INSAF Bulletin [36]   April 2005
Postal Address: Box 272, Westmount Stn., QC, Canada H3Z 2T2 (Tel. 514 346-9477)
(e-mail: insaf@insaf.net; View the old bulletins)
                   Editors : Daya Varma (Montreal) & Vinod Mubayi (New York)   Produced by : South Asia center - CERAS
    Editorial Board : Yumna Siddiqi (Middlebury)


Op-Eds

Modi Visa Denial: Celebrate But Organize Further - Vinod Mubayi and Daya Varma

It Is Too Bad Lalu Lost, It Would Have Been Worse If He Had Won! - Daya Varma

Indian Communist Leaders Visit Pakistan

Behind Enemy Lines: Observations on Science and Society in India - Pervez Hoodbhoy

NEPAL: United Opposition Against King Gyanendra

A Three Kings' January 6th 2005 Year of the Rooster Offering - Part 3 - Andre Gunder Frank


News Briefs

Permanent Peace, Demands Conference of Indians and Pakistanis

Padma Shri Award for Gladys Staines


Op-Eds


Modi Visa Denial: Celebrate but Organize Further

Vinod Mubayi and Daya Varma


Narendra Modi, the Chief Minister of Gujarat, a hard-line RSS pracharak, the master mind of the Gujarat pogrom that killed over 2000 minority Muslims in February-March 2002, and the leader of a state government that has perpetrated and continues to perpetrate many atrocities against Christians and Muslims, was invited to visit the U.S. and U.K. in late March 2005. The invitation to Modi was extended by the Asian American Hotel Owners Association (AAHOA), an organization that includes many small motel owners of Gujarati origin; its board has several fervent supporters of Hindutva on it. The public events that Modi was going to address included: a speech at Madison Square Garden in New York City sponsored by the Association of Indian Americans for North America (an NRI Hindutva-front organization), a keynote address to the AAHOA annual convention in Orlando, FL, and another speech at California State University in Long Beach, CA. The Florida event, it is important to note, was co-sponsored by many premier American multinational corporations such as American Express, the Cendant Corporation, US Franchising Service, etc. that are part of the lucrative hotel service industry; AAHOA members themselves own real estate estimated at $40 billion. Chris Matthews, host of the NBC TV show “Hardball”, was to share the stage with Modi in Florida for which he was supposed to have received a fee of $50,000. These huge amounts are illustrative of the financial clout being disposed of by the NRI sympathizers of Hindutva.


News of Modi’s visit galvanized a response by a number of different forces in the U.S. and U.K. opposed to the communal and violent politics practiced by Modi and his ilk. About 40 different organizations, ranging from organizations of secular Indians, various organizations belonging to Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, and Hindus of Indian origin, and progressive individuals resident in North America, came together in an umbrella Coalition Against Genocide (CAG) that launched a whole series of actions aimed at denying legitimacy to the Modi visit. These actions ranged from requests to AAHOA to rescind their invitation to Modi, demands to the U.S. State Department that Modi be denied a visa on the grounds of his having committed acts of religious persecution that amounted to crimes against Humanity, pressure on the corporate business sponsors to cancel their sponsorship of the Florida event, request to Matthews not to share a stage with a criminal like Modi and forego his lucrative fee, and press releases to the U.S. media about Modi’s record. This pressure began to show some results: Matthews declined to participate in the AAHOA convention and the corporate sponsors did likewise by canceling their participation. Two members of the U.S. Congress introduced a resolution on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives that denounced Modi in no uncertain terms. South Asian academics in various U.S. universities wrote a letter to the U.S. government protesting the planned visit and the Institute for Religion and Public Policy also wrote to the State Department to deny Modi entry into the U.S. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, a body chartered by the U.S. Congress, expressed a significant concern about the visit through a statement by its Chairperson, Preeta Bansal , who is herself of Indian origin.


The final blow to the visit was delivered by the U.S. government when Modi was not only denied a diplomatic visa but his business/visitor visa that was still valid for a few more years was canceled. It is interesting that the U.S. State Department, while quoting the relevant portion of the regulation under which Modi was denied entry, justified its action by referring to reports of official Indian bodies like the National Human Rights Commission and the rulings of India’s Supreme Court that had severely criticized the Modi regime for its acts of omission and commission in the 2002 Gujarat pogrom. This response effectively defused the Indian government’s somewhat hypocritical and pro forma protest of the Modi visa denial, an issue on which the BJP has been trying hard to arouse “patriotic” indignation and fervor within India.


Although the Modi visit was canceled, his followers went ahead with the programs in New York and Florida bringing his speech in by a video-link. A spirited protest of about 250-300 CAG members that went on for almost four hours was held outside the Madison Square Garden venue in New York despite a freezing rain. A similar protest also took place in Florida. It was good news that Modi was denied a visa for the US. His criminality has been proven many times and in many different ways. But we have to recognize that it is unlikely that CAG’s opposition to Modi and Hindutva played any significant role in the U.S. government’s decision. Other factors like the Congressional resolution and, more important, the pressure from U.S. Christian groups that are upset with Hindutva’s actions against Christians in India probably had more  impact.


There is no doubt Modi deserves to be prosecuted in India as is fit for any country which abides by minimum standards of the rule of law and humanity. But while bringing Modi to justice is a necessary step, it is hardly sufficient to solve the problem of mass support for fundamentalist politics in India. Prosecuting criminals, hanging them, electrocuting them, chopping off their heads or denying them freedom to travel to the Western world has not stopped crime and the prosecution of Narendra Modi will not, by itself, bring dignity to India’s minorities. The venom spread by the Sangh Parivar is deep-rooted and has created an anti-Muslim, anti-Christian culture, which has seeped into the minds of millions of Hindus. Is there any other explanation why nearly 4,000 gathered inside Madison Square Garden to listen to the satellite-transmitted speech of Narendra Modi while less than a tenth of that number protested outside? Maybe if Modi had appeared in person, the crowds, both inside and outside, would have been much larger. But the disparity would probably still remain and it brings up the issue again of mobilizing people against fundamentalist politics.


