.</div>
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The entire system, not only the system's crisis, doesn't give up women from exploitation. It not only turns women into commodity, it pays women less also. The fact exposes capital's brute face as paying women less than men means paying women less for necessary labor, which means either considering women lesser than average human being or putting extra burden on women for sustaining her body and soul, which capital needs for its regeneration.</div>
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A broader “picture” makes the system's face more brute. All over the world, women's labor is underpaid and unpaid. Women's work at home is unpaid. For sustaining labor, an essential for capital, work at home – food preparation, rearing up children, etc. – is required, and that goes unpaid. So, the fact comes out as capital extracts from women at home.</div>
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“Women contribute substantially to economic welfare through large amounts of unpaid work, such as child-rearing and household tasks, which often remains unseen and unaccounted for in GDP.” (Katrin Elborgh-Woytek, Monique Newiak, Kalpana Kochhar, Stefania Fabrizio, Kangni Kpodar, Philippe Wingender, Benedict Clements & Gerd Schwartz, <em>Women, Work, and the Economy: Macroeconomic Gains From Gender Equity </em>, IMF staff discussion note, September 2013) It's actually theft as labor is used but unpaid.</div>
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Inequality women face turns stark if women's unwaged/under-waged work is considered. Citing the ILO Lena Graber and John Miller write: In 1990, women carried out two-thirds of the world's work for 5% of the income. (“Wages for housework: the movement & the numbers” in Amy Gluckman, John Miller, Bryan Snyder, and Chris Sturr (ed.), <em>Readings in Macroeconomics </em>, 28 th edition) In 1995, the UNDP's Human Development Report estimated that women's unpaid and underpaid labor was worth $11 trillion worldwide, and $1.4 trillion in the US . The share of the advanced economy is more than one-tenth. The amount tells capital's gains from women. Capital knows the secret: Wealth is in the hands of a goddess named Laxmi.</div>
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As example of hours spent by women in household work Lena and John refer to a set of data related to the issue: In Australia , 2 hours and 27 minutes were spent for child care per day in a household by a woman in 1997. In the UK in 2000, it was one hr. and 26 min. while in Nepal , in 1996, it was two minutes more than that of the UK . In Norway , it was 42 min. in 2000 while in Japan it was 24 min. in 1999. Time spent for food preparation was: Australia – 1 hr 29 min., Norway – 49 min., the UK – 1 hr. 8 min., Nepal – 5 hr. 30 min. Time spent for water and fuel collection in Nepal was 1 hr 10 min while in Norway it was 1 min. Time was also spent for cleaning and shopping. The total time spent was: Australia – 3 hr. 39 min., Japan – 3 hr. 34 min., Norway – 3 hr. 56 min., the UK – 4 hr. 55 min. (op. cit.)</div>
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What do these hours and minutes mean? Citing Rosemarie Tong's <em>Feminist Thought: A More Comprehensive Introduction </em>, (1989, Westview Press) Lisa Healy writes: “In essence, women's domestic labour is a vital contribution to the production of marketplace commodities, as it permits the capitalist to extract surplus value in the marketplace and can hence, be construed as unpaid labour ‘performed for the capitalist'.” (“Capitalism and the Transforming Family Unit: A Marxist Analysis”, <em>Socheolas: Limerick Student Journal of Sociology </em>, vol. 2(1), November 2009, University of Limerick ) Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Selma James claimed that women's work inside the home generates surplus value. (cited in Rosemarie)</div>
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Further facts render more startling picture: “Canadian women performed 65% of all unpaid work, shouldering an especially large share of household labor [….] In Great Britain […] unpaid labor hours are high for an industrialized country [
], far greater relative to GDP. […W]hen valued using the opportunity cost method, unpaid work was 112% of Britain 's GDP in 1995! With the specialist-replacement method, British unpaid labor was still 56% of GDP — greater than the output of the United Kingdom 's entire manufacturing sector for the year. In Japan […] women perform over 80% of unpaid work […] The Japanese Economic Planning Agency calculated that counting unpaid work in 1996 would add between 15.2% (generalist-replacement method) and 23% (opportunity-cost method) to GDP. Even at those levels, the value of unpaid labor still equaled at least half of Japanese women's market wages.” (Lena & John, op. cit.)</div>
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With increased crisis, financial or ecological, the workload on women increases. In areas in Bangladesh , rural women's time spent for collecting fuel and firewood increased many fold due to degradation of their immediate ecology. (Farooque Chowdhury, “Scarce fuel: Growing scarcer” and “Notes from the field”, <em>People's Report 2002-2003, Bangladesh Environment </em>, vol. I, UNDP sponsored) Micro credit targeted at women at household level increases debtor women's workload and working hour/day to the level of inhuman cruelty. (Farooque Chowdhury, “Metamorphosis of the micro credit debtor”, <em>Micro Credit: Myth Manufactured </em>, 2007) It's almost impossible to find mainstream's study on the working hour of women debtors of micro credit, and a comparison between incomes by micro credit “enterprise” and other economic work. One has to depend on inquiry at personal level to get the answer regarding micro credit debtors. These, data and information provided by Lena and John, and the People's Report, and the argument related to women-debtors of micro credit, are a part of a picture that help comprehend the labor women are compelled to spend in the service of capital.</div>
