East by Northwest

Fuming Brits Find India A Convenient Whipping boy

2012-02-11T00:57:00.005Z

Deccan Herald 11/2/2012

Last year, British PM David Cameron led one of the largest-ever business delegations to India, comprising six Cabinet ministers and around 60 business leaders. He lobbied heavily in favour of the British built Eurofighter. But, asFrance emerges as the firm frontrunner to supply India with 126 fighter jets, the knives are now out in Britain – for Cameron and for India too.

The loss of the defence contract to the French company Dassault, which makes the Rafale fighter, would deny Eurofighter's Typhoon an important export order that could in turn jeopardise thousands of British jobs. Many in Britain have accused the Cameron-led government of not properly supporting British industry in the past and therefore regard the probable loss of the Eurofighter deal as emblematic of its general inadequacy.

As a backlash over India’s decision, however, sections of the public and various commentators have taken it upon themselves to also apportion blame to India bylinking the loss of the contract to the issue of aid. They have been quick to point out that the British government is sending 280 million pounds to India for each of the next four years and that the aid package is around 15 times larger than what France sent to India in 2009.

They ask, “Where is the trade dividend?” – especially in light of International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell saying last year that the aid relationship with India is very important and the focus of the relationship was also about seeking to sell Typhoon jets. For him, aid was linked to trade. But this is a stance which is now being strenuously denied by various members of the government he is part of in order to dampen criticism in view of the French having possibly bagged the prize.

Vociferous protests have subsequently taken place concerning sending aid to India, especially at a time when massive public sector job losses and slashes to services are being made in Britain.

It is being asked why should the overburdened British taxpayer give aid to a country with 300 billion dollars worth of foreign reserves and year on year growth that has been over 8.5 per cent? It has also not gone unnoticed that India has funds not just for its own aid and space programmes, but for nuclear weapons too, while Britain itself has no space programme and has been debating scaling down its own nuclear weapons systems.

Many in Britain question why aid should be given to India, which has an economy that is on course to overtake Britain’s in the next ten years, and that, according to financial advisers Merrill Lynch, has 1,53,000 dollar-millionaires - a number that grew by 20 per cent in just one year, compared with Britain’s own increase of less than one per cent.

They argue that India might do better to scrap its space programme, aircraft carriers, nuclear weapons and its huge aircraft buying programme worth billions and redirect all those funds to invest in improving the plight of the poor. Britain could then drop its aid and save money.

Banner headlines in the British press have claimed that giving money to India is a waste anyhow, given that rich Indians and politicians have silted away billions in Swiss bank accounts since independence. The accusation is that much aid money to India is thus chewed up by corruption and fraud. The lavish spending of India’s rich has been targeted too, with much focus on multi storey Mumbai penthouses, Formula 1 and the like.

Such arguments aside, though, what has often been ignored during this tirade against India is that, as a strategy for poverty alleviation and within the broader context, the impact of aid is minimal at best. There is no denying that, despite India's rising power on the world stage, poverty remains rife and the country is home to a third of the world’s malnourished children. India's annual average income per person is around 2.5 per cent of Britain’s.

However, much of the hardships are today fuelled by rising inequality brought about by neo-liberal economic policies. Inequality in India has increased significantly since it opened up its economy in the early 1990s. India's rich elites have benefited enormously, and this has often been at the expense of the poor. Look no further than the real estate speculators and the land grabs from the poor, the rising obesity levels and the persistent malnourishment, the corporate rich and the theft of natural resources in the tribal areas and the high GDP and the low poverty alleviation statistics. Aid is like using a plaster to stem a burst dam.

Regardless of whether India actually wants or needs this aid in the first place, it’s a pity that sections of the British media and certain politicians do not highlight the fact that the sum given by Britain to India is anyhow only less than one per cent of Britain’s debts - hardly a drain on the British economy. It’s also a pity that they don’t focus more on the real drain placed on the economy via the hundreds of billions that are being picked from the pockets of ordinary Brits via bank bail outs, corporate subsidies and fraud and tax avoidance and evasion by the rich.

Much easier for them to point the finger at India in order to divert attention from the neo-liberalism that continues to fuel Britain’s economic woes and exacerbate poverty in India. Much easier to use aid toIndia, just like welfare for Britain’s own poor, as a convenient whipping boy.

Wallowing in Consumerism, Passive Citizens Will Make Us Pay

2012-02-03T17:52:00.002Z

Deccan Herald 3/2/2012

As the debate rumbles on about India opening its doors further to powerful transnational companies, the question to be asked is just what is there to discuss? The neo liberal agenda of the US via the policies of various institutions, such as the World Bank and World Trade Organisation, has generally negatively impacted local economies, democracy and people’s rights, while fuelling inequality and lining the pockets of the rich and a relatively small section of the population.

Too ideological a standpoint? Not really, especially if you dig out the various reports on the rising inequalities in India, the low level of poverty alleviation (the same as it was 20 years ago, prior to economic liberalisation), the persistent deprivations and witness the ongoing often violent conflicts. It’s for good reason that reactions against the US agenda are taking place and credible alternatives are being forwarded and implemented elsewhere in the world, such as in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and other places in Latin America via popular movements and democratically elected governments. Even in theUS, where the ‘Occupy Movement’ has been prolific over the last six months or so, people are protesting and offering a plausible agenda for change.

But what of the rest of the population? What of the ‘don’t knows’, ‘don’t cares’ or ‘can’t be bothered’? How can they be galvanised into action?

On a recent train trip from Chennai to Delhi, a student told me that many of his friends at college are uninterested in politics or the problems facing India and the world at large. They were more taken with the marvels of the latest life changing i-pod, world shattering laptop or revolutionary smart phone to hit the shelves. For such students, a college degree would be their passport to a nice job, nice car and a never ending stream of consumer products – everything a ‘model citizen’ could ever dream of.

But politicians have known for a long time that if economic prosperity can be guaranteed, then key sections of the population could be bought off and passive ‘model citizenship’ assured. The same compliant consumerist mindset is prevalent among many in western countries too, even as they watch others taking to the streets to protest against corporate capitalism, job losses and attacks on the public sector and state provided welfare.

Certain people only have the luxury of not caring, however, because others who went before them did care. And because they cared, they struggled for access to education, workers’ rights and equal rights for women, black people and gay people. It was a long and hard battle to ensure things like decent wages, housing and healthcare that the ‘not-my-problem’ set now take for granted.

Today, as people are struggling to obtain or maintain hard won freedoms and rights, many who were given them courtesy of others or previous generations of activists look around and say, while no doubt tapping away on their cell phone in some macburger hellhole and gorging on the products offered to them via the irresistible output of the entertainment and information industry, “Not my problem, leave me alone.”

As debate rages over the pros and cons of the opening of the Indian economy to outside interests, many have already been softened up to accept the ‘benefits’ of neoliberalism and consumerism.

But what’s the problem? They have a right to indulge in the crassest form of crass consumerism they like, don’t they? Well, maybe. But when people talk about democracy and the will of the people, or at least those privileged enough to express their will via their purchasing power, there is often a blind spot. How can there be democracy when giant corporations, through advertising, rich and well-connected lobbysists and PR machines, have been able to prescribe attitudes, habits and emotional reactions, which bind the consumers to their products and thus the perceived legitimacy of the free market system?

Even almost 50 years ago, French social philosopher Herbert Marcuse could see then that consumer products had the function of corrupting and manipulating. They promoted a false consciousness, which was immune against its falsehood. He had his finger firmly on the pulse as far back as 1964, when he argued that corporate capitalism had succeeded in tying people aggressively to the commodity form via the need for possessing, consuming and constantly renewing the gadgets and devices offered to and imposed upon them.

And politics has come to mirror the mindset of the marketplace. Think of some meaningless political slogan such as ‘We are change’ or some ad slogan that states ‘Cola is life’, even though it should actually read ‘is death’ for those farmers whose water supply has been contaminated or depleted near the local bottling plant. Nobody really knows what these slogans mean and perhaps nobody really cares. After all, it’s that feel-good, knee-jerk emotional factor that counts. That’s what the market is. That’s what politics has become.

Noam Chomsky once said that neo liberalism reduces the population to mouthing empty phrases and patriotic slogans and watching gladiatorial contests between politicians who are little more than models designed for them by the PR industry. He is of course correct because, as long politics and people are in the shadow of big business, any belief that we have genuine democracy is illusory.

Somehow, this neo liberalism, this passivity, this neo colonialism, by means of propaganda and garbled logic, is passed off as constituting freedom. And because it’s freedom, so the lie goes, it is also democracy. So we must have more of it. And the more we have of it, the better. Right?

Myth and Reality: The Lies of Neo Liberalism

2012-01-20T18:47:00.000Z

Appeared in Deccan Herald on 21/1/2012

It is often said that there’s a fine line between success and failure. But any evaluation depends on where you draw the line and who is actually doing the drawing. Despite upbeat public statements from the Pentagon about Afghanistan, a recently leaked CIA report says the situation there is stuck in a stalemate. Khalil Nouri, co-founder of the New World Strategies Coalition, says the position is so grim that the US might be having second thoughts about withdrawing. After almost 11 years, the occupation is a failure.

US government spokespersons and President Obama are prone to telling the public that everything is fine in Afghanistan, however -- no doubt just as ‘fine’ as things are in Iraq, plagued as it is by sectarian divisions, ongoing violence, faulty infrastructure and terrible social deprivations. Based on official US public proclamations on Afghanistan and Iraq, are we to conclude that the word ‘failure’ no longer exists.

But this type of whitewashing is not exclusive to military ventures, as it applies to many other policy areas too, where we are also led to believe by various ‘experts,’ advisors and corporate backed think tanks that all is well. It’s more than a politician’s job is worth, or for that matter a highly paid corporate executive, economist or Pentagon official, to admit to failure.

Think of those who inform us that neo-liberalism has been great for humankind and that ‘globalisation’ has brought freedom of choice, democracy and untold prosperity. Think of those who tell is outsourcing is wonderful, Forbes rich-listers are role models and that poverty is soon to be done away with. And these people will also try to convince you that the ‘war on terror’ is going to plan and the ‘war on drugs’ even more so.

This propaganda continues even as, before our very eyes, crises abound with the poor continuing to suffer, civil liberties being stripped away, drugs crippling communities throughout Europe and North America, people being made homeless, wages continuing to fall in real terms and taxpayers’ money pouring into the black hole of needless wars and the pockets of the arms companies. Yet, we are patted on the head and told that we must stick with the prevailing system because there is no ‘credible’ alternative. That’s an extremely low standard to beat people into submission with and to measure success by – the yardstick of ‘things could be worse, so life is therefore better than you think’.

But that’s the trouble with proponents of the type of predatory capitalism and associated militarism that now engulfs the word. The system is in crisis and a patent failure, but is sold to us as a success story. While it is indeed a wonderful wealth creating machine for some, capitalism cannot solve its own problems. It just has a habit of shifting around the system the many problems it creates.

Capitalism is based on the need to maximise profit and beat down competitors. In the 1960s and 70s, in the face of increasing competition from abroad, not least from Germany and Japan, the US began to outsource production to bring down costs by using cheap foreign labour. Other countries followed suit. To provide a further edge, trade unions and welfare were attacked in order to suppress wages at home. Problem solved. Or was it?

Not really. As wages in the west stagnated or decreased and unemployment increased, the market for goods was under threat - if people have no money to buy things, then what to do? New problem, new ‘solution’ -- lend people money and create a debt ridden consumer society. Of course, it produced new opportunities for investors in finance, and all kinds of dubious financial derivatives and products were created, sold to the public and repackaged and shifted around the banking system. Now all of that has hit the fan too, this time the ‘solution’ is bailouts for the banks to get them lending once again.

Some solution. Even as the Euro teeters on the brink of collapse and markets are flooded with goods due to the over accumulation of capital and low consumer spending, failures are spun by politicians as glitches that can be put right by, for example, printing more money and handing out even more debt.

And on a global level, as local democracy is usurped by the influence of international finance and powerful corporate interests, local economies are being destroyed and people booted from their land. The fact that such people can then at least swarm to some sprawling, overburdened city and, if lucky, get a few dollars a day job in an outsourced sweatshop is also passed off as some kind of success story or economic miracle.

When the media paint a rosy picture of the world and when politicians inform us that everything is okay, according to the sacred scriptures of neoliberalism, why should we believe them? They are, after all, both sides of the same coin, feeding from the same gilded trough and sucking on the same corporate teat.

Surely any evaluation of where the world is currently at should be left to the ordinary folk, many of whom have already provided their assessment of the situation through the ongoing global protests against the bankers, inequality, imperialist wars and corruption.

There is indeed a fine line between success and failure. And millions of ordinary people have already taken to the streets to show where it really lies.

Poison, Eat, Inject: Big Pharma and the Food and Healthcare Scam

2012-01-10T14:24:00.006Z

Appeared in the Deccan Herald on 11/1/2012 and in the State Times on 19/1/2012

Walk down the local high street and see the shell of what it once was. Where local grocery stores, banks and quality clothes stores used to comprise the cornerstone of a thriving local community, there now exists a sense of decay and loss. The only people who shop here these days are the low paid, those in receipt of old age pensions and people on welfare. Most of the manufacturing jobs were outsourced abroad because it was ‘good for the country’, but not good for many of the people, who ended up jobless or underemployed.

The banks centralised, ‘rationalised’ and left. Their former premises have been converted into bars selling beer at bargain basement prices, where people can drink away their empty days. The clothes shops have been replaced with second hand stores and the grocery stores selling fresh produce are now betting offices or pawn shops, offering people the chance of a few pounds to get them through till the next payday or welfare cheque. Betting or booze, take your pick, they are opiates to dull the senses by any other name.

The big supermarket chains and retail megastores opened up a few miles away on the edge of town, catering to the car owning people with good credit ratings who could spend their hard borrowed cash on all manner of goods. Their hard ‘earned’ cash was never going to be enough given the downward pressure on wages and their decline in real terms for many years now. So debt became the saviour and pumped up the economy. The years of ‘maxing out’ on the credit cards were laughingly known as the boom years, until the market became saturated with debt that no one could afford to pay back. Many western nations lived in a bubble… then it burst!

Still, there’s always decent food if you can get to the edge of town supermarket, isn’t there? Wander down the massive aisles, and cast your eyes on aisle after aisle of brightly coloured produce from all over the world. There are no seasons in the modern supermarket. Everything appears ripe, appears fresh, even if it was picked green then artificially ripened between field and shelf. A seemingly endless supply of food from all over the world. Food grown for export, food as cash crops, food grown on fields in other countries. It’s no coincidence that most of the world’s poor tend to be involved in the production of food. It ends up on the tables of others in far off places.

And just look at those shelves. Chicken breasts, chicken wings, whole chickens, half chickens… all tightly wrapped in cling-film. Well, at least it looks like chicken. I guess before they were slaughtered, they looked like chickens, clucked like chickens and acted like chickens. Or did they? People prefer white meat from the breasts. So the chicken is pumped full of hormones to make its chest develop more in comparison to the rest of the body.

People want convenient food, always available. So, why not pump animals full of growth hormone and antibiotics? Why wait months for the chicken to grow when weeks will suffice? As the chicken buckles under the weight of its growth and its internal organs have difficulty in coping with such rapid growth, what eventually appears on the supermarket shelf is the ‘idea’ of a chicken.

The meat looks like chicken meat, it’s labelled as chicken, so it must be chicken. Right? But why focus on the illusionary chicken? We could quite easily apply the same logic to say the cow or the pig. These are animals that are made sick by chemical-industrial agriculture, some of which never see a field or even daylight, imprisoned in their shed. And people eat these sick, unhealthy animals. And while we are at it, why not apply the ‘idea of the chicken’ analogy to the banana, tomato of some other food item too, which has been painted and pumped?

With this amount of hormones, antibiotics, food additives, preservatives and colourings, artificial sweeteners, aluminium, sulphur, flavour enhancers and heavy metals being put into what we eat, is it any wonder that we are becoming sick?

Severe anemia, permanent brain damage, Alzheimer’s, dementia, neurological disorders, reproductive problems, diminished intelligence, impaired immune system, behavioural disorders, cancers, hyperactivity and learning disability are just some of the diseases linked to our food. Of course, just like cigarettes and the tobacco industry before, trying to ‘prove’ the glaringly obvious link will take decades as deceit and lies are passed off as ‘science’ by the corporations involved in food production.

In the meantime, enter the pharmaceuticals racket, sorry, I mean industry...yes, the very industry in the US that’s spends more on lobbying politicians than any other industry and more on marketing its bogus miracle drugs than researching them. The very industry that is involved in the manufacture of all those poisonous chemicals and additives that find their way into our food.

Big pharma has the US Food and Drugs Agency in its pocket and regards chemical industrial food production, the consequent diseases produced and chemical industrial ‘healthcare’ as a huge money making scam. Why prevent illness when you can produce it, then cash in on it? The production of contaminated food, the manufacture of bad health and the subsequent government sanctioned drug pushing in the name of pharmaceutical-led ‘healthcare’ begs the question, what price human life?

As India opens its doors to western agri-business, chemically laden supermarkets and drug pushing pharmaceutical companies, I beg the question what future your health? Indeed, what future India?

Greek Myths, an Arab Spring and a Million Mutinies Now

2011-12-24T19:05:00.006Z

Appeared in Deccan Herald on 25/12/2011

If one thing appeared to define 2011, it was ‘people power’. Most notably, there was the ‘Arab Spring’. This was followed by mass protests against social and economic inequality in the form of ‘Occupy Wall Street’ and the international ‘Occupy Movement’. And let’s not forget the anti-corruption protests in India as well. Dissent could be witnessed across the globe, and events reminded many of the radical days of the 1960s when ordinary folk believed they could effect meaningful social change by acting together. The year’s end presents an opportunity to look back on events and evaluate whether the optimism surrounding ‘people power’ was well founded.

First off, the ‘Arab Spring’, probably the most important phenomenon of 2011. The media coined the term to describe a series of protests that took place across the Arab world against a range of autocratic rulers. The ‘Arab Spring’ began in January after a market trader set himself alight in protest against the regime in Tunisia. The government subsequently fell after a month of increasingly violent protests, and President Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia.

The focus then shifted rapidly to Egypt, where the world’s media homed in on the thousands who occupied Cairo’s Tahrir Square demanding democratic rights and for President Mubarak to step down. Well, he did, eventually. A military junta took control and sanctioned elections, but not before launching a major assault on thousands of people in November who were still occupying Tahrir Square in protest against the army.

The King of Bahrain declared a three-month state of emergency in March as troops from the Gulf Co-operation Council were sent to quell unrest there. The West stood by as Saudi soldiers attacked civilians in Bahrain and put a brutal stop to any notion of democracy. Its attitude was rather different when it came to Libya, though.

A ‘spontaneous’ anti-Gadhafi uprising took place in the Libyan city of Benghazi, or so we were led to believe. Unlike the events in Bahrain, the US, Britain and France fell over themselves to get a UN resolution to ‘protect civilians’ from what they claimed was going to be an imminent, merciless attack on the people of Benghazi by government forces. Many pondered the West’s underlying motives in intervening in Libya, given that it was turning a blind eye to (even sanctioning) the violent attacks on civilians by troops in Bahrain.

Fuelled by an intensive NATO bombing campaign, an eight-month-long civil war ensued, leaving tens of thousands dead. A ragtag bunch of anti-government fighters, ably assisted by western special forces, subsequently captured and murdered Muammar Gadhafi. Not so much part of any ‘Arab Spring’ — more a preplanned policy of regime change by foreign powers.

The ‘Arab Spring’ rumbled on into Yemen and then Syria, with thousands fleeing that country to Turkey as protests and a government crackdown followed. Over the next few months, many were reported dead.

Apart from the turmoil in the Arab world, the tumultuous impact of the 2008 economic meltdown continued. As the economy nosedived in the UK, young people rioted in towns and cities across the country. Later in the year, however, a more constructive tactic emerged across the world in the form of the ‘Occupy Movement’, a kind of ‘democratic awakening’ that was partly inspired by the ‘Arab Spring’ and aimed at redressing various injustices, including more equal distribution of income, banking reform and a reduction of the influence of big business on politics.

Taking their cue from events in Cairo, ordinary people occupied and set up camps in key locations, such as Wall Street, London’s financial centre and outside the European Central Bank in Frankfurt. Much of the movement was directed towards the bankers and financiers who had been responsible for the economic crisis and its crippling effects on the lives of millions.

Over the weeks, despite attempts to discredit it by much of the media, the movement had more than a few politicians squirming, especially in the US, by drawing particular attention to the crooked links between Wall Street and various Washington politicians. Barack Obama, David Cameron and Manmohan Singh expressed a certain sympathy with the aims of the movement, implying that protesters were expressing legitimate concerns about fairness in society.

Fine words, but with no substance. A violent, co-ordinated police crackdown on protesters took place in many cities across the US during late November. Moreover, not wanting to pay any sort of financial price for their actions that had resulted in the destabilisation of so many economies, the bankers and speculators plunged Europe into a state of permanent crisis throughout 2011 by insisting that political leaders should fall in line and make ordinary people bear the cost. Politicians meekly obliged.

The good people of Greece, despite their highly publicised street protests, appeared powerless to prevent the onslaught on their public services and living standards to pay for a crisis they had no part in. The situation reverberated around Europe, with Italy, Portugal and a number of other countries sliding towards their own Eurozone sovereign debt nightmares.

Sections of the media in northern Europe conveyed the message that the ‘lazy’ Greeks (or ‘feckless’ Italians) were bleeding everyone dry with their failing economies and bailouts. It was a great Greek myth based on lies about the work-shy, welfare-loving people of Greece.

It was much easier to delegitimise the Greek protests by blaming the ordinary folk of Greece and their perceived character defects for a bulging national debt rather than focusing on culpable financial speculators and skewed economic relations between nations within the Eurozone. Europe’s pre-World War Two spectres of scapegoating and nationalism were thus beginning to rear their ugly heads again on the back of a major economic crisis.

And so to India, where scam after scam just keeps coming to light — the 2G telecom affair, the UP rice scam, Commonwealth Games corruption, the 2010 housing loan issue and… well, let’s be blunt, there are just too many to mention and on so many levels. In 2011, people had just about had a gutful.

Anna Hazare spearheaded the anti-corruption protests that sprang up across the country, and Swami Ramdev also led protests over the repatriation of black money from foreign banks. The government appeared to give way. Then it backtracked and dithered over the nature of the Lokpal Bill. Widespread support from various civil bodies and prominent figures across the country put pressure on the government to act. Things turned ugly with on-off hunger strikes, beatings and government crackdowns on protesters, and on Hazare himself. Bitter verbal attacks have become the order of the day.

Just as Julian Assange was threatening to declare precisely who had siphoned off what from the Indian economy into their personal foreign bank accounts, the US Government, Bank of America, PayPal and the like willingly lined up to financially cripple WikiLeaks and effectively prevent it from operating.

Under house arrest in the UK on what may well be bogus sexual abuse charges, Assange appears to be moving closer to being extradited to Sweden and then possibly the US to face espionage charges over the leaking of sensitive government information. With WikiLeaks and Assange on the ropes, it’s not just Washington that is letting out a sigh of relief. Many an Indian politician, private organisation and ‘high net worth’ individual might be too, who, according to a report by Global Financial Integrity, are the ones mainly responsible for depriving the ordinary people of money equivalent to 13 times India’s national debt.