Is there something we are not doing here and something that people like us are not doing back home? One feature of our efforts seems to be that attempts at mass mobilization and painstaking work at building organs  within the community have been replaced by electronic communication - transmission of some useful, some peripheral information, depending upon the whim of the sender. There is a place for electronic media in communication but, given the nature of the Indian community, it cannot replace the painstaking effort of mass mobilization, work in the community and talking to people in the language they are familiar with (that might be different from the one we know). It is difficult to find material against Modi on websites such as Foil, that can be printed and given to computer-deprived, barely-English-knowing South Asians.


CAG is an advance on what existed (or did not exist) before, an embryonic front of organizations and persons of different backgrounds uniting to oppose fundamentalism. It is a necessary first step but it cannot stop there and must move into the wider community if it is to prove an effective counterweight to the centrally organized fundamentalists in the US and UK. Ad-hoc coalitions that mainly lobby and protest are, by their very nature, only a starting point for political action; they need to be transformed into something more permanent and more organized. If lobbying and protest could suffice, there would have been no Iraq and Afghanistan war. Millions marched in hundreds of cities across the world against the Bush-Blair agenda. Nearly 5% of the Montreal population was on the street for more than two hours at -23 Celsius to oppose the impending war.  Even some influential governments expressed their reservation. Yet Afghanistan and Iraq were attacked and thousands massacred. 


Why did lobbying succeed in denying a visa to Modi? While the answer is speculative, it is probable that Bush used one provision out of many in the U.S. government’s arsenal to rectify to some degree his administration’s anti-Muslim policies and relatively dismal credentials on human rights issues. Our jubilation, however, may turn out to be a bit premature and a bit unfounded if we fail to carry out painstaking mass work rather than depend upon liberal American institutions to take care of our problems.

Back to Headlines



It is too bad Lalu lost, it would have been worse if he had won!

Daya Varma



Since their beginning over half a century ago, Indian elections have sprung surprises. In the first parliamentary elections in 1951-52, the Communist Party of India (CPI) together with its People’s Democratic Front in Hyderabad (the party was illegal and hence the front; present Andhra Pradesh was then Hyderabad) won 23 seats and emerged as the second largest party after Congress. Every one, including CPI, was surprised. In the 14th Parliamentary elections last year, the defeat of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and the victory of Congress was also a big surprise.


So Lalu Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) falling far short of a majority in the Bihar elections a few weeks ago could be called a surprise, though it was not. But was his unexpected poor performance due to the Ram Vilas Paswan factor? Or was it because Lalu did almost nothing for the people of Bihar? His credentials as a secular leader are no doubt commendable but they are not enough for him to retain hold on an impoverished Bihar. His political buffoonery, which delights our intelligentsia, is devoid of content and his caste and muscle power equations are available to his rivals as well as to him. What happened to Laluji will, sooner rather than later, also be the fate of Mulayam Singh in UP.


No one can continue to stay in power in UP and Bihar, especially Bihar, without undertaking a thoroughgoing land reform. By inference, no one can continue to rule India without ensuring land reform in these two states which have become the home of a vast majority of  India’s poor. Yet, Lalu is willing to unite with CPI and CPI-M but unable or unwilling to implement the agrarian reforms done by the Left Front government in West Bengal. Lalu’s continued victory would have undermined the anti-feudal aspirations of the masses. So one can feel bad that an anti-NDA leader like Lalu lost. But if he had won it would have been a victory for feudal oppression in perpetuity and a continuation of Darbar-style politics.


Back to Headlines



Indian Communist leaders  visit Pakistan





Harkishan Singh Surjeet, General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and A.B. Bardhan, general secretary of the Communist Party of India (CPI) arrived in Pakistan on February 22, 2005 on a 10-day visit as guests of the Joint Left Front of Pakistan comprised of the Communist Party of Pakistan, the Communist Mazdoor Kisan Party of Pakistan and the Labour Party of Pakistan.The visit, the first by senior Indian communist leaders, since Sajjad Zahir was sent by the then undivided CPI at the time of independence in 1947, is another positive sign in the improvement of Indo-Pak relations. Both leaders stressed that dialogue is the only solution to Kashmir and both opposed foreign mediation and arms race.


“Toba Tek Singh”:

In addition to major centers such as Karachi, Islamabad and Lahore, Indian communist leaders also visited  a place called  “Toba Tek Singh”, which is the title of the story by the great writer Saadat Hasan Manto [I have no doubt that Surjeet had read it in the original Urdu); this is how the story starts (Translated from the original and supplied by Feroz Mehdi):


“Two or three years after the partition of India and Pakistan, the two governments remembered that inmates of mental asylums should also be switched. Meaning, all mentally retarded Muslims languishing in Indian asylums should be sent to Pakistan and Hindus and Sikhs in Pakistani mental asylums should be sent to India. Several high level intellectual conferences were held and finally a date was fixed for switching the mentally disabled”. Thus begins Manto’s short story ‘Toba Tek Singh’.


The background to this story is a mental asylum in the historic city Lahore, which found itself in Pakistan after the partition on August 14, 1947. All the asylum characters are confused that they woke up one morning in a place called Pakistan while they had themselves not moved at all. “By the way what is this thing called Pakistan”, asked one. Another, once a lawyer, got further depressed when he was told that the city of Amritsar, where his girlfriend lived, was now in India while Sialkot, his hometown, was in Pakistan. The main character is a Sikh whom all inmates called Toba Tek Singh. Nobody had ever seen him sit or lie down. He was once in a while seen to lean against a wall. His legs had swollen like that of an elephant. He was never heard saying anything coherent, just gibberish.