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The data and argument above tell the huge amount of wealth women produce and the extent of deprivation they “earn”. What's the total work day women spent all over the world for years and for generations, and what's the total amount of wealth they produce? It's unimaginable. Is it less than the labor required for building the Taj Mahal or the pyramids? Nazrul Islam, the Rebel Poet of Bengal, said: Half of the world's great creations are made by women, men's contribution was not the whole. The world system appears illogical if one compares the amount of money the system wastes by manufacturing arms, waging wars and invasions, organizing assassinations and hatching conspiracies while it doesn't pay women's so much labor.</div>
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But, “[t]here is ample evidence that when women are able to develop their full labor market potential, there can be significant macroeconomic gains. … [R]aising the female labor force participation rate (FLFPR) to country-specific male levels would, for instance, raise GDP in the United States by 5 percent, in Japan by 9 percent, in the United Arab Emirates by 12 percent, and in Egypt by 34 percent. …In rapidly aging economies, higher FLFP can boost growth by mitigating the impact of a shrinking workforce. … Better opportunities for women to earn and control income could contribute to broader economic development in developing economies …. Equal access to inputs would raise the productivity of female-owned companies. … The employment of women on an equal basis would allow companies to make better use of the available talent pool, with potential growth implications. (Katrin Elborgh-Woytek, et al, op. cit.)</div>
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Questions obviously will follow the facts cited above: Why (1) women are not allowed to develop their full labor market potential? (2) FLFPR is not allowed to increase? (3) better opportunities for women to earn and control income are not allowed? (4) women are not allowed to have equal access to inputs? (5) employment of women on an equal basis is not allowed? And, what are the obstacles or the interests that create the obstacles?</div>
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The last question virtually questions, and exposes the status quo. The obstacles are in the interests that dominate entire societies, not only women. Other questions simultaneously expose the dominating system's tact and incapacity.</div>
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The status quo is incapable of developing full potential of all the productive forces in society. The crude act of the system that gets exposed is: the system tries to increase reserve army of labor by keeping women in a corner, by making them appear useless. Increasing reserve army of labor benefits capital.</div>
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Gender wage gap increases capital's power for bargaining with labor. The gap in the same occupation makes capital's power crudely exposed. The IMF staff discussion note finds “there is a significant wage gap associated with gender, even for the same occupations.” (op. cit.)</div>
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Self-employment, so-called informal sector, is the evidence of a system's incapacity to provide employment, discarding of responsibility regarding employment. It's a failure of the system. The system fails to use all its productive forces. At the same time, with this sector, the system increases the size of reserve army of labor. The gender gap doesn't leave even the sector. “The gender gap in earnings”, the IMF staff discussion note says, “is even higher in self-employment than in wage employment.” (op. cit.) Despite losses the system sustains gender gap in the labor market. GDP per capita losses attributable to gender gaps in the labor market have been estimated at up to 27 percent in regions. In regions it varied: 15 and 23 percent. (Cuberes, D & M Teignier, “Gender Gaps in the Labor Market and Aggregate Productivity,” Sheffield Economic Research Paper 2012017, June 14, 2012 version) The cruelty of the system – weaken labor to increase profit – thus gets exposed.</div>
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Despite potential with female labor force participation, the IMF staff discussion note finds: “Average FLFP remains low at around 50 percent, with levels and trends varying across regions. … Variations in the gender gap are significant even among OECD countries.” (op. cit.) Doesn't the system require a better FLFP? Is it the incapacity of even the OECD countries? The system reveals its anti-women position with its incapacity.</div>
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State is a machine in the system. States in the global system propagate their responsibility to ensure basic necessities and rights. But, the IMF staff discussion note says: “In many countries, the lack of basic necessities and rights inhibits women's potential to join the formal labor market or become entrepreneurs.” (op. cit.) How can one reject findings mentioned in an IMF staff discussion note? Doesn't the finding say: states don't care about women?</div>
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States' anti-women position is further exposed as the IMF staff discussion note says: “In many advanced economies, tax systems impose strong disincentives for FLFP through high tax wedges on secondary earners.” (op. cit.) And, tax system in any system serves dominating interests/elites.</div>
