SACW - 5 June 2016 | Afghanistan: Escalation / Bangladesh: machete killings / Nepal: Free Speech / Sri Lanka: Saffron Violence? / Pakistan: Atomic Bomb Tests 18 years on / India: Right Wing Education Project/ Brazil: Political Quake / Muhammad Ali (1942-2016) / Lessons for Peace from Back in the USSR / German Left and the Weimar Republic

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire - 5 June 2016 - No. 2898 
[via South Asia Citizens Web - sacw.net since 1996]

Contents:
1. Pakistan: A balance sheet for May 28 | Pervez Hoodbhoy
2. Sri Lanka: Return Of Saffron Violence? | Hilmy Ahamed
3. India: Poisoning Young Minds and Paving the Paths to Right Wing Expansion | Vijay Prashad
4. India: A Tale of Two Vehicles - Sadhvi's Motorcycle and Rubina's Car | Ram Puniyani
5. Video recording: Book release of Rana Ayyub's explosive book "Gujarat Files: Anatomy of a Cover Up"
6. India: In Bastar, it looks as if the failed Salwa Judum idea is being given a fresh lease of life | Nandini Sundar
7. India: ‘No! This is not Acceptable' say Delhi University Teachers | Mukul Mangalik
8. Video: Diane Elson and Amit Bhaduri on Development and Equity | 2016 Leontief Prize Lectures 
9. Recent On Communalism Watch:

::: URLs & FULL TEXT :::
10. Afghanistan: Escalation in conflict causing 'displacement crisis' - Amnesty International Press Release
11. Nepal’s Futile Attempt to Limit Free Speech | Biswas Baral
12. Bangladesh: No let-up in machete killing - Editorial, New Age
13. Pakistan: Women commission rejects CII bill
14. Pakistan’s Jihadist Heartland: Southern Punjab - International Crisis Group - Asia Report N°279 30 May 2016
15. Alex Zukas review of Ben Fowkes. The German Left and the Weimar Republic
16. New Political Earthquake in Brazil: Is It Now Time for Media Outlets to Call This a “Coup”? | Glenn Greenwald, Andrew Fishman, David Miranda
17. Lessons for Peace from Back in the USSR | David Swanson
18. Tributes to Muhammad Ali (1942-2016)

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1. PAKISTAN: A BALANCE SHEET FOR MAY 28 | Pervez Hoodbhoy
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On this very day, exactly 18 years ago, riotous celebration erupted after Pakistan tested its nuclear weapons. Just 17 days earlier, India had experienced a similar moment. Then, one year later, Pakistan once again saw mass jubilation during the officially sponsored Youm-i-Takbir. But, in sharp contrast, today's nuclear celebrations are barely audible. One hopes that this signals increased national maturity and sobriety.
http://sacw.net/article12792.html

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2. SRI LANKA: RETURN OF SAFFRON VIOLENCE? | Hilmy Ahamed
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Some Buddhist monks, who are going around intimidating Muslims, have formed themselves in to vigilante groups. There is a need for the government to take the bull by the horns. No vigilante group should be allowed to intimidate anyone, law and order needs to be maintained.
http://sacw.net/article12804.html

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3. INDIA: POISONING YOUNG MINDS AND PAVING THE PATHS TO RIGHT WING EXPANSION | Vijay Prashad
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These schools are the infrastructure of the Right. They set up shop, teach their narrow and dangerous ideology, use modest amounts of money to build support through social services and then convert this into political power. In both Gujarat and in central India, the long-term work of the Right has now delivered these regions to them. Older nationalist and leftist parties have fallen by the wayside. When one asks, how did the land of Gandhi (Gujarat) become the laboratory for the Hindutva Right, the answer lies —partly—in this educational infrastructure.
http://sacw.net/article12797.html

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4. INDIA: A TALE OF TWO VEHICLES - SADHVI'S MOTORCYCLE AND RUBINA'S CAR | Ram Puniyani
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Can there be two type of Justice delivery system in the same country? This question came to one's mind with the U turn taken by NIA in the cases related to terror acts in which many Hindu names were involved. Now the NIA in a fresh charge sheet (May 13, 2016) has dropped the charges against Pragya Singh Thakur, has lightened the ones against Col Purohit and others.
http://sacw.net/article12795.html

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5. Video recording: Book release of Rana Ayyub's explosive book "Gujarat Files: Anatomy of a Cover Up"
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On Friday [27 May 2016], The Caravan Conversations launched the journalist Rana Ayyub's self-published book, "Gujarat Files: Anatomy of a Cover Up." In 2010, Ayyub, then working for Tehelka magazine, had spent eight months undercover in Gujarat. Posing as a filmmaker, she met bureaucrats and senior police officials in Gujarat who held pivotal positions in the state between 2001 and 2010. The transcripts of the sting operation, unpublished so far, form the core of her book. At the launch, Ayyub was in conversation with the Supreme Court lawyer and the former additional solicitor general Indira Jaising, and the journalist Rajdeep Sardesai. Hartosh Singh Bal, the political editor at The Caravan, moderated the discussion, the first half of which is here.
http://sacw.net/article12794.html

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6. India: In Bastar, it looks as if the failed Salwa Judum idea is being given a fresh lease of life | Nandini Sundar
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The security establishment never tires of claiming that human rights activists are partisan, and only blame the state. But when they do expose Maoist crimes, the police is not interested. One wonders if the establishment's problem is really the Maoists – in whose name the state is spending several thousand crores on militarisation – or rights activists and the idea of democracy they uphold.
http://sacw.net/article12800.html

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7. India: ‘No! This is not Acceptable' say Delhi University Teachers | Mukul Mangalik
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A bombshell dropped by the University Grants Commission (UGC) on May 10th–the Gazette Notification 2016–has triggered a massive teachers' rebellion at Delhi University (DU). When the Delhi University Teachers' Association (DUTA) leadership gave a call for a boycott of the evaluation process, May 24th onwards, teachers responded with uncommon readiness and near unanimity. Evaluation centres remain deserted. Thousands of teachers thronged the Sriram College of Commerce (SRCC) auditorium and jammed the Ring Road and the streets of DU in the mid-day heat of May 28th. Close to 5,000 teachers marched from Mandi House to Parliament Street this afternoon, May 30th.
http://sacw.net/article12799.html

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8. Video: Diane Elson and Amit Bhaduri on Development and Equity | 2016 Leontief Prize Lectures
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On March 10, the Global Development and Environment Institute (GDAE) awarded the 2016 Leontief Prize to Diane Elson and Amit Bhaduri for their work to improve our economic understandings of development, power, gender, and human rights.
http://sacw.net/article12796.html