When Toba Tek Singh found out that he would be transferred to India, his main concern was: ‘where is Toba Tek Singh’ (the name of his native village)? On the day when the inmates of this mental asylum were taken to the border and assembled in the No-Man’s Land between the two newly created countries, Toba Tek Singh refused to budge for he wanted to know where his village was. In the midst of the rush of transfers, there was a loud scream and a big thud. For the first time people saw Toba Tek Singh lying on the ground where he fell, India on one side and Pakistan on the other. So there lay Toba Tek Singh, on the No-Man’s Land, dead!


Back to Headlines



Behind enemy lines:  Observations on science and society in India

Pervez Hoodbhoy (Dawn  Magazine section,  20 Feb 2005)

(Photograph provided by the author not attached. ed.)


Few Pakistanis get to visit India, the so-called "enemy country", and fewer still to independently assess the development of science and education across its hugely diverse regions. I had the exceptional good fortune to make such a visit recently, made possible by the award of UNESCO's Kalinga Prize for the popularization of science. One part of the Prize included a 4-week lecture tour that took me around India: Delhi, Pune, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bhubhaneswar, Cuttack, Calcutta, and then back to Delhi again before I returned home to Islamabad in mid-February. Although the Prize was awarded in 2003, frosty Pakistan-India relations had made my tour impossible until 2005.


It was a relentless schedule from the first day onwards with several lectures daily at schools, colleges, universities, research institutions, and peace groups. I chatted with children from excellent schools as well as those from rather ordinary ones; had long sessions with students and professors from colleges and universities; met with the "junta" (cooks, taxi drivers, and rickshawallas); and was invited to see ministers and chief ministers in several states, as well as the president of India.


Some observations follow:


Many Indian universities have a cosmopolitan character and are world class. Their social culture is secular, modern, and similar to that in universities located in free societies across the world. (In Pakistan, AKU and LUMS would be the closest approximations.) Male and female students freely intermingle, library and laboratory facilities are good, seminars and colloquia are frequent, and the faculty engages in research. Entrance exams are tough and competition for grades is intense. Some universities, "deemed universities" and other research institutions I visited (TIFR, IISC, IITs, IMSC, IICT, IUCAA, JNCASR, IPB, Raman Institute, Swaminathan Institute,...) do research work at the cutting edge of science. A strong tradition of mathematics and theoretical science forms a backbone that sustains progress in areas ranging from space exploration and super-computing to nanotechnology and biotechnology.


The rural-urban divide, and the class divide in education, is strong.  Schools and colleges in small towns have a culture steeped in religion. Here one sees hierarchy, obedience, and even servility. The national anthem is sung in schools and religious symbols are given much prominence. Some students I met were bright, but many appeared rather dull. Although most Indian colleges are coeducational (unlike in Pakistan), male and female students sit separately and are not encouraged to intermingle. It is sometimes difficult to understand the English spoken there. Where possible, I spoke in Hindi/Urdu. This enhanced my ability to communicate and also created a certain kind of bonding. There is an evident desire to improve, however, and at least some college principals go out of their way to organize events and invite guest speakers. My lecture at the Basavanagudi National College, a fairly ordinary college in Bangalore, was the 1978th lecture given by academicians over a period of 30 years!


Independent thought in India's better universities is alive and well. Office bearers of the Jawaharlal Nehru University students union in Delhi were requested by the university's administration to present flowers to President Abdul Kalam at the annual convocation. They flatly refused, saying that he is a nuclear hawk and an appointee of a Hindu fundamentalist party. Moreover, as young women of dignity they could not agree to act as mere flower girls presenting bouquets to a man. Eventually the head of the physics department, also a woman, somewhat reluctantly presented flowers to Dr. Kalam but said that she was doing so as a scientist honoring another scientist, not because she was a woman. Bravo! I have not seen comparable boldness and intellectual courage in Pakistani students. Student unions in Pakistan have been banned for two decades and so it is a moot question if any union there could have mustered similar independence of thought.


Taking science to the masses has become a kind of mantra all over India. My columnist friend Praful Bidwai - a powerful critic of the Indian state and its militaristic policies - counts among India's greatest achievements the energisation of its democracy and refers to "our social movements, with their rich traditions of people's self-organisation, innovative protest and daring questioning of power". These movements have ensured that, unlike in Pakistan, land grabbers in Indian cities have found fierce resistance when they try to gobble up public spaces - parks, zoos, playgrounds, historical sites, etc. Praful should also include in his list the huge number of science popularization movements, sometimes supported by the state but often spontaneous. These are sweeping through India's towns and villages, seeking to bring about an understanding of natural phenomena, teach simple health care, and introduce technology appropriate to a rural environment. There is not even one comparable Pakistani counterpart. I watched some science communicators, such as Arvind Gupta at IUCAA in Pune, whose infectious enthusiasm leaves children thrilled and desirous of pursuing careers in science. Individual Indian states have funded and created numerous impressive planetariums and science museums, and local organizations are putting out a huge volume of written and audio-visual science materials in the local languages.


Attitudes of Indian scientists towards science are conservative. Progress through science is an immensely popular notion in India, stressed both by past and present leaders. But what is science understood to be? I was a little jolted upon reading Nehru's words, written in stone at the entrance to the Jawaharlal Nehru Institute for Advanced Research in Bangalore: "I too have worshipped at the shrine of science". The notion of "worship" and "shrine of science" do not go well with the modern science and the scientific temper. Science is about challenging, not worshipping. As a secular man, Nehru was not given to worship but his metaphorical allusions to industries and factories as temples of science found full resonance. Indeed, science in India is largely seen as an instrument that enhances productive capabilities, and not as a transformational tool for producing an informed, just, and rational society. Most Indian scientists are techno-nationalists - they put their science at the service of their state rather than the people. In this respect, Pakistan is no different.