What else happened in 2011? The new state of Southern Sudan came into being, Formula 1 roared its way into India, and there was pandemonium in parliament, as US retail giant Wal-Mart and other international multi-brand retailers took a step closer to entering India’s retail sector.

The ‘William & Kate’ spectacle took place in London, a royal wedding that some say drew in an estimated two billion TV viewers, corruption yet again reared its head in cricket, with a number of Pakistani cricketers being sent to jail, and the global population officially reached seven million.

A massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami hit Japan and dominated the headlines for weeks. Leaving a trail of death and havoc in its wake, particularly around the Fukushima nuclear power plant, some serious questions were raised by governments around the world about nuclear power and its safety, so much so that Germany decided to phase it out.

The UN declared a state of famine in Somalia, a car bomb killed 100 in the capital Mogadishu, and Norway mourned after 76 people were murdered in Oslo because a gunman had a grudge against the ruling political class and decided to go on a shooting spree.

And there was, of course, also the increasing instability in Pakistan. The US killed at least 24 Pakistani troops on the Pakistan side of the Afghan border in November, adding to the ongoing destabilisation of that country. With its influence in Libya already having been curtailed by NATO intervention there, warnings came out of China concerning possible military confrontation with the US over its role in Pakistan. This was preceded by Osama Bin Laden’s illegal assassination by US personnel, again on Pakistani soil, and unbeknown to the Pakistan authorities at the time.

Throughout the world, thousands of people lost their lives due to various natural and manmade disasters, including floods in Pakistan, Brazil, Thailand and Cambodia, a pipeline explosion in Kenya, a massive earthquake in Turkey and the bombing of Moscow’s Domodedovo International Airport.

But it was the rich and famous that tended to get more column inches. And on that note, 2011 said goodbye to Hollywood legends Jane Russell and Elizabeth Taylor, spiritual leader Sathya Sai Baba, painter M F Hussain, British singer Amy Winehouse, actor Dev Anand, director and actor Shammi Kapoor and computer guru Steve Jobs.

Looking back, the general narrative for 2011 was shaped by the mainstream media. However, although much news was underreported, or only featured in little known yet well respected ‘alternative’ websites or niche journals, we can safely say that 2011 was a year of uprisings and instability.

It would be nice to state that 2011 was the year when autocracies came crashing down in the Arab world and democracy prevailed, when the corrupt in India were shaking in their boots and when the bankers and politicians in the West were trembling in the face of protests on the streets. If only that analysis rang true. Unfortunately, it doesn’t.

Although the media focussed on the spontaneity and grassroot nature of events in the Arab world, and there’s no denying that many ordinary folk with genuine grievances were involved, there is evidence that many of these ‘uprisings’ were sparked off or manipulated from outside, with the US helping to fuel protests in the region for its own self interest.

Egypt’s President Mubarak had become a thorn in the side of Washington by disagreeing with US policy in West Asia. He was removed. The West’s erstwhile bogeyman Muammar Gadhafi was conveniently got rid of too. And with Iran’s ally Syria also being destabilised, USA’s long time goal of toppling the regime in Tehran appears to be a step closer.

As for the ‘Eurozone crisis’, with French and German leaders Sarkozy and Merkel zipped firmly into their pockets, the bankers and speculators are attempting to secure a guarantee that their future financial losses will be offset by the European taxpayer. An increasingly banker-dominated, centralised and autocratic Europe is looking less appealing by the day, with many, not least in Britain, demanding their government retain some semblance of national sovereignty and leave the European Union.

And, in India, the highly placed crooks seem likely to do their utmost to intimidate, procrastinate, water down or dodge the consequences of any anti-corruption parliamentary bill.

Too negative an assessment of ‘people power’ in 2011? Not really. Perseverance is the key to change. Nothing worth anything ever came easily, as Egyptians, more than most, know full well.

Notwithstanding the role of outside forces in the ‘Arab Spring’, many protesters seem likely to continue with their efforts to try to leverage at least some measure of democratic accountability from the new regimes. Despite media hostility and the crackdown on the ‘Occupy Movement’, the various occupation protests could be regarded as some kind of a starting point for effectively challenging the erosion of democratic rights and the corrosive power of big finance. Same too with India. A broadening of the anti-corruption movement beyond what it has now become is required to force politicians’ hands.

Whether this is at all realistic lies in the resolve of the people themselves. But given our digital age and the much talked about power of social media, it’s not wholly unreasonable to assume that perhaps many more Assanges, Hazares and dissenters will eventually emerge, especially if Julian Assange gets extradited to the US, Anna Hazare’s shoulders prove too narrow to carry the fight in India, or the occupation movements hit a dead end. After all, in ancient Greek legend, didn’t the Hydra of Lema sprout more heads after one of its originals was chopped off?

Too much wishful thinking? Yet another fanciful Greek myth? Only time will tell.

Softening Up a Population for War

2011-12-12T04:50:00.012Z

Appeared in Deccan Herald on 15/12/2011 and in Morning Star on 12/12/2011

Many in the UK swore that it would never happen again. A hugely unpopular decision to go to war at the time, Tony Blair is still vilified to this day by large sections of the British public for his decision to support the Bush administration and illegally invade Iraq.

Fast forward eight years, and the now British PM David Cameron and Foreign Secretary William Hague are spewing out a similar brand of finger pointing bravado that we once heard from Blair towards Iraq, but this time in the direction of Iran. The ransacking of the British Embassy in Tehran has served to ratchet up existing tensions between Britain and Iran a few notches more.

Hague, the blood on his hands not yet dry from Libya, has used the embassy episode to exploit to the full what have become ‘common sense’ perceptions of a demonic Iran that have become prevalent among the British public. And the British media can always be relied on to fuel such beliefs and then cheer-lead the public into supporting aggressive actions and policies towards other states, as it did over Iraq and Libya.

During the past few years, the British public has become used to media stories about Ahmadinejad ‘the crazy man’ and the ‘mad mullas’ in Tehran, as well as the Iranian regime being hell bent on wanting to acquire a nuclear bomb that would only threaten the ‘peace and stability’ of the region.

What peace and stability? Look what the meddling and carnage by the US has done to neighbouring states, such as Afghanistan and Pakistan. And why single out Iran over the nuclear issue? Iran is a nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) signatory, and there appears to be no firm evidence that it is in breach of it. Nuclear armed Israel and India are not NPT signatories, yet it’s Iran that has been subject to economic sanctions and nuclear inspections for years, while India basks in the warm glow of US ‘favour’, if that’s what compliance with US hegemony can be termed.

The UK government is perhaps softening up its public for possible British involvement in what could be an eventual military attack on Iran. With Washington already having done its level best to destabilise Iran and its ally Syria from within, a huge build up of US troops has been taking place in the region for many months. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is also crying wolf over Iran’s intention to acquire a nuclear weapon, which is hardly surprising given that a US diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks describes the new Director General of the IAEA Yukiya Amano as "solidly in the US court" and "ready for prime time."

China’s ambassador to the UN has already warned Yukiya Amano not to create “unfounded” evidence to justify a military attack on Iran in the name of halting its nuclear programme.

“Ready for prime time” is a very revealing term. Journalist John Pilger, writing recently in the UK’s New Statesman, highlights the propagandist role of the British media over Iran and how Pentagon press releases are passed off, even in the ‘serious’ press, as genuine investigative journalism.

In a document by the British Milinistry of Defence leaked to WikiLeaks, investigative journalism is described as a "threat" greater than terrorism. As military commander General David Petraeus once said, the US strategy is to conduct war of perceptions continuously through the news media. No surprise therefore that, as was the case with Iraq, lies, misinformation and bogus dossiers all have a role to play in trying to demonise Iran.

The reality is that the British government is once more falling in line with US policy. What was once referred to as the ‘Great Game’ during the days of the British Empire to describe the struggle for influence between Britain and Russia in the strategically important West and Central Asia regions is now a battle between the US and China, with Iran’s oil and fresh water sources being a vital prize.

As a client state of the US, something the Brits foolishly regard as a ‘special relationship’, Britain can be relied on to do Washington’s bidding. When the drum is beaten over the ransacking of embassy in Tehran, the drum is provided courtesy of Washington. Like a clockwork toy monkey, Foreign Secretary Hague beats it on cue. While many in Britain too easily swallow the ongoing demonisation of the regime in Tehran, others see things differently, not least China.

Having had their influence curtailed in Libya and in the wake of the US killing of 26 Pakistani troops, a top Chinese government official has warned that any threat to Pakistan would be taken as a direct threat to China, according to the JunshiJia website, which cites a report by China’s Central TV. The report also states that as the US war in Afghanistan deepens and the threat of military action against Iran becomes stronger, the threat of confrontation with China increases. A western-led military assault on Iran is strongly discouraged, a point China also hoped to stress by way of a huge show of force in its recent war games near the Pakistani border.

As William Hague possibly contemplates another dose of murder and mayhem after Libya, surely the lies in the build up to Iraq are too fresh in the mind for the British public to be fooled once again. By now they should have seen through the ongoing US-led deception of perpetual war for perpetual peace. Ultimately, there’s no peace to be found in Armageddon.

The Battle for the Corporate Control of India

2011-12-01T03:59:00.010Z

Appeared in Deccan Herald on 1/12/2011, Meghalaya Guardian and North East Times on 2/12/2011 and Morning Star on 7/12/2011

In recent years, India has increasingly conformed to an US-led economic agenda driven by the policies of the World Bank, World Trade Organisation and associated institutions.

The likes of Cargill and Monsanto could smell big profits and moved into the agricultural sector with their costly, non-renewable chemical-dependent seeds. Apart from undermining biodiversity and an indigenous agricultural sector, many farmers became trapped in debt and were left in an impossible situation. Under what is termed ‘Mode 4’, India’s pharmaceutical and financial sectors are now being prized open by European Union interests.

The coup d’etat for transnational corporations, however, occurred in 2005 with the US-India nuclear deal. It was a master stroke in securing India’s strategic geo-political and economic compliance. The deal not only created a market in India for US nuclear sector technology and fuel companies, but also secured India’s role in containing China and supporting US aims in Iran.

Environmentalist Vandana Shiva has argued that what many are unaware of, though, is that the deal was also linked to the Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture agreement, which was aimed at widening access to India’s agricultural and retail sectors for US companies. This agreement was drawn up with the full and direct participation of representatives from various companies, such as Monsanto, Cargill and Walmart.

Little surprise then that following in the steps of US agribusiness, Walmart is now possibly on the verge of gaining access to India. And it’s not difficult to be left with the impression that, as with the cash for votes scandal in securing the nuclear deal, Walmart’s entry into India is going to be pushed through (or at least attempted to be) at any cost, as demonstrated by the uproar in parliament concerning the undemocratic nature of the decision taken by the government to allow 51 per cent direct foreign investment in multi brand retail.

Anyone who says that giant foreign retail chains will squeeze out most of the competition and exert undue pressure on suppliers is attacked for being stuck in the past. The ones mired in outdated thinking, though, are the proponents of this policy who exhibit a blind faith in the ‘globalisation’ project that underpins the opening up of various sectors of the economy to foreign interests.

It’s ironic that at a time when India is opening its economy even more to the forces of international capitalism, tens of thousands are involved in the ‘Occupy Movement’ throughout the US and across the globe, protesting against the policies that have granted so much power to transnational corporations. The message from the protesters is that free market globalisation is a moribund ideology, which is underpinned by corrupt networks of interest and has created unemployment and enormous inequalities.

Take the food retail sector in the West, for instance. Big supermarkets have squeezed farmer’s margins, much of the retail competition has been eliminated and the type of ‘long life’, ‘always available’ food on display has been pumped full of chemicals from field to shelf, or is shipped half way around the world from poorer countries that produce cash crops for export to rich nations, which impacts their own agricultural sector. While beneficial to certain consumers, there are many losers.

Think of the local neighbourhoods with boarded up high streets that have given way to soulless, out of town retail outlets that are inconvenient for the old or the less well off without access to carbon emitting transport.

Think of the massive profits that are reliant on low paid labour and a heavily taxpayer subsidised, heavily squeezed chemical-industrial intensive agricultural sector.

Think of the long-distance, energy inefficient food supply chain and the large volumes of purchase from single producers at take-it-or-leave-it cut throat prices.

And now India wants to import this system for the ‘benefit’ of its own food sector.

India has a decentralised retail sector, where the vast majority of vegetables come to the doorstep, and has a system that is arguably quite effective at meeting consumer demand. Freshly picked, locally sourced vegetables are available from countless competing vendors, whether in tiny grocery stores or from community markets/street traders. Of course, there are certain problems, but this type of small-scale retail not only generates millions of jobs, but is also more eco-friendly and able to provide food at affordable prices.

The myth of western chains being the great saviour of India’s retail sector is partly justified on the basis that food price increases are caused by an inefficient, wasteful food supply system, while ignoring the price effects of the ongoing restructuring of India’s agriculture in favour of a handful of corporate interests. Moreover, authors Jonathon Bloom and Andrea Segre argue the western model based on corporate retail accounts for the waste of half of the food in the world.

The big supermarket chains in the West negatively impact the environment because their profits derive from a system that employs the extensive manufacture and use of chemicals. They compel farmers to grow tampered-with food to ‘enhance’ appearance and to ensure long shelf life, while also drastically reducing labour costs and increasing energy use by shipping food around the globe.

The fear is that the increased corporate control of agriculture in India will lead to the destruction of jobs and existing retail infrastructure, while placing decisions of what people eat and how it is produced into the hands of large foreign corporations. The fear is that surrendering control of India’s sovereignty and self determination by way of binding lop-sided international agreements is colonialism by any other name.

From Libya to Pakistan: A Tragedy of Epic Proportions

2011-11-29T04:48:00.015Z

Appeared in Deccan Herald on 29/11/2011 and in Morning Star on 13/12/2011

It’s a familiar scenario. A major political event occurs and the mainstream media opts for simplistic explanations. Take the so-called ‘Arab Spring’, for instance. The overriding narrative is about how Facebook and Twitter has changed that part of the world.

The premise is that widespread, spontaneous, grass-root uprisings spread within individual countries and then from one country to another, largely as a result of the use of social media technology. What we were not informed of, however, was the extent to which many of these events had been managed and preplanned.

In many ways, the Arab Spring is reminiscent of the earlier revolutions in Eastern Europe that occurred in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Also portrayed by the media as grass-root uprisings, many of those ‘revolutions’ were in fact destabilisation-regime change operations, funded and orchestrated by the US. Although many independently acting ordinary folk did actually become involved, they ended up being highly disillusioned with the outcome. But the west got what it wanted – pro-western governments in power.

The covert US funding and management of the revolutions in Eastern Europe has been well documented. A series of governments were overthrown by mobilising disaffected, pro-western people financed by the US government via various foundations, such as National Endowment for Democracy, National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, Freedom House, the Centre for Non Violent Action and Strategies and the United States Agency for International Development.

The same has been true of the Arab Spring - a nice media friendly sound-bite denoting renewal and hope. In Egypt, US friendly Mubarak was ousted and a US friendly military junta installed. Not much change. Not much hope. The turmoil in Libya and now in Syria are spin offs from the events in Tunisia and Egypt. And it doesn’t take much to appreciate that events across that part of the world are turning out to be favourable for the US.

That’s because it has had its fingers all over the Arab Spring since before day one. While the mainstream media homed in on the role of Facebook and Twitter in the Egyptian uprising, little if anything was said about the US government’s role, through its various foundations and institutes, in actually promoting the use of social media technology among the young and encouraging political activism in the Arab world.

French-Canadian Ahmed Bensaada’s new book ‘Arabesque Americain’ documents the links, funding and main figures behind pro-democracy organisations in over a dozen Arab countries, including Egypt, Lybia, Tunisia and Syria, which were financed by the US. Indeed, he identifies the specific pro-democracy groups by name and the exact amount of US funding each received.

Hardly a series of autonomous, grass-root uprisings as the media would have us believe. Notwithstanding the genuine desires, frustrations and grievances that propelled many ordinary folk to eventually join in and take to the streets, much of the Arab Spring seems to have been backed by a US policy of destabilisation.

George W Bush once stated that West Asia through to Pakistan represented an ‘arc of instability’ and that it was the US government’s mission to export freedom there and to bring stability to the region. Look no further than Pakistan to see what the US has brought.

An active US high risk campaign has been mounted to divide, weaken and control a nuclear armed country by fuelling ethnic and regional tensions and exploiting factionalism between and within the military, intelligence services and civilian government. The ongoing destabilisation of Pakistan and even possible eventual strategically managed balkanisation would serve to counter Chinese influence and fit in with US aims to assume control of the wider region, from Morocco to the borders of a compliant India.

Divide and rule has been a tactic of many an empire throughout the ages, and it is no coincidence that so many nations, usually highly strategic for US interests - Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya, for example – have been destabilised, after having been weakened at the centre by the US. Of course, they are now being ‘supported’ by the US, except in the case of Syria (at least not yet).

With its ally Syria teetering on the brink, perhaps Iran was all along the ultimate goal for the US domino policy of destabilisation in the Arab world and West Asia. Oil rich and holding a key geo-political position in relation to the mineral rich central Asian republics, the US has been for some time taking aim at Iran. If its covert operations to undermine the Iranian government and ferment dissent fail, there’s always direct military intervention, and the huge build up of US military hardware in the region suggests this is becoming a distinct possibility.

As part of ‘exporting freedom, democracy and stability’, the US is running covert operations, building bases (or massive embassy compounds) and is involved in training, arming, and funding local forces in 75 countries across the globe. Moreover, last year alone, its International Military Education and Training programme indoctrinated more than 7,000 people from 130 countries.

Countless ordinary decent folk are now living in chaos as a result of US and western interference. From North Africa through to Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and into Pakistan, the US has stoked up ethnic and political tensions and has attacked or debased the sovereignty of nation states in its attempt to secure control of the entire region. Whether it is part of the bogus ‘war on terror’, or whether it occurs under the lie of ‘humanitarianism’, US led imperialism has effectively brought an arc of tragedy to the region. And it’s a tragedy of epic proportions.

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For those who say Mubarak was pro-US and ask what would the US gain in getting rid of him, well, he was indeed pro-US in many respects. However, he was against the invasion of Iraq and was against the US' hostile stance towards Iran and Syria, among other things. He wanted to adopt a more conciliatoty tone than the US. Webster Tarpley gives a blow by blow account of the events that took place in Eygpt earlier this year and discusses the role of the US in ousting Mubarak. It's all on his site.

Why US Hates Assange

2011-11-16T04:06:00.006Z

Appeared in Deccan Herald on 16/11/2011 and in Meghalaya Guardian and North East Times on 17/11/2011

The US craves global dominance. Don’t take my word for it. As defence secretary in the1990s, Dick Cheney said the US wanted to rule the world. WikiLeaks’ cables and the US National Strategy for Counter-terrorism show that some 60,000 US special forces operate in 75 countries across the globe.Factor in the hundreds of US military bases on foreign soil, and you don’t need to refer to an old Dick Cheney quote to get the point.

To achieve compliance, military and economic power obviously matter, but ideology matters too, particularly in an era of social media, the internet and 24/7 news channels. In the modern age, for the US to secure hearts and minds, it has become vital that its point of view has to be the only point of view, or at least the most credible one, in the eyes of its own population and even the international audience.

During the last few years, though, a new force has emerged to challenge US official versions of events and its world view. By exposing lies and misinformation, WikiLeaks has become a threat to US propaganda, and the US has been doing its damnedest to neutralise it. US attorney general Eric Holder is on record as saying that the release of sensitive diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks had put the US and its citizens at risk. He subsequently authorised a criminal investigation into WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange. Many officials in the US regard Assange as a criminal, even a terrorist, who indeed should be put on trial.

The noose seems to be tightening around Assange. He appears to have lost his battle over extradition from the UK to Sweden to face charges of sexual misconduct. Counsel Geoffrey Robertson, Assange’s lawyer, claims the allegations are politically motivated and that Assange will not receive a fair trial in Sweden. Assange himself denies the allegations and also believes they are part of a plan to eventually extradite him to the US to face espionage charges and for the US to finally silence him.

The US state-corporate machine has done everything in its power thus far to curtail WikeLeaks’ influence. Most debilitating of all has been the shutting down of WikiLeaks’ access to finance, notably via PayPal, MasterCard, the Swiss bank PostFinance, Moneybookers, Bank of America and Visa Inc.

Bank of America has been especially strident in attempting to discredit and shut down WikiLeaks with various dirty tricks, including backing a smear campaign that involved the use of false documents, disinformation, and sabotage.

Assange recently said the financial blockade had destroyed 95 per cent of WikiLeaks’ revenues and announced that it was suspending publishing operations in order to focus on fighting the blockade and raising new funds. WikiLeaks and its members have also reportedly been victims of ongoing harassment and surveillance by law enforcement and intelligence organisations, including extended detention, seizure of computers and veiled threats.

Unfortunately, though, such actions come as little surprise. Successive US administrations have shown a strong dislike of democracy, whether at home or abroad, and have done everything to stifle it. As long as a foreign government, no matter how dirty, corrupt and repressive, acts in the US’ interests, the US has backed it. From the backing of death squads in Latin America and the overthrow of democratically elected governments, such as the Allende one in Chile in 1973, to supporting murderous regimes like Suharto’s in Indonesia, for decades US administrations have killed, oppressed and slaughtered innocent people, either directly or indirectly.

James Stockwell, former CIA official, argues that, by the 1980s, the US and CIA had been responsible for six million deaths through its ‘third world war’ – its war on the ‘third world’.

Assange’s stated aim has been to hold power to account by providing the masses with information that is kept from the public. By implication, the public can then hold its leaders to account. That’s democracy. And that’s what frightens the US. The people most ignorant of how US democracy functions are US citizens themselves. And that’s how the administration likes it to be. Assange has different ideas. He and WikiLeaks have shed light on political back room deals, deals that most often go against the rights of individuals and especially common folk, deals that make war and profits for the corporations and the rich elites.

In exposing state-corporate secrets and challenging powerful institutions, Assange has made many enemies in high places. From Wall Street to the heart of US government (and possibly the Indian government too, given the information he claims to have on India’s black money in foreign accounts), they fear him. And they fear what else he was about to expose, especially the names of crooked individuals who were responsible for the 2008 economic meltdown. For the time being, however, the financial blockade has all but silenced WikiLeaks.

Eric Holder says Assange put the lives of US citizens at risk by leaking diplomatic cables. But it has been successive US administrations that have been responsible for so many deaths abroad and thereby for polarising opinion across the world on the US. If anyone has placed US lives at risk, it’s not Assange. Holder should look much closer to home, within the US oligarchy of billionaire financiers, industrialists and corporate backed politicians who, as Julian Assange now knows too well, despise transparency, dislike democracy and will do anything to prevent themselves from being held to genuine account.

The Contemptuous Lathi Charged Cattle Prod of Indian Officialdom

2011-11-08T03:53:00.006Z

Appeared in Deccan Herald on 8/11/2011 and Morning Star on 9/11/2011

When a rich tycoon was interviewed about India’s inaugural Formula 1 race and asked if the nation’s priorities should lie elsewhere (with alleviating poverty, for example), he said let’s concentrate on what India has, rather than what it hasn’t got.

Easy for him to say. With a mouthful of dust and a rock for a pillow, the poor have for too long received little airtime or column inches when compared with the concerns of the middle classes and elites.

When the Sensex goes up, we are led to believe that this is good for India. In the west, when a company sheds workers to decrease costs, its stocks and shares go up. This is also presented as good news. But such things are not health indicators of the economy or the country. They are indicators of how happy the rich are, of how much they are benefiting from free market policies.