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Thus, the inequality that women face shows the world capitalist system's incapacity, crude trick to exploit women, and an “output” of the system's acts to increase the size of the reserve army of labor. The system hinders potential while tries to gain more strength to bargain with labor.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2562186355143923770.post-31835654280964509342014-10-19T22:30:00.000+06:002015-01-02T22:12:58.293+06:00Inequality And Imperialism<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="style113" style="font-weight: bold;">C</span>apitalism can't surmount inequality as the system itself creates the curse that humanity struggles to defeat. And, inequality, with imperial power and incapacities, affects societies in far flung areas distorting their economic-social-cultural-political development. Moreover, inequality with its political manifestations and ramifications threaten the system. But the system nourishes inequality. A seemingly strange, but inherent contradiction within the system!</div>
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Advanced capitalist economies, the economies that have fattened themselves by bleeding the poor in every corner of the planet, are bearing inequality in spheres of income, well-being, health care and education. It's not possible for the system to break down barriers to equality, the dream humanity nourishes in its heart. This takes away all logic for the existence of capitalism while connections of capitalist crisis are exposed.</div>
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<strong>200 years</strong></div>
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The sharp rise in income inequality across the world is one of the most worrying developments of the past 200 years, said the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in a recent report. “It is hard not to notice the sharp increase in income inequality experienced by the vast majority of countries from the 1980s. There are very few exceptions to this”, said the report <em>How Was Life? Global well-being since 1820 </em>(van Zanden, J. L., et al. (eds.) (2014) OECD Publishing, doi: 10.1787/9789264214262-en)</div>
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“The enormous increase of income inequality”, the report said, “on a global scale is one of the most significant – and worrying – features of the development of the world economy in the past 200 years.” The report tracked wellbeing in eight world regions over two centuries.</div>
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About three years ago OECD Secretary-General informed: “Income inequality in OECD countries is at its highest level for the past half century. The average income of the richest 10% of the population is about nine times that of the poorest 10% across the OECD, up from seven times 25 years ago.” He was presenting <em>Divided We Stand: Why Inequality Keeps Rising </em>, an OECD study report, in December 2011. The Secretary-General said: Inequality increased further in the US , Germany , Denmark , Sweden , Israel . It has “fallen in Chile and Mexico , but in these two countries the incomes of the richest are still more than 25 times those of the poorest.”</div>
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The world capital blesses the rich: from seven times to nine times within 25 years, and more than 25 times of the poor!</div>
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Despite many countries' recovery from the Global Economic Crisis, the OECD finds, “the distribution of “market income” (gross earnings and capital income) kept widening … Measured by the Gini coefficient (which is 0 when everybody has the same income and 1 when one person has all the income), market income inequality rose by 1 percentage point or more in 20 OECD countries between 2007 and 2011/12.” (OECD (2014), " <em>Income Inequality Update - June 2014 </em>”)</div>
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Inequality is behaving in an “amazing” way: Hardest the hit largest the increase. “The largest increases”, according to the OECD, “occurred in those countries hit hardest by the crisis: Spain , Ireland , Greece , Estonia and Iceland ”. France and Slovenia have the same experience. “In Spain and Greece , inequality of market income widened considerably in the aftermath of the crisis, and kept increasing more recently as the crisis persisted: compared to 2010, it increased by another 1.5 and 3 percentage points, respectively, in 2011. Market income inequality also increased by more than 1 percentage point in 2011 in Germany , Luxembourg and Portugal , compared to 2010.” (ibid.)</div>
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In Australia , poverty is on the rise. More than one million Australians are in severe poverty, with access to less than 30 percent of national median income. More than 2.5 million people, and one in six children, are struggling to fulfill their daily basic needs. More than 600,000 children, and one-third of children in single parent families, lived below the poverty line. A significant number of Australians remained in “deep and persistent” poverty for extended periods, often for more than five years. More than 40 percent of all people on social security benefits fell below the poverty line. More than 100,000 persons are homeless. Adult working-age Australians are more likely to be homeless than any other age group, constituting 44% of all homeless persons nationally. Children have the second largest representation among those classified as homeless, with more than 1 in 4 homeless, children. (Cassells, R., Dockery, M., and Duncan , A (2014), <em>Falling through the cracks: Poverty and Disadvantage in Australia </em>, Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre and <em>Poverty in Australia 2014 </em>, the Australian Council of Social Services)</div>