India's nuclear and space programs are nationally venerated as symbols of high achievement. This led to India's nuclear hero, Dr. Abdul Kalam, becoming the country's president. When Dr. Kalam received me in his office, after the usual pleasantries, I expressed my regret at India having gone nuclear and causing Pakistan to follow suit. Shouldn't India now reduce dangers by initiating a process of nuclear disarmament? Dr. Kalam gave me a well-practiced response: India would get rid of its nuclear weapons the very minute that America agreed to do the same. He displayed little enthusiasm for an agreement to cut off fissile material production. However, he did agree to my suggestion that exchange of academics could be an important way to build good relations between Pakistan and India.

Indian society remains deeply superstitious, caste divisions are important, and women still have a long way to go. While I found myself admiring the energetic popular science movements, I was disappointed that they pay relatively little attention to the anti-scientific superstitions widely prevalent in Indian society. After I had given a strong pitch for fighting irrational beliefs at a meeting of science popularization activists from villages in Northern India, a young woman asked me what to do if "koi devi aap pay utr jayai" (if a spirit should descend upon you). The jyoti (astrologer) dictates the dates when a marriage is possible, and even whether a couple can marry at all. When I was in Bangalore, hundreds of thousands had thronged to be cured by an American faith-healing quack, Benny Hinn.  Inter-caste marriages are still frowned upon, and usually forbidden. In local newspapers one typically reads of tragic accounts such as that of a boy and girl from different castes who jointly commit suicide after their families forbid the match. Although Indian women are freer, more visible, and more confident than their Pakistani counterparts, India is still a strongly male dominated society. However, the rapidly increasing number of bold and well-educated young women gives hope for the future.

Muslims in India remain at the margins of scientific research and higher education. Hamdard University in Delhi is distinctly better than the university bearing the same name on the Pakistani side. Jamia Millia, a largely Muslim university, appears to be doing well and probably better than any Pakistani university in the field of physics. But, although Muslims form 12% of India's population, I met only a few Muslim scientists in leading Indian research institutes and universities. Discrimination against Muslims does not appear to be the dominant cause.  A professor at Jamia told me that an overwhelming number of Muslim students were inclined towards seeking easier (and more lucrative) professions in spite of special incentives offered to them at his university. In general, Muslims in India appear more modern and secular than in Pakistan. However, Hyderabad astonished me. Is it a total exception? In the lecture that I gave at a government women's college, there was only one young woman without a burqa in an audience of about a hundred. These women were surprised to learn that Pakistan - at least in most places - is more liberal than Hyderabad. The extreme conservatism in the Muslim part of the city reminds one of Peshawar.

There was a remarkable lack of hostility towards Pakistan. Indeed a desire for friendly relations was repeatedly expressed in every forum I went to. This is not to be taken lightly: many of my public lectures were either about (or on) science, but others dealt with deeply contentious issues - nuclear weapons, India-Pakistan relations, and the Kashmir conflict. Various Indian peace groups and NGOs organized public discussions and screenings of the two documentaries that I had made (with my friend Zia Mian): "Pakistan and India under the Nuclear Shadow", and "Crossing the Lines - Kashmir, Pakistan, India".  To be sure, my views on Indian policies and actions in Kashmir occasionally provoked knee-jerk nationalistic responses and accusations of pushing "a Pakistani line". But these were infrequent and even heated exchanges always remained within the bounds of civility.

Ignorance about Pakistan is widespread. In most public gatherings, and certainly in every school that I spoke at, people had never seen a Pakistani. A puzzled 12-year old girl asked me: "Sir, are you really a Pakistani?". Many Indians have a misconception of Pakistan as a medieval, theocratic state. In fact, only a few parts of Pakistan are really so. I also encountered the belief that Pakistanis have been totally muzzled and live in a police state. This is untrue - articles in the Pakistani press are often blunter and more critical than in the Indian press. An Indian friend hypothesized that knowledge of the other country is inversely proportional to the geographical distance between our countries.  Unfortunately this will remain true unless there is a substantial exchange of visitors.

Indians are deeply nationalistic and may dislike particular governments but they only rarely criticize the Indian state. This is not difficult to understand: the democratic process has given a strong sense of participation to most citizens and has successfully forged a national identity (except in Kashmir, and parts of the North East) that transcends the immense diversity of Indian cultures. But this has an important downside: nationalism is easy to mobilize and highly dangerous in matters of war and conflict. I found the Indian elite (especially the former heads of nuclear, space, and technology programs) condescending and irritatingly smug. Even if India has done well in many respects, in most others it is still behind the rest of the world. Fortunately, Pakistani intellectuals are less attached to their nation state and therefore more forthright. The reason is rather clear: three decades of military rule have dealt a serious blow to nation building and firming up the Pakistani identity.

Similarities between the two countries exceed the differences. Cities in both countries are poisoned with thick car fumes and grid-locks are frequent; megaslums and exploding populations threaten to swallow up the countryside; electricity supplies are intermittent; and water is fast disappearing from rivers and aquifers. The rural poor are fleeing to the cities, and wretched beggars with amputated limbs are casually accepted as part of the urban scenery. There is little long-term planning, and none at all for coping with the inevitable changes that global warming will soon bring.

India is upbeat about its future and the feeling of optimism is palpable down to the lower middle class. The steady improvement in educational quality and outreach, the growth of social movements that keep excesses of power and authority in check, and a sense of participation among people are among India's most significant gains. But its problems are no less than its accomplishments. Will India's poor be able to find a voice, get help in fighting superstitions and notions of caste, and be spared the marginalization that accompanies globalization? Will India's leadership have the wisdom to arrive at some reasonable accommodation on Kashmir, cease obsessive militarization, and divert resources to pressing social needs? These larger issues, and not just advances in science and technology, will decide just how high India can rise.

(Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy is professor of physics at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad.)

Back to Headlines



NEPAL: United opposition against King Gyanendra

Abbreviation for Nepali political parties: Nepali Congress (NC); Nepali Congress-Democratic (NC-D); Nepal Communist Party-United Marxists-Leninists (CPN-UML); People's Front Nepal (PFN); Nepal Sadbhavana Party (NSP); Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-M). Nepal Student Union (NSU) affiliated with Nepali Congress.