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9. RECENT ON COMMUNALISM WATCH:
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    Bangladesh’s accommodation of extremism spells danger for the region (Sumit Ganguly)
    India: State itself the culprit in Gulberg massacre - Teesta Setalvad (interviewed in Catchnews)
    India: ‘It Stretches Credulity that Court Rejected Conspiracy in Gulberg Society Case’ - Manoj Mitta reponds to questions by The Wire
    Ramdev, that hindutva laced yoga guru has big business ambitions
    India: What were these violent clashes in Mathura between Azad Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrahi and the police ?
    India: 84% Of 12 Million Married Children Under 10 Are Hindus (Indiaspend
    India - Gujarat 2002: What happened at Gulberg, 14 years ago (Leena Misra)
    Two Years of Modi Sarkar: Broken Promises-Sectarian Agenda
    India: Modi govts' attack disguised as FCRA violations on leading legal luminary Indira Jaising's NGO days after she spoke at the book release of Gujarat Files by Rana Ayyub
    India: Awaited, Judgement in 2002 Gulberg Society Trial, 69 People Massacred in Gujarat
    India: Court Verdict in 2002 Gulbarg massacre of Gujarat coming today
    India: Racism is not just skin deep (Anuradha M Chenoy)
    India: Madhya Pradesh govt slaps National Security Act (NSA) on duo for Facebook post
    India: Tough laws must deter street justice (Edit, The Tribune)
    India: Haryana government must take strict action against apathetic officials for Jat riots (Edit, The Times of India, June 1, 2016)
    India: Fear or forgiveness? Bandukwala dithers. But for many 2002 survivors, the issue is: No justice, no peace (Javed Anand)
    Salil Tripathi's review of Gujarat Files by Rana Ayyub
    India: This false dawn - Modi regime’s obsession with the ‘new’ .. to purge the ‘old’, and to create the ‘non-people’ (Apoorvanand)
    India: Every Pandit in Kashmir faces identity crisis (Aarti Tikoo Singh)
    [Courageous Rana Ayyub's Book] Challenging the Gujarat narrative | Jawed Naqvi (Dawn 31 May 2016)
    How major IT firms such as SAP and Oracle helped the India's right wing BJP during the 2014 national elections
   
 -> available via: http://communalism.blogspot.com/
 
::: URLs & FULL TEXT :::
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10. AFGHANISTAN: ESCALATION IN CONFLICT CAUSING 'DISPLACEMENT CRISIS' - AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL PRESS RELEASE
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(Amnesty International - 31 May 2016)

Press Release

    1.2 million internally displaced
    Afghan security forces struggling in areas such as Helmand where they have taken over from British troops
    Taliban at strongest since 2001, as well as emergence of groups claiming allegiance to ISIS

Afghanistan is facing a “displacement crisis” with the number of Afghans who have fled violence and yet remained trapped in their own country dramatically doubling over the past three years, Amnesty International warned today (31 May) as it issued a new report.

Afghans already form one of the world’s largest refugee populations, behind only Syrians, with an estimated 2.6 million Afghan citizens living beyond the country’s border. The report finds that there are also a staggering 1.2 million people “internally displaced” in Afghanistan today, a dramatic increase from some 500,000 in 2013.

Recent years have seen an escalation in violence in the country, as international troops – including UK forces -  have left, and the Afghan security forces have fought for control against anti-government groups like the Taliban, who are reportedly at their strongest since their ousting from power in 2001. This has led to large-scaled displacement across the country with people fleeing the intensifying conflict.

Helmand province, said to be the most dangerous in the country, was where the majority of British troops were stationed throughout the 13-year US-led invasion and occupation of the country. Four hundred and 49 British military personnel died in the province during the war. Since Afghan forces took over the battle against the Taliban, they have been steadily losing ground in Helmand, and as the conflict has escalated, more civilians have fled in search of safety.

There have also been growing reports of fighters claiming allegiance to the Islamic State armed group over the past two years. In the eastern province of Nangarhar groups apparently affiliated to ISIS have engaged in clashes with both pro- and anti-government forces in 2015, leading to the displacement of tens of thousands of civilians.

Champa Patel, South Asia Director at Amnesty International, said:

    “While the world’s attention seems to have moved on from Afghanistan, we risk forgetting the plight of those left behind by the conflict.

    “Even after fleeing their homes to seek safety, increasing numbers of Afghans are languishing in appalling conditions in their own country, and fighting for their survival with no end in sight.

    “All parties that have been involved in Afghanistan over the past 15 years have a responsibility to come together and make sure that the very people the international community set out to help are not abandoned.

    “Afghanistan and the world must act now to end the country’s displacement crisis, before it is too late.”

Amnesty’s research found that despite the promises made by successive Afghan governments, displaced people in Afghanistan lack adequate health care, shelter, food, water and opportunities to pursue education and employment, with most living in dismal conditions.

Mastan, a 50-yearold woman living in a camp in Herat, told Amnesty:

    “Even an animal would not live in this hut, but we have to. I would prefer to be in prison rather than in this place, at least in prison I would not have to worry about food and shelter.”

Amnesty pointed out that a National “Internally-displaced People” Policy launched by the Afghan government in 2014 has hardly been implemented – stymied by corruption, lack of capacity in the Afghan government and fading international interest.

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11. NEPAL’S FUTILE ATTEMPT TO LIMIT FREE SPEECH
by Biswas Baral
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(The Wire - 30 May 2016)

Many people in Nepal seem to believe that it is important to outlaw ‘hate speech’. But this is a slippery slope. Who is to judge what constitutes hate speech? And how do you suppress it without inviting a terrible backlash?

Nepal is no Bangladesh; you don’t get shot there for expressing your views. The public space is vibrant and every shade of opinion, however extreme, gets ample space in Nepali media outlets. But this does not mean there is no restriction on free expression in the country.

In Nepal there are authorities you can criticise at your peril. The recently promulgated constitution also has some vague clauses on press freedom, giving the state a lot of discretion over their interpretation and making them rife for abuse. For foreigners, it is tougher still, with a new government directive preventing them from speaking their minds.

According to the new directive, foreign travellers are forbidden from engaging in anything even remotely political while in the country. The ruling comes after Robert Penner, a Canadian living and working in Nepal, was recently deported for tweets that were deemed to be against ‘national interest’. The government, it appears, also did not take too kindly to his suggestion that the deaths in the recent protests in the Tarai belt be properly investigated.

Similarly, Martin Travers, a British national was arrested for participating in a recent anti-government protest in Kathmandu. Before him, veteran Nepali journalist Kanak Mani Dixit was jailed on what many believe were trumped up charges. His crime? Vocal opposition to a high-level political appointment.

Cases of concern

Penner had a valid permit to work with a Kathmandu-based technology company called Cloud Factory, unlike many other foreigners who routinely overstay their visa and work in the country illegally (mostly out of love for Nepal rather than with an ulterior motive). Penner liked to tweet and engage in vigorous debates on the new constitution online, and was known as being combatively “pro-Madhes,” not afraid to openly challenge anyone whom he deemed “anti-Madhes”.

Penner had his critics. He was too abrasive for some. (This writer has himself often clashed with him on social media on some issues.) But even his worst critics in Nepal — some of whom claim to have been harassed and trolled online by the Canadian — don’t believe he should have been deported for his tweets and his inquiry about the deaths in Madhes if he had not violated any visa rules. It says a lot about the level of tolerance in Nepal when people can’t even tweet freely.

Penner’s case is sub judice in Nepal’s Supreme Court right now as he has challenged the grounds of his deportation.