And India’s rich have become very happy indeed. At a time when so many are suffering financial hardship, ‘High Net-Worth Individuals’ (HNWI), according to a report by Capgemini and Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, have more than doubled in India. In 2008-09, India had 84,000 HNWIs. In 2010, it rose by 50 per cent, the biggest increase of all countries.

Almost everywhere, the sickening displays of conspicuous consumption are plastered on billboards, highlighted in TV commercials and expounded by various millionaire celebrities endorsing some or other worthless product that is, partly by virtue of them endorsing it, touted as being priceless. It can be easy to become desensitised by the poverty we see around us on a daily basis. Easier to say “leave me alone” and take refuge in the living room and tune in to the latest feel good TV programme, or read the latest gossip column in the glossy supplements.

Appealing to base instincts, greed and narcissism has become the priority value of ‘modern’ India. The need to shop is more of a priority than is the need to fill an empty belly. How many gleaming malls selling ‘must have’ international designer goods have been built on the backs of ‘never have’ sweated labour? ‘Never have’ education. ‘Never have’ enough food. ‘Never have’ the opportunity to fulfil their human potential.

For too long, the poor have prayed each day for what tomorrow never brought. The cruel fact is that tomorrow could have delivered. And it could have done so some time back.

How many rupees have ended up in Swiss banks, robbing such folk of a quality of life they can now only but dream of? According to some estimates, it could be over Rs 72,80,000 crore. Data from the Swiss Banking Association in 2006, indicated that India had more black money than the rest of the world combined, or 13 times India’s total national debt. And then there is the UP rice scam, direct theft from the poor, involving some Rs 2,00,000 crore. Astronomical figures were also involved in the 2G Spectrum scam. And so on.

Last year,Global Finance Integrity reported that USD 460 billion had gone missing from the Indian economy since Independence via illegal capital flow, thus widening the gap between rich and poor. The report suggested the main guilty parties have been private organisations and High Net Worth Individuals. The figure, however, could be grossly underestimated because it doesn’t include other illegal practices, such as smuggling and cash transfers outside the financial system.

After a while, though, statistics and claims about corruption become mere figures, mere words. Like the poor who we see living on the pavements, we can become desensitised to them. But beneath them lies a story of wasted human potential and sickening greed, whether that greed is by individuals or whether it is underpinned by the institutionalised corruption of an economic system that ensures wealth flows from bottom to top –and stays there. And as these processes continue and we can seemingly do little to challenge them, further desensitisation occurs.

The cost of this corruption has been a proper education system for all, a first class health care system and decent roads, buses, city and rural infrastructures. Instead, India’s elites have conspired to leave this country with cities that are becoming nightmares to live in, with a rundown rural sector mired in problems and poverty and with a mass of people that are treated little better than cattle by the police, politicians and authority in general.

Anna Hazare and other prominent figures and their supporters aside, too many still accept this. Too many accept the cattle prod lathi of corrupt, sneering, contemptuous officialdom. Partly, unlike the middle classes, they do not have the time, energy or luxury to protest. Partly, they have become conditioned to accept this state of affairs. A good old dose of Indian fatalism is reckoned on by those in charge to keep the less well off grateful for their miserable predicament.

The term ‘crimes against humanity’ is thrown around quite liberally these days. But seldom on such a list will you see sections of the Indian elite who have been responsible for the mass malnutrition and hunger, the early deaths, the wasted potential, the massive poverty, the daily suffering and by implication, the complete and utter contempt for the lives of crores of their own countryfolk.

Better for some to lie back and indulge if a grotesque form of cerebral masturbation by thinking of Formula 1, by thinking of a bulging Swiss bank account, by thinking of a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. Life’s easier that way. For some.

With Gadhafi Gone, the West Acquires Licence to Loot Africa

2011-10-22T04:15:00.008+01:00

Appeared in Deccan Herald on 22/10/2011 and London Progressive Journal on 26/10/2011 - a slightly shorter version also appeared in the Morning Star on 24/10/2011

So, Nato got its man. After actively intervening in Libya’s internal affairs, under the lie of ‘protecting civilians’, along with an estimated 30,000 others, Muammar Gadhafi is finally dead. There are conflicting reports about his end, but some suggest the remnants of his entourage fled Sirte in a convoy of armoured vehicles, but were attacked by Nato planes or a US drone.

Much of the media has lapped it up. According to many news bulletins, Gadhafi and his supporters fled, bloodied and wounded, until he was dragged from a drain pipe then beaten and executed by NTC fighters.

This version of events was perfect for the western media. A coward, a rat, taking refuge in a sewer. It fitted their depiction of him as madman, as brutal dictator-cum-coward, hiding behind his henchmen, till there was no one left to hide behind.

It’s good versus evil in the usual Hollywoodesque depiction of western wars – because there is no room for grey, no room to confuse the ‘bewildered herd’ of onlookers who pay for these wars with their taxes. God, or someone or thing else, forbid that anyone, especially the media, should question this carnage or, indeed, any of those politicians responsible for it. Luckily for them, the media didn’t.

Much of it knelt before the feet of Obama, Sarkozy and Cameron with the usual due deference required by their respective states in times of war. In fact, many people would have been hard pushed to admit to their countries having been engaged in a war in Libya, given the lack of coverage of events, or at least Nato’s part in them. That’s how poor the ‘free’ press is in the west.

The media has had a field day, parroting the platitudes of western officials who, as with Saddam Hussein before, like to tell the world that Gadhafi’s fate is a lesson to all the west’s ‘evil’ enemies. Standing before TV cameras in well tailored suits and with all the ceremonial paraphernalia of state at their disposal to provide a false air of respectability and help gloss over the hypocrisy, Obama, Sarkozy and Cameron have remained true to their lies, right to the bitter end.

These are the men who sanctioned slaughter in Libya. These are the men who, from afar, reined terror from the air in order to help a rag-tag force of CIA and western special forces-backed fighters on the ground take each town and city of Libya bit by bit. These are the men who killed, with not a drop of Libyan blood actually soiling their manicured hands and well pressed suits.

Yet, it is these men, and their media, who portrayed Gadhafi as the irrational maniac, a rat who was dragged from his hiding-hole. Gadhafi said he would fight to the end. It was he who said that he would never leave Libya and would die there. True to his words, he stayed and died on Libyan soil. Cowering behind their forces, would Obama, Sarkozy or Cameron be so willing to have remained in Washington, Paris or London, if those cities were about to yield to the overwhelming military might of foreign backed forces? I think we know the answer to that. These are people who kill with unmanned drones from far away bases in the US and UK and label civilian deaths as ‘collateral damage’.

But let’s put the hypocrisy and triumphalist mutterings of western officialdom and its media to one side for a moment. In part, the war on Libya was a war on Africa. India, China, Russia, or for that matter, any other nation not wholly in the pocket of the US was not going to get its hands on Libya’s oil. Under Gadhafi, there was no guarantee that this would not happen. Of course, it may still happen, but it will be according to the dictates of the new rulers of Libya and its western backers, whose oil companies have been lining up to oil their greasy palms with the benefits of Libya’s black gold for some time.

With Gadhafi gone, so is the threat of a leader who wanted to cement African unity, challenge the hegemony of the dollar with a gold backed dinar and assert control over Africa’s own resources. For too long, western imperialism has gorged itself on plundering Africa’s abundance of natural resources. If western powers can stop Libya disintegrating under the yoke of factionalism, as a result of conflict among the forces that it helped put together in order to oust Gadhafi, then it’s business as usual.

Payback has been a long time coming. Gadhafi was a thorn in the side of the west for decades, with his backing of the IRA, Palestinians and other causes throughout the world. Despite former British prime minister Tony Blair and moral crusader cosying up to him a few years back, the west has finally got what it wanted.

One final point. I can still recall an India military officer being interviewed on TV during the first Gulf war in 1991. When asked if any lessons could be learned from that conflict, he replied “Yes, do not go to war with the US without nuclear weapons.”

Ironic then, isn’t it, that Gadhafi, after renouncing his programme to procure weapons of mass destruction, has been ousted by the forces that pressurised him into doing so. As the west wallows in its latest apparent victory, it may just be stoking the fires for much bigger problems that are fronted by protagonists who have learned the lesson that Indian military official spoke of and backed by arsenals Gadhafi could have only dreamed of.

Bollywood Novacaine and the Dull Pain of Poverty

2011-10-13T05:16:00.007+01:00

Appeared in Deccan Herald on 13/10/2011, State Times on 21/10/2011 and London Progressive Journal on 4/11/2011

And so the issue of poverty has reared its inconvenient head once again. The Planning Commission has put the poverty line at 32 rupees a day. Ludicrously low. But playing fast and loose with India’s poverty line has almost become a trendy pastime.

The truth is that poverty is an embarrassment. It is an embarrassment to many of India’s rich and to a good number of politicians who like to portray the country as an emerging superpower, with its space programme, sophisticated weaponry, sports towns, growth figures, Formula 1 race track and gleaming malls. India also houses the second largest number of affluent people, with three million households having over USD one lakh of investible funds. While this represents just 1.25 per cent of households, it is again the kind of phenomenon that some love to promote as part the myth of India sitting at the top table of nations.

Reality check. One in four people in India is hungry and every second child is underweight and stunted. India is 67th out of 88 countries listed in last year’s global hunger index. The 2010 Multidimensional Poverty Index indicated that eight Indian states account for more poor people than in the 26 poorest African countries combined. According to this measure, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal have 421 million poor people. This is more than the 410 million poor in the poorest African countries.

Instead of concentrating on GDP growth figures, how about we focus on the annual poverty alleviation figure? The former fluctuates between eight and nine per cent, while the latter is 0.8 per cent, virtually the same as it was 20 years ago. The sacred scripture of free market 'trickle-down' dogma has not delivered.

But, hold on a minute. The eight or nine per cent GDP economic growth figures tell us that India is thriving. Right? Wrong. The rich in India are thriving, but the poor, and these days given the inflationary pressures, the middle classes too, are struggling to get by. If the growth figures tell us anything, it is that they - the poor and large sections of the middle class - are paying for the lifestyles of India’s rich.

Step inside the gated communities or a plush 27-storey one billion dollar plus Mumbai house and arrive in a Forbes nightmare world of privilege and wealth. Step inside the brand spanking new shopping malls, and you could be forgiven for thinking that you were in London or New York, with the plastic food joints, bland international chains and an air-conditioned macburger world of cola dens and coffee bars. These swish temples of modernity are a statement of perhaps where India wanted to be, of where part of India thinks it now is.

India is capitalism’s success story, or so the media tell us. But the logic of capitalism is to drive down costs and increase profits. Politicians in the West are trying to change perceptions of India among their own populations. They are attempting to eradicate the notion of it being a land of call centres and BPOs that takes jobs from the West and replace it with the idea that trade between India and the West is a two-way relationship that is creating jobs, growth and higher living standards for all concerned.

The reality is somewhat different. For example, the recent deal struck between India and the US for Harley-Davidsons will not benefit plants in the US because a new assembly unit in India is to be built. Setting up shop in India not only leads to the use of cheap labour, who were no doubt booted off their land at some stage, but also puts downward pressure on existing labour costs in the West. It's a win-win situation for CEOs and shareholders alike.

I suppose that servicing the well-to-do by providing them with Harleys, overpriced coffee and i-phones is what ‘development’ is all about, for some. However, the urban-centric, urban-chic ‘new’ India of retail centres, luxury motorcycles and consumerism is largely built on the 80 per cent that exist on less than two dollars a day.

On his recent visit to India last year, it was noticeable that Obama and his entourage had little to say about these people. Not much was said about India's warped development that creates rich-list billionaires while maintaining many urban and agricultural workers in dire poverty. There seems to be no invite, no reservation at the top table, no impending arrival at destination corporate-driven-nirvana for those people and others like them.

In the West, workers' jobs and wages are heading one way - downwards. In large parts of India, with increasing food costs, things are just as tough. Listening to political leaders you'd be hard pressed to notice though. They and the media are adept in twisting the truth and passing off such things to their respective populations as necessary blips in the journey towards to some cheap con-trick notion of the promised-land.

There is a shift in power occurring across the world – from the poor and less well off to the rich. And India is not escaping this phenomenon. When politicians speak of ‘inclusive growth’, it is nice talk. But that’s all it is. How could it be anything else with the government continuing to sell India to western financial and corporate interests under that benign term ‘structural adjustment’?

But poverty can always be brushed aside, can’t it? There’s always Bollywood novacaine or the latest rich list to distract or dull the pain. Better still - the stroke of a bureaucrat’s pen in drawing a new poverty line will do just fine.

The Great Arms Bazaar

2011-09-21T12:56:00.010+01:00

Appeared in Deccan Herald on 22/9/2011 and State Times on 27/9/2011

Buy one, get one free! It's the biggest show on earth, the biggest sales event this side of armageddon. It's the largest arms fair in the world, and it recently took place in London. Countless ways to maim and kill were on show with various sophisticated weaponries designed to pierce, explode and annihilate.

The three day event took place in one of the world's richest cities and in what could have been just another exhibition centre exhibiting garden furniture, children's toys, river boats or some other benign consumer good. But, this time, despite the veneer of respectability, a sordid, blood splattered industry was plying its wares. As with any other exhibition, all manner of brand spanking new objects were laid out in full splendour. If you ever needed reminding, whether it comes to Libya, Afghanistan, Columbia or Pakistan, death can arrive in many forms and can begin its journey in the most unexpected places - in this case, inside the ExCel Centre in London.

Representatives from Saudi Arabia, Israel and many other repressive, arms-hungry regimes were present. The UK's arms giant BAe Systems was there to make a killing - no literally, they really were there to make a killing - to make killing a highly profitable venture for its British taxpayer heavily subsidised shareholders. US companies Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and General Dynamics were present too.

If you are into mass slaughter, repression and war, and plenty are, East London and the innocuously named Defence and Security Equipment International exhibition was the place to be. Capitalism's naked greed and profiteering were there for all to see. Morality? Forget it. On the day that British PM David Cameron was in Libya celebrating another hollow victory for imperialism and the beginnings of the western colonisation of Nato's new protectorate, many of his arms dealing cronies in London were reaping the rewards of his and others’ militaristic policies.

I recall Cameron in Egypt, not too long ago, mouthing facile platitudes about democracy and human rights as the Mubarak regime fell, before moving on with his arms dealers in tow to Bahrain and Saudi Arabia - those bastions of democracy and human rights, who were incidentally invited by the British government to attend the London arms fair.

What timing though. As the London fair was in full flow, Cameron and his French counterpart Sarkozy wallowed in the limelight in Libya on the political platform of ‘protecting’ Libyans from Gadhafi. What sheer arrogance. What sheer hypocrisy. 30,000 now lie dead in Libya, countless others are maimed and much of the country's physical and social infrastructure is in ruins as a result of British-French military rockets and bombs and support for rebel forces who had been backed both during and prior to the intervention by the CIA and British and French secret services. The British government, in collusion with the profiteering arms manufacturers, has done its best to help destroy and set the wheels in motion for the rape of Libya.

Some 1,000 arms manufacturers were displaying their wares in London, and over 40 countries were represented. The Economist Intelligence Unit (part of the Economist Group) stated that 14 of those countries were authoritarian regimes. Five countries, according to the British government itself, were countries with "the most serious human rights concerns." But who cares when there is a fast buck to be made? Certainly not the British government, which partly funded the event through its arms promotions organisation. Despite apparent concerns over repression and human rights abuses and despite soothing official statements about the stringent conditions for issuing sales licences for arms, the British government has few qualms about selling to Algeria, Israel, Bahrain, Libya, Iraq, Saudi, Pakistan and the UAE, some of which constitute the government's 'arms export priority markets'.

While Cameron, Sarkozy and British Foreign Secretary William Hague stand in front of TV cameras and make warm sounding speeches about humanitarianism and the precious nature of human life, they and their arms dealing buddies are all to willing to play fast and loose with the lives of millions of people.

You don't have to go to the London arms fair to appreciate the fact that the arms industry and its political backers don't really care to whom it sells and for what purpose the wares are used. Some time back, Wikileaks provided insight into the global arms shopping list, much of which centred on West Asia and much of which was sold to regimes which subsequently used the military hardware during the ‘Arab Spring’ to suppress and kill their own people, or, in Israel's care, folk in Gaza.

If the arms industry ever went into a mild panic when the Cold War finished, there was never any need. The first gulf war and then the confict in the former Yugoslavia meant that markets were not about to dry up anytime soon. And now, despite the economic downturn and major defence cutbacks in the US and Europe, markets such as West Asia, Africa and India, the world's largest arms importer, are on hand to keep the pot boiling. With politicians stuffed in back pocket and tensions being stoked in various locations across the globe, regional arms races seem likely to keep the arms trade in profit for a long time to come.

A Thousand 9/11s Now - Bombed and Bludgeoned into 'Freedom'

2011-09-13T20:25:00.020+01:00

Appeared in the Deccan Herald on 14/9/2011

The tenth anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York was a sombre occasion. In front of tearful crowds gathered at the site of the towers, president Barack Obama read from the Bible and George W. Bush read a letter written by Abraham Lincoln as president to a widow who had lost five sons in the Civil War. The letter said that those deaths were “a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.”

The crowd heard that the US had overcome slavery and Civil War, bread lines, fascism, recession, riots, communism and terrorism and was reminded that, while the US is not perfect, its democracy is durable.

Such lofty ideals and moving sentiments were echoed by secretary of state Hilary Clinton at another event in New York. She stated that the US and other nations of the world face a long-term struggle against the ‘murderous ideology’ of terrorism that continues to incite violence around the world.

Draped in the national flag, the US mainstream media wallowed in conveying such sentiments on a day awash with sound bites of a nation united in sorrow and determined to defeat the forces of barbarism.

But, one question for Mrs Clinton: Who is to save the world from the barbarism of the US? Not the US media, that’s for sure.

Instead of getting drunk on the aphrodisiac of self-serving sanctimony on the anniversary of 9/11, the media could have done much better by focussing on the much wider picture, as did the organisers of a recent press conference for the ‘Millions March’ in Harlem. The conference heard Father Miguel d’Escoto Brockman from Nicaragua state that there are no people who know less about what the United States does abroad than the American people themselves who are systematically deceived. Brockman concluded that this is the very foundation of what they call democracy in the US.

The Millions March rally heard speaker after speaker denounce US imperialism abroad, while stating that, at home, police brutality and harassment, housing foreclosures, destruction of public education, hospital closures and the workings of the penal system all conspired to enslave black people.

New Black Panther Party head attorney Malik Zulu had a powerful message for the US government when he said that your enemy is not ‘our’ enemy, Afghanistan and Iraq are not ‘our’ enemies. He argued that black people’s enemies are right here in the US — budget cuts, racism and white supremacy — and that you don’t have to go abroad to fight them.

Such talk is in stark contrast to the usual self righteous platitudes spewed out by politicians and the media who privilege US democratic ideals ahead of other countries’ values. Let’s move beyond such establishment rhetoric for a moment and hold the US and its much touted democratic ideals to account.

US support for undemocratic, repressive regimes is there for all to see, whether it is Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the former Mubarak regime in Egypt or elsewhere. It has toppled democratically elected governments in Latin America and has torched, scorched and poisoned civilians throughout Southeast Asia.

It sells arms to repressive regimes, not least Israel to help suppress Palestinian people, and reports from numerous agencies document its creation of civilian bloodbaths across the world, from Nicaragua and Iraq to Pakistan and Afghanistan. Indeed, leading academic and activist Noam Chomsky provides detailed accounts of US acts of aggression over many decades that place it at the top table in terms of global terror states.

Imagine if the US were being attacked on a daily basis by unmanned drones. Imagine external forces were financing opposition parties there to topple the Obama regime. Imagine if outside sanctions were effectively killing millions of its citizens. Imagine, on the premise of some bogus ‘war on terror’, an outside country striking at will to ‘punish’ the US or take out individuals there for not falling in line with that country’s policies.

And imagine if that other country’s secret service were able to carry out or instigate acts of terror, revolt or destabilising tendencies within the US in order to ferment unrest, civil war or partition of the country. And imagine that country committing war crimes and getting away with it...

The worst thing is that most US citizens could not imagine such things happening to their own country. It would be beyond the pale. They could not imagine it because they remain blissfully unaware that such actions are being, or have been, carried out in their name in Pakistan, Venezuela, Iran, the former Yugoslavia, Sudan, Libya, Iraq and elsewhere throughout the world.

Such things are either not mentioned by the US media, are spun in a positive light (civilising the barbarians), or tend to be brushed aside as ‘unfortunate’ events in the US struggle to bludgeon and bomb people into accepting ‘freedom’.

When all of the havoc brought about by the US abroad and at home is taken into account, it kind of puts the 3,000 deaths, passages read from the Bible and talk of ‘sacrifices at the altar of freedom’ into perspective, doesn’t it? Maybe not for most in the US, but it certainly does for many of us outside who are tuned in to the wider picture.

YouTube Video - John Stockwell and the CIA's 'Third World' War - over six million dead through covert operations

Fame and the Free Market - Dying to be Different

2011-09-10T20:41:00.017+01:00

Appeared in the Deccan Herald on 11/9/2011

Being famous and dying young can be a great career move. It’s highly recommended. But there is an obvious twist. You will not be around to cash in on the benefits. Soon after British singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse died in July, her records re-entered the charts and were hits all over again. Jimi Hendrix also went to the top of the charts after his death in 1970, as did John Lennon in 1980. It's been a common theme down the years. But, career strategy apart, why is it that fame too often appears to be a passport to oblivion?

Kurt Cobain, Viveka Babajee, Kuljeet Randhawa, Silk Smitha and Kunal Singh are all reported to have committed suicide. Drink or drugs took the lives of Janis Joplin, Meena Kumari, Hendrix, The Who's Keith Moon and Led Zeppelin's John Bonham. Tragic endings all lay in store for Guru Dutt, Ishmeet Singh Sodhi, Divya Bharti and Parveen Babi. The list of famous people who died before their time, often in tragic circumstances, is a long and sad one.

Rock and roll in particular is notorious for the deaths of young men and women in their prime. In 2007, a British university study found that between 1956 and 2005 drug and alcohol problems accounted for 25 per cent of the deaths of a sample of artists who died young.

But the grim reaper does not have to come calling with a bagful of booze and drugs. Death can come early to the famous in many forms and is not always self inflicted. It can be via the hand of the unhinged, or simply as a result of leading a hectic life and constantly being on the move. For instance, John Lennon was murdered just for being an icon, at age 40, and early rock and roll pioneers Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and Eddie Cochrane were all killed in plane or car crashes. None of them lived beyond 22.

Even many of those who survived fame and lived to tell the tale only did so only by the skin of their teeth. While India has more than it’s fair share of celebrities who fell down only to get up again, even bad boy Sanjay Dutt cannot compare to the Rolling Stones's Keith Richards, that walking pickled featured cocktail of booze, drugs and heavy living, who has been on many a website's 'death watch' list for years. His musical talent is surpassed only by his ability to survive a long life of reckless debauchery.

Alas, such a life is not for everyone. Amy Winehouse barely made it to 27. While she will linger in the collective memory for some time to come, her legacy of brilliant singer with an insatiable appetite for R&B, soul and jazz will be tainted by her tendency for self destruction.

Her singing was certainly up there with the all time greats, as any aficionado in the music industry will testify. With that powerful voice, black beehive hair, tattoos and heavy eye make up, she was instantly recognisable, and her short life was littered with international accolades and awards.