Nonviolent protests by five political parties (NC, CPN-UML, NC-D, PFN and NSP) and fierce resistance by CPN-M are placing a noose around the neck of Gyanendra, who staged the palace coup on February 1, 2005. The five parties had close to 190 seats among them in the 205-member dissolved parliament


CPN-M leader Prachanda said his party would impose regional blockades, strikes and also conduct 'people's actions' from March 14 to April 1 to protest against the royal coup. The action would be followed from April 2 with a 10-day strike across Nepal. Prachanda has also called upon all major political forces to unite with the Maoists in a common front against the monarchy. Prachanda said "From now onwards, we will assist the political parties in their activities, not disrupt it. We guarantee their safety and security in the districts to carry out their activities."


In the meantime, unable to foresee what is coming, Nepal police arrested 500 hundred protesters in Kathmandu’s main trading centers on March 14 including political activists belonging to five major parties. Those arrested include former minister and Nepali Congress member Balabahadur Rai, CPN-UML leader Mahesh Mani Dixit and Nepali Congress (Democratic) Lawmaker Akkal Bahadur Bista.


US continuing to aid Nepal king

The Asian Human Rights Centre (AHRC) has accused America for interfering in Nepal's humanitarian crisis by refusing to suspend military aid. The human rights watchdog has warned against the Washington move to extend 2 million dollars in security assistance to Nepal this year saying it has given the wrong signals to an already defiant King. "The United States is part of the problem because they see the problem in Nepal as part of the war against terror. They are trying to ignore the ground realities which prevail in Nepal. The fact that the US has not suspended military aid, basically contributes to the problem because the King perceives this as a support to his rule since February 1," AHRC Director Suhas Chakma told a news conference in New Delhi. In addition to replacing antique rifles with M-16s to help Nepal fight the Maoists, the US is helping train the Nepali military "in values as well as skills."  (Source, Liberation News Service, March 15, 2005)


Nepal student leader calls for overthrow of monarchy

In an interview with Radio Free Nepal on March 11, Pradeep Poudel, leader of the Nepal Student Union (NSU) said that only the overthrow of the monarchy could bring true democracy. Poudel believes it is impossible to bring the King under the constitution, a position held by the Nepal Maoists all along. (Source, Liberation News Service, March 15, 2005)

NEPAL political parties to cooperate with Maoists

Nepal's major political parties (NC, NC-D, CPN-UML, PFNP and NSP), at a closed door meeting in the Thai capital Bangkok, have vowed an all-out fight against the monarchy after agreeing to the main demand of Maoist rebels to redraft the Himalayan nation's constitution.

''This will be our last fight with the king. There will be no compromise anymore. That's what we have decided...no more compromise,'' Sujata Koirala of the Nepali Congress party told IPS. ''We will keep going on the streets. In the beginning Nepalis were scared to come out. But now they are not,'' she added. ''We have to fight this autocratic system.'' (Source, Liberation News Service, March 15, 2005)


Press Release by CPN (Maoist) (13 March, 2005-abridged, ed.)


Today, the Nepalese society has arrived at a very sensitive crossroads in its political history. The feudal autocracy that by challenging Nepalese people’s aspiration of achieving full democracy has come to the fore through the so-called royal proclamation is being opposed everywhere. But, the feudal elements that have come up for their last battle of existence are busy exhibiting a drama of conciliation, gift, punishment and intrigue against people under the leadership of autocratic monarchy. Feudal ringleaders, who have already staged the artless drama of repeating 1960, are now playing the same old game of dividing and repressing political parties. The Nepalese people, who were enduring the dirty games of the feudal palace for the last 55 years, will never be deluded by these games. On the contrary, the great Nepalese people of the twenty-first century will advance unitedly with full determination of accomplishing the necessity of democratic revolution, which been long overdue since 1950. It is sure that the feudal elements, by closing all the doors of peaceful and forward-looking way out, have launched an adventure to push the wheel of history back with the strength of terror of the royal army sustained with foreign aid; they will be thrown out into the garbage of history.

Taking seriously into consideration the political sensitivity of the country, our party has been very responsibly emphasizing the necessity to advance ahead against the feudal autocracy by establishing a broad front of all the political parties, civil society and intelligentsia. Taking lesson from the bitter experiences of the past, it is urgently necessary to build up, first of all, a concrete understanding among the political parties to unite the broad masses. In this context, our party would like to clarify its preparedness for the sacrifice necessary from our part through this statement. Declaring not to obstruct all political parties that are against feudal autocracy rather to help conduct political activities in any part of the country without any hindrance, our party thinks it necessary to go ahead by carrying out criticism and self-criticism among the political parties and maintaining unity on a new basis; and also wants to clarify its preparedness for that. In addition to this, we would like to request humbly all the political parties in and outside of the country not to have any doubt in our party’s declared policy of supporting the Constituent Assembly and multiparty democratic republic.



It is known to all that our party had carried out countrywide wheel-jam and blockade as an immediate protest against the so-called royal proclamation. Being responsible to the people, we had suspended that program after 15 days. In that very context, challenging the feudal elements to revoke their totalitarian step, we had also clarified that we could declare a higher level of program of struggle if that was not complied with. But the authoritarian elements taking it not as a way out are now adventuring to save their existence through killings, terror, Pancha-rallies and stupid propaganda. In such a situation, our party heartily appeals to the masses of the people of all levels and sects including workers, peasants, women, students, teachers, professors, doctors, lawyers and journalists to create a storm of movement in favor of full democracy and against autocracy. For this, our party, along with strikes, wheel-jam, shutdown and blockade in the local and regional level, declares a program of countrywide mass mobilization and military resistance from March 14 to April 1 and a countrywide general shutdown (Nepal Bandh) from April 2 to April 22 on the occasion of the historic mass movement day in 1990. Our party heartily appeals to the broad masses of the people again to make this program of struggle a success and let the absolute feudal elements, which are trying to push the country back towards medieval era, know the people’s strength.  (Prachanda, Chairman, Central Committee,CPN-Maoist)


Back to Headlines



A Three Kings' January 6th 2005 Year of the Rooster Offering - Part 3

Meet Uncle Sam - without clothes - parading around China and the world. Observed From the Top of the Great Wall through the Eyes of the Innocent Little Boy.