Before Penner, it was Dixit who was jailed by the country’s main anti-corruption body, the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA). Dixit had strongly opposed the appointment of Lokman Singh Karki — a person implicated in the suppression of the 2006 movement for democracy — as the head of CIAA. Karki is well-known for changing his political colours: once a diehard royalist, he swiftly jumped ship to the side of the democratic parties when it became clear that the Nepali monarchy was a spent force.

The grounds for Dixit’s prosecution were flimsy, as proven by the Supreme Court order to release him. According to the apex court, there was no evidence that he had abused his powers as the chairman of Sajha Yatayat, a widely-praised public bus service. It was a clear case of personal enmity.

Then came the arrest of Travers from a demonstration in Kathmandu. All available evidence suggests that he had joined the protest out of curiosity and that he had no political agenda. This was also why he was promptly released on probation. The British government subsequently issued a warning to its citizens travelling to Nepal to not get involved in any kind of political activities.

Indeed, the government has every right to formulate laws on what a foreigner in Nepal can and cannot do. But what are the standards it is aiming for? Is it looking to be North Korea or Syria or does it want to be a progressive country that is at ease with constructive criticism?

As Dixit’s case shows, such restrictions are not applicable only to foreigners. On May 23, another Nepali journalist, Shesh Narayan Jha, was arrested for taking photos of the government secretariat in Kathmandu. Jha happened to be outside the secretariat when a Nepali youth decided to smear the front of secretariat building with red colour resembling blood, an act Jha managed to capture. The youth, Ishan Adhikari, who was also taken into custody, was protesting what he termed the government’s reluctance to address the concerns of the protesting Madhesi and Janajati communities. Both were later freed but there have since been similar copycat acts of daubing red on the walls of the secretariat in support of Adhikari’s bold act of defiance.

Prime Minister K.P. Oli, it appears, is simply not bothered by the backlash against his recent efforts to control free speech. He is immune to such criticism. After all, he is someone who openly advocated enlisting goons into his party — the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninists), or CPN-UML — saying they deserved an opportunity to “correct themselves”. Nothing seems to bother him. This is why he has no hesitation in trying to limit the freedom of speech to serve his political agenda. The publicity stunts that he uses to whip up jingoistic nationalism among Nepalis seem to be working. Recently #ISUPPORTKPOLI became the most popular hashtag on Twitter in Nepal.

Restrictive Constitution

But it is not just Oli and the CPN-UML that wants to limit freed expression in Nepal. The Nepali Congress and the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), the first and the third biggest parties in Nepali parliament respectively, also agreed on a constitution that in a roundabout way circumscribes press freedom.

For instance, the new constitution guarantees “full freedom of the press” in the preamble. But Article 19 (1) presents an extended list of restrictions on free speech. It bans material that is deemed to infringe upon “territorial integrity, nationality and harmonious relations between the federal units,” and those the state sees as abetting “hatred to labour and incitement to caste- and gender-based discrimination”. These restrictions were notably absent in the 1990 Constitution as well as the 2007 Interim Constitution. Likewise, Article 19 (2) introduces a restriction, also missing in the previous Constitutions, allowing the government to “make laws to regulate radio, television and online content”.

It is important to unreservedly condemn any such attempts to restrict free speech, the cornerstone of any functioning democracy. Many people in Nepal seem to believe that it is important to outlaw ‘hate speech’. But this is a slippery slope. Who is to judge what constitutes hate speech? And how do you suppress it without inviting a terrible backlash?

C.K. Raut — a Madhesi academic who advocates the secession of the entire Madhes region – started getting some traction among common Madhesis only after he was jailed. Before that he was just a firebrand radical whom very few people took seriously. The same is true of Penner, who was relatively unknown except among a small online community before his arrest and deportation. Penner now seems determined to use his new-found celebrity online — with no less than The New York Times writing an editorial on his behalf — to hound the Oli government and to continue his fight against what he believes are discriminatory provisions in the new constitution.

In these times of great political churning in Nepal, we need vigorous debates on all contentious issues, not the policing of free speech.

Biswas Baral is a Kathmandu-based journalist who writes on Nepal’s foreign policy. 

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12. BANGLADESH: NO LET-UP IN MACHETE KILLING
Editorial, New age
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New Age (Bangladesh) - May 22 2016

Editorial

THE alarming trend of machete attacks on secular bloggers, writers, publishers, teachers, Muslim spiritual leaders and their followers, and members of religious minority groups, most of which have proved fatal, goes on unabated. The latest attack in the series took place on Friday morning in Kushtia. As New Age reported on Saturday, when a homoeopath and a teacher of the Islamic University in the district were riding a motorcycle on their way to a free Friday clinic the former conducted, three assailants aged about 25–26 years, who were also riding another motorcycle, hacked to death the homoeopath and critically wounded the teacher. This is the heinous manner in which more than 30 people, who were critical about religion or had liberal views of religion and life or belonged to different religious minority groups, have been killed, particularly since February 2013 when blogger Rajib Haider was hacked to death at Mirpur in Dhaka. Reportedly, both the victims at hand were fond of baul ideology — a popular expression of religious syncretism that developed here throughout centuries.

Although the police are yet to find the clues to the murders, the Islamic State, as the US-based SITE Intelligence reported, has already claimed the responsibility for the attack. The same intelligence group reported similar claims of either IS or another extremist group allegedly linked with al-Qaeda after earlier attacks, which were forthright rejected by the government though. What is, meanwhile, more frustrating is that while the government sought to link almost all the killings to its political rivals, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and its allies, in particular, it has so far failed to even resolve the mysteries behind most of the murders, let alone bring the perpetrators to justice. Not only that, it has so far shown an ominous tendency to accuse the victims, especially when it came to blogger murders, of courting deaths through their activities after all the attacks. One can also recall here the home minister’s comment after the recent murder of a Buddhist monk in Bandarban when he blamed the victim’s relatives for the killing even before investigation. There are reasons to believe that all this may have emboldened the machete-wielding groups to not only continue with their killing mission but also extend killing fields even to remote areas such as Bandarban.

As mentioned in these columns earlier, it is hard to believe that despite seriousness, the police fail to find out the machete attackers or the mastermind. It is all the more so because the government has said on more than one occasions that the perpetrators of the attacks do not come from across the border. Besides, the precision the attackers have evidently maintained so far in hitting the targets indicates that attackers were trained in this regard as well. In any case, the government must seriously act on the issue without any delay to allay the pervasive sense of insecurity among people, not to mention ending the long-prevailing culture of impunity. Conscious citizens also need to raise their voice over the issue in a sustained manner.

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13. PAKISTAN: WOMEN COMMISSION REJECTS CII BILL
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(Dawn - May 31, 2016

The Newspaper's Staff Reporter 

LAHORE: The Punjab Commission on the Status of Women (PCSW) has rejected the Council of Islamic Ideology’s (CII) proposed ‘model’ bill for the “protection of women” and condemned it as unconstitutional, illegal and in complete violation of fundamental human rights.

The CII’s proposal contravened fundamental rights of women enshrined in the Constitution and violated international laws and treaties Pakistan signed and was bound by, said the PCSW in a statement on Monday.

“In the light of Article 25 of the Constitution that upholds equality of all citizens before the law, the proposed bill adds no value to the rights of women,” the statement said.