She collected five Grammys, three Ivor Novellas and virtually every prize that she could have won. Her songs and albums propelled her to the top of the music profession and provided her with the means to indulge in all the trappings that fame brings. It may be no exaggeration to claim that, well before her death at such a young age, she was already on the way to acquiring legendary standing on the basis of her musical talents. As is often the case, dying young has certainly cemented that status.

Amy Winehouse appeared to have everything going for her. But she threw it all away. The paparazzi and tabloid press were all too quick to home in on tales of heroin and crack cocaine use and erratic behaviour. They hounded her wherever she went. Harrowing reports of violence, drug rehabilitation clinics, alcoholism and various health issues became commonplace and served to overshadow her talent and eventually detract from her live performances. Her father at one stage was reported as saying that doctors had warned his daughter that, if she continued smoking crack cocaine, she would have to wear an oxygen mask and would eventually die.

Amy Whinehouse should be remembered for her brilliant voice and songs. But we don’t live in an ideal world, do we? Her early death tells us this. It doesn’t take a genius to see that she was a troubled young woman. So, who is to say that things would have been much different if fame had never come knocking?

The answer to that question can only be speculative. But, in a world that turns people into almost instant global brand identities for mass marketing and lavishes them with untold fame and riches, is it any wonder than more than a few - in many cases, stronger souls than Whinehouse - can’t cope and end up dead or as tragic figures?

Whether it’s Michael Jackson ‘king of pop’ or Diana ‘queen of hearts’, such famous people lead lives that most ordinary folk cannot even begin to imagine. They become media manufactured icons, which can have sinister implications for all concerned – for those coping with fame and playing out the illusion, but also at times for many of the fans who buy into celebrity worship and become obsessed with perfect strangers whom they think they know so well.

Amy Winehouse is now part of the long list of celebrities who have fallen by the wayside at a young age as a result of drugs, drink or health problems, or a combination of all three. But perhaps, ultimately, she is just another casualty of the frailty of the human condition when confronted with a modern world fixated by materialism and celebrity.

Craving fame and wealth has become the blind faith of the age. TV programmes like X Factor and Idol are based on the falsehood that this is what we should aspire to, as we drool over a fast food smorgasbord of here today-gone tomorrow brands to be glorified then spat out when considered obsolete. It's an obsession built on crazes that have little resilience in a world of media induced fabrications and fickle idolisation.

While material reward and fame may be a somewhat liberating experience for those who emerge into the limelight from lives of poverty and hardship, the crass fetishisation of wealth and wannabe celebritydom, coupled with a pervasive cult of excessive individualism, can be socially divisive. Such a culture eats away at a sense of communality and camaraderie by encouraging folk to seek unlimited self gratification and set themselves apart from everyone else. It also fuels a certain arrogance, which can lead people to regard themselves as being above and beyond society's standards of accountability.

You don’t have to read about some movie star running a vehicle into people sleeping on a Mumbai pavement and then walking free, in order to have an inkling of the type of sickening conceit that fame can bestow and the corrosive influence it has. Nor do you have to watch them bounce in and out of court, lodge numerous appeals and serve mere days in prison for crimes that ordinary folk would be banged up years for.

But fame begets privilege, and its influence is everywhere in today's world of multi-channel 24 hour TV, powerful public relations agencies, gossip columns and instantly accessible social media. Fame must not be viewed in isolation, though. It is part of a wider ideology.

The French philosopher and social theorist Michael Foucault suggested that our taken for granted knowledge about the world in general and how we regard ourselves may seem benign and neutral, but must be viewed within the context of power. Today, fame and individualism have increasingly become an accepted form of ‘truth’, of reality, and of how we view ourselves and evaluate those around us. Endless glossy commercials and TV shows that wallow in the filthy veneration of money, fame and narcissism are conveying the message that greed is good, fame is the epitome of success and the individual is king.

This is, of course, based on a false assumption, on a lingering lie. And part of that lie is the joining of fame and failure at the hip. Notions of failure are implicit in the messages surrounding individualism, money and fame. If you are not famous or do not stand out from the crowd, you are somehow a failure. If you don't buy this product, wear that item or apply some whitening skin cream, you somehow don't cut it. It is a culture that preys on our insecurities, which the media, ad agencies and product makers manipulate at will.

In true Foucauldian style, it's a power play that is concerned with redefining who we are or what we should be. Consumerism, fame and a notion of ‘the self’ in terms of individualism, not the collective, dovetail neatly with the ‘free market’ ideology of the day. In a world where it’s become a case of ‘each one for themself’, the carrot of fame or of ‘making it big’ provides the perfect antidote. A craving for fame and fortune is the promised land, the ultimate opiate for modern man and woman.

Such concerns aside, it must be stressed that wealth and fame are very narrow measurements of success anyhow. Humans are social animals and a sense of personal well being derives from our relations with one another and with the environment around us. ‘Happiness’ and well-being surveys tell us this time and time again. It may bring material riches, but, by its very nature, fame, particularly the near instant variety, can be anti-social and ultimately ‘anti-happy’. It can catapult a person into a very turbulent stratosphere, where lives and relationships can be thrown into turmoil. Personal isolation, alienation and self-destruction may follow. If the core value of society becomes ‘the self’, what future society? Indeed, what future the individual?

While some crave fame, others do not. Amy Winehouse is once reported to have said that all she wanted to be was a singer. Perhaps she never set out to acquire fame. Unfortunately for her, it came knocking, regardless. Although a lot cave in to the pressures, a few have the good sense to shun fame or get out early in the knowledge that it isn't for them.

To many, Amy Winehouse's death will come as little surprise, given her tormented private life. She may have been an immense musical talent, but that talent was combined with vulnerable personality traits. Fame and happiness can be uneasy bedfellows. For Amy and others like her, they were perfect strangers.

In finishing, it may be pertinent to ask why so much media coverage is paid to the passing of such privileged and famous individuals in a world where millions are left to live and die in poverty. It’s a valid point. However, such coverage in a way compels us to hold up a mirror to society and question its values. In particular, it encourages us to reflect on the shallow nature of fame and all it symbolises and entails. Ultimately, it may lead us to reject society’s unholy obsession with it.

Till Death Do Them Part - Libya, Nato and the Mainstream Media

2011-08-29T20:32:00.009+01:00

Appeared in Deccan Herald on 30/8/2011

There are lies, more lies and then there is the media. Take the BBC, for instance. As Britain’s national state broadcaster, it is duty bound to provide impartial news coverage - after all, it is the ordinary person who funds it. However, the question to be asked is why folk should pay for a ‘service’ that consistently misleads in order to secure compliance for state-corporate policies?

The reporting on events in Libya has been disgracefully one-sided by most of the mainstream media in Britain. This comes as no surprise, though, given the pious narrative the media puts forward at the best of times, which implies the British government and Nato are essentially civilising forces in a barbaric world.

During times of war, this narrative becomes even more strident. Picture a different world for a moment, one in which the African Union (AU) had intervened in British affairs on the back of the recent riots, in order to 'protect' rioters and then ‘liberate’ them from an oppressive regime. With a bit of arm twisting, it managed to get a UN resolution to implement a no fly zone over Britain.

The AU media then embed themselves with the British 'rebels', who had been illegally armed with weapons from AU countries, or its allies elsewhere, in order to overthrow the corrupt Cameron regime. The media report the conflict from the rioters-cum-rebels’ point of view, fail to seriously question the legitimacy of the conflict – indeed, tacitly support it - and jump on every utterance from British PM David Cameron with sneering contempt to portray him as an irrational maniac.

As Cameron and his cronies flee for their lives, AU countries’ TV channels show images from inside his home and those of his millionaire government associates to highlight the opulent lifestyles they indulged in. The message is implied that all such riches were robbed from the ordinary people of Britain by Cameron and his ilk through the system they presided over. Finally, as a no-fly zone policy morphs into a killing campaign from the air, the deaths caused are largely underreported or downplayed.

Substitute Nato for the AU, Gadhafi for Cameron and Libya for Britain, and you get the picture concerning the hypocrisy the mainstream media in Britain has indulged in. It is a media that portrayed those involved in the recent riots in a wholly negative light, and a media which glorifies the unjust opulence and the corporate tyranny that has wrecked the economy. Yet, when it comes to events abroad, when it suits, members of the mainstream media all too readily trip over themselves to praise violent uprisings and rant against perceived injustice, tyranny and leaders who live in opulence.

Peel back the veneer of ‘objectivity’, and the media’s record on the Libyan conflict is laid bare.

How many times have broadcasters failed to focus on where Libyan rebels were getting their arms from in the face of a UN sanctioned arms embargo on Libya?

How many times have broadcasters questioned Nato’s ‘moral right’ to attack Libya, especially given the West’s role in Afghanistan and Iraq and its long history of interventions and support for unscrupulous regimes over the decades?

And how many times did broadcasters question mission drift, whereby a path for Libyan rebels into the heart of Tripoli was blasted from the air, courtesy of a massive Nato bombing campaign?

A compliant, toothless media too often rolled over, peddled the notion of a widespread popular uprising and tended to focus merely on the processes of intervention, rather than the legality or morality of the whole affair.

Fortunately, there are many who did not get into bed with officialdom, and stories emerged regarding the arrests of those reporters who had focussed on providing alternative versions of events, not least Nato massacres of civilians and disinformation from western officialdom about Gadhafi attacking his own people.

After the Nato backed rebels took Tripoli, concerns arose over the fate of reporters Mahdi Nazemroaya and Thierry Meyssan and also British independent journalist Lizzie Phelan, whose blog and Twtter account were suddenly deleted. Her reports for Press TV were stridently anti-Nato. Anxiety over her whereabouts was expressed amid reports of her and the other journalists mentioned having received death threats and attempts by Nato to silence dissent.

The mainstream media could do a lot worse by focussing on a news item that has largely (if not completely) gone unnoticed, that of the 200 prominent African figures who have accused western nations and the International Criminal Court of “subverting international law” in Libya. The UN has been misused to militarise policy, legalise military action and effect regime change, according to University of Johannesburg professor Chris Landsberg. He says it is unprecedented for the UN to have outsourced military action to Nato in this way and challenges the International Criminal Court to investigate Nato for “violating international law.”

In the absence of dissenting voices, or just plain decent journalism, many ordinary people rely on sources for their ‘news’, which, apart from a brief allusion to oil now and then, have forwarded the notion that Nato’s involvement in Libya has been perfectly legitimate because it’s all been about removing a crazy man from power who was oppressing his own people.

The portrayal of the Libyan conflict has been a damning indictment of a self congratulatory media that continually back slaps itself for being ‘impartial’ and ‘free’. It’s been damning indictment of British ‘democracy’ too.

(A French warmonger shakes hands with Muammar Gadhafi)

Libya - Blood, Lies and Oil

2011-08-23T20:40:00.011+01:00

Appeared in Deccan Herald on 24/8/2011

After six months of fighting, the Nato-backed rebel forces have finally entered the Libyan capital, Tripoli. During this period, parts of Libya have been devastated by the fighting, and some estimates have put the death toll in the tens of thousands. Reports coming out of Libya claim that over 1,300 have been killed in the 24 hour period following rebel forces entering the capital.

Nato’s active involvement in stoking this civil war began under the auspices that a no-fly zone must be implemented in order to prevent a bloodbath in Benghazi, as a result of government forces threatening to enter the city to put down a rebel uprising. This was the official line. According to the cringing sanctimony of the British and French PMs, a tactic both leaders are well versed in, it was to be a humanitarian mission to protect lives.

A UN resolution to implement a no-fly zone soon crept towards an out and out Nato bombing campaign to assist rebel forces. As many had suspected from the outset, the west's aim was all along aimed at outright regime change.

In many ways, the whole sorry affair has been reminiscent of Iraq. Saddam Hussein wouldn’t open up the Iraqi economy to western corporate interests. The US therefore contrived a means to get rid of him under a bogus rationale concerning the possession of weapons of mass destruction.

Of course, media and governments rarely inform people about the real intentions for going to war. With Libya, the reason was sugar-coated with the notion of 'humanitarianism' — saving civilians from a barbaric maniac. But the truth is that the duplicitous west had wanted Gadhafi out long before any uprising or ‘Arab Spring’.

Slaughter, killing and oppression occur throughout the world, often supported by the west supplying regimes with arms. So, Nato wanting to ‘protect innocent lives’ in Libya just didn’t wash. It was a convenient lie.

In order to understand the Libyan conflict, look no further then Libya’s financial relationship with the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, the Bank for International Settlements and multinational corporations. The IMF has stated that Libya’s Central Bank, completely state-owned, had nearly 144 tons of gold. Author John Perkins notes that, in the months running up to the UN resolution that allowed the US and its allies to send troops into Libya, Gadhafi was openly advocating the creation of a new currency, which would rival the dollar and the euro. He was calling on African nations to join an alliance that would make this new currency, the gold dinar, their primary form of money and foreign exchange. They would sell oil and other resources to the US and the rest of the world only for gold dinars.

Such a strategy represented a threat to western hegemony over world currency markets, and the US dollar in particular, and would mean African countries breaking free from the powerful global international finance institutions and possibly at last asserting genuine independence from their former colonial masters. Saddam Hussein had advocated policies similar to those expressed by Gaddafi shortly before the US sent troops into Iraq. Libya has received similar treatment, this time with the faltering Brits and French in the lead role.

And let’s not forget oil either. Italian, UK and French oil companies are already rubbing their hands in anticipation of Gaddafi’s departure and are queuing up to get a slice of Libya's lucrative oil and gas business.

Before the Nato backed campaign against Gadhafi, Libya was among the top countries in Africa in terms of education levels and welfare provision. Disparities in wealth and income were not as marked as in other oil rich nations, and Libya performed relatively well in many areas of social development.

Although it cannot and should not be forgotten that Gadhafi has been a brutal ruler, under the guise of benevolent dictator and in addition to his social policies at home, French journalist Moe Seager argues that Gadhafi also gave millions to black African countries from Chad to South Africa for health, educational and agricultural projects. As iron fist dictators go, there have been worse.

But after Nato and the well armed rebels are finished (illegally supplied with arms, given the international arms embargo on Libya), the country may well end up resembling Iraq, with its sewerage, power, health care and education systems in tatters and its land and people contaminated by depleted uranium.

As the conflict appears to be reaching tipping point, it may be worth considering whether the Nato intervention has created a bloodbath or has actually saved lives, as was the official stated aim of the UN 1973 resolution. If Gadhafi is finally defeated, will Libya be a better place, given the death and destruction that has occurred in the country in order to oust him? And, given the apparent rag tag nature of rebel forces and internal competing factions, what kind of instability or ongoing violence can Libyans expect in the medium to long term?

One thing that we can definitely be certain of though is that the Nato countries that actively backed the rebels will want payback. Despite their propaganda, there was no benevolence on their part. It is they who will do their utmost to carve up Libya and cast it in their own image. It is they who are now controlling access to Libyan assets that were frozen. The gap between what ordinary Libyans want and what they finally get may well turn out to be a gaping chasm.

Rampant Criminality in the UK

2011-08-12T17:06:00.007+01:00

Appeared in the Morning Star on 13/8/2011

What is human decency? What does it mean to be law abiding? In recent days, David Cameron has been all too eager to talk about such things in front of the TV cameras in the aftermath of the street disturbances in the UK. Consider the following passage.

"These are sickening scenes – scenes of people looting, vandalising, thieving, robbing, scenes of people attacking police officers and even attacking fire crews as they are trying to put out fires. This is criminality, pure and simple, and it has to be confronted and defeated. People should be in no doubt that we are on the side of the law-abiding people, who are appalled by what has happened."

Other senior politicians have come out with similar sentiments. But are you really on the side of law abiding people, Mr Cameron?

How about we turn these words back on those who utter them. Let us hold them to account, according to the criteria that they use to judge and condemn others.

Many of the politicians who are now mouthing such sentiments have in the past sanctioned illegal wars or policies that have led to the deaths hundreds of thousands of people. Think back to the sanctions imposed on Iraq in the 1990s that led to the deaths of 500,000 children, all because a certain political leader would not adopt pro-western policies.

But you don't have to think back that far. In Libya, a similar war strategy, fully backed by Cameron, is in place to remove another leader who won't tow the line. Such wars have been justified on the basis of humanitarianism. As the body count piles up, so does the hypocrisy.

David Cameron has stood before the TV cameras in the last few days to condemn ordinary folk who took to the streets. While many should indeed be condemned, they are in many respects the victims of the 'greed is good' neo-liberal policies that Cameron supports.

A lot of senior politicians, with the media in tow, have been cheerleaders for the free market approach and the gamblers on Wall Street, or in the City of London, who have plunged millions into poverty across the world - a world reeling from the effects of the last economic crisis induced by them and a world possibly about to feel the effects of its second assault.

Look around the UK - the social deprivation, the rich who have got even richer and the inequality gap that has become a chasm. Then ask, what are the real crimes? Who are the real criminals? Who has done the most thieving, the most robbing, the most looting? Who has indulged in devastating vandalism and created fires from Libya to Afghanistan? Who has looted from the poor across the world and, through the system in place, has ensured wealth flows from bottom to top?

Who has marched into other people's countries and smashed them up?

Whose criminality is the worse? The politicians, the financiers, the proponents of economic dogma, which serves as a masking device for brutality, or the folk who have born the brunt of it all and who then react?

While some working class youth have looted and helped themselves to all manner of consumer goods, just who have they taken their cue from? The great role models of the age, no doubt - the take now, pay later mentality of corporate Britain and the bankers - or, in the case of the bankers, take now and take again, but never pay back.

Inserting a hot poker into the centre of a beehive and jiggling it 'for the bees' own good' is not a good idea. Of course, the resulting anger from the bees will not be the fault of the poker wielding maniac, though, will it? When the bees hit back with a nasty sting on your backside, there's always a good old spot of blame shifting to indulge in.

Moralistic sermons about human decency and law abiding action, which many senior politicians are so keen to talk about at this time in the UK, only count when it suits them - only count when applied to others.

Anarchy in the UK: London's Burning!

2011-08-09T20:35:00.016+01:00

Appeared in the Deccan Herald on 10/8/2011

It’s back to the 80s in Britain! Major British cities are burning, as crowds of young, working class people are taking to the streets to vent their anger and frustration against a system that has cut many of them adrift. It was the same back in 1981, when there were similar uprisings. Then, as now, the turmoil occurred against a backdrop of rising unemployment, social deprivation and strident neo-liberal economic policy.

The Conservatives are back in power, but it would be foolish to suggest that the blame for the current upheavals should be laid at their doorstep alone. The Labour Party, or ‘Tory-Lite’, was in government for 13 years and moved so far to the right that it deserted its traditional core of working class voters.

If many ordinary folk in Britain now feel they have no political voice, they may well be right. While most people involved in the turmoil are not overtly politically conscious, perhaps the best way to articulate their various frustrations, as far as they are concerned, is to take the streets.

Images of the violence may be shocking, but, in a way, those images are symptomatic of what Britain has become. Modern Britain has always been a country heavily divided along class lines, and economic and social policies of the last few decades have served to accentuate such divisions.

In 1981, class and racism were key factors underlying the turmoil. But, what we did not have back then is the type of paranoia that has followed in the wake of Britain’s involvement in illegal wars in Asia. The intelligence agencies have been for some time intensively monitoring Muslim communities. Britain is now a more fractured and intolerant place, with various groups feeling a sense of utter marginalisation and even oppression.

It’s not just Muslims who need to worry, though. Britain has been gradually turning into a police state for quite a while, with security agencies having increasing access to all kinds of personal data. From cradle to grave, officialdom is watching, listening, tracking and prying.

Excessive monitoring began in the 1980s when a section of the population became surplus to requirements. At that time, British society underwent a structural adjustment of privatisation and welfare cutbacks and outsourced much of its manufacture industry. A permanent underclass emerged, and a deregulated finance sector became a key driver of the economy. And we know how that panned out.

With a weak economy, public service cutbacks and people being saddled with debt to bail out the banking sector, ordinary folk in Britain are now feeling the pinch.

Neo-liberalism came along with rhetoric about personal freedom, and it has of course made us free - free to be monitored and surveyed by the state like no other country in Western Europe, free to pick up the tab for the failings of financial capital, and free to build up the greatest amount of personal debt in Europe. Maybe there’s not much freedom in an open prison, and those who have taken to the streets perhaps, more than most, know this too well. For many, what is currently being played out on the streets of Britain comes as little surprise.

It only takes one incident to ignite a wider sense of resentment. We saw this in Tunisia when a market trader was killed. In London, current events appeared to have been triggered by the police shooting of a young, black man. However, if you were to tune in to the media, you would be forgiven for thinking all had been well in the state of ‘merry old England’. For years, the mainstream media has sought to gloss over the genuine nature of Britain’s social and economic problems by parroting platitudes about ‘our’ culture being diluted, bombers wanting to kill us, or services being over stretched due to an influx of immigrants. Politicians and the media have for some time been using fear and paranoia as a proxy and distraction.

Britain has become a society of me-first acquisitive individualism, the effects of which are so graphically witnessed in many towns and cities today - a descent into drugs, alcohol and crime, community breakdown, fear for personal safety and a range of other social problems.

In an age of rampant consumerism, it is little wonder that so many people who are subject daily to images and messages of acquisitive materialism and who experience blocked opportunities feel resentful and angry? In an age of neo-liberalism, social breakdown, imperialist wars and extensive surveillance, is it any wonder that there is a price to be paid?

News reports concentrate on how all of this plays out to an international audience, given that London is about to hold the Olympics next year. Isn’t it terrible they say that an international football match to be held between England and Holland has had to be cancelled. And what about the England-India test match. Will it or won’t it go ahead? You see, for years, such issues are what have really mattered to ‘middle England’. Not the disturbing plight of large sections of its fellow citizens.

While some of the images of violence are sickening and need to be condemned, the media would do well to focus more on the underlying causes of the trouble and hold politicians to account over why a significant proportion of the population has been increasingly marginalised. Instead, what we hear about from the media and various political and economic leaders is the ‘wanton vandalism’ of those hell bent on destroying the fabric of society. However, it was they who helped destroy it in the first place.

The Energy of Protest: The Future's Renewable

2011-07-17T16:51:00.020+01:00

Appeared in the Deccan Herald on 31/7/2011 (a much shorter version appeared in the Morning Star on 18/7/2011)

The global population is set to increase from the current figure of seven billion to between nine and ten billion by 2050. Many wonder just how the energy needs of such a burgeoning population can be met. Coal and oil resources are finite and pressure on them increases by the year. Their adverse environmental impact has been well documented. While wind, tidal and solar energy, for instance, are posited as being cleaner and sustainable, many countries have opted for nuclear power as the solution to their energy needs.

Any debate about nuclear power is dominated by perceived risks and benefits. There are also questions of opportunity cost: investing in and developing nuclear energy impacts on how much money (and commitment) is left to invest in other sources. Of course, various vested interests shape the nature of the debate, not least the pro-nuclear lobby. There's a lot to be gained - and to be lost, depending on which way the policy decisions go.

And those interests are well aware that public opinion counts. Influencing risk perception among both policy makers and public alike is a particularly important aspect of the discourse. Incidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima have all raised concerns about the safety of nuclear power and have placed the nuclear industry on the back foot.