Andre Gunder Frank [The article by Prof Frank is several pages long. It will be produced as a series. Ed.]


THE UNCLE SAM PAPER $ TIGER POSES A MAD GEO-POLITICAL CATCH 22


Of course, crashing the $ would also in one fell swoop wipe out, that is default, the Uncle Sam debt altogether. Thereby, it would simultaneously also make all foreigners and rich Americans lose the whole of their $ asset shirt. They are still desperately trying to save as much of it as possible by not going for the crash, that is for broke. That is, they are trying to protect the remainder of their $ investment shirt by keeping their $ live sustaining pump going. The whole business of maintaining the Uncle Sam Ponzi Scheme poses the world's biggest and craziest Catch - 22 since MAD, and it is just about as mad.


All the more reason why it MUST be resolved. But the way out of the mad Catch 22 need not be a soft landing. It can be hard one indeed. This dissolution of the Uncle Sam Ponzi Scheme will be costly and the greatest costs will as usual probably be dumped on the poorest who are least able to bear these costs, but who are also least able to protect themselves from being forced to do so. And the historically necessary transition out from under the Uncle Sam run doughnut world can bring the entire world into the deepest depression ever. Only East Asia is in a relatively good position to save itself from being pulled - or pushed - to the bottom, but even then also after paying a high cost for this transition - toward itself!


However, the world is facing an even MADer global geo political and military Catch 22. It remains the great unknown and perhaps unknowable. How would [will?] Uncle Sam react as a Paper [money] Tiger that is wounded by a crash of the Ponzi Scheme Confidence Racket from which he and millions of un-knowing Uncle Sammies have lived the good life? To compensate for less bread and civil rights but more "Patriot"ic acts at home, a more chauvinist Uncle Sam can provide a World War III circus abroad. A crash of $ will pull the financial rug out from under, and his discourage his foreign victims from continuing to pay for new Pentagon adventures abroad. But some more wars may still be possible with the weapons he would still have and some more Military Keyensian government deficit spending at home, also for the new ''small'' nukes he is preparing for the occasion. That could well - nay horribly - be the cost to the world of the current policies to ''defend Freedom and Civilization." The Super Catch 22 is that almost nobody other than Osama bin Laden wants to run that risk.


Yet, such a transition would [will?] not be historically new. Recall how much the transition to Uncle Sam cost: a 30 Year War from 1914 to 1945 with the intervening second Great Depression in a century that cost 100 million lives lost to war, more than in all previous world history combined, not to mention the litterally [hundreds?] of millions who suffered and died from unnecessary starvation and disease. Or the previous transition to the British Major Bull cost the Napoleonic Wars, the Great Depression of 1873-95, colonialism and semi-colonialism, to name a few, and their human costs. The latter coincided with the most pronounced El Niño climatic changes in two centuries, which ravaged Indians, Chinese, and many others with famines. But these were in turn magnified by the Imperial Colonial powers who used in their own interests, e.g. increased export of wheat from India especially during years of famine.

The parallels with today, including even again taking advantage of a century later renewed stronger El Niños are too horrifying and guilt generating for hardly anybody to make. They include Uncle Sam's IMF imposed ''structural adjustment" that obliges Mexican peasants to have already eaten the belt that the IMF wants them to tighten still further. Three million dead and still counting in Rwanda and Burundi, and then some in neighboring Congo, came after IMF imposed strictures and the cancellation primarily by Uncle Sam of the Coffee Agreement that had sustained its price for these producers. And now - nay since the CIA murder of Lumumba and the elevation of Kosavubu in Katanga in 1961, indeed since the King of Belgium's private reserve of the Congo in the 19th century, we get the scramble for and production and sale there of gold for Uncle Sam's Fort Knox, and now also titanium so that we can communicate by mobile cell phone, diamonds for ever, and so on. Uncle Sam also took advantage of yet another strong El Niño event that ravaged South East Asia, and especially Indonesia, simultaneously with the post 1997 financial crisis that Uncle Sam deliberately parlayed into an economic depression. It was so great that it swept out of office President Suharto whom Uncle Sam had installed there thirty years earlier with his CIA coup against the popular father of Indonesian independence, Sukarno. That had cost at least half a million but also an estimated up to one million lives that Suhartu took directly plus the poverty generated by the infamous "Berkely Mafia" that he installed to run the Indonesian economy into the ground. The parallels with the past also include environmental degradation, and the shift of ecological damage from the rich who generate it to the poor Third World who bears its greatest burden. And of course we should not forget World War III [the third after the second AND fought in the Third World] that Daddy Bush began against Iraq in 1991 [See my "Third World War" http://rrojasdatabank.info/agfrank/gulf_war.html

Yet there are also others in the world who do not [yet? ] feel all that caught up in the Catch 22. Calculatedly just before this year's 2004 Uncle Sam election, one of them said so out loud in a video broadcast to the world. It seems to have been least publicly noted by its principal addressee Uncle Sam, who should have been the most interested party: For it was none other than bin Laden himself who announced that he is ''going to bankrupt the Uncle Sam! '' In view of the deliberate Uncle Sam blindness to the shakiness of his real world foundation abroad, so massive a collapse abroad may not be more difficult to arrange than as it was only to topple its Twin Tower symbol at home.