The CII bill contains some 163 recommendations addressing issues of property, marriage and motherhood, besides crimes (including violence) committed against women. It also proposes steps like allowing men to “lightly beat their wives” and banning co-education past the primary level, that sparked a controversy.

All the rights that the CII claims to grant women under its “model” bill are already enshrined in the laws, the PCSW argues.

It ridicules the CII advice of getting codified in law that “women will not be permitted to receive foreign officials and state guests” and urged all concerned citizens and government bodies to reject the bill as unconstitutional and redundant for it not only impinges on the women’s rights but also reverses the rights gained over a century through a process of evolution of fundamental rights and freedoms.

The CII’s draft bill reduces to nothing the rigorous efforts made by the government to protect the rights of women and it treats them as legal minors and property of men by prescribing that they need to be instructed in all matters of life, the commission says.

Criticising CII recommendations for women on co-education, breastfeeding, ban on formula milk, use of contraception, criminalising abortion after 120 days, barring women from labour-intensive work and military combat, the PCSW says women all over the world have excelled in every walk of life.

From accomplishing the most physically challenging of tasks to running governments and big corporations, there is nothing that women have not been able to accomplish, it says, adding Pakistan is among one of the few nations in the world which has had a female head of the state.

“The CII appears to have forgotten the roles played by eminent women such as Ms Fatima Jinnah, Begum Ra’ana Liaquat Ali Khan, Ms Maleeha Lodhi and current ministers Ms Saira Tarar, Ms Anushay Rahman and Ms Hameeda Waheed-ud Din. CII’s position would be in all respects a huge step back from the progress that has been made to date.”

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14. PAKISTAN’S JIHADIST HEARTLAND: SOUTHERN PUNJAB
International Crisis Group - Asia Report N°279 30 May 2016
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Southern Punjab must be central to any sustainable effort to counter jihadist violence within and beyond Pakistan’s borders, given the presence of militant groups with local, regional and transnational links and an endless source of recruits, including through large madrasa and mosque networks. The region hosts two of Pakistan’s most radical Deobandi groups, Jaish-e-Mohammed, held responsible by India for the 2 January 2016 attack on its Pathankot airbase; and the sectarian Laskhar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), which was at least complicit in, if not solely responsible for, the 27 March Easter Sunday attack that killed more than 70 in Lahore. To reverse the jihadist tide, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N)’s federal and Punjab province governments will have to both end the climate of impunity that allows these groups to operate freely and address political alienation resulting from other governance failures these groups tap into.

Southern Punjab was once known for a tolerant society, but over the past few decades, state support for jihadist proxies, financial support from foreign, particularly Saudi and other Gulf countries, combined with an explosive mix of political, socio-economic, and geostrategic factors, has enabled jihadist expansion there. Bordering on insurgency-hit and lawless regions of the country and also sharing a border with India, it has long provided a convenient base where these outfits can recruit, train and plan and conduct terror attacks. Although jihadist groups still harbour a fringe minority in a region where the vast majority follows a more tolerant, syncretic form of Islam, their ability to operate freely is largely the result of the state’s policy choices, particularly long reliance on jihadist proxies to promote perceived national security interests. The absence of rule-of-law, combined with political dysfunction and inept governance, also allows these organisations to exercise influence disproportionate to their size and social roots.

With state sponsorship and a pervasive climate of impunity enhancing jihadist groups’ recruitment potential, the risks of joining are far lower than potential gains that include employment and other financial rewards, social status and sense of purpose. These are all the more compelling in Punjab’s largely rural and relatively poorly developed southern regions, where perceptions of exploitation by the industrialised central and north Punjab, referred to by southern Punjabis as Takht Lahore (throne of Lahore), are high, the result of political marginalisation, weak governance, economic neglect and glaring income inequity.

After the December 2014 attack on the Peshawar Army Public School by a Pakistani Taliban faction that killed over 150, mostly children, the civilian and military leadership vowed to eliminate all extremist groups. Yet, the core goal of the counter-terrorism National Action Plan (NAP) it developed – to end distinctions between “good” jihadists, those perceived to promote strategic objectives in India and Afghanistan, and “ bad” jihadists, those that target the security forces and other Pakistanis – appears to have fallen by the wayside.

A highly selective approach still characterises the ongoing crackdown on militant outfits in southern Punjab and undermines broader counter-terrorism objectives. While the anti-India Jaish continues to operate freely, paramilitary units use indiscriminate force against local criminal groups, and the Punjab government resorts to extrajudicial killings to eliminate the LeJ leadership and foot soldiers. Overreliance on a militarised counter-terrorism approach based on blunt force might yield short-term benefits but, by undermining rule-of-law and fuelling alienation, will prove counterproductive in the long term.

The lack of progress on other major NAP goals, particularly reform and regulation of the madrasa sector, has especially adverse implications for southern Punjab, with its many Deobandi madrasas. The children of the poor are exposed to sectarian and other radical ideological discourse. The state’s unwillingness to clamp down on it in sectarian madrasas and mosques so as to counter hate speech and prevent dissemination of hate literature increases the potential for radicalisation in the region.

In the poorest region of the country’s richest and most populous province, where economic hardships are compounded by periodic natural disasters, including droughts and floods that destroy homes and livelihoods, jihadist groups, often with state support, their access being facilitated by the bureaucracy, are given opportunities to win hearts and minds through their charity wings. At the same time, civil society organisations capable of filling the gaps in the state’s delivery of services are often subjected to restrictions and intimidation.

Despite jihadist inroads, the vast majority in southern Punjab still adhere to more moderate syncretic forms of Islam: Sufism, and Barelvism, with practices and rituals that Deobandis and Wahhabi/Salafis portray as heretic. Yet, a general climate of impunity is encouraging extreme religious, sectarian and gender discrimination and exclusion. If left unchecked, these groups’ influence will likely spread within and beyond the region.
Lahore and Islamabad should enforce the law against all jihadist organisations, without exception. If they do not, many in southern Punjab may continue to see the rewards of joining such organisations as far outweighing the costs.

RECOMMENDATIONS

To end the climate of impunity

To the federal and Punjab governments:
1.  Replace selective counter-terrorism with an approach that targets all jihadist groups that use violence within or from Pakistani territory, including by thoroughly investigating the alleged role of Pakistan-based jihadists in the Pathankot attack, extending beyond individual operatives to the organisations that sustain them.

2.  Focus counter-terrorism efforts on reforming and strengthening the criminal justice system, with a properly resourced, authorised and accountable provincial police force at its heart, so as to moderate reliance on lethal force.
3.  Investigate and monitor under the Anti-Terrorism Act or UN Security Council Resolution 1267 and its blacklist all madrasas, mosques and charities with known or suspected links to banned groups, as well as those that maintain armed militias, or whose administrators and/or members incite violence and other criminal acts within or from the country; and act first against those madrasas in southern Punjab already identified as actively training militants and having direct or indirect links with jihadist outfits.

4.  Prevent circulation of hate literature and enforce laws against hate speech in madrasas, mosques and other forums, including by following through on all current cases against hard-line preachers and others accused of violating them.

To redress policy that favours a jihadist fringe over a moderate and diverse civil society
5.  Remove arbitrary official and unofficial restrictions on NGOs and other civil society organisations in southern Punjab and assume responsibility for protecting against jihadist threats.