Nevertheless, supporters of nuclear power argue that, as an energy source, it is carbon-friendly, clean, safe (incidents have been few and far between, they claim) and relatively cheap and abundant. Others, however, argue that when government costs, the impact of uranium mining and the issue of long term nuclear waste storage are factored in, the process isn't as cheap, energy efficient, sustainable, environmentally friendly or as safe as is claimed. And even uranium is a finite resource. Reserves may not last another 60 years or so. There are also concerns over devastating accidents and acts of terror.

Those who favour nuclear energy also forward that the notion that alternative ‘green’ energy will not be able to cater for rising energy demands in the coming decades. The argument is that such energy sources are unstable and cannot produce sufficient amounts of energy to satisfy increasing demands. In defence, physicist Sowmya Dutta argues that the alternative energy sources are actually more abundant: the world has potential for 17 terra watts of nuclear energy, 700 terra watts of wind energy and 86,000 terra watts of solar energy.

Then there is the thorny issue of the link between nuclear power and nuclear weapons, which we are told can be monitored and controlled by the regulatory regimes that are in place. Any number of Chernobyls or Fukushimas pale into insignificance when placed alongside the potential danger of nuclear arms proliferation that nuclear power undoubtedly brings.

The late French environmentalist Jacques Cousteau said in 1976 that human society is too diverse, national passion too strong and human aggressiveness too deep seated for the peaceful atom and the warlike atom to stay divorced for too long. One only has to look at the ongoing debate about Iran's civil nuclear programme and its potential ability to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons to see the link. Countries with nuclear technology and know-how all have the potential to embark on a weapons development programme. At present, there are 21 countries using nuclear energy.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) walk a fine line by seeking to promote the development of 'peaceful' nuclear power, while at the same time trying stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons. A major challenge to nuclear proliferation controls has been the spread of uranium enrichment technology. The question arises as to whether it is possible to adequately oversee a civil nuclear energy programme in order to prevent the diversion of plutonium to nuclear weapons.

Article Two of the IAEA states that the Agency shall seek to enlarge its contribution to peace throughout the world and that it shall ensure that assistance is provided by it to prevent atomic energy from being used for military purpose. Article Four of the NPT reaffirms the inalienable right to develop the peaceful use of nuclear technology and pledges to facilitate trade with this in mind. Both bodies seek to promote the development of peaceful nuclear power, while at the same time trying to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.

Nuclear weapons parties to the NPT - The US, Britain, France the Soviet Union and China - are prohibited from transferring nuclear weapons or associated technology to non-nuclear states, but can provide technologies for civilian nuclear activities. In return, the non-nuclear states agree not to seek nuclear weapons and to accept 'safeguards' on their civilian nuclear materials.

Of course, this has been made a mockery of, with various states transferring nuclear technologies to others, which have gone on to develop nuclear weapons. Israel, North Korea, India and Pakistan all have nuclear weapons and are not party to the NPT.

When the Bush regime agreed to help India with its nuclear energy programme, the very principle on which the treaty is supposed to be based was undermined - that assistance with the development of nuclear energy is available only to those who say they will shun nuclear weapons. Many technologically advanced nations, including Japan, South Africa and Indonesia, have chosen to abide by the NPT to gain access to foreign nuclear technology. If India was made a special case, why should those nations do without nuclear weapons?

Former US President Jimmy Carter said the deal with India was just one more step in opening a Pandora's box of nuclear proliferation. Preventing the spread of uranium enrichment or reprocessing technology and thus access to weapons usable material is an ongoing problem.

The role that the powerful pro-nuclear lobby plays in shaping the debate about nuclear energy should not be underestimated. The US Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) is described by Dr Helen Caldicott, a long-standing nuclear critic, as the propaganda wing for the US nuclear industry, which spends millions of dollars annually to engineer public opinion. The NEI forwards the message that nuclear energy is clean, safe and cheap and in promoting this message has often attacked opponents and targeted legislators and policy makers via ‘independent’ reports, phoney claims and ‘donations’.

Journalism Professor Karl Grossman of the State University of New York suggests the misinformation from General Electric and Westinghouse, the ‘Coke and Pepsi’ of the nuclear industry (who will incidentally both benefit enormously from India’s lucrative, multi billion dollar expanding nuclear sector), has made the money put into PR and lobbying by the tobacco companies appear miniscule. Perhaps such a level of spending and propaganda is not surprising because Harvey Wasserman, writer and activist, says this is an industry that can't solve its waste problems, can't operate without leaking radiation, can't pay for itself and can't get private insurance against terror or error.

One thing that is usually missing from the nuclear energy debate, however, particularly from the pro-nuclear lobby, is the notion of democracy. In a way, the whole debate revolves around the kind of world we wish to live in.

Look no further than one of India's fiercest anti-nuclear critics for an articulation of how democracy, human rights and ecology are central to the debate. Vandana Shiva argues that most civilisations throughout history worked with nature and regarded themselves as part of it. The scientific and industrial revolution was based on the idea that nature is a dead weight to be dominated and manipulated by humans for their own ends. As a trained physicist, she is more aware than most of how this form of Cartesian dualism impacted science and led to a dangerous separation between mind and matter, between humans and nature.

If Fukushima tells us anything, it is that, according to Shiva, we should recognise that humans cannot dominate nature with technology, tools and industrial infrastructure. China, Germany, Switzerland, Israel, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines are realising this and are currently reviewing their nuclear power programmes.

In the US too, the incident has refocused attention on the vulnerability of spent fuel pools at the 104 operating US nuclear plants. Senator Edward J Markey recently stated that the US should not wait for a meltdown to beef up US nuclear safety measures and that lessons must be learned from Japan to ensure nuclear safety. Plutonium, produced as nuclear waste, has a half life of 240,000 years, while the average life of nuclear reactors is 21 years. There is so far no proven safe system for nuclear waste disposal.

As for India, the proposed Jaitapur nuclear power plant in Madban village, Ratnagiri district, Maharashtra, will be the world’s largest nuclear power plant. Vandana Shiva argues that Jaitapur is a seismically sensitive area, and that, here too, there is no proper plan for the disposal of 300 tonnes of nuclear waste that the plant will generate each year. What's more, the plant will require about 968 hectares of fertile agricultural land that the government claims is “barren”.

Jaitapur is one of many nuclear power plants proposed on a thin strip of fertile coast land. Villagers of the Konkan region have been protesting against the nuclear plant, and Jaitapur has been put under prohibitory orders in an attempt to dampen protests. Activities concerning other planned nuclear plants are affecting hundreds of villages across India and are also mired in accusations of land grabbing and forced population displacement.

Factor in the dodgy dealings that went on in parliament to help push these policies through, not least the cash for votes scandal, and it becomes clear that Vandana Shiva has a point when she declares the destruction of democracy and constitutional rights is the price being paid for India’s expansion of nuclear energy.

A new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shows that close to 80 per cent of the world’s energy supply could be met by renewables come mid-century, if backed by the right enabling public policies. And here lies the solution for energy, which, going by the hundreds of billions of dollars to be ploughed into nuclear power in the next 20 years or so, the Indian government has little commitment to. It involves proper research and investment in renewables to improve availability and efficacy, coupled to a deep seated commitment to democracy by making renewable ‘green’ energy integral to local economies and communities, rather than uprooting, polluting or destroying them.

Such a strategy could also include something that is all too often left out of the energy debate – reducing levels of consumption. In the fog of rhetoric and facts concerning the merits or drawbacks of nuclear energy, many fail to question the wider model of development it is tied to. It is a model that is not only ecologically destructive, but promotes high consumption levels of energy in order to engage in unnecessary work to produce unnecessary goods that have an inbuilt planned obsolescence. This wasteful, high-energy system is tied to what is ultimately an environmentally unsustainable consumerist mindset shaped by an image of the world laid down by powerful transnational corporations.

Moving away from such a system would throw into question the perceived inevitability of spiralling energy demand in the coming decades and the apparent need for nuclear power. But perhaps there are just too many policy makers who are too eager to dismiss renewable sources on the misguided basis that they are an impractical anyhow. Thankfully, though, not everyone thinks this.

A recent report produced by London-based Bloomberg New Energy Finance for the United Nations Environment Programme says that worldwide investments in renewable energy have gone up by roughly a third over the last year, to $211 billion. Led by China's renewable push, the world is now on a trajectory that will see its investments in renewable electricity surpass those in fossil fuels within a year or two. Excluding hydropower, renewables made up about 35 per cent of the power capacity added worldwide last year, and produced over five per cent of the total power. In Africa, led by Egypt and Kenya, investments were up nearly five-fold, reaching $3.6 billion.

At a time when the anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are fast approaching in early August, it is right that questions be asked of the nuclear industry. Happenings in Japan have led many to contemplate if we as a species should continue with our nuclear experimentations. Indeed, Chancellor Merkel and the German parliament have announced concrete plans to phase out nuclear energy by 2022, making Germany the first major industrial power to take such steps since Japan’s devastating incident.

With proper commitment and investment in renewable energy, the future need not resemble the past. The future could be bright. The future could be renewable.

The Great Libyan Deception

2011-06-26T17:20:00.014+01:00

Appeared in the Morning Star on 27/6/2011

(US spooks at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, were revealed in 2009 as the third biggest visitors to the Morning Star website. Webmaster Carl Worswick said the site always welcomes new visitors: "It's good to see that even the CIA recognise that the Morning Star is the only place to read the stories that the corporate press are afraid to print.")

Some months ago, the world was informed by Britain, France and the US that a no-fly zone must be implemented in Libya in order to prevent a bloodbath in Benghazi. We were told that Gadaffi's forces were about to enter the city to put down the western backed rebels. It was to be a humanitarian mission to protect lives. Months on and Libya is being destroyed by NATO forces hell bent on removing Gadaffi from power.

Footage of dead civilians are now appearing regularly on TV screens as the NATO air bombardment continues to bring down terror on Tripoli. We first had a no-fly zone policy, which then crept towards a bombing campaign and explicit support for rebel forces, and now we have a war for outright regime change.

With the US may be getting cold feet over the whole affair, the Brits and French are being left to go it alone and seem incapable of achieving the result that they desire, which is dragging out the suffering and destruction for the Libyan people.

In many ways, the whole affair is reminiscent of Iraq. Hussein wouldn't open up the Iraqi economy to western corporate interests and was undermining the role of the US dollar. He therefore had to be got rid of under a bogus rationale concerning weapons of mass destruction.

Of course, media and governments rarely inform people about the real intentions for going to war. With Libya, the reason was sugarcoated with the notion of 'humanitarianism'. The trouble with that argument is that it so obviously reeks of hypocrisy. Slaughter, killing and oppression occur throughout the world and are often implicitly supported by the west supplying regimes with arms. So why are some regimes targeted for intervention and not others?

According to John Perkins, author of 'Confessions of an Economic Hit Man', the real reasons for the attack on Gadaffi revolves around Libya’s financial relationship with the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and multinational corporations.

The IMF states that Libya’s Central Bank is completely state owned and has nearly 144 tons of gold. Perkins notes that In the months running up to the UN resolution that allowed the US and its allies to send troops into Libya, Gadaffi was openly advocating the creation of a new currency, which would rival the dollar and the euro. He called on African and Muslim nations to join an alliance that would make this new currency, the gold dinar, their primary form of money and foreign exchange. They would sell oil and other resources to the US and the rest of the world only for gold dinars.

This represented a threat to western hegemony over world currency markets and would mean countries breaking free from the powerful global international finance institutions that favour western interests. Saddam Hussein had advocated policies similar to those expressed by Gaddafi shortly before the US sent troops into Iraq. Gadaffi is now getting the same treatment as Hussein did.

The fact that both countries have vast oil resources shouldn't be overlooked either. Stealing and controlling other people's resources is part and parcel of the the wider imperialist project.

In Libya, we are therefore witnessing the protection of the US dollar and the economic system that depends on it. If the US seems to have taken a back seat, its client states have stepped up to the mark in the form of Britain and France.

As with Iraq, the destruction of Libya is taking place as a result of Gadaffi daring to challenge the West. According to various reports, before the attack, Libya was among the top countries (often the top country) in Africa in terms of education levels and welfare provision. Disparities in wealth and income were not as marked as in other oil rich nations, and Libya performed relatively well in many areas of social development. After NATO is finished, the country may well end up resembling Iraq, with its sewerage, power, health care and education systems in tatters, as well as its economy, and its land and people contaminated by depleted uranium.

As the bombing continues, the casualties mount. So does the bill. At a time when austerity measures are being forced through in the UK because the country is allegedly cash strapped, unimaginable amounts of money are suddenly found to fund a war that few people there understand the reasons for. Conservative estimates put the cost of the war to the UK taxpayer at 1,000 pounds a minute or at 40 million pounds a month. The hypocrisy exists on every level and is there for all to see.

Sham Democracies

2011-06-24T20:39:00.019+01:00

Appeared in the Deccan Herald on 25/6/2011 and in the North East Times and Meghalaya Guardian on 27/6/2011

Whatever happened to the notion of democracy? It's plain for all to see how dissenters in undemocratic regimes are treated. They are brutally put down. But while such regimes make few claims to being liberal or democratic, democracies find open dissent on the streets much harder to deal with. The strategy has always been to prevent it from happening in the first place.

The US, for instance, has the likes of Fox News to keep people from noticing how their tax dollars are being used on behalf of big oil companies to fund bloody wars for oil, which those companies then sell back to US citizens for a fine profit. The ordinary person is being shafted both ways. Given the state of much of the US media and the mainstream political narrative in the country, it's doubtful that the majority of the public will wake from the great American dream (aka con-trick) any time soon.

But once ideology no longer keeps people in check, then what? Look no further than Greece. The same financial institutions that caused the economic meltdown are attempting to make ordinary folk pay again for the crisis, which they thought they had already paid for and which they had no part in causing. A further process of privatisation and public cutbacks are about to plunge even more people into joblessness and poverty. And elected representatives are powerless (or spineless) to reject the bitter IMF-coated pill.

Resultant anger is fuelling a challenge by ordinary people to the power of finance. They are openly confronting the way the IMF and EU work behind closed doors to force their policies on member countries and ordinary people who end up suffering the consequences.

Many people throughout the world are increasingly realising that their sovereign democratic governments are neither sovereign nor democratic and are in the pocket of unaccountable elite financial interests abroad. The economic crisis has clearly exposed exactly whose interests western style liberal democracy serves. It was of course Lenin who said that western liberal democracy was the best shell for capitalism. Its shell is now cracking.

But we don't just have to look at Greece to see this. Take the free trade deal currently being thrashed out by the EU and India. It's hardly been headline news, mainly because the talks are going on behind closed doors.

British political activist Mick Carty says that the deal will represent a huge coup for finance capital, which, in Britain at least, is central to the project of remoulding its economy into a cheap labour platform for financial services. The deal aims to secure big business access to the Indian economy and the employment of India's highly skilled IT, technical and financial personnel in Europe at minimum rates of pay and without trade union protection.

Key EU demands are the liberalisation of the Indian financial services sector and the enforcement of intellectual property rights, in particular in India’s pharmaceutical industry. The EU also wants to see procurement rules that channel Indian public spending into transnational corporations as well as what is called 'investor protection', which would allow transnationals to sue the Indian government if it makes a decision that is not in their interests.

The Indian government's key demand is Mode 4 access to the EU, which comprises a World Trade Organisation provision that allows transnationals registered within one trading partner to transfer labour at existing rates of pay and terms of employment to work temporarily within the company in the other trading partner.

If the deal is agreed, Carty asserts that India's thousands of relatively small state-based banks and jobs will be quickly swallowed by big British and London-based US banks. And British, German and French pharmaceutical monopolies will see their global position secured alongside the big EU-based utility companies gaining access to Indian public expenditure.

While one side of the deal will affect workers in India, Mode 4 will be used by European companies moving into the Indian market to secure temporary transfers of highly skilled Indians to Europe as a low-cost alternative to local workers. Carty asks why train young workers in Europe when a reserve army of skilled, low paid graduates that will be bonded to their employer and without enforceable rights is readily available to be in-sourced?

As long as it's all done and dusted beyond the glare of the media and little public scrutiny takes place then who is to know and who is to care? It is not clear whether the various parliaments will even be asked to discuss the issue before it becomes binding. Regardless, the outcome of the current discussions will effectively become permanent.

In Greece, India or elsewhere, whether its trade agreements or servicing the public debt, binding agreements and policies on behalf rich, unaccountable powerholders are too often being carried out above the heads of the people many of whom will suffer the dire consequences.

But all is not lost. We can always put an X on a ballot paper in the hope it will radically change things, can't we? That’s the problem - it won't.

Planned Obsolescence in India

2011-06-01T22:48:00.020+01:00

Appeared in the Morning Star on 3/6/2011

(This article can be regarded as a follow up to a previous piece 'Pauperising Farmers in India', which is also on this site)

Some commentators perceive current upheavals in India are merely part of a necessary transition towards an urban based society. Those who resist are accused of being Luddites and of lacking perspective. It is said that the transition takes time and there will be unfortunate casualties along the way. There appears to be an implicit belief that 'urban is good', underpinned by a blind faith in the 'free' market and a western model of development.

Mainstream thinking implies that shifting to an urban environment to toil in factories, become a domestic servant or work as a security guard improves the human condition. However, according to many surveys carried out in recent years into life satisfaction, happiness has been declining in developed nations since the late 1950s, despite people having moved to cities and gaining access to a greater range of material goods.

Many of these studies indicate that people in wealthy western nations are not much happier, or are indeed less happy, than those who belong to poorer more rural countries that use far fewer resources. This is a damning indictment of a development model that is not only ecologically destructive, but promotes conflict due to grabs for finite resources to fuel the craving for ever more products that have an inbuilt planned obsolescence.

It is easy to fall prey to the belief that the shift to wholesale urbanisation is inevitable and therefore should be forced through. Urbanisation in Britain, for instance, was the result of deliberate policies, the unforeseen outcomes of various struggles and the uprooting of people to get them into factories and help line the pockets of the industrialists who were getting rich on the back of their colonies. It wasn't a 'natural' occurrence. So why blindly ape it?

Perhaps because it's colonialism merely in a different guise.

In India, clearing farmers from their lands and handing agriculture over to monopoly agribusiness is part of a conscious ploy to drive people to the cities to eventually lead what is ultimately an environmentally unsustainable consumerist lifestyle. The plan is to shape the economy according to the image of transnational corporations.

And once the stage is set, the profiteers can move in. The state abdicates its responsibilities by submitting to the neo-liberal tenets of Wall Street's 'structural adjustment' programme, whereby government reins in spending and adopts a pro-privatisation strategy. The whole notion of governance then changes - exploitation and huge profits are justified on the basis of 'private investment risk', and the notion of democracy is usurped by unaccountable cartels who rule the market and beat down labour costs.

The result leads to the type of protests, uprisings and displacements we now witness in various parts of India. One solution of course has been for displaced people to flock to already overcrowded cities with dilapidated infrastructures and water scarcities. Despite the turmoil, however, many regard this as a transitional phase on the way to urbanisation that will eventually work out for the best. The best for whom though?

It's easy to downgrade 'the rural' or 'the tribal' by claiming they are barriers to 'progress' when priority is given to building flyovers, luxury townships and muscle flexing weapons programmes at the expense of proper investment in rural industry and productive biodiverse agriculture. And it is easy to portray them as basket cases and thus advocate change and displacement when they have experienced decades of neglect.

Maybe something valuable could be learned from Bhutan, which notes the importance of economic growth, but stresses Buddhist values in its pursuit of modernisation. There, the government through its policies actively promotes psychological well-being, health, community vitality, ecology and culture, heritage and the preservation and sustainable use of the environment.

According to much research into happiness, when decisions are taken to invest heavily in health, education, self sustaining communities and local economies and work within limits set by the environment, contentedness is boosted. However, elites in India and the West currently work against nature and 'the local', not with them. They work against the interests of many, not in favour of them.

The western model of development should not be viewed as a cure-all remedy. Engels documented the horror that urban industrialisation brought to England during the 19th century. For many people, hardship has never gone away. It has been a permanent feature. Poverty, drug use, imprisonment, poor health and a range of other issues blight large sections of the population in 'developed' societies. For such people, their struggle continues.

Ordinary people, whether in the US, Europe, India or elsewhere, have and continue to struggle for rights and better living conditions, and, while the types of land acquisition and displacement now occurring in India have occurred throughout history in various countries, so has , protestinjustice and resistance against it. Unfortunately, as far as India is concerned, those with bulging pockets privilege a certain notion of development at the expense of alternatives then quite literally bulldoze it through over the heads of the downtrodden. For the victims, it's planned obsolescence, albeit in a different guise.

Pauperising Farmers in India: Economic Growth or Abnormal Swelling?

2011-05-22T13:17:00.038+01:00

Appeared in the Deccan Herald on 26/5/2011, Morning Star on 25/5/2011, Meghalaya Guardian and North East Times on 28/5/2011 and State Times on 11/6/2011

With nine per cent economic growth, India has apparently arrived. It's not too clear where 'destination India' happens to be, but it is one that includes nuclear weapons, a space programme, luxury townships and an upcoming Formula 1 race track for rich men to drive expensive cars for the well-to-do to watch. Eye-catching stuff. What more could a country want?

How about policies that prioritise food sovereignty and water security for a burgeoning yet vulnerable population, delivered by a thriving agriculture sector?

Take the current building of the Delhi to Agra Yamuna expressway, for instance. Will this project benefit the 70 per cent mainly rural folk who struggle to get by on less than two dollars a day, or is it just intended to benefit the rich and their planned townships and sports cities along the road and tourism? Huge tracts of fertile land have been gained cheaply and sold for massive profit. Parts of the area are now up for sale at 18 times the price that was paid to farmers for the land.

Farmers' leaders claim the number of deaths over this land acquisition to be at least 70. Police action has included firing live bullets and rapes on peaceful and unarmed people demanding justice and their rights. This is symptomatic of what is happening across the country.

In Jaitapur, police recently opened fire on peaceful protesters demonstrating against the proposed Nuclear Power Park in Maharashtra. In Orissa, state forces are to be deployed to assist in what many regard as the anti-constitutional land acquisition to protect the stake of India’s largest foreign direct investment project, the POSCO Steel project. The anti-POSCO movement in its five years of peaceful protest has faced state violence numerous times.

Decent roads and other infrastructure are necessary, but at what cost to whom and at what sacrifice as far as other infrastructure such as agriculture is concerned?

Apart from displacing people and selling off much needed fertile land, the government has placed part of agriculture in the hands of powerful western agribusiness. You don't have to look far to read the many reports and research papers to know the effects - biopiracy, patenting and seed monopolies, pesticides and the use of toxins leading to superweeds and superbugs, the destruction of local rural economies, water run offs from depleted soil leading to climate change and severe water resource depletion and contamination.

Export-oriented policies that are part of agricultural globalisation have led to a shift in India from the production of food crops to commodities for exports. Where farmers traditionally grew paddy, pulses, millets, oilseeds and vegetable crops, they now grow cotton for export or wheat. India’s biodiversity is being uprooted. The subcontinent used to have 30,000 varieties of rice to cope with different climates. There are now 15.

One in four people in India is hungry and every second child is underweight and stunted. But environmentalist Vandana Shiva argues that hunger is a structural part of the design of the industrialised, globalised food system and of the design of capital-intensive, chemical-intensive monocultures of industrial agriculture. In her view, this type agriculture merely created a market for corporations to breed crops that respond to high chemical inputs. It has increased production of wheat and cotton at the cost of the production of other crops, some of which is now imported.