The Pentagon is the world's largest planned economy - to redistribute income from poor to rich at home and abroad to blackmail friend and foe to do the same


Meantime back on the farm as the saying goes in Texas, what does Uncle Sam himself blithely do with the world's hard earned savings and money? His consumers still over-consume it without 99. 9 percent of them knowing what they are doing, since hardly anyone tells them so. And Uncle Sam's government uses much and all of its increase of hundreds of B$ for the Pentagon. That money is not spent to pay its poor professional soldiers who come mostly from small town rural America and took the only job they could get, and even less is spent on its hapless reservists. They told Rummy in Kuwait that he does not even provide them with sufficient and safe equipment. Rummy replied, I am an old man, I just got up, and I need time to get my thoughts together.


But at home in the Pentagon, Rummy faces no such problem. There he knows very well what he is doing, privatizing war also in Iraq as at home. The Military-Industrial Complex against which General Eisenhower warned in his 1958 parting Presidential address is alive and kicking, more than ever under the stewardship of "Vice" President Cheney and his De[a]fSec Rumsfeld. With their jobs disasterously well done, both are being kept on for a second term. So is Paul Wolfowitz "of Arabia" who with Douglas Feith is one of the duo at the Pentagon that went to Israel. Regarding the latter, the German Der Spiegel Dec 20,2004:33 quotes Tommy Franks, who was the commander of the Iraq invasion, as calling "the greatest total idiot that there is on God's Earth, with whom I have to battle almost every day"].


Between 1994 and mid - 2003, Uncle Sam's Pentagon made over 3,000 contracts valued at more than $300 billion with 12 Uncle Sam private military companies [PMCs] out of the 35 estimated by the NYT, others of which are small and offer mercenary services. But more than 2,700 of those contracts were given to only two companies: to Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Cheney's Halliburton, and to Booz Allen Hamilton. [Center for Public Integrity's International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, cited in Mafruza Khan e-mail, 16 Aug 2003]. In Iraq these PMCs now have as many mercenaries as Uncle Sam and UK troops combined. But of course that is still ''small'' potatoes, since the bulk of Pentagon money is Uncle Sam-ed to buy expensive weapons systems from the only four major Uncle Sam ''Defense" contractors and the likes of Vice President Cheney's Halliburton. Uncle Sam then uses these arms unilaterally to twist others arms by armed threat and blackmail, and if that is not enough to invade the world that provided the money in the first place. After all, Uncle Sam has to do what it must to keep the money coming in.


To carry the ''white man's burden" to defend his ''civilization" the law of the west is the spaghetti western posse vigilante law


Uncle Sam unilateralism is not so much , as often mistakenly supposed, just going it alone. Yes, it is to proclaim fighting for ''Freedom" [whose?- we may ask] and "saving Civilization," as Uncle Sam President Bush and his even more eloquent UK mouth piece Tony Blair proclaim every day. The simplest way to ''save'' civilization was by simply abolishing in a day its most precious gift of the whole body of international law to keep the peace, which the West had taken centuries to develop, admittedly also in its own imperial interests. Still, it was the best and only international law we had, and at the very least better than nothing at all. Now the only "Law of the West" that remains is indeed 'The law of the West': The spaghetti western vigilante law of posses that, with or without a conniving judge, take the 'law' into their own hands to form a lynch party. Then they go after whom and where and when they please. Alas, now in the real world the self- appointed posses operate "out of area" on a much grander scale than any fictional spaghetti western film could ever have imagined.


That also means disemboweling and paralyzing the UN institution that was established to guard the peace, except when Uncle Sam after its own wars always re-cycles the UN to pick up the pieces he shattered in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and now Iraq. But in so doing, it also means, to dupe, threaten, cajole and blackmail all others - friends and foes alike - to do his bidding on every issue, big and small. He has trained a whole civilian army of officials to do that. That way, Uncle Sam ''unilaterally'' throws his still apparent weight around in all other international institutions that deal with endeavors from agriculture and aviation to zoology. But Uncle Sam extorts real unilateral favors for himself even more through his bi-lateral relations. That is why WTO was dead on arrival. Indeed Uncle Sam now prefers to Uncle Same bi-lateral relations unilaterally, as he increasingly isolates himself internationally. So, he can exercise even more military, political and economic bargaining power over any one of his victims than he any longer can over all or even many of them in international institutions.


Uncle Sam's proud march from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tipoli - on to Panama, twice to Iraq, Afghanistan


And when that bargaining is not enough, or even if it could be, Uncle Sam simply attacks when he feels like it and invades little Grenada [population, all of 300,000]; Nicaragua [with the help of arch-enemy Iran]; Panama [7,000 civilians killed in one night to capture one man only, Daddy Bush's one-time friend and ally Noriega - there is an all smiles photo of them shaking hands]; Iraq in 1991 [that was even a money making venture as Uncle Sam extorted more $ from his allies to pay for the war than it actually cost him! But Iraq was contaminated by Uncle Sam's depleted uranium, which has multiplied birth defect there - and which caused the infamous "Gulf War syndrome" among his and British troops, which Uncle Sam denies and refuses to acknowledge]. The less said about Somalia the better. Yugoslavia was attacked in part to make an example out of what can happen when a state is weak enough and, yet in abject defiance of Uncle Sam and his IMF, maintains some state ownership of important means of production and still provides social welfare state protection to the population. That is like still Belorus today, where Uncle Sam also tried to get ''regime change," but military action is more difficult on the border of Russia, unless it is in accord as against Afghanistan or is bought off. Moreover, Yugoslavia only gave up in 1999 after Russia withdrew its support from it; because Uncle Sam successfully used political economic blackmail and partly bought it off in Berlin.