6.  Repeal all legislation that discriminates on the basis of religion, sect and gender and refrain from backtracking on provincial pro-women legislation or yielding to Islamist party pressure to dilute its provisions.
7.  Protect southern Punjab’s religious minorities, in particular Christians and Hindus, and take action against perpetrators of violence against women by acting through the legal system on reports of intimidation and abuse.

To redress the political, social and economic alienation in southern Punjab that contributes to recruitment opportunities for jihadist groups

To the federal and Punjab governments:
8.  Reform and expand the public school network, including by removing intolerant religious discourse and distorted narratives glorifying jihadist violence from the classroom; and accompany education reform with assistance along the lines of the Benazir Income Support Program (BISP) to help poor families afford to send their children to school.

9.  Increase southern Punjab’s development budget, accompanied by meaningful consultations with communities on development programs; and establish and implement requirements to hire a significant proportion of local labour for such programs and provide it related training.

To the ruling and opposition parties:
10.  Respond to the political alienation in southern Punjab by including local leaders within party decision-making processes and structures, and giving them a voice at the local, provincial and national levels.

11.  Redress local grievances by addressing them in the provincial and federal parliaments, including through appropriate legislation.

Islamabad/Brussels, 30 May 2016 

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15. ALEX ZUKAS REVIEW OF BEN FOWKES. THE GERMAN LEFT AND THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC
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(H-Net Reviews. May, 2016)

 Ben Fowkes. The German Left and the Weimar Republic: A Selection of Documents. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2015. 399 pp. $28.00 (paper), ISBN 978-1-60846-486-9.

Reviewed by Alex Zukas (Department of Social Sciences, National University)
Published on H-Socialisms (May, 2016)
Commissioned by Gary Roth

The German Revolutions

Ben Fowkes has produced a book that is much more than a standard documentary reader. Thanks to his skillful translations and expert commentaries, it gives English-language readers a sense of the broad range of issues which animated the German Left during the Weimar Republic (1918-33). Weimar Germany had the largest socialist party and the largest communist party (outside the Soviet Union) in the world so the relations between those two left-wing parties had world-historical significance. Since this book is a study of the political Left rather than the entire German working-class movement, Fowkes devotes little space to the politics of the German trade union movement (which was also the largest in the world).

Fowkes organized 176 documents around twelve key issues that correspond to the twelve chapters in the book. Although some complete documents are provided, most entries are short excerpts from longer documents. His choice of documents demonstrates Fowkes’s expert knowledge of the key primary sources on the Weimar Left and includes party congress proceedings, periodicals, unpublished archival sources, and published documentary collections. The brevity of the excerpts keeps the reader focused on the key issues being discussed in the chapter and prevents the introduction of extraneous issues present in the longer documents.

The chapters are organized around the following themes: 1) social democracy’s role in the establishment of the Weimar state, 2) council democracy versus parliamentary democracy, 3) communism’s insurrectionary politics, 4) the Weimar Left’s attitudes toward Weimar democracy, 5) social democracy (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands or SPD) between government opposition and coalition, 6) the German Communist Party (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands or KPD) and the Comintern, 7) social democratic foreign policy, 8) democratization of the armed forces, 9) the gender and sexual politics of social democracy and communism, 10) social democratic and communist long-term political objectives, 11) party structure, base, and milieu, and 12) parties and groups of the dissident Left.

The bulk of the book concentrates on the policies of the two main Left parties of the Weimar Republic. Fowkes reserves his last chapter for a discussion of Left dissidents from the beginning to the end of the Weimar Republic and includes a selection of documents outlining their party programs and critiques of the two major Left parties. It is a little surprising that Fowkes does not have a chapter on SPD and KPD views of, and policies toward, the Weimar Right, especially the Nazis, but these views and policies emerge in part in the above chapters.

Each chapter has an introduction in which Fowkes, with reference to exemplary historical research, explains the significance and context of the key issues raised by the documents. There is also a general introduction to the period and its central issues and extensive footnotes in every chapter that explain key terms, events, individuals, and organizations for the general reader. At roughly seventy pages, taken together the introductions constitute a small and well-informed monograph on the Weimar German Left.

The general introduction lays out the main political issues that the two major left-wing parties confronted in the Weimar Republic and the stances they took toward those issues. At the most fundamental level, most SPD leaders believed that capitalism was a permanent feature of German life and from that assumption they pursued policies that promoted parliamentary democracy as the best means to secure workers’ interests and piecemeal improvements. KPD leaders, on the other hand, “thought capitalism and bourgeois rule were doomed” (p. 1) and believed a revolutionary state based on workers’ councils would best secure the interests of the broad working class. The SPD strove to be a party of governmental stability while the KPD strove to be a party of governmental overthrow. That neither party succeeded in their quest is one of the main outcomes delineated by this book.

While it engaged in state- and local-level alliances (see chapters 3 and 6), the KPD shunned coalitions with other parties at the national level. The SPD welcomed such coalitions and the documents in chapter 1 clarify the role of the SPD’s leaders in supporting a national parliamentary government during the revolution of 1918 and the early years of the republic against more radical left-wing groups that sought to create a council-based democratic socialist government controlled by workers and against SPD stalwarts who proposed to socialize the major industries of Germany. The documents in chapter 1 illustrate the range of opinion within the SPD and the reform measures that the SPD attempted to enact with its coalition partners. Fowkes points out the major contradiction in which SPD leaders found themselves: only a vigorous mass workers’ movement (which made SPD leaders uneasy) could put enough pressure on the SPD’s bourgeois coalition partners to generate reforms but as soon as the pressure let up, the reforms were undone.

Chapter 2 revisits this early history but it focuses on the issue of the movement by radical workers for council, rather than parliamentary, democracy and SPD opposition to that goal. The documents show the lively debate among members of the SPD and the breakaway Independent SPD (USPD) about the desirability and feasibility of the councils as a new form of state. As the documents and commentary by Fowkes makes clear, many council members were not sure that they wanted to assume power and the SPD was able to use these divisions and its alliance with the military to suppress the more militant elements and have the more moderate elements vote to dissolve the workers’ and soldiers’ councils and institute factory councils that were not organs of state but would assist in securing social peace and efficient running of factories. A council form of government was a major plank in the KPD’s program throughout the Weimar period.

The first few years of the Weimar Republic were years of worker rebellion and civil war. Chapter 3 contains documents relating to discussions among communists of 1) the possibility of a united front with socialists and 2) the efficacy of insurrection. Fowke’s introduction to this chapter contextualizes KPD politics and explains important internal dynamics and disputes within the party about vanguardism and armed uprisings. His discussion is nuanced as he explains that German communism was not synonymous with armed insurrection or vanguardism during this period and that KPD leaders had varying views on both. Such disputes often ended with leadership changes, particularly in the aftermath of failed uprisings. The upshot was that, after several failed uprisings from 1919 to 1923 the KPD, while committed in theory to the violent overthrow of capitalism and the realization of a socialist revolution along Bolshevik lines, no longer fostered plans to seize state power but focused instead on opposition to the Weimar system and support for the Soviet Union.