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The ACSS report cited the Australian Bureau of Statistics <em>Household Income and Expenditure Survey </em>that asked people about their actions because of a shortage of money. Actions taken by the respondents over the last year due to a shortage of money included “Pawned or sold something”, “Sought financial help from friends/family”, “Unable to heat home”, “Went without meals”, “Could not pay gas/electricity/telephone bill on time”. Do these sound “actions” by the poor in Third and Fourth Worlds (TFW)?</div>
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Australia , it was claimed during the Great Financial Crisis (GFC), was not facing the crisis. The economy was happily cashing on coal export. But the coal power, along with casino and prostitution, has powered poverty also.</div>
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Crisis not only generates inequality and poverty in capitalism. Crisis also aggravates inequality-situation although the system fattens with profit.</div>
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During the last 200 years, as the OECD compares, the world found capitalism gaining strength to strength, conquering heights after heights, plundering land after land, waging wars for loot, abusing science and technology for maximizing profit. Over the last 200 years capitalism has gradually and forcefully entrenched its world system. Two world wars ravaged the world during the last 200 years. The last World War and its aftermath put extra wealth and power in pocket of capitalism. The Korea and Vietnam Wars brought more money to capitalism. Multinational corporations made huge investments and made huge profit during the period. Capitalism's “golden age” was during the last 200 years.</div>
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Capitalism has ensured its control not only with its economic dictatorship, but has also imposed its political, information, cultural and ideological order, dictatorship, over the entire planet. It's imperialism. Post-revolutionary societies' efforts to reduce inequality set a few examples as the societies tried to break the chain of the imperialist world order. But those efforts faced disasters. A number of new examples are now emerging in a part of the planet. But still capitalism, the system owning enormous wealth, is the order of the day, and inequality dominates the capitalist system. Condition of the poor around the world is the evidence.</div>
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<strong>Poor: lost more gained less</strong></div>
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Gains the poor made in the capitalist world disclose capitalism's capacity and incapacity, capacity to deprive many and benefit a few, and incapacity to initiate a fair distribution among many. “Lower income households”, the OECD finds, “either lost more during the crisis or benefited less from the recovery. Across the OECD countries, real household disposable income stagnated, and the income of the bottom 10% of the population declined from 2007 to 2011 by 1.6% per year (Figure 1). Focusing on the top and bottom 10% of the population in 2007 and in the latest year available shows that, on average across the OECD, the drop in income was twice as large for the bottom 10% compared with the top 10%. Out of the 33 countries where data are available, the top 10% has done better than the poorest 10% in 19 countries.” (ibid.)</div>
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<strong>Figure 1: Poorer households tended to lose more or gain less Annual percentage changes<br />in household disposable incomebetween 2007 and 2011, by income group</strong></div>
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<img height="272" src="http://www.countercurrents.org/newtemplate_clip_image002_0010.gif" width="575" /></div>
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<strong>Source: </strong>OECD (2014), "Income Inequality Update - June 2014”. © OECD 2014</div>
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<strong>Note:</strong></div>
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<strong>1. </strong>Data for 2007 refer to 2006 for Chile and Japan ; and 2008 for Australia , France , Germany , Israel , Mexico , Norway , New Zealand , Sweden , and the US . Data for 2011 refer to 2009 for Japan ; 2010 for Austria and Belgium ; and 2012 for Australia , Finland , Hungary , Korea , Mexico , the Netherlands and the US . For Hungary , Mexico and Turkey data on market income inequality are not available. There is a break in the series in 2011 for the UK , and results are not strictly comparable. 2011 data for Ireland and the UK are provisional.</div>
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<strong>2. </strong>The statistical data for Israel are supplied by and under the responsibility of the relevant Israeli authorities. The use of such data by the OECD is without prejudice to the status of the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem and Israeli settlements in the West Bank under the terms of international law.</div>
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<strong>3. </strong>( ? ) in the legend relates to the variable for which countries are ranked from left to right in increasing order.</div>
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Disposable income also experienced inequality. Spain , France , Hungary , Slovak Republic had larger increases in disposable income inequality. Following a few years of stable inequality in disposable income Germany and the US , the two significant economies in the world capitalist system, found a significant increase in 2011 and 2012. In Finland , Korea , the Netherlands , Poland and Portugal , the slight decrease in disposable income inequality continued in 2011. (ibid.)</div>