Shiva argues for a shift towards ecological, biodiversity-intensive, low-cost farming systems. Her organisation, Navdanya, is helping farmers across India implement a practical shift away from centralised, globalised food supply controlled by a handful of corporations towards decentralised, localised food systems that are resilient in the context of climate vulnerability and price volatility. She asserts such a system could feed India’s population.

Of course, the biggest beneficiaries of what is currently happening are the Monsantos, Syngentas and Cargills. The biggest losers are the many farmers who have been conned, forced into debt and have committed suicide en masse.

If the present path is continued, the mass of the population will find itself increasingly reliant on an insecure supply of food that is unnecessarily shifted around the planet, increasing water scarcities and expensive food that has less nutritional content and involves a greater threat to health. An article in the journal Hortscience in 2009 indicated falling nutritional values as a result of industrialised agriculture, and various studies point to the health risks from intensive, industrial methods as chemicals and the impact of genetic modifications become prevalent within the food chain.

According to officialdom, current construction projects comprise ‘necessary infrastructure', and giving free rein to agribusiness serves 'public purpose'. The reality is however that such trends form part of a skewed notion of 'development' dictated by elite interests in India and at the World Bank and by the corporations that pull the strings at the World Trade Organisation, who have all succeeded in getting their 'free' trade agendas accepted.

Where is the logic in giving the thieves the keys to your home? Why hand over the country to those who regard food and fertile land as resources to be looted for profit?

India may have nine per cent economic growth but this doesn't give the true picture. Surely, like some of the plants now grown, it's a case of 'abnormal swelling'.

Winds of Change: The Power of People

2011-05-14T19:54:00.011+01:00

Appeared in the Deccan Herald on 15/5/2011 and in Meghalaya Guardian and North East Times on 20/5/2011

These are tumultuous times. From Wisconsin and Greece to the Arab world and India, people are standing up to be counted and are demanding change. There is more than a whiff of the 1960s in the air, a decade of people power when civil rights activists, anti-war protestors, students and workers across the western world were on the march.

Perhaps today’s younger generation is living through its own version of that period. Although this decade is still in its infancy, it’s quite possible that people will look back on it in 30 years’ time in the same way we now look back on the 60s.

The 1960s crackled with revolution. It was a decade of excess and flamboyance as much as it was of feminism, Marxism and the New Left. There was the hippie movement that questioned conservative post war conventions with flower power, free love and Woodstock. And then there was Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Tariq Ali, radicals who resisted oppression and advocated wholesale political change.

The Prague Spring shook the communist world, over 30 African countries gained political independence, racial segregation in the US was outlawed and the revolutionary leader Fidel Castro was at the helm in Cuba. Many things didn’t work out and have left a lingering legacy of disillusionment, but we do actually have a lot to thank the 60s for. The decade laid the foundation for women’s rights, gay rights and a whole host of civil liberties and personal freedoms that are now taken for granted, especially in the western world.

The lesson from the 1960s is that change is possible, and, thankfully, this has not been lost in today’s world. With a hint of deja vu, the Left is on the rise once again, with Hugo Chavez in power in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia and a number of other leftist leaders holding top political office throughout the region. Change is sweeping North Africa and West Asia too.

If the heady days of the 60s and the current upheavals in the world tell us anything, it is that the individual, whether acting alone or collectively, can be a force for change. Look no further than India and the plight of Binayak Sen, for instance, which has inspired many and captured the world’s imagination. Along with other prominent figures, such as Arundhati Roy, Sen has drawn worldwide attention to India’s powerless and forgotten folk, who are being thrown off their land by powerful mining interests in the name of ‘progress’.

But Sen has been making a difference all his life to the lives of the poor and downtrodden. The Indian Academy of Social Sciences has stated that his suffering and personal risk may well serve to inspire scientists, as well as the general public, for some time to come. The Global Health Council has noted that his accomplishments speak volumes about what can be achieved in very poor areas when health practitioners are also committed community leaders.

Anna Hazare has also been making a difference for quite some time with various social and economic projects, ranging from improving irrigation, education and local decision making to successfully tackling untouchability. But it is his ‘fast till death’ anti-corruption protest that has been a rallying point for ordinary people. The fast led to nationwide protests and has forced government action.

Hazare’s belief is that India will become a strong nation by having self-reliant, self-sufficient villages, which can be achieved only through social commitment and the involvement of the common person. For too long, many have been mired in fatalism by adopting a ‘we are like this only’ mentality, but, for a moment at least, Hazare’s anti-corruption protest appears to have struck a chord with many across India.

Sen and Hazare are not alone. There are many others battling for change, not least Irom Sharmila, who has been on a hunger strike for over ten years to demand the repeal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 in Manipur. Unfortunately, her plight and cause have not impacted the public conscience in the way that Hazare’s has.

While Sen, Hazare and Sharmila are concerned with the looting of the nation’s wealth, debasement of civil liberties or the oppression of certain populations, recent events elsewhere show that such concerns are hardly unique to India.

On his visit to the country last year, it was noticeable that Barack Obama and his corporate entourage had little to say about the bottom 50 per cent of the population. Not much was said about the kind of warped ‘development’ that creates rich-list billionaires while driving many into poverty and removing access to publicly funded services. And it’s the same situation across the globe.

In fact, Hazare says that corruption is an issue that encompasses poverty, unemployment, water, food and sources of livelihood. And it is those very issues that have, to an extent, fuelled many of the protests as an arguably corrupt global economic system has negatively impacted the lives of tens of millions throughout the world.

In Greece, as a result of the ‘austerity measures’ being imposed on the population, resultant anger is fuelling a challenge by ordinary people to the power of finance. Hundreds of academics, politicians and activists are calling for the opening of Greece’s debts to public scrutiny, with the aim of confronting the way that the International Monetary Fund and European Union work behind closed doors to force their policies on member countries, whereby ordinary people suffer the consequences. A short viral film called ‘Debtocracy’ (government by debt) is sweeping Greece’s online community and convincing people they are being conned.

People have been protesting in many countries in response to the banking crisis, unfair public sector service cuts and rising food prices and poverty. Even before the banking crisis, too many had for too long experienced the impact of deregulated markets and consistent downward pressures on wages.

In the Arab world, throw into the equation simmering resentment over the treatment of Palestinians and the presence of western-backed dictators and corrupt officials who have scant regard for human rights and civil liberties, and you had an explosion of mass resentment that was just waiting to be triggered.

The self-immolation of street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia seems to have been the turning point. After that incident, protest and revolt spread across the Arab world, despite crackdowns by repressive governments. Calls for change have swept the region.

The mantra of change for change’s sake can be very seductive, however. Think back to Obama and his ‘world tour’ just before he was elected. Tens of thousands all over the world turned out to listen to him talk inspiringly about change and hope. The media fell over itself to impart what turned out to be a cruel public relations con-trick by his Wall Street backers based on the deceit of no more wars, no more Guantanamo and no more US imperialist-type jaunts abroad.

Guantanamo is still there, war has been stepped up in Afghanistan and a new one started in Libya, and the CIA has its blood soaked fingers ever deeper in the turmoil that has become a defining feature of Pakistan. Despite the exercise in portraying him as the man of the people, Obama has failed to make a significant difference for the better.

But, what of the ordinary folk who want change, particularly in the Arab world?

Gigi Ibrahim was one of the many activists in Tahir Square demanding an end to the Mubarak regime. When interviewed on British TV, the interviewer suggested that, unlike in the 1960s, today’s protestors lack any coherent ideology or sense of political idealism. When the interviewer listened to Ibrahim stating that she is a ‘revolutionary socialist’, perhaps he was somewhat surprised by such a good old dose of 60s-style radicalism.

What young people like Gigi Ibrahim want and what they finally get, however, may well turn out to be entirely different things, given the disparate nature of those involved in the protests, cosmetic personnel changes by regimes that stay in tact (a major concern in Egypt) and the heavy shadow cast across the Arab world by the US, Israel and the Europeans.

In any case, the tectonic plates of history may not yet be ready to shift in the right direction for far reaching, radical and lasting change to take place. Lenin posited that, in spite of widespread discontent throughout Europe in the early 20th century, Russia was the country in which revolution occurred because it contained all the contradictions possible within a single state at the time. It was ripe for transformation.

Nonetheless, individuals acting alone or together can still enact change. Sometimes the best that can be hoped for is incremental change rather than that of the revolutionary kind — just giving those tectonic plates a slight nudge in the right direction.

In India, it remains to be seen if people power can ultimately win through. Persistence is the key. After all, the people are many and the power holders few. Hazare, Ibrahim and many others appreciate this. Irom Sharmila, and for that matter, Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma, are more aware than most, at least as far as persistence is concerned.

Of course, new technology in the form of the internet and social media can help. The online transnational community Avaaz informs people by e-mail about issues and urges them to take action on matters from corruption and poverty to conflict and climate change. This model of internet organising is allowing millions of individual efforts to be rapidly combined into powerful collective forces. The vital role of social media in campaigns and protests is now an accepted norm among a burgeoning younger generation that appears less inclined to tolerate corruption, inaction or injustice than those that went before.

When used this way, new technology provides individuals with a sense of direct power in an age when an increasing number of younger people are acutely aware that placing an ‘X’ on a ballot paper every few years just isn’t good enough. Given the deep seated nature of the many problems facing the world, a new generation wants democracy to be an ongoing, everyday affair and politicians genuinely held to immediate account, especially when the main priority of many an official and political party appears to be the speed at which they rush to suck at the corporate teat.

If new technology is helping to bring about change in places like India or the Arab world then all well and good. Nearly all change that has benefited ordinary people has resulted from the actions of ordinary folk themselves. Apart from the philanthropists, such benefits have never been handed out freely by the bankers, stockbrokers or corporate rich who wield the power.

This has been true whether for women’s rights, political rights, workers’ rights or any other number of civil liberties. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X knew this. Gigi Ibrahim, Anna Hazare and countless others know it too.

From Hollywood to Abbottabad: An Illegal Political Assassination

2011-05-08T12:52:00.019+01:00

Appeared in the Deccan Herald on 11/5/2011

It was a daring raid by heroic men. It was a shot in the arm for freedom and democracy. It was a major victory in the 'war against terror.' Was it? Not really. But this populist narrative coming out of the White House is blindly mimicked by much of the mainstream media.

To help matters along, we had that photo of Obama, Clinton and other US government officials sitting in the White House apparently watching a 'live feed' video of the raid on Bin Laden's compound. All very dramatic and all very Hollywood, with some Schwarzenegger-type gun toting unit reeking revenge on the bad guy. It plays out well to a US audience reared on media propaganda where there is black and white with no grey areas allowed.

Osama Bin Laden was not armed when he was shot dead. Neither was he using his wife as a "human shield." This original version of events that came out of the White House is in direct contradiction to what Obama later announced. The new version of events was presented by spokesman Jay Carney, who said Bin Laden's wife had rushed one of the Seals and was shot in the leg but not killed. Carney also said that Bin Laden was then shot and killed, and he was unarmed. The original version said he was armed.

You couldn't make it up. Or maybe you could and they are.

We were lied to or misled over the reason for the US and its allies going into Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, and we have been constantly misled over Bin Laden being directly responsible for the attack on the twin towers in New York. There has never been any credible evidence presented. So, why believe anything that comes from the mouths of 'official sources' in the US?

Much of the media, however, merely parrots the 'official narrative' about not only the daring raid on Bin Laden's compound, but also the deceptions concerning some notional 'war on terror' and a simplistic tale of good vs evil wherein western imperialism has been airbrushed away.

The US media likes to focus on US citizens dancing in the streets and shoves microphones in people's faces who mouth platitudes about revenge for 9/11 and justice having been done.

Instead of questioning the evidence (if any) presented for Bin Laden being responsible for the twin tower attacks, or the way the CIA and Pentagon helped construct al-Qaeda and even today in Libya are using it to further US ends, the media finds it much more sexy and ratings-friendly to spew out the US government line as fact.

Noam Chomsky asks the US to consider how it (and the media) would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic. The western media fails to highlight that the US operation to kill Bin Laden was an illegal political assassination carried out on the sovereign territory of another state, apparently without that state's consent or knowledge.

President Zardari has denied that Pakistan sheltered terrorists, describing it as "the world's greatest victim of terrorism" in an article for the Washington Post.

And there lies the crux of the matter. Just who are the real victims in all of this and who are the major culprits?

Don't look to much of the mainstream media to provide the answer to this. The media narrative coincides with the US government's depiction that hails weapon wielding US 'liberators' for essentially killing and maiming millions in unjustified and illegal wars in West Asia and helping turn Pakistan into the mess of conflict and death it is becoming.

Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice, Blair and the rest of their cronies have been complicit in the deaths of people that outweigh those killed in the twin towers attack thousands of times over, and that's not even taking into account the lakhs killed as a result of sanctions in Iraq during the 1990s (5,00,000 children under 5, according to UNICEF). Obama's administration is continuing along the same lines.

Their policies have also been responsible for turning much of the West into a fear ridden open prison tinged with Islamophobia and ready to get in line whenever a new imperialist adventure is mooted or more draconian anti-civil liberty measures are forwarded to 'protect' people from the induced paranoia.

It's clear who the main victims and culprits are.

But why worry? As in the movies, the bad guy has been eliminated. All they need now is for some other character to play the part. And the media will no doubt continue to play cheerleader from the sidelines.

They Never Use The F-Word

2011-04-10T16:46:00.010+01:00

Published in the Morning Star on 11/4/2011

In some quarters, the word 'failure' has virtually been obliterated from the English language. We are led to believe that the cold calculations of 'experts', advisors and think tanks have got policy and decision making down to a fine art. So why worry? Failure has been banished to the backwaters of history. It's more than a politician's job is worth, or for that matter a highly paid corporate executive, to contemplate using the F-word or admit to having failed.

Think of the failures of US foreign policy and the wars in Iraq and Afgahnistan. According to Bush, Obama and assorted government spokespersons, everything went or is going according to plan. Despite the reality of creating turmoil, death, destruction and instability, it's all a raging success. Just like the unfolding fiasco in Libya no doubt.

And, of course, on the economic front, neo-liberalism has been the best thing since sliced bread. 'Globalisation' has apparently brought freedom of choice, democracy and untold prosperity to the world. Outsourcing is amazing, Forbes rich listers are to be worshiped and poverty is soon to be done away with. The 'war on terror' is going to plan and the 'war on drugs' even more so.

This propaganda continues its deluge even as the poor continue to fill up prisons, workers' rights are stripped away from Wisconsin to Ohio, drugs cripple communities throughout Europe and North America, people are made homeless, wages continue to fall in real terms, and taxpayers money pours into the black hole of needless wars and the pockets of the profiteers and arms companies that live off them. But we are told that capitalism works and we must stick with the system because everything else has failed. That's right, failure does exist – but only when applied elsewhere.

But that's the trouble with capitalism, it doesn't know when its beat. It's a patent failure sold to us as a success story. While it is indeed a wonderful wealth creating machine for some, as even Marx acknowledged, the system does not seem capable of solving its own problems. It just manages the many problems it creates.

In the 1960s, in the face of increasing competition abroad, not least from Germany and Japan, the US began to outsource production to bring down costs by using cheap foreign labour. To provide a further edge, trade unions and welfare were attacked in order to suppress wages at home, as was witnessed for instance in the UK during the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher.

Problem solved? Not really. As wages in the West stagnated or decreased in absolute terms and unemployment increased, the market for goods was under threat - if people have no money to buy things, then what to do? Simple, lend them money and create a debt ridden consumer society. Of course, this meant new opportunities for investors in finance, and all kinds of dubious financial products were created, sold to the public and packaged and shifted around the banking system. Now all of that has hit the fan too.

You see, nothing ever fails in capitalism. Failures are spun by politicians as successes and crises are passed off as opportunities for entreprenuers to exploit. Crises are shifted around the system until the next crisis hits. Shopping is freedom, wars are humanitarian and success is always just over the horizon. Trouble is, that horizon is never reached. It's a big, fat lie.

The international system of trade and finance has allowed capital and finance to be moved around the globe at ease, resulting in big profits and cheap labour, private profit and public havoc. Commodity and financial speculators can plunge millions into poverty and hunger, and local power is usurped by the increasing influence of international financial institutions and state-corporate masters, whose policies destroy often self sustaining local rural economies and effectively boot people off their land. But they should be grateful – they can swarm to some sprawling overburdened city and, if lucky, get a few dollars a day job in a outsourced sweatshop. It's an economic miracle!

As power is handed over to some powerful seed manufacturer, pharmaceutical company, private water entity or energy provider (take your pick), we are informed that all of this is an unmitigated success and we've never had it so good. Is this the case?

Perhaps that question should not be left to the prosperous upper middle classes in the West or in some 'miracle economy' such as India to answer. Those people have benefited and have in fact never had it so good. The question should be posed to the bulk of the population in any number of countries. The answer I think would be somewhat different.

Science Matters - But So Do Priorities: Two Steps Forward, Three Steps Back?

2011-04-09T20:22:00.011+01:00

Published in the Deccan Herald on 10/4/2011

Whatever happened to the brave new future that science had once promised? During the European Age of Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries, people hoped that science and rationality would triumph over superstition and myth and deliver us from the tyranny of kings, autocratic rule and religious dogma. Despite such hope, however, today the world faces many deep seated problems that science has arguably often fuelled. Has science taken over from where former tyrannies left off? Indeed, has science itself become the new mythology?

In order to justify the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan to the public, politicians and the media in the West expressed moral outrage about the 'barbaric' laws of Afghanistan - women denied access to education, a lack of freedom of thought and death by stoning. After that, it was a case of ‘quick, follow the compass, send in the troops, and let's teach those barbarians how things should be done’. Not the magnetic compass, but the dodgy one of morality - the people of science and rationality versus the people of darkness and ignorance. Well, that’s how moral crusader Tony Blair and tub thumping George Bush and his cronies tried to sell their geo-political exploits to us all.

After all, we in the West have seen the light. We found it through the lens of a microscope and at the bottom of a test tube and were blinded with it as we discovered the marvels of nuclear fission and all manner of technological delights. We found the answer. We found the truth. Or did we?

‘The truth' is a tricky thing to pin down, even in science. It is built on shaky stilts that rest on shifting foundations. Science historian Thomas Kuhn wrote about the revolutionary paradigm shifts in scientific thought, whereby established theoretical perspectives can play the role of theology, albeit a secular type, and can serve as a barrier to the advancement of knowledge, until the weight of evidence and pressure from proponents of a new theoretical paradigm is overwhelming. Then, at least according to Kuhn, the old faith gives way and a new truth emerges. From Newton to Einstein, theoretical paradigms have come and gone.

Philosopher Paul Feyerabend also argued that science is not an 'exact science'. The manufacture of scientific knowledge involves a process driven by various sociological, methodological and epistemological conflicts and compromises, both inside the laboratory and beyond. Despite the nature of this negotiated order, however, much of the modern world still tends to bow down to science as the giver of hard truth.

Whatever its merits or shortcomings as a discipline, it is the way in which science is used by powerful groups that is the real issue. US sociologist Robert Merton highlighted the underlying norms of science as involving research that is not warped by vested interests, the common ownership of scientific discoveries and subjecting findings to organised, rigorous scrutiny within the scientific community. How science is funded, used and manipulated by fund providers and other vested interests quite often runs counter to and debases such lofty ideals.

Cloak something in the vestiges of science and it takes on an almost mythical character that is not to be questioned, no matter how poor the underlying scientific research may have been. In many respects, science and technology have in fact become the new mythology. In this day and age, a highly placed lobby group or expensively funded campaign targeted at the press, TV or social networking media can convince almost anyone that some incredulous outlook is scientific truth. I refer you to the anti-global warming brigade or the sometimes spurious claims forwarded by big pharmaceutical or agribusiness companies. When is science not science? When studies are funded and designed to secure predetermined outcomes, or findings are cherry picked to justify a stance.

Science has undoubtedly led to technological advances and has improved life for millions. It would be foolish to suggest otherwise. But what does it say about us as a species when people can sit and watch a probe going to the moon but turn a blind eye to millions a couple of hundred kilometres away living in the direst situations imaginable? Where is the 'progress' and 'age of reason' in a world where people use sophisticated weaponry to kill in the name of peace or destroy the ecology for the sake of profit? Science matters. But so do priorities.

The radical German writer Herbert Marcuse summed up the problem facing us by saying that the capabilities, both intellectual and technological, of contemporary society are immeasurably greater than before, which means that the scope of society’s domination over the individual is also immeasurably greater than ever before.

Whether it's religious faith or secular reason, both have promised us versions of nirvana, yet the world now faces major problems. Religion and science have a history of colluding with the powerful to help produce the mess they claim to have the remedy for. Did we become closer to god and goodness when religion ruled? Did we find the light when the scientists ended up in the pay of governments and wealthy corporations? Or did we become blinded by warped morality?

The ability to genetically modify foods and convince farmers to ditch centuries' old tried and tested methods of crop production accounts for little when it results in death, starvation and fear of the future. Patent your product and foist it on some hapless farmer, or patent another and make it too costly for the common person to treat his or her life threatening disease. The result is the will of god, or should I say the actions of profiteers and some cost-benefit analyst who worked it all out on a spreadsheet?

But god is watching. No, wait a minute, it's not god, it's the CCTV cameras and the security agencies. God was kicked out of the building and was replaced with technology long ago. Hold on though, I just found him under lock and key in the store cupboard to be brought out occasionally in an attempt to inject a bit of morality into the expediency of it all.

So where is humankind heading? We’ve achieved much in a relatively short space of time. Anatomically modern appearing humans originated in Africa about 200,000 years ago, and we reached full behavioural modernity around 50,000 years ago. To put things in perspective, dinosaurs were on the Earth for 250 million years.

Just think of what has been achieved during our time here - jet and space travel, steel and glass megacities, literature and philosophy, medical, genetic and scientific advances, computer technology, mass communications, etc. It's very impressive. But our achievements must be placed into context.

Rulers and politicians have spilled rivers of blood and continue to do so just to become temporary masters of some or other part of the planet, and endless cruelties have been visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the globe upon inhabitants elsewhere. In the name of progress, we have driven many animals to the point of extinction, treat the planet as a garbage dump, pollute the air, melt the ice caps and continue to rape the land of its natural resources. You don't have to revisit the effects of last year's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to appreciate our impact, but it helps.

As dolphins, sea birds and whales lay dying in the oil-soaked sea, a finger had to be pointed at the sheer arrogance of it all. No effective contingency plans were put in place for such deep-sea drilling. As long as profits were guaranteed, the risks were worth taking.

Tony Hayward, the then CEO of BP, argued that the responsibility for safety on the drilling rig was Transocean's because it was their rig, their equipment, their people, their systems, their safety processes. Obama blamed BP, the US people blame BP and Obama, BP tried to wriggle free by blaming others. Lax regulations were sought by the oil-rich lobby, and it got what it wanted. It's clear that many had their snouts in this unholy mess.

If we wish to save ourselves and all other living things, we must rethink how we organise ourselves on this planet. The international system of trade and finance has allowed capital and finance to be shifted around the globe at ease, resulting in big profits and huge oils spills, easy money and cheap labour, private profit and public havoc. Commodity and financial speculators can plunge millions into poverty and hunger, yet all of this is done according to the warped rationale of the market, supported by economic dogma and propaganda masquerading as science. Today, food prices and people are subject to the whims of speculators, tomorrow it could be water.

There is much talk of 'saving the planet', but the planet was around a long time before humans emerged, and it will still be here a long time after we have departed the scene. Even if we do our worst, many millenia down the line the planet will recover. We don't necessarily need to save the planet. We must save us from ourselves. Our impact on this planet has been immeasurable, but our timescale of existence might well turn out to be a small fraction when compared with that of the dinosaurs.