Then Afghanistan became a targeted victim, again with the help of Iran and Russia. That is after Uncle Sam created and sponsored the Taliban government that eradicated opium. But the ''liberated" Afghanistan now grows opium again even more that before Taliban eradicated it so that opium now accounts for one third of Afghanistan's GDP, according to the new announcement upon taking office by the new President who was installed by Uncle Sam. At the same time as I write, Uncle Sam is launching a renewed military offensive against Taliban; but there is no more mention of bin Laden. And now innocent Iraq is already the Uncle Sam target and victim again, of which more below. Whos'e next, Iran?, Syria? - not Libya, it is now obediently making oil deals with Uncle Sam; and not North Korea that made nukes to protect itself against precisely that.


Sorry, I neglected to mention two additional perhaps possible alternatives prior to invasion. One is of course sponsoring, organizing, or even making a military or otherwise coup d' etat of which the CIA has a proud record,: Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Congo in 1960, Vietnam in 1961, Brazil in 1964, Guyana in 1964, Indonesia in 1964-65, Dominican Republic in 1965, Ghana in 1966, Greece in 1967, Cambodia in 1970, Chile in 1973, Argentina in 1976, Bolivia again and again, Fiji in 1987, Nicaragua in 1990 by "election" under threat of continuing the Contras war, Haiti again and again - against the ex-puppet Uncle Sam put there in the first place, just to name a few of the better known ones [of course not at the Uncle Sam home].


Another alternative is better known and attempted several times against on Fidel Castro in Cuba with explosive cigars and other imaginative CIA ''dirty tricks," all of which have been unsuccessful. So was the bombing of Cornel Ghadafi's tent home that killed his daughter. But our good Mr. Perkins relates a successful CIA attempt.

The Japanese wanted to finance and construct a sea-level canal in Panama. [It's President Omar] Torrijos talked to them about this which very much upset Bechtel Corporation, whose president was George Schultz and senior council was Casper Weinberger. When Carter was thrown out (and that's an interesting story-how that actually happened), when he lost the election, and Reagan came in and Schultz came in as Secretary of State from Bechtel, and Weinberger came from Bechtel to be Secretary of Defense, they were extremely angry at Torrijos -- tried to get him to renegotiate the Canal Treaty and not to talk to the Japanese. He adamantly refused. He was a very principled man. He had his problem, but he was a very principled man. He was an amazing man, Torrijos. And so, he died in a fiery airplane crash, which was connected to a tape recorder with explosives in it, which -- I was there. I had been working with him. I knew that we economic hit men had failed. I knew the jackals were closing in on him, and the next thing, his plane exploded with a tape recorder with a bomb in it. There's no question in my mind that it was C.I.A. sanctioned, and most -- many Latin American investigators have come to the same conclusion. Of course, we never heard about that in our country. (http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/09/1526251).

Torrijos had previously signed a treaty with President Carter handing over the Panama Canal to - Panama!

Simple inspection also reveals that being too good a political friend or tool of Uncle Sam can also be just about the riskiest, that is foolish, thing any statesman can do; for it can easily spell his political or physical death sentence after Uncle Sam stabs him in the back. A successor of Torrijos, as we noted, is now sitting in an Uncle Sam jail after loyally serving and smiling in a photo with George Bush [father]. But the line is long and goes all the way around the world starting in the 1950s and 1960s: Rhee in Korea, Diem in Vietnam, Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Somoza in Nicaragua, virtually everybody in Haiti from Papa and Baby Doc to the priest Aristide installed by Clinton and removed by Bush, the Shah of Iran - put there after the 1953 CIA coup against Mossadeq after he had nationalized Irani oil but was let go when his usefulness faded, as was Mobutu after three decades in Zaire, Saddam Hussein - Rummy himself went to see him twice in his already previous incarnation as Secretary of Defense, Yugoslavia's Milosevic - he was the necessary and reliable implementor of the Uncle Sam Dayton agreement in Bosnia, and of course the Taliban - Uncle Sam himself formed and put it in charge of Afghanistan, not to mention one Osama bin Laden - he also served Uncle Sam there.

[Not?] incidentally, simple inspection of the facts on the ground also reveals that, if the above ''lines of defense" fail and Uncle Sam goes to war, except for little Grenada, not a single one of these or any other Uncle Sam wars was ever won by his military force, unless it be the Pacific one against Japan. World War II was won in Europe at Stalingrad in 1943 by Russian troops who would have reached Berlin even if Uncle Sam had not arrived later]. The Korean War was and remains a stalemate. The War against Vietnam was lost. The War against Yugoslavia was ''won" only when the Russians withdrew their support, and then all but seven Yugoslav tanks and all of its planes left Kosovo unharmed. Only its and Yugoslavia's civilian infrastructure had been bombed to smithereens, and its and the wider Balkan landscape was polluted for eons by Uncle Sam's renewed use of depleted uranium. The War against Afghanistan is being lost, and so is the War against Iraq, despite the reported use once again of depleted uranium, also again of napalm as in Vietnam and even of gas.


Back to Headlines



News Briefs


Permanent peace, demands Conference of Indians and Pakistanis


The 7th Conference of Pakistan-India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD), which concluded on February 28 in New Delhi, and was attended by 600 delegates, nearly one-half of them from Pakistan, opened a new chapter by demanding a permanent peace between the two countries. The Pakistani delegates included 5 from the Pakistani side of the Line of Control (LoC) in divided Jammu & Kashmir and nearly half were women. The success of the conference was hailed by the media and had the blessings of the Indian External Affairs Ministry, which made available the premises of Hyderabad House, normally reserved for visiting heads of states, for use by the delegates.


Padma Shri award for Gladys Staines


Gladys Staines, widow of the Australian missionary Graham Staines, was awarded Padma Shri by Indian President at a function in New Delhi. Mrs. Staines's husband, who worked for many years among leprosy patients in Orissa, and their two small children were murdered by the Hindutva fanatic Dara Singh and his henchmen in Orissa on January 19, 1999; the jeep  in which they were sleeping in the night  was set on fire. Mrs. Staines, showed no vindictiveness against the murderers and  has remained behind in India to continue her husband's work".


Back to Headlines