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Most of the OECD-countries (Oc) are in the First and Second Worlds. What happens to the poor in non-OECD-countries, most of which are in the poor TFW? In most of the Oc, transparency and accountability in the ruling mechanism is better than the countries in the TFW. What the poor in the TFW face everyday in the present world order if the poor in the Oc benefited less and lost more?</div>
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The TFW-countries are not only home to backward economies; these countries are also (1) victims of the world capitalism that mercilessly exploits all the resources of these countries; (2) home to crude ruling elites that openly plunder the people and the nature in respective countries, ruthlessly dominate entire societies, and lumpenize political process; and (3) victims of imperialist intervention, which is carried out not only with armed forces, but also with other forces that include aid, finance, science and technology, and diplomacy and politics. This reality of invasion increases inequality in the TFW-countries.</div>
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Lumpenizing political process is a single example of many acts and processes that increase inequality. Functions lumpenized political process carries out include snatching away minimum rights based on which people can get mobilized, voice issues related to inequalities, infrastructure and essential services, demand wage rise, protest wage cut and destruction of nature, environment and ecology.</div>
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“With the tightening of class lines and the increasing severity of social conflict”, Sweezy writes, “parliament becomes more and more a battle ground for contending parties representing divergent class and group interests. … [P]arliament's capacity for positive action declines…” ( <em>The Theory of Capitalist Development </em>, MR Press, 1964) Sweezy's observation was on parliaments in capitalist economies.</div>
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In the periphery, the parliament-reality is different from those in the center. Moreover, the reality in the periphery is not only related to parliament. Its distortion/perversion is wider. “In the periphery … efforts to copy the bourgeois institutions of the center … either produced empty façades or were discarded by dominant classes … who saw in any concessions to the underlying population a dangerous threat to their continued rule.” ( <em>Four Lectures on Marxism </em>, MR Press, 1981) This reality of empty façade hurts people's efforts and struggles against inequality.</div>
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Now, it's an accepted fact that destruction of nature, environment and ecology hurts people, and the poor is hurt most. The world capitalism makes money by demolishing nature, environment and ecology while people get hurt – deprived – because of the demolition. And, today, imperialism is the army of the world capitalism that makes the onslaught on environment, etc.</div>
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Today's Iraq , Afghanistan , Libya , Syria are burning examples of increased inequality due to imperialist intervention. People in countries that turn into victim of imperialist intervention not only stand helpless in front of destruction and disruption of all arrangements and services essential for their survival; they also find institutions critical for survival either vanished or vacant or pseudo. In lands invaded by imperialists, mere daily survival with barest provisions turns out the only fact of life as the first and only concern of the peoples there in those lands is insecurity/security of life. Uncertainty compounds insecurity in the life of the people. All essential and basic provisions for sustaining life are hoarded in an imperial depot named dearth. Organizations required for voicing needs and waging struggle to attain essential provisions and services turn dysfunctional during and after invasion. The atmosphere that overwhelms an invaded land is hostile to people's organizations capable of organizing people's democratic struggle as only “good wishes” of victor, represented by an administrator or a commander or an ambassador, prevails there. The entire situation increases inequality.</div>
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Imposition of neo-liberal measures in countries is an example of imperialist intervention in the form of economy. The countries intervened are now not only the TFC, but countries in the Second World also. The regime change episode in Greece and Italy are examples.</div>
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The neo-liberal measures – selling out of public properties, utility services and infrastructure are only a few of those measures – increase inequality. Neo-liberal measures are imposed by imperialism. Its power and organizations impose it.</div>
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The recent bombardment with austerity measures in Greece and other countries is another example of imperialist intervention. These countries are examples of rising inequality that the measures generated.</div>