Throughout its history in the Weimar Republic, the SPD had a love-hate relationship with the bourgeois parties with which it formed national government coalitions. Unlike the KPD, it saw the defense of the parliamentary republic as a defense of working-class interests, but coalitions often meant compromising on those interests. Chapters 4 and 5 provide documentary evidence of the internal struggles of the SPD regarding its strategy of coalitions with bourgeois parties in an unstable and sometimes hostile parliamentary democracy, along with documentary evidence of the problems faced by the SPD and KPD in their attempts to form a united working-class front against the bourgeois parties of Weimar. In both situations, ideological divides were deep and trust was in short supply. As Fowkes indicates, such coalitions were episodic. Efforts at a united front with communists officially ended when the communists began to refer to SPD leaders as “social fascists” after 1928 (although informal alliances did persist at the local level) and efforts at coalition with bourgeois parties ended in early 1930 with fundamental differences over social policy. Once fear of the Nazis took hold in late 1930, the SPD assumed a policy of toleration of the Brüning government, which led to its capitulation to right-wing parties bent on eliminating the republic.

Chapter 6 focuses on the relationship of the KPD to the Communist International (Comintern) headquartered in Moscow. Fowkes explains that the emotional and ideological connection of the KPD to the Comintern was always strong even as the relationship grew from one of relative independence and equality in the early Weimar Republic to greater financial and bureaucratic dependence to the point that, after 1928, the party’s “general policy in most important strategic and tactical questions was determined outside Germany” (p. 174). While the documents presented make this growth of centralized control evident, they expose the ambiguities and dissentions of the earlier period. Fowkes explains the “class against class” policy of the KPD after 1928 and its “social fascist” line was partially a result of a new Comintern line in the “Third Period” but also partially the result of a genuine and deeply held opinion of KPD leaders and rank-and-file members that the SPD was counterrevolutionary in the early Weimar period and remained counterrevolutionary in its continued repression of radical worker demonstrations in Prussia and its support of the capitalist Weimar state.

The next chapter presents the reader with documents regarding the SPD’s foreign policy ideas and practices, which Fowkes frames as pro-Western and anti-Soviet. The SPD worked to revise the Versailles Treaty through cooperation with the Allies while the KPD favored an alliance with the Soviet Union. Fowkes offers only a few documents on KPD foreign policy, which he argues was anti-Western (that is, anti-capitalist) and pro-Soviet. While purportedly about foreign policy, the documents themselves reveal a proto-nationalist bent within the SPD and even the KPD. In this chapter Fowkes’s commentary greatly surpasses the reach of the documents.

Socialists had long wanted to democratize the German military. Such a desire stretched back before World War I. The documents in chapter 8 lay out the various socialist and communist positions about the proper relation of the military to civilian power in the new republic. As Fowkes elaborates, because of their fear of a radical takeover of political power, the SPD aligned itself with the old imperial officer corps in the aftermath of the German Revolution and used the military to suppress worker uprisings, patrol eastern borders, and guarantee food supplies. The Soldiers’ Councils argued for subordination of the military to civilian power, election of officers, abolition of rank, and other democratizing moves but the new SPD-led government sided with the High Command and kept the old structures intact. By 1920 the time for reform had passed and the military retained a great deal of autonomy and began to influence foreign policy and budget decisions regarding military expenditures and illegal rearmament. Communists took a dim view of all of these developments and worried about a resurgence of German militarism, while the SPD passed a resolution in 1929 for civilian control of the military that carried no weight. Fowkes’s commentary again greatly surpasses the reach of the documents in this chapter. One wishes he had included documents that extended as far as his observations.

The documents in chapter 9 engage issues of women’s equality and sexual politics. According to Fowkes, both parties promoted women’s equality in society and the workplace, but the SPD had a traditional view of women’s roles and neither party had many women in leadership positions and both promoted gender divisions of labor within their party and affiliate organizations. The documents show that SPD women were not happy with this situation. According to Fowkes, the SPD was very tentative around issues of sexuality while the KPD used “demands for sexual reform as an agitational tool” (p. 243). Such demands included decriminalizing abortion and making birth control and sex education freely available. Fowkes elaborates the parties’ position on the other main issue of Weimar sexual politics, homosexuality, explaining that communists advocated complete decriminalization while socialists backed conditional decriminalization, but he includes no documents on their positions.

In chapter 10 the documents Fowkes submits are the two parties’ official programs at the start of the Weimar Republic and the modifications the parties made to them later. His introduction explains the problems faced by the parties that led to the articulation and revisions of these programs, with the communists moving in a national populist direction and the socialists abandoning their time-honored moniker as a working-class party in favor of a “people’s party,” even as prominent Marxists in the party resisted this move. Fowkes sees the SPD’s continued coupling of Marxist rhetoric with reformist practice as a major contradiction that it was unable to overcome. He also comments on each party’s agrarian program, which he includes in the chapter.

Chapter 11 presents documents regarding each party’s internal structure and the socioeconomic and geographic bases of its support. While both parties were urban and proletarian, the KPD was more urban and proletarian than the SPD and had more frequent leadership turnover. In his commentary, Fowkes engages the hot issue of working-class “milieu”: what it was, how strong it was, and to what extent the parties shared it. The documents offered in this chapter are party membership figures, organizational statutes of the parties, their auxiliaries, cultural (milieu) organizations, national election returns, and articles on worker education.

The final chapter in the book documents the factional divisions within the whole Weimar Left. The first texts are from the first and largest splinter party, the USPD (founded in 1916), which saw itself as the upholder of the proletarian values of the prewar SPD and as the defender of the council system. Both it and the Socialist Workers’ Party (SAP, founded in 1931) left the SPD (which a small section of the USPD rejoined in 1922). While Fowkes discusses other socialist dissident groups, the remaining documents concern communist splinter groups like the leftist Communist Workers’ Party (KAPD), founded in 1920; the rightist Communist Working Group (KAG), founded in 1921; ultraleftist groups around Karl Korsch and Ruth Fischer (1926); and the rightist KPD Opposition (KPO), founded in 1930. Fowkes argues that while this dissident Left was numerically small, it had influence beyond its numbers, especially at the end of the Weimar Republic.

This book has great value to historians and students of Weimar Germany, early twentieth-century socialism, and the Weimar Left not only for its wide selection of documents but also for the key debates among historians that Fowkes explains in his commentaries and footnotes. In addition, the book has a wide range and offers a rich picture of the Weimar Left. It includes documents that represent different viewpoints in the SPD and KPD on a whole range of issues and it engages high politics, social issues, long-term political objectives, the sociology and milieux of the parties, and dissident splinter groups.

Fowkes provides an outstanding bibliography of the primary sources he consulted as well as recent and classic works by historians on the Weimar Left. While space is always a consideration, one wishes he had included documents that extended as far as his commentary in some of the chapters. Also, some secondary works cited in the footnotes with only the name of the author and the date of publication (e.g., Sperber 1998 and Stibbe 2010) are not in the bibliography. This oversight is easily corrected with a full bibliographic entry. Nevertheless, this book will serve as a standard work on the German Left in English that historians of socialism or working-class movements who do not read German and students in upper-division history courses on the Weimar Republic or early twentieth-century socialism can consult with confidence.