Humankind now stands at a fork in the road. One option is to carry on down our current path by accepting the status quo and all which that entails - diminishing democracy, the increasing influence of international financial institutions and consequent destruction of local economies, science pressed into the service of a worldwide arms industry, endless conflict over finite resources, mass suffering and even eventual oblivion for the species. However, there is the alternative route, and many individuals and organisations across the world (and even countries, such as Bhutan or Costa Rica) have already chosen it. This path involves debunking the myth that the endless pursuit of high GDP growth on the back of deregulation and increased power for the market, speculators and corporations is how we measure progress.

The choice is ours because, as the physicist and astronomer Carl Sagan once said, there is no hint that help will come from out there in the cosmos, from god or anyone else, to save us from ourselves. If we don't help ourselves, who will? We have to because, just like the oil-soaked sea creatures in the Gulf of Mexico, there is nowhere else to run.

The Cancer Cash Cycle

2011-03-29T17:35:00.011+01:00

Appeared in Deccan Herald on 13/4/2011 and in Morning Star on 29/3/2011

Cancer is big business. Despite massive public screening campaigns and talk of cures, cancer rates continue to soar, and certain companies not only profit from making the chemicals that cause cancer but also from selling the drugs that treat it.

In the 2009 documentary The Idiot Cycle, it is claimed that the world's top cancer causing culprits include the companies Bayer, BASF, Dow, Dupont, Monsanto, Syngenta, Novartis, Pfizer, among others. The allegation is that chemical manufacturers are profiting from the production of cancer-causing products and then some of the same companies are investing in profitable cancer treatments.

On top of this, many of these companies are now developing genetically modified crops which have never been adequately tested for long-term health impacts like cancer. The onset of the disease is frequently 15 to 20 years down the road for victims.

Gilles-Eric Seralini, professor of molecular biology at the University of Caen in France, says it is absurd that only three months of testing allowed GM corn to be approved in over a dozen nations. Upon reviewing Monsanto's raw data, he and his team found, among other problems, liver damage and physiological changes into a pre-diabetic condition among the rats which had eaten Monsanto's GM corn. And that's just from three months of eating such food.

The incidence of cancer is escalating and is expected to double by 2050, and it's a global issue. For example, the incidence of cancer for some major organs in India is the highest in the world. While tobacco is a major cause, other factors cannot be discounted. Recent reports in the Indian media have drawn attention to rising rates of breast cancer in urban areas, and in 2009 there was a reported increase in cancer rates in Tamil Nadu's textile belt, possibly due to contaminated water. But without proper regulations in force this may be the thin end of the wedge for India.

According to Dr Samuel Epstein, emeritus professor of environmental medicine at the University of Illinois, a range of industries in the US have contaminated the air, land and sea with a wide range of petrochemical and other carcinogens. This has not only affected the public at large, but has also placed workers in certain sectors and their offspring at risk of cancer.

Epstein notes that the incidence of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma has increased by nearly 100 per cent in the US over the last few decades, and brain cancer by about 80 to 90 per cent. Breast cancer has gone up by about 60 to 65 per cent. Testicular cancer - particularly in men between the ages of 28 and 35 - has gone up by nearly 300 percent. Epstein asserts that there has been a massive escalation in the incidence of cancer that cannot be explained away on the basis of smoking, longevity, genetics or a fatty diet. He may be right.

In the US, animal and dairy products are highly contaminated with a wide range of hormones, pesticides and other industrial chemical carcinogens, some of which are very important risk factors for reproductive cancers - testicular cancers in men, breast cancers in women and leukemia in children. The use of the IGF1 growth hormone in milk has been associated with breast, prostate and colon cancer.

Epstein provides various examples of everyday, taken-for-granted household items, cosmetics and toiletries, from deodorants to shampoo and talcum powder, which also contain chemicals that are carcinogens. The conclusion is that synthetic chemicals and their effects on people's health affect everyone simply because they can be found in so many consumer products today. Unfortunately many governments roll over all too easily when it comes to sanctioning new synthetic chemicals without adequate testing, which is not too surprising, especially where pharmaceuticals are concerned - substantially more money is spent by companies on marketing and lobbying than on actual research into their drugs.

The usual tactic by officialdom is to individualise health issues by advising people to change their behaviour. While in certain cases individual behaviour may indeed minimise risks, there is not much the individual can do in terms of many of the major cancers that have increased in recent decades. By adopting a "blame the victim" strategy, attention is diverted away from the practices of large corporations that cause cancer and ill health.

However, scientist Dr Shiv Chopra tells of his many battles against the Canadian government which knowingly allowed dangerous drugs, agricultural practices and carcinogenic pesticides to enter the food supply. Chopra asserts that there is a concerted effort by companies to sicken and then treat humanity, while raking in massive profits.

Whistleblowers like Chopra are playing a valuable role by exposing corrupt practices. At the same time a number of pressure groups are actually engaged in trying to phase out the use of carcinogenic chemicals in products. However, as was the case when the tobacco companies were taken on, tackling the interests of powerful state-corporate actors is likely to be a long and arduous affair.

British Prime Minister’s Fog of Rhetoric over Libya

2011-03-25T19:19:00.009Z

Appeared in Deccan Herald on 26/3/2011

So, the United Nations has finally given the green light for outside armed intervention in Libya. British Prime Minister David Cameron had been one of the loudest voices in the west calling for military action. The trouble with Cameron is that his bark these days is more frightening than his bite and, as with the West in general, he also exhibits an all too visible moral hypocrisy.

The Cameron government is currently making huge cuts to public services in order to balance the books, and the armed forces are taking a share of the pain. The UK’s capability to act militarily on the international stage has been seriously restricted due to cutbacks. Bark as he may, acting alone Cameron does not have the clout to back up his rhetoric. Gone are the days of the UK striding the world stage as a significant global power.

Cameron seems to forget this. But his Tory party has always been a party of nationalism, hope and glory. It must be hard to change the habit of a lifetime. And why has Cameron been calling for intervention? Oh yes, that’s right, to save lives. I didn’t hear the West calling for military intervention in Palestine in early 2009 when Israeli forces, according to a UN report, were deliberately targeting civilians in their war in Gaza. And I didn’t notice concerns about humanitarianism as the UK plied the Israeli government with components that were used to wage its war.

Not much is said either about the UK’s huge arms deals with human rights abuser Saudi Arabia, which is currently helping out Bahrain, another undemocratic regime, in its suppression of demonstrators. And where are the strident condemnations or call to arms over killings in Yemen or Ivory Coast? Until a month or so ago, Britain was selling arms to Libya, importing oil and some of its respected universities were readily accepting large amounts of money from Libya.

But various western governments and leaders have always demonstrated selective amnesia and double standards when it comes to morality and humanitarianism. Throughout the 1990s, many western leaders had few qualms about supporting sanctions on Iraq and the subsequent invasion, both of which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians.

Concern for human rights is fickle and is often expressed only when oil and commercial investments are at stake. Is the West really concerned about voices for democracy and welfare in Libya? It’s not hard to be sceptical. After all, Saudi armed forces recently used live ammunition against demonstrators with little if any condemnation from the West.

While it is highly commendable to want to save lives and avoid brutal slaughter by instituting a no-fly zone or via other interventions, it is debatable whether lives will be saved, given the unintended consequences of intervention that are yet to be played out. Moreover, whenever western countries advocate intervention on supposed humanitarian grounds, it is right to be suspicious, taking into account the West's record of meddling in the affairs of others.

The track record isn't too good. Over the past century, the US, for instance, was either directly involved in or backed forces that were responsible for the mass killing of civilian populations from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia to Timor and Iraq. It was involved in toppling or destabilising democratic regimes from Iran, Honduras and Guatemala to Brazil and Chile, and it has supported authoritarian dictators in Indonesia, Latin America and the Arab world.

From the illegal invasion of Iraq to covert operations in Pakistan, as highlighted by the recent murky case of CIA operative Raymond Davis, the US’s self serving role abroad has been apparent. The democratic and human rights credentials of the regimes it has supported have counted for little. As renowned reporter Stephen Kinzer has argued, to further its interests much of the history of the US on the international stage has involved replacing democratic leaders with people who detested everything the United States says it stands for.

Throw into the equation that the first world war was largely based on British and German grabs for oil and that much of recent global history has subsequently revolved around control of it, it becomes apparent that the value of life has too often been determined by the bloody geo-political often oil soaked morality and the aspirations of western elite interests.

Given this history, it comes as no surprise that there is suspicion over the West’s intentions in Libya. While some take comfort from media-friendly politicians who talk about human life being precious and must be saved, others are aware that, for the West, life is precious - only when it suits.

The US's Crumbling Ideological Hegemony

2011-03-04T11:15:00.025Z

Appeared in Deccan Herald on 14/3/2011 and Morning Star on 7/3/2011

Back in 1992, we were told by US academic Francis Fukuyama that, with the apparent triumph of western capitalist democracy and the downfall of the USSR, we had arrived at the end of history, the end of ideology. Fast forward a couple of decades and Hilary Clinton has announced the US is at war – an ideological war for the hearts and minds of the global community.

While Voice of America and other US backed international broadcasters were aggressively assertive during the Cold War, Clinton laments the fact that, since then, funding has been cut back and US ideological global influence has weakened, especially with new kids now on the block, such as Russia Today and Al Jazeera, gaining influence.

Apart from Voice of America, Hollywood served as a de facto propaganda machine for decades, spewing out self aggrandising messages about the US as a beacon of freedom and democratic ideals. Hollywood propagated the great 'American lie' of the great 'American Dream' - the individual reigning supreme, overcoming adversity and making it in life.

Enter satellite TV, the Internet and social media and people now no longer turn to a single news source or are as influenced by the Hollywood propaganda machine. The media landscape has been transformed. During the past five years or so, the US has had to face up to the harsh truth that it is no longer able to monopolise the global debate, or even the terms of debate, when it comes to shaping the analysis and reporting of news, whether via CNN or any other US-based global outlet.

While the US may no longer be involved in a war over clear cut political ideology, as was the case in the Cold War, the problem for the US is that it thinks its point of view is the only point of view, or at least should be the only point of view that people get to hear. Its attitude to the changed landscape is revealing - one day Hilary Clinton praises the Internet, the other she wants to control it, depending on just who is accessing information and whether or not it coincides with US political aims. In her recent speech urging governments to end Internet censorship, she warned that countries such as China, which censor the Internet, risk going the same way as Egypt and Tunisia, where pro-democracy protests brought down governments.

Perhaps Clinton should look closer to home. The Internet is already heavily monitored by the US government, but most revealing of all perhaps is the US attitude to WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. The US has done everything in its power thus far to curtail its influence by shutting down its access to finance, notably by initially applying pressure on PayPal and MasterCard. Now Assange, with his impending extradition from the UK to Sweden to face charges of sexual abuse, is in real danger of eventually being extradited to the US to possibly face trumped up charges over WikiLeaks.

Non-US English language TV channels, such as Russia Today (RT), Al Jazeera and China Central Television (CCTV) have served to undermine US attempts at ideological hegemony. Hilary Clinton says that the US is losing the propaganda war to these channels, especially Al Jazeera. She also states that she has seen Russia Today in a few countries and that it is “quite instructive.”

As a recent convert to RT, I can see why she thinks this to be the case. RT's news coverage is highly critical of US international policies, and it's not crude anti-western propaganda or some unrefined throwback to the Soviet era. It's analyses are well grounded and based on credible sources and institutions. Whereas many western news channels focus more on a need for humanitarian military intervention in Libya, RT focuses more on intervention as a cover for imperialism, pointing to the fact that hundreds were killed in Gaza last year but there was little talk of intervention there. The emphasis is completely different. If Hilary Clinton is worried, she has good cause to be.

Bullying and cajoling may be having an impact as far as WikiLeaks is concerned, but these tactics hold little sway when it comes to impacting the influence of RT, Al Jazeera or CCTV.

If the upheavals in the Arab world show us anything, it may be that it's becoming more difficult for the West to continue to prop up authoritarian leaders and rely on such leaders to keep their populations in line. There is a new generation who are more well informed and tuned in and who are much harder to control. The US is rattled by the new media landscape and the increasing sophistication of various populations whose expectations and aspirations are no longer constrained due to their access to a wider range of news channels, Twitter and other social media.

Francis Fukuyama mistakenly believed we had reached the end point of humankind's ideological evolution and that western liberal democracy was the final form of human government. That in itself was always a thoroughly depressing thought. These days, however, many throughout the world see through the charade of western style democracy. And Hilary Clinton knows it.

Love and Misery in the Age of TV: A Trilogy of Rants

2011-02-26T19:13:00.010Z

* At War with the TV
* The Rolling Ribbon of Misery
* The Bitter Realisation of 'Happily Ever After'

At War with the TV

Appeared in Deccan Herald on 27/2/2011

That electronic box in the corner is responsible for sending me into a spiralling pit of despair and ruining my life. It sits there, day in and day out, laughing at me, mocking me and spewing out an endless cocktail of unattainable drivel based on advertisements that tell me how to live my life. And, because almost none of us, let alone me, lead the lives portrayed in TV advertisements, it is easy to be left with lingering feelings of self doubt, worthlessness and a sense of bitter disappointment.

How many times have I seen someone appearing in a TV ad telling me that I’m unique and so special and then implying I’m a useless piece of garbage because I don’t possess a face that resembles the smoothest piece of porcelain ever made? I mean, I don’t need to see some 23-year-old model bragging about how wrinkle-free they are because they bathe themselves in some cream that costs a zillion dollars a jar, when we all know the wrinkles would not have set in anyway by that age and that the substance in question is probably as useful to humankind as the company that manufactures it.

If your face doesn’t fit, and it probably won’t because, according to those ads, it will require not only facial cream but plastic surgery or botox and a head transplant as well, you will not be invited to the endless party that the whole world seems to have been invited to, going by the images on TV. Once your face does fit, however, you can join that TV ad jet set who while away their time at fancy drinks parties in sumptuous business class up in the air travelling between New York and Paris or brokering huge deals while wearing the latest from the fashion walkways of Milan.

Even cookery programmes are seldom about food these days. Food isn’t about tasty nutrition any more, it’s about lifestyle. So is drink. Coffee isn’t just a beverage, it’s a double decaff lifestyle aspiring latte to be drunk in the right place with the right crowd while tapping away on your blackberry in a plush branch of coffee-cup-price-rip-off.

When you begin to watch this fantasy world on TV, you might start out by being impressed by it all. If only I could drink champagne aboard some ongoing business class party-fest in the sky. If only I could get that power job with ‘million-dollar-deal-breaker, inc’. But, after a while, being impressed turns to frustration because no matter how hard you try or where you look, there is a big ‘no entry’ sign barring your way to the world of easy living and shimmering, shiny people.

As my lost hope turned to frustration followed by harsh embitterment many years ago, I began yelling at the TV on a regular basis. I realised that the aspirations being sold to us are as catchable as a rocket speeding into a big, black hole, crushing the dreams of all on board. Now, as I stumble about my lifestyle choice hovel that passes for a home, I have become extremely adept at muttering to myself about the injustices of the world and those advertising agencies that have conspired to ruin my life through the medium of that now smashed up TV that lies in the corner.

Anyway, why bother buying hugely expensive celebrity-endorsed luxury chocolate that encases some mushy substance that is as tasty as eating dead parrot? We only bought it because we were informed that it is 100 per cent ‘natural’ and made from the honest work of peasant folk toiling away with their cows herds on the slopes of the Andes. Yeah — right. As authentic as that bottled bacteria-ridden ‘pure mountain water’ that comes from the tap in the factory on the edge of town.

Goodbye cruel TV. No longer will I have to endure you stabbing me through the heart. No longer will you conspire to leave me lying in your trash heap of false dreams and broken promises.

The Rolling Ribbon of Misery

Before that flickering fib-box of deceit was invented, also known as TV, there was the newspaper – boring black and white, with rows and columns of text, and not much else. The poor old newspaper reader of yesteryear must have required all the tenacity of a garden worm burrowing through frozen dirt in order to get from first to last page. As technology developed, newspapers gradually became punctuated with the odd image here and there, and the whole package eventually became easier on the eye.

Then came a big wake up call with the advent of the radio then the goggle box. At first, TV tended to show still images to accompany news items because it was thought that the half-brained viewer would not be able to concentrate on what the newsreader was saying while watching an actual moving image.

In order to keep up, as TV news developed, newspapers became more eye-catching with splashes of colour, headlines of ever increasing size and larger and larger pictures. For many publications, news gathering became a bit of a damned nuisance as they opted to fill their pages with images of half naked women, celebrity gossip and all manner of useless information that is forgotten within five seconds of reading it.

Most revealing of all, however, is the evolution of TV news. From the stale and boring presentation of the 1950s, which had all the appeal of spending a wet weekend watching milk curdle, we were gradually treated to ever more user-friendly newsreaders and roving reporters.

Then came cable and satellite TV, and competition between news programmes and channels intensified. What we now have is a 24 hour a day rolling misery fest of intolerable pain and horror that some or other group of people somewhere in the world is hellbent on inflicting on another group of people.

The sensationalist laden nihilism that now passes for news has become the worst type of voyeurism known to humankind. We sit mesmerised by non-stop images of earthquakes, tsunamis, death, war and unfathomable despair. Why, why why, we yell at the screen. At some stage, we will probably be informed that the US is yet again contemplating going to war to ‘liberate’ another set of poor downtrodden folk. And, for a fleeting moment, we may think it very strange that each time it carries out such action it somehow always accidentally stumbles on a bunch of oil fields belonging to such folk.

But we can always take a slither of comfort from the fact that, amazing as it may seem, these are the good times because, no matter how terrible things may appear to be, they are about to get much worse. The text rolling across the bottom of the screen tells us that some or other expert believes we are all about to be sizzled by global warming within a decade or are soon to become hopeless victims of the next horrific disease about to grip the planet. This rolling ribbon of text will also inform us about some catastrophic earthbound meteorite that could be (but probably isn't) heading our way.

Just as we have been convinced that every drop of joy has been squeezed from living and contemplate ending it all here and now, we can stop reading the text and turn our attention again to the screen images of people experiencing yet another horrendous disaster and say “Oh well, at least it’s not me. Things could be worse I guess.”

Suddenly, life almost seems worth living again, that is until we switch channel and begin to watch some depressing documentary on the correlation between mental breakdown and watching the news on TV.

But most of the news isn’t really news. 24 hour news channels have a lot of air time to fill. What better way to do it than by having an array of well paid ‘experts’ wheeled onto our screens to speculate on worst case scenarios of doom resulting from that meteorite that has a one in a trillion trillion chance of ever smashing into Earth?

Never mind, things could be worse. By the next time you watch the news - they probably will be.

The Bitter Realisation of 'Happily Ever After'

When my TV was taken away for repair, I hit rock bottom. Watching drops of condensation fall down the window before coming to rest on the decaying wooden sill could keep me occupied for hours. I merely sat there, alone in my paint peeling apartment, pondering about the temporary nature of happiness and the permanency of disillusionment. Thankfully, before resorting to taking up wrist slitting to pass the time, the TV returned. Now the TV is back, I can get on with letting it destroy my life.

The trouble with TV is that it far too often subjects us to idyllic notions of love. Many programmes and commercials sell you the notion that there is someone out there just for you, the 'special one'. Out of nearly seven billion people, strangely there is only 'one'. Why not ten, or a thousand? No, just the one. Just think of all those love songs and watch all those movies that imply this.

You see it all the time on TV. Good looking boy meets good looking girl. It's either love at first sight, or one has to win the other's heart and go through a series of humiliating, soul destroying setbacks before two hearts become one and they end up together, living happily ever after.

Now, the odds that you could ever possibly stumble across this person are too just astronomical to contemplate. The notion that there is just one person out there is almost as ludicrous as the notion that you will ever find them in a rather large world containing billions of people. Nevertheless, so many buy into this guff and spend their whole lives looking for this mythical person. I kind of gave up looking after numerous futile, self defeating quests.

You meet someone. They are attractive and, if lucky, they will find you attractive too. It's is all very exciting. It's all brand new as you discover your potential lifelong soulmate. This could be 'the one'. The voice, the mannerisms, the looks. How wonderful. The air crackles with magic, and nights watching paint dry in a dark, dingy room are a thing of the past.

A few months or years down the line, however, that voice, the one you once found so soothing, has developed into an irritating, grating noise that drones on and on. The cute mannerisms are now merely annoying. And those facial features that were once so appealing... well, the eyebrows are too thick, the nose too long, and were those ears always that big? Maybe this person isn't 'the one' after all. Perhaps it's all been a massive mistake and they have been on a course of ugly pills since we first met.

Of course, the person is just the same as when you first met them. It's just that the perfectionists, the overly critical, the easily bored and the constant fault finders among us could never be satisfied, even if god's gift to humanity were to suddenly fall into our laps.

Replace 'happily ever after' with aching disillusionment. Replace the notion of 'the special one' with someone who will 'make do'. For Cinderella and her glass slipper, read ugly sister and old, worn out moccasin. All the movies and songs that held up the notion of true love, endless passion, beautiful people. two hearts becoming one - it was a big, fat lie!

But, it just wouldn't do to portray romantic love as some kind of wrinkly old slipper that's not very appealing. It wouldn't work having Valentine cards celebrating the crushing realisation that there is no unique 'special one' out there waiting for you and for you alone. It wouldn't do to have the myth of romantic love shattered by the notion that all there is to look forward to in life is a big-eared, thick eyebrowed annoyance with whom you could sit watching TV for decades to come in some damp, peeling apartment, with the only glimmer of relief from such desperation entailing bursting into tears while watching the condensation roll down the window pane before coming to rest on some decaying sill.

The Problem with British Aid to India

2011-02-21T18:24:00.022Z

Appeared in Morning Star on 21/2/2011

Since 1998, India has received more British aid than any other country. A recent policy review in the UK resulted in a decision to maintain more than one billion pounds of aid to India in the coming years. British aid is to remain at 280 million pounds a year until 2015 but will shift to more investment in private enterprise. PM Manmohan Singh stated that, while the amount is not significant, it is certainly welcome and will be put to good use.

Such sentiments are not echoed by everyone in India, however, as there are many who no longer wish to receive handouts from the former colonial master. In the UK too, especially during a time of biting austerity measures, massive public sector job losses and slashes to services, many are vehemently opposed to giving money to India.

Some Tory MPs, the right wing Taxpayers' Alliance and members of the public point out that India has a space programme, costing nearly the same as Britain gives in annual aid, and ask why should the UK taxpayer give aid to a country with 300 billion dollars worth of foreign reserves and year on year growth of over 8.5 per cent. It has also not gone unnoticed that India has funds not just for a space programme but for nuclear weapons too, while Britain itself has no space programme and is debating scaling down its own nuclear weapons systems.

Some go as far to argue that India might do better to scrap its space programme, aircraft carriers, nuclear weapons and its huge aircraft buying programme worth billions of dollars, and redirect all those funds to invest in improving the plight of the poor. The UK could then drop its aid, saving money and military tensions in the subcontinent would be reduced as a result.

However, the British government seems quite happy to maintain aid to India. On the one hand, aid constitutes 'soft power' that leverages economic and political advantage. Its role may in fact have more to do with securing trade deals than it does with concern about the poor. Indeed, in the face of fierce competition, the British government lobbied hard in India last year and secured a huge aircraft deal for British Aerospace and Rolls Royce.