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Imperialism, thus, emerges as one of the main actors behind inequality and its rise. Mainstream's discussions on inequality don't take into account the issues of imperialism and the world order that the imperialist powers run. It's mainstream's <em>altum silentium </em>, profound silence.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2562186355143923770.post-16428435396360991072014-08-01T22:19:00.000+06:002015-01-02T22:20:45.537+06:00Bangladesh Labor: Seized Machine, Hungry Garments And Bloodied Strawberry<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="style59" style="font-weight: bold;">H</span>unger strike and seizure of machines by garments workers in and near Dhaka, the Bangladesh capital, during the last part of July 2014 were part of Bangladesh labor action that is moving unabated through experiences of gains and failures. In distant Greece, labor from Bangladesh witnessed a court verdict that further bloodied already bloody strawberries. The incidents once again confirmed the dominating reality: dominance of capital. The incidents, on the opposite, also showed an emerging reality: labor’s increasing action.</div>
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<strong>Of seized machine</strong></div>
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Eid, Moslems’ holy festival after a month of fasting and practicing restrains on aspects of life, was approaching. That was July. All salaried employees and wage laborers usually get festival bonus. It’s the rule, practice and tradition. The bonus provides a small opportunity to mend torn down life of the hard-pressed labor and low-salaried employees.</div>
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But alas! Workers in a garments factory were not going to have it. Their salaries for the months of June were not paid. Uncertain was the festival bonus. The aggrieved workers had to resort to action: demonstration. And, then, they had to resort to strike. The owner and his management cadres fled away. A few accounts officials were gheraoed, kept seized, for five days that led to a “resolution”: payment of all unpaid salaries and festival bonus by July 21, 2014. It was a written commitment from the factory management. The seizure was withdrawn.</div>
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The owner-committed time limit for payment of salary and bonus passed. Eid approached nearer. Darkness of uncertainty was coming closer to the workers. They frantically tried to contact the owner. But, to no avail! He was beyond reach.</div>
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The desperate situation and violation of commitment led workers to seize a part of machineries of the factory. They successfully found a buyer also. The machines were sold away. A sum of money came in. It was more than Taka, the Bangladesh currency, 1.7 million. [$1=Tk. more than 78] The sale proceed was distributed among the workers by the workers. The money distributed was treated as salary for the month of June. A police official confirmed the sale of machineries by the workers. [bdnews24.com (Baanglaa version), July 27, 2014, “Workers sale factory machinery to realize unpaid salaries”; name of the factory: Trade Mark Fashion Limited; place of occurrence: Gazipur, a few kilometers from Dhaka; period of occurrence: Last week of July] It was a labor action without adventurism that gave no scope for highhanded interference. And, it was an exposure, and a lesson, and an experience.</div>
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<strong>Of hungry garments</strong></div>
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About 1,500 workers of five garments factories in Dhaka resorted to protests and about three hundred of them went on a hunger strike to realize their unpaid salaries for the months of May and June and festival bonus. The hunger strike continued for days, and it was during the Eid festival while millions of citizens were celebrating the festival and the entire country was in a festive mood. Scores of the workers were sent to hospital as they collapsed from hunger strike. The workers returned to the factory, place of the hunger strike, and joined their striking colleagues after recovering from hospital. Progressive Doctors’ Forum, an association of physicians connected to the Communist Party of Bangladesh, extended medical care to the striking workers.</div>
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Commitments for the payment of salaries and bonus were made thrice on behalf of the owners. But all the commitments remained unfulfilled. As the festival neared the workers began protest that later led them to resort to hunger strike. Initially, there was none to unknot the problem of non-payment. Later, the garments manufacturers’ association sought another week for a partial payment.</div>
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It was reported that the factories, owned by Tuba Group, produced garments amounting to Tk. 260 million during the recently concluded World Cup Football.</div>
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It should be mentioned that in 2012, Tazreen Fashions, a factory owned by the same company, burned down that killed hundreds of workers. The owner, Delwar Hossain, is now in jail for negligence causing deaths.</div>
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The workers’ series of protests for non-payment of salaries was going on for a long time. One leader of the garments manufacturers said: “We’re really sorry. They could not celebrate Eid and they’re on a hunger strike.” One of the garments manufacturers “urged the government to take charge of paying [the workers’] salaries at any cost.” One of the striking workers asked: We are fined for delay in work. But, who shall be fined now for delay in payment of salaries? [bdnews24.com, July 29, 30 and 31, 2014]</div>
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Thus it appears: The manufacturers are “sympathetic” to the workers as the workers had no Eid celebration but the manufacturers’ association could “not” arrange money; the manufacturers now need government help; government should take charge for paying salary, not for making profit.</div>