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16. NEW POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE IN BRAZIL: IS IT NOW TIME FOR MEDIA OUTLETS TO CALL THIS A “COUP”?
Glenn Greenwald, Andrew Fishman, David Miranda
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(The Intercept - May 23 2016)

Brazil today awoke to stunning news of secret, genuinely shocking conversations involving a key minister in Brazil’s newly installed government, which shine a bright light on the actual motives and participants driving the impeachment of the country’s democratically elected president, Dilma Rousseff. The transcripts were published by the country’s largest newspaper, Folha de São Paulo, and reveal secret conversations that took place in March, just weeks before the impeachment vote in the lower house was held. They show explicit plotting between the new planning minister (then-senator), Romero Jucá, and former oil executive Sergio Machado — both of whom are formal targets of the “Car Wash” corruption investigation — as they agree that removing Dilma is the only means for ending the corruption investigation. The conversations also include discussions of the important role played in Dilma’s removal by the most powerful national institutions, including — most importantly — Brazil’s military leaders.

The transcripts are filled with profoundly incriminating statements about the real goals of impeachment and who was behind it. The crux of this plot is what Jucá calls “a national pact” — involving all of Brazil’s most powerful institutions — to leave Michel Temer in place as president (notwithstanding his multiple corruption scandals) and to kill the corruption investigation once Dilma is removed. In the words of Folha, Jucá made clear that impeachment will “end the pressure from the media and other sectors to continue the Car Wash investigation.” Jucá is the leader of Temer’s PMDB party and one of the “interim president’s” three closest confidants.

It is unclear who is responsible for recording and leaking the 75-minute conversation, but Folha reports that the files are currently in the hand of the prosecutor general. The next few hours and days will likely see new revelations that will shed additional light on the implications and meaning of these transcripts.

The transcripts contain two extraordinary revelations that should lead all media outlets to seriously consider whether they should call what took place in Brazil a “coup”: a term Dilma and her supporters have used for months. When discussing the plot to remove Dilma as a means of ending the Car Wash investigation, Jucá said the Brazilian military is supporting the plot: “I am talking to the generals, the military commanders. They are fine with this, they said they will guarantee it.” He also said the military is “monitoring the Landless Workers Movement” (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, or MST), the social movement of rural workers that supports PT’s efforts of land reform and inequality reduction and has led the protests against impeachment.

The second blockbuster revelation — perhaps even more significant — is Jucá’s statement that he spoke with and secured the involvement of numerous justices on Brazil’s Supreme Court, the institution that impeachment defenders have repeatedly pointed to as vesting the process with legitimacy in order to deny that Dilma’s removal is a coup. Jucá claimed that “there are only a small number” of Court justices to whom he had not obtained access (the only justice he said he ultimately could not get to is Teori Zavascki, who was appointed by Dilma and who — notably — Jucá viewed as incorruptible in obtaining his help to kill the investigation (a central irony of impeachment is that Dilma has protected the Car Wash investigation from interference by those who want to impeach her)). The transcripts also show him saying that “the press wants to take her [Dilma] out,” so “this shit will never stop” — meaning the corruption investigations — until she’s gone.

The transcripts provide proof for virtually every suspicion and accusation impeachment opponents have long expressed about those plotting to remove Dilma from office. For months, supporters of Brazil’s democracy have made two arguments about the attempt to remove the country’s democratically elected president: (1) the core purpose of Dilma’s impeachment is not to stop corruption or punish lawbreaking, but rather the exact opposite: to protect the actual thieves by empowering them with Dilma’s exit, thus enabling them to kill the Car Wash investigation; and (2) the impeachment advocates (led by the country’s oligarchical media) have zero interest in clean government, but only in seizing power that they could never obtain democratically, in order to impose a right-wing, oligarch-serving agenda that the Brazilian population would never accept.

Brazil's interim President Michel Temer during a meeting with unionists at the Planalto Palace, in Brasilia, Brazil, on May 16, 2016. Photo: Andre Dusek/Estadao Conteudo. (Agencia Estado via AP Images)

Photo: Andre Dusek/AP
The first two weeks of Temer’s newly installed government provided abundant evidence for both of these claims. He appointed multiple ministers directly implicated in corruption scandals. A key ally in the lower house who will lead his government’s coalition there — André Moura — is one of the most corrupt politicians in the country, the target of multiple, active criminal probes not only for corruption but also attempted homicide. Temer himself is deeply enmeshed in corruption (he faces an eight-year ban on running for any office) and is rushing to implement a series of radical right-wing changes that Brazilians would never democratically allow, including measures, as The Guardian detailed, “to soften the definition of slavery, roll back the demarcation of indigenous land, trim housebuilding programs and sell off state assets in airports, utilities and the post office.”

But, unlike the events of the last two weeks, these transcripts are not merely clues or signs. They are proof: proof that the prime forces behind the removal of the president understood that taking her out was the only way to save themselves and shield their own extreme corruption from accountability; proof that Brazil’s military, its dominant media outlets, and its Supreme Court were colluding in secret to ensure the removal of the democratically elected president; proof that the perpetrators of impeachment viewed Dilma’s continued presence in Brasilia as the guarantor that the Car Wash investigations would continue; proof that this had nothing to do with preserving Brazilian democracy and everything to do with destroying it.

For his part, Jucá admits that these transcripts are authentic but insists it was all just a misunderstanding with his comments taken out of context, calling it “banal.” “That conversation is not about a pact for Car Wash. It’s about the economy, to extricate Brazil from the crisis,” he claimed in an interview this morning with UOL political blogger Fernando Rodrigues. That explanation is entirely implausible given what he actually said, as well as the explicitly conspiratorial nature of the conversations, in which Jucá insists on a series of one-on-one encounters, rather than meeting in a group, all to avoid provoking suspicions. Political leaders are already calling for his resignation from the government.

Ever since Temer’s installation as president, Brazil has seen intense, and growing, protests against him. Brazilian media outlets — which have been desperately trying to glorify him — have suspiciously refrained from publishing polling data for many weeks, but the last polls show him with only 2 percent support and 60 percent wanting him impeached. The only recent published polling data showed that 66 percent of Brazilians believe legislators voted for impeachment only out of self-interest — a belief these transcripts validate — while only 23 percent believe they did so for the good of the country. Last night in São Paulo, police were forced to barricade the street where Temer’s house is located due to thousands of protesters heading there; they eventually used fire hoses and tear gas. An announcement to close the Ministry of Culture led to artists and others occupying offices around the country in protest, which forced Temer to reverse the decision.

Until now, The Intercept, like most international media outlets, has refrained from using the word “coup” even as it (along with most outlets) has been deeply critical of Dilma’s removal as anti-democratic. These transcripts compel a re-examination of that editorial decision, particularly if no evidence emerges calling into question either the most reasonable meaning of Jucá’s statements or his level of knowledge. This newly revealed plotting is exactly what a coup looks, sounds, and smells like: securing the cooperation of the military and most powerful institutions to remove a democratically elected leader for self-interested, corrupt, and lawless motives, in order to then impose an oligarch-serving agenda that the population despises.