On the other hand, there is an acute awareness that, despite India's rising power on the world stage, poverty remains rife and the country is home to a third of the world’s malnourished children. In India, 456 million people live on less than 1.25 dollars per day, and annual income per person is only 1,180 dollars, compared to 3,650 dollars in China and 41,370 in the UK.

Andrew Mitchell, the UK's International Development Secretary, says British aid will focus on India’s poorest states and poorest people and will used to unlock funds from the private sector and reinforce the impact of India’s own programmes. The aim is that, in time, UK aid will be phased out and replaced by self sustained private sector growth, facilitated by the UK. This strategy is not without support. The NGO Christian Aid has welcomed this approach by arguing that the private sector has a key role to play in supporting such poverty alleviating programmes and in targeting the economic symptoms of poverty and other social, cultural and political factors.

Aid is a limited tool, however, and its efficacy has been much debated. Much of the world's poverty is the direct result of rising inequality brought about by neo-liberal economic policies. Inequality in India has increased significantly since it opened up its economy in the early 1990s. India now has more dollar billionaires than Britain and the wealth of the top ten billionaires in India grew by 70.3 per cent during the calendar year 2009, from Rs 3,55,205 crore to Rs 6,05,077 crore. Mukesh Ambani’s wealth for instance grew by 75 per cent to Rs1,66,556 crore. India's rich elites have and continue to benefit enormously from prevailing economic policies, often at the expense of the poor if we are to go by the insurgencies in India's eastern states, land dispossessions and numerous other pointers.

The amount of aid received from Britain is thus a mere drop in the ocean, even more so when considering that, according to Global Finance Integrity (GFI), India has lost more than 460 billion dollars since independence because of the illicit funnelling of wealth overseas. GFI's 2010 report stated that the illegal flight of capital through tax evasion, crime and corruption had widened inequality in India. Add to this total the 39 billion dollars lost to the exchequer due to the 2G telecom scam, and it appears things do not seem to be improving.

Some in the UK adopt the view that if many rich people and politicians in India choose to treat their own country's poor with contempt by denying them potential funds in this way then that is their business – not ours. Unfortunately, it is not hard to appreciate why the notion of 'charity begins at home' has therefore too often become a rallying call in the UK whenever aid to India is mentioned.

Corporate Ways: Using Junk Science to Win Public Approval

2011-02-16T18:26:00.011Z

Appeared in Deccan Herald on 19/2/2011

When rich companies with well positioned lobbyists fund their own research and distort outcomes for their own ends, like some giant pharmaceutical company tinkering with our food or using poisonous pesticide, we are in serious trouble. Due to the corporate takeover of science, our rights and freedoms are currently in the process of being destroyed by propangada and dogma.

In a genuine 'age of reason', science would provide clear answers to issues and the public would be able to engage in open, honest debate over the rights and wrongs of policies. Instead, however, corporate interests have conspired to muddy the waters so that public debate has too often become distorted and campaigns of deliberate misinformation have become commonplace.

'Scientific debate' is now often played out in full public glare and acrimony has become the norm, particularly when someone's huge profits are threatened. Corporate greed leads to debate being stifled whereby scientists and various groups who do not support particular stances are made to look like they are the ones who are pushing dogma based on self-interest and not the other way around.

No wonder, therefore, that the public is sometimes left feeling confused. Even when the weight of credible scientific evidence is overwhelming, powerful companies are highly skilled in creating ambiguity and controversy through their PR machines. Of course, having access to huge funds helps.

For instance, ExxonMobil gave $2.9m to US groups that misinformed the public about climate change, and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) reportedly offered scientists money to publish articles critical of the International Panel on Climate Change's 2007 climate change study. The AEI had received more than $1.6m from Exxon. Last year, Greenpeace revealed that the American Petroleum Institute, which includes oil giants ExxonMobil, Shell and BP, had encouraged its members to send employees to rallies against a climate change Bill that required large utilities to use greater renewable energy sources.

The aim of such campaigns is to deceive the public by giving the impression of serious scientific doubt coupled with popular dissent over proposed policies. Money talks. The public listens.

Another tactic used to sway public opinion involves big companies trying to whip up the belief there is some kind of conspiracy or unscrupulous group that is working against them and, by implication, the population in general – because of course these rich corporations have our common interests at heart, or so they tell us. Those who say that global warming is taking place, for instance, or that GMOs pose a danger, are dismissed as having an ideological axe to grind against those corporations that want to keep on burning fossil fuels, controlling the world food supply and raking in massive profits – all for the benefit of humankind you understand.

Lazy journalism, corporate backed Internet bloggers or those with an agenda in the media also contribute to the process. Stories can be twisted any which way and two newspapers can slant the same evidence to produce entirely different takes. Propaganda masquerades as 'serious' journalism, and 'experts' from well-funded corporate backed think-tanks are wheeled onto our screens to put forward points of view based on methodologically unsound 'junk science'.

Despite the apparent democratic nature of easily accessible communication technologies, not least the Internet, the veil of ignorance has not been lifted. Too often, science is a football to be kicked around and a victim of corporations that have scant regard for the public interest.

If corporate ideology fails, however, it's always nice to know that there is good old fashioned bullying to rely on. For example, a recent WikiLeaks cable highlighted how Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) were being forced into European nations by the US ambassador to France who plotted with other US officials to create a “retaliatory target list” of anyone who tried to regulate GMOs.

The corporate takeover of science has led to many questionable but highly profitable practices. The issue goes far beyond the advertising industry referring to dodgy science to con the public into buying an anti-aging cream, a fat reducing food supplement or a wonder-beauty product. Think of those who want to control the food supply and farmers who are forced to buy seeds year after year from one centralised corporate entity. Backed up by their selective scientific findings and spin machines, powerful corporations have placed at their mercy farmers who are no longer able to grow their own foods and harvest their own seeds. Think also of seasonal flu vaccines, plastic food containers, pesticides, the collapse of the honeybee population, factory farming, mercury poisoning and psychiatric pharmaceuticals. The corporate misuse and abuse of science has damaged the overall reputation of the scientific community while swelling private coffers to bursting point.

Credible science adheres to a certain methodological rigour, and its findings are at least subject to some form of established system of peer reviewed scrutiny, however imperfect that may be. Perhaps, in these times, the biggest challenge it faces is becoming more adept in getting its message out and remaining independent from outside vested interests. A failure to do so is resulting in it being hijacked by corporate agendas and our rights and freedoms being eroded.

Going Gaga: From Marx and Mandela to Simon Cowell

2011-02-04T16:31:00.009Z

Appeared in Deccan Herald on 13/2/2011

History is littered with heroes. From the Dalia Lama and Ho Chi Minh to Nelson Mandela and Albert Einstein, societies have always placed someone on a pedestal. In today's world, however, are heroes still relevant? If they are, just what kind of characters inspire us, and what do they tell us about ourselves as individuals or as a society?

When I was growing up, the world was a different place. People had faith in great figures and leaders, and a belief in a better tomorrow existed. Armed with an inspiring concept, a charismatic person could touch the hearts of millions. Certain people were catalysts for change, helping to overhaul the burgeoning weight of injustice or making a startling contribution to some or other field of human endeavour.

Over the last few decades though, the world has been demystified and everything deconstructed, with each minute detail open to scrutiny. Even the great men and women of yesteryear have had the cold light of scepticism shed upon them, and many heroes were shown to have feet of clay. Gandhi, Churchill, Mother Theresa and others were noted by some not so much for their achievements but for their foibles and follies.

Marx and Lenin fell from grace as the Soviet Union imploded, and others had long ago been hauled from their self aggrandising pedestals. Mao built a personality cult around himself to try to disguise his tyranny, as did Hitler and Mussolini. In the long run, it didn't wash and had disastrous consequences.

Perhaps we have now arrived at the point where idealism too often flounders on the rocks of cynicism and revered maxims and protagonists are too often cast aside. With heroes having had the myths surrounding them stripped bare and the big ideas, such as capitalism, communism and democracy, having seemingly failed or in deep crisis, some of us may well ponder if we have now become caged in the prison of modernity, what German sociologist Max Weber called the iron cage of bureaucracy. Do we now exist in an era where the prevailing order seems to be all there ever can be, with no hero about to rescue us? Perhaps we are destined to be led by bland bureaucrats lacking in vision or boldness.

While some might perceive this to be our fate, others still crave for visionaries and heroes. They want to believe that ‘big ideas’ can still electrify. But where are today's heroes and grand visions? Hero-in-waiting Obama flattered to deceive, and figures such as Bill Gates and Julian Assange may occasionally demonstrate a flicker of heroism, righting wrongs and delivering us from evil, but that depends on your point of view.

Nowadays, it may at times seem a lot easier to create villains rather than heroes. It was done to great effect with Saddam and has been a successful tactic when used to demonise others as well. If you can't produce a hero, invent an enemy. In recent years, cranking up the fear factor has become the default setting for capturing hearts and minds, with a compliant media in tow of course.

As for heroes, however, don't despair. The media can help out here too. Turn on and tune in to self styled messiah Simon Cowell, as he rules over his empire of franchised TV shows, celebrities and wannabes. With 'Idol', 'X-Factor' and a host of reality TV programmes dominating the networks, forget the clarion calls of politics or organised religion and buy into the messianic hysteria whipped up by instant fame TV. Acquire immediate salvation from the mundane with Cowell – the giver, the creator, the destroyer – the ultimate godhead for those seeking to enter the promised land of fame and riches and acquire their unique place in the pantheon of celebritydom.

Being a showbiz personality requires you to sell your soul to the media (and any number of sponsors). But that's what it takes in a world of here today gone tomorrow shallow fame and junk materialism. While many people may not really need gods or inspiring leaders in their lives anymore, they still yearn to be spoonfed glitz-sprinkled icons and worship them on TV or in the pages of a glossy magazine.

In a media-driven age, fame is just a marketing strategy away. With the right PR company, you can suck in those desperate to pay homage to something (anything!), so long as you mask your averageness by going Gaga with a dress made from meat, or by indulging in some other outrageous 'heroic' act to shift attention away from your almost complete lack of talent. People need to retain faith in something, even if it entails bowing down to individuals whose only attribute is their unending ability to parade their ordinariness and egos in the tabloids courtesy of the paparazzi.

As you sit watching TV, you may sometimes end up wondering just what has become of us when we allow such mediocre people to acquire this type of recognition. Perhaps it is an indictment of society's own mediocrity, where difference and diversity have been crushed by numbing standardisation and where people accept the faith that this is how life should be lived, as they pray before the never ending conveyor belt of disposable commodities and heroes to be fetishised, consumed then spat out when they pass their very short sell by dates. It's the secular theology of the age, built on flotsam and jetsam products, celebrities and fads that ebb and flow with the vagaries of mass titillation and the whims of corporate backers.

And let's not forget the Forbes rich-lister, movie star or multi-millionare sportsperson too, whose wealth and extravagant spending are also to be glorified, at least according to much of the mainstream media. The heroes of entertainment or business are the epitome of all that is virtuous and true. Or so they like to tell us. But surely there are others more worthy of veneration.

Indeed, there are. It is not without good reason that Noam Chomsky was voted seventh in a list of 'Heroes of our time' in 2006 and the leading living public intellectual in another poll in 2005. And, despite the detractors and iconoclasts, many historical figures have actually left ongoing legacies that continue to inspire. Writer Ramachandra Guha lists Bhimrao Ambedkar, Rabindranath Tagore, Jawaharlal Nehru, M.K. Gandhi and many others in his anthology of brilliant individuals who made modern India. Their actions and ideals still act as a benchmark for people today.

While present day celebrities revel in their conspicuous displays of wealth and the adoration of their fans, some may wish to take comfort in knowing that the spirit of the likes of Gandhi, Ambedkar, Martin Luther King and Mandela lives on in the millions of ordinary folk who demonstrate notions of justice, public service and social equity in their day to day activities. Such people often show immense courage and self sacrifice in pursuit of a greater good while working tirelessly for their communities, but few are thrust into the limelight, partly because their deeds just aren't sexy enough to sell magazines or increase ratings.

Aung San Suu Kyi has been an enduring figure of resistance against brutal dictators but tends to hit the mainstream headlines only after having been incarcerated or released from prison. And Binayak Sen did much good long before he became a beacon for democracy after being imprisoned by the Indian State. Countless others in India and beyond strive to achieve great things behind the scenes.

But, it can be unfair to single out individuals. Their achievements are often the product of dedicated teamwork and build on the efforts of others who went before. Enticing as it may be, the notion of events being shaped by the individual or hero acting alone (the 'great man' view of history) is highly partial.

Greatness is a fickle caller anyhow. People tend to act within circumstances not of their own choosing, which can either propel individuals to public eminence or leave them to live out their lives in relative obscurity regardless of their valiant efforts and tangible impact. For example, Martin Luther King was in the right place at the right time in history that allowed him to shine. In another period, regardless of his excellent personal attributes, King may well have been consigned to live out his life beavering away in the shadows.

The point being made is that true heroes are the ordinary people who do extraordinary things in the face of adversity every day. Events seldom conspire to place social workers, activists, fire fighters, nurses, educators and doctors in the spotlight. Nevertheless, they are committed to making a positive contribution to society and are in fact the foundations upon which communities are built. Such folk seek neither adoration nor undue reward.

Given their fortitude and commitment to public service, when all is said and done, is it not they who should really be regarded as the genuine heroes of the age?

Actions of Ordinary People Key to Change

2011-02-02T19:20:00.009Z

Appeared in Deccan Herald on 3/2/2011

The increase in inequality is the most serious challenge facing the world. That was one of the main messages that emerged from the World Economic Forum in Davos. According to Min Zhu, a special adviser at the International Monetary Fund and a former deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China, the world is not paying enough attention to this issue.

Martin Sorrell, chief executive of media company WPP, concurred by stating that inequality and the concentration of wealth is increasingly emerging as one of the underlying causes of the financial crisis and subsequent recession. Sorrell argues that a more equal spread of wealth would mean more money is recycled back into the economy thereby creating stable demand.

In the US, the top one per cent owned 47 per cent of the wealth in 2007. In 1968, the top one per cent owned 28 per cent of the wealth. A similar trend was found by the recent Credit Suisse’s Global Wealth Report, which analysed over 200 countries and the wealth belonging to the world’s richest people. It noted that the total global net worth has increased by 72 per cent since 2000. But the report highlighted that the possession of wealth is almost unimaginably skewed.

The world has over 1,000 billionaires, 80,000 people worth over $50 million each and 24 million worth between $1m and $50m. Contrast this with the three billion people whose wealth averages less than $10,000. Some 1.1 billion have a net worth of less than $1,000. Half the people on earth possess less than two per cent of global wealth, whereas the world’s richest one per cent possesses 43 per cent.

On his visit to India last year, it was noticeable that US president Barak Obama and his entourage had little to say about the bottom 50 per cent. Not much was said about the kind of warped ‘development’ that creates rich-list billionaires while driving agricultural workers and others into dire poverty. There seemed to be no invite, no reservation at the top table, no impending arrival at destination corporate-driven-nirvana for those people.

Instead, Obama’s remarks were aimed at the millionaire US CEOs who accompanied him and the millionaire Indian elite. Right across the globe, many workers’ jobs and wages are heading one way — downwards. But listening to the mainstream media and the political PR machines, you would be hard pressed to notice.

Leaders and a fawning media are adept in twisting the truth and passing off such things to their respective populations as necessary blips in the journey towards to some cheap con-trick notion of the promised land.

And it is indeed a trick because the system is designed to ensure that the flow of wealth goes upwards and remains there through what the academic David Harvey calls ‘accumulation by dispossession’. This takes place via, among other things, the privatisation of public assets, deregulation of the financial sector, the use of subsidies and tax policies that favour the rich and the consistent downward pressures on labour costs.

At Davos, Sorrell called for more integrated global leadership and advocated coordinated efforts to address trade imbalances, capital flows, water resources and immigration. But how can this be a genuine strategy for greater equality?

A more fundamental shift in mindset is required. Regardless of leadership issues and capital flows, the current economic system and any tinkering with it by the corporate elite is based on dogma masquerading as economic theory.

Ha Joon Chang, Cambridge University, says that economics isn’t a social science anymore, but adopts the role the Catholic Church played in medieval Europe. Essentially, it’s secular theology used to justify the prevailing system, with the hope that some drops of wealth will trickle down an extremely thin funnel to placate the mass of the population. Capitalism is designed to keep wealth at the top. Widening the funnel slightly, as Sorrell and others advocate, will not address the underlying issues of a failed system.

So, what’s the answer? You can either wait for the people at Davos to change things effectively. Or you could place your ‘X’ on the ballot box in support of any number of politicians whose only difference is the velocity by which they rush to suck at the corporate teat.

The answer is that nearly all change that has benefited ordinary people has resulted from the actions of ordinary folk, not bankers, stockbrokers or big business. That’s true of worker’s rights, women’s rights, greater economic equality and any other number of civil liberties achieved. Just ask the good people of Tunisia and Egypt.

Managing The Crisis: From London to Athens, The Stick and Chip Approach

2011-01-20T17:27:00.013Z

Appeared in Morning Star 21/1/2011

The UK is currently involved in enforcing austerity measures in order to reduce the public debt brought about by the financial crisis. Public sector cutbacks resulting in huge job losses and reductions in services, increased VAT and a range of other policies mean that ordinary people are now feeling the pinch. Unions are becoming agitated, students disgruntled and many others angry. A social crisis is brewing, and the government knows it.

In order to maintain consensus, however, the government has imported from the US 'nudge theory' - a kind of extension of Margaret Thatcher's once stated belief that there is no such thing as society – only individuals who are free to choose whatever they want to choose.

Nudge theory is neo-liberal doctrine dressed up in user-friendly wrapping paper. The core of this approach is to nudge people to modify their perceptions, not only with the aim of influencing individual behaviour, but also in terms of them regarding government policies as legitimate. People are being softened up to accept an increased role for the private sector, the attack on public services and job losses, despite the rich being responsible for the crisis. Of course, included in the recipe is the well worn diversionary tactic of 'divide and rule'. The government and media are encouraging people to lay blame for current social ills at the door of 'irresponsible' strike happy unions, benefit 'scroungers', the 'undeserving' poor and inefficient public services that needed cutting all along anyhow.

In a way, there is a parallel with the invasion of Afghanistan. Most of the talk used to focus on getting the troops out. However, now that the government has decided to keep British soldiers there, the talk has shifted to supporting 'our brave heroes'. Support the troops, support the cuts. Replace the moral debate about the rights and wrongs of invasion and bankers' corruption with a tabloid inspired rallying call based on emotive personal tales of bravery and honour or the outright necessity for cuts and that we are 'all in it together'. But, if this ideological approach fails, a back up plan involving wide scale policing and surveillance is on hand.

Modern technology allows the authorities to track down individuals and engage in the 'political policing' of lawful democratic activity on a scale not seen before. Close Circuit TV (CCTV) photography has already been used to identify individuals within crowds of demonstrators who recently took part in student protests, and the UK has a permanent police unit looking for 'extremists' – however defined - whether lawful protesters or not.

Facial recognition technology has made huge progress recently, and the Britain's huge CCTV network can now be used to allow data-mining and profiling, which could be applied to any number of databases. Facebook has added facial recognition to its features, and intelligence agencies have put vast resources into searching social network sites and internet forums. Systems are being developed for profiling internet dissent too.

Other surveillance methods are also being developed. For instance, it is now possible to identify an individual's movement via vehicle registration or public transport travel passes. An automatic number plate recognition facility is being added to CCTV systems so that any vehicle can be identified, and cameras are being integrated with travel cards so that travellers' identities can be established. Police can and do already obtain thousands of individuals' travel records each year from London’s OysterCard travel smartcard.

A European Union (EU) group is also proposing to track the lives of every individual, from every transaction made to almost everywhere a person goes. Many European countries are already putiing radio-frequency identification chips in bank cards, which have in effect become de facto ID cards. The EU wants give every chipped object its own webpage, and, each time an RFID tag is scanned, the webpage will be updated according to time and location.

The end result of these measures is that security agencies will have access to personal data on bank details, mobile phone locations, travel, internet usage and digital images that can be data-mined and applied to different scenarios, including taking part in a protest. From cradle to grave, officialdom will be watching, listening, tracking and prying.

These systems, when integrated, will enable the authorities to put together files on the activities and contacts of individuals engaged in legitimate protest and opposition. Although political policing and targetted surveillance has been going on for many decades, given the scope and sophistication of current technology, every citizen may soon be 'on file' and under suspicion, with huge amounts of personal information being made available to the authorities like never before.

European governments increasingly regard their populations as a threat to the established order. They have let the financial institutions ruin their economies and might well let them do it again given they are still calling the shots. As a result of the austerity measures, governments are facing a legitimation crisis. If they fail to convince their respective populations of their democratic credentials and social turmoil results, apart from the usual baton charge or a beating on a protest rally in London or Athens, it appears that other more pervasive and sinister means are at hand to maintain order.

(HERMES, INDECT and ADABTS are the names of some of the systems referred to. INDECT grew out of strategies developed in Europe and by the CIA to data-mine information about political opposition from, for example, social networks. In the UK, there are reportedly more CCTV cameras than the rest of Europe put together.)

Food Chain in Danger: Pesticides Kill Billions of Bees

2011-01-12T19:11:00.010Z

Appeared in Deccan Herald on 13/1/2011

Have you heard the buzz lately? Chances are you probably haven’t. Billions of bumblebees are dying off, and the entire global food chain may be in danger. Along with other insects, such as moths and hoverflies, bees pollinate around a third of the crops grown worldwide.

The humble bee is a much under-appreciated creature. In fact, life as we know it depends on it. Bees pollinate wild plants and agricultural crops, including some 90 per cent of the world’s commercial plants. Most fruits, vegetables and nuts, including okra, tomatoes, sunflowers, cucumbers, cashew, onion, cabbage, rapeseed, almonds, citrus fruits and cherries are all pollinated by bees, and coffee, soya beans and cotton are dependent on them to increase yields. Bees are at the forefront of a food chain that also sustains wild birds and animals.

As with other crucial pollinators, bees have been in serious decline around the world for the past few decades. Sydney Cameron, an entomologist at the University of Illinois, led a team on a three-year study of eight species of bumblebees in the US. The findings showed that the relative abundance of four of the sampled species had declined by up to 96 per cent and that their geographic ranges had contracted by 23 to 87 per cent, some within the past two decades. In the US, 50 to 90 per cent of commercial bee colonies are affected by ‘Colony Collapse Disorder’. However, the decline is a major global issue.

In the UK, three of the 25 British species of bumblebee are already extinct, and half of the remainder have shown serious declines, often up to 70 per cent, since around the 1970s. Bee populations have also been affected in the mainland Europe, China and India.

In India, wild honey collection in the Kutch region of Gujarat last year fell to 50 tonnes from the usual 300 tonnes in previous years because of the fall in the number of honey bees. The yield of certain native crops like date palms, lemon, papaya and kesar mangoes has also decreased. In Malda, West Bengal, mango honey was once good business, but farmers say bees are now avoiding mango trees.

Reasons for the decline of bees may be many, including parasites, viral and bacterial infections, changes to habitat, pollution and poor nutrition stemming from intensive farming methods. However, one of the major causes points to the use of neonicotinoids, a nicotine-based pesticide that has been banned in France, Germany, Portugal, Greece, Italy and Slovenia.

The latest disclosures by WikiLeaks indicate that the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) allowed the widespread use of the bee-toxic pesticide