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It’s a “story” of trickery, and of indifference, and of cruelty, and of capitalizing workers’ distress.</div>
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Entrepreneurs’ organizations lobby for formulating policies favorable to them, influence national budget allocation, banking, financial, fiscal, export policies. But they can’t influence one entrepreneur in paying salaries and bonus. Entrepreneurs make profit, take full of it. But they ask government to take responsibility whenever they face problem they create. It’s the public that bears government expenses. So, it stands: “I make profit, you, the public, bear the cost.”</div>
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<strong>Of strawberry</strong></div>
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On the jade end of July a Greek court in the western port city of Patras acquitted local farmers responsible for shooting 28 Bangladeshi strawberry pickers. The magistrates, guardians of “justice”, allowed two of the farmers including the owner of the farm who had also been accused of human trafficking, to walk free. Two others, accused of aggravated assault and for possessing illegal firearms, were handed prison sentences; 14 years and seven months to one, and 8 years and seven months to the other. But both were also freed pending appeal.</div>
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The Bangladeshis were shot at in April 2013 at a Peloponnese farm as they demanded six months of unpaid salary. It was the workers’ “sin”. Media investigations showed the migrant workers work in subhuman conditions without access to proper hygiene or basic sanitation. However, the farmers engaged senior criminal lawyers to defend them in the drama named Justice in Court.</div>
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In disbelief, scores of migrants, many sobbing, protested the verdict outside the court house. The verdict has sparked outrage in entire Greece. Politicians, unionists and anti-racist groups have condemned the verdict as a “black mark for justice” in a case that brought the spotlight on the migrant workers’ appalling working and living condition in Greece.</div>
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Moisis Karabeyidis, the victim’s lawyer, said after the ruling was delivered: “I feel shame as a Greek. This decision is an outrage and a disgrace. The court showed an appalling attitude toward the victims.” Politicians standing for labor rights said the verdict set an unwelcome example for other employers to follow. “It sends the message that a foreign worker can die like a dog in the orchard,” said Vassiliki Katrivanou, an MP with the main opposition radical-left Syriza party. “It leaves room for new victims by closing eyes to the brutal, inhuman and racist character of the exploitation suffered by workers on the land,” she said, pointing out that the ruling had been made on the World Day against Trafficking in Persons.</div>
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Anti-racism organizations denounced the judgment as scandalous, and said it raised questions about the impartiality of the Greek justice system. The organizations planned to step up protest action against the verdict. In a statement Petros Constantinou, coordinator of the Movement against Racism and the Fascist Threat, said: “We call upon unions and human rights movements to react against this unprecedented racist scandal. The hundreds of millions of profit made in the strawberry industry cannot come about by shooting laborers in strawberry fields.”</div>
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It’s an irony! The irony is of time. Greece, the country that organized the greatest game event on the planet, Olympic, with a lot of money a few years ago went down to the stage of the Third World poverty and desperation, experienced regime change without an armed intervention, bankers’ dictation that the Third World experiences almost everyday. Sometimes, it appeared, Bangladesh, once despised as simply a humanitarian case, was in a better position compared to the state of the poor in Greece. A part of the sick European economy has to rely on migrant labor to make profit. Then, it shoots and maims migrant labor and fans far-right, Nazi forces. The economy is sick, but its power to influence judiciary and to assault labor is not weak.</div>
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<strong>Of the stories</strong></div>
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What do the “stories” tell?</div>
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It tells tales of capital’s character, and it tells tales of collaboration that capital crafts, and it tells tales of justice that capital delivers, and it tells tales of state that capital commands.</div>
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The Bangladesh workers, still politically unorganized, are passing a particular phase. It will gradually evolve. A quote from Marx and Engels is worthy to refer here:</div>
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“To begin with, the workers fight individually; then the workers in a single factory make common cause; then the workers at one trade combine throughout a whole locality against the particular bourgeois who exploits them. Their attacks are leveled not only against bourgeois conditions of production, but also against the actual instruments of production …</div>
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“At this stage the workers form a disunited mass, scattered throughout the country, and severed into fragments by mutual competition.” (The Manifesto)</div>
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The Bangladesh labor will pass this phase, where NGO-driven labor mobilization, politicization of de-politicization, plays a role.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0