If Dilma’s impeachment remains inevitable, as many believe, these transcripts will make it much more difficult to leave Temer in place. Recent polling data shows that 62 percent of Brazilians want new elections to select their president. That option — the democratic one — is the one Brazil’s elites fear most, because they are petrified (with good reason) that Lula or another candidate they dislike (Marina Silva) will win. But that’s the point: If what is being avoided and smashed in Brazil is democracy, then it’s time to start using the proper language to describe this. These transcripts make it increasingly difficult for media outlets to avoid doing so.

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17. LESSONS FOR PEACE FROM BACK IN THE USSR
by david swanson
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(davidswanson's blog - 3 June 2016)

In the early 1980s almost nobody from the United States traveled to the Soviet Union or vice versa. The Soviets wouldn't let anybody out, and good Americans were disinclined to visit the Evil Empire. But a woman in California named Sharon Tennison took the threat of nuclear war with the seriousness it deserved and still deserves. She got a group of friends together and asked the Russian consulate for permission to visit Russia, make friends, and learn.

Russia said fine. The U.S. government, in the form of the FBI and USAID, told them not to go, warned that they would not be permitted to move freely once there, and generally communicated that they, the U.S. government employees, had internalized their own propaganda. Tennison and company went anyway, had a wonderful experience, and spoke at events with slide shows upon their return, thus attracting many more people for the next trip.

Now it was Tennison's turn to brief the flabbergasted and ignorant U.S. government staff who had virtually no actual knowledge of Russia beyond what she gave them. This was back in the day when President Ronald "Is this a film or reality?" Reagan said that 20 million dead Americans would be acceptable in a war. Yet the so-called intelligence so-called community didn't know its assets from its elbows. War as a "last resort" was being considered without having considered literally any other resorts. Someone had to step in, and Sharon Tennison decided she'd try.

Those first trips took courage, to defy the U.S. government, and to operate in a Soviet Union still monitored by a nasty KGB. But the Americans went with friendship, were generally permitted to go wherever they wanted, and encountered friendship in return. They also encountered knowledge of cultural differences, the influences of history, political and social habits both admirable and lamentable. They became, in fact, a bridge between two worlds, experts on each for the other.

They expanded their work as Gorbachev came to power and the USSR opened up. They hired staff and opened offices in both countries. They sponsored and facilitated all variety of exchanges from art schools to Rotary clubs to police officers to environmentalists. They began bringing Russians to the United States as well as the reverse. They spoke all over the United States, even -- in some examples Tennison gives in her book The Power of Impossible Ideas -- converting gung-ho members of the U.S. weapons industry into volunteers and staff (in one case a man lost his job at General Dynamics as penalty for associating with them, but this freed him to more closely associate).

Tennison's organization worked on sister cities, citizen diplomacy, alcoholics anonymous, and economic development. The latter would, over the years, become increasingly central and certainly focused on privatization and Americanization in a manner that might well be criticized. But it was not U.S. citizen diplomats who created the oligarchs of the 1990s or any culture of oligarch admiration. In fact, Tennison and her philanthropists made grants to Russians dependent on their making donations to others, working to build a culture of philanthropy. Alcoholics Anonymous can also be criticized, of course, but this was an effort to assist Russians with a real problem, not to threaten them with nuclear annihilation. All of these projects built relationships that have lasted and that have influenced U.S. policy for the better.

Through the 1990s, the projects evolved to include food and financial donations, orphanages, aid modeled on the Marshall Plan's Productivity Tours, the creation of urban gardens and sustainable agriculture, and numerous business-training initiatives. Tennison met Vladimir Putin before he rose to power. She also met and advised top officials in the U.S. government. She accepted huge grants from USAID, the agency that had advised her never to begin her work. Of course, USAID has been involved in coups and hostile propaganda around the world, and a closer look at that problematic association might have been helpful in The Power of Impossible Ideas. But the work Tennison describes was all for the better, including taking U.S. Congressional leaders to dine in ordinary Russian homes. (I wonder how many current U.S. Congress members have done that.)

I can't possibly recount all the amazing stories in Tennison's book, which lives up to its vague and extravagant title; I strongly recommend you read it yourself. The critical development in the later chapters is the diversion Tennison encountered between reality and U.S. media. She found Putin to be a force for reconciliation, and the U.S. media to be intent on demonization -- at least from the moment that Russia refused to participate in attacking Iraq in 2003.

Putin had tried to partner with the United States, challenging the demands of Russian hardliners. He allowed the U.S. to use Russian bases in Central Asia. He overlooked the United States withdrawing from the ABM treaty. He accepted NATO expansion right to Russia's border. He supported, up to a point, the U.S. "war on terrorism." Washington didn't care.

"During the 2000s," writes Tennison, "I watched as the reservoir of goodwill from the Gorbachev/Reagan years evaporated." In 2004 the State Department cut off its funding for Tennison's work. In 2006 the Council on Foreign Relations produced a report hostile toward Russia. That same year, Russia gave the United States the 10-story-tall monument that stands in Bayonne, New Jersey, but it was too late to have the U.S. media inform many people of it. In 2007, the U.S. was pushing to get Georgia and Ukraine into NATO. Now, following the Ukrainian coup, the U.S. is seeking "partnerships" with NATO for those nations. The U.S. also announced its plans to put Ronnie's "Star Wars" into Poland and the Czech Republic, later changed to Poland and Romania.

Finally, Putin began pushing back, warning against aggression toward Russia. In 2007, Tennison brought a group of 100 Russians to Washington, D.C., to speak to Congress. But the hostility only increased. (By 2016 Pentagon staff would be openly saying the motivation of this hostility is bureaucratic and profit-driven.)

In 2008, Tennison and others in her organization launched a blog to correct bad U.S. media. But with tensions growing ever worse, Tennison has lately returned to where she started and begun taking groups of interested Americans to visit Russian cities and get to know members of the demonized foreign land. These trips are as badly needed as they were in the 1980s, though they may require less courage. In fact, what seems to me to require the most courage, or the greatest delusion, is to not participate in this potentially world-saving project.

Sharon Tennison provided this at the end of her book, so I assume it's OK to copy it here: Reach out to her at sharon [AT] ccisf.org.

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18. TRIBUTES TO MUHAMMAD ALI (1942-2016)
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FIGHTER, JOKER, MAGICIAN, RELIGIOUS DISCIPLE, PREACHER: MUHAMMAD ALI
by Kevin Mitchell
Muhammad Ali, the brash and beautiful young man from Louisville who ‘shook up the world’, was a man for his times who shaped those times and made them unforgettable
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/jun/04/muhammad-ali-sp-fighter-joker-magician

MUHAMMAD ALI (1942-2016): ANTI-WAR LEGEND AND BOXING GREAT DIES AT 74
"My conscience won’t let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people, or some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful America... How can I shoot them poor people? Just take me to jail."
by Jon Queally
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/06/04/muhammad-ali-1942-2016-anti-war-legend-and-boxing-great-dies-74


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South Asia Citizens Wire
Buzz for secularism, on the dangers of fundamentalism(s), on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
Asia. Newsletter of South Asia Citizens Web: 
www.sacw.net/

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DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not necessarily reflect the views of SACW compilers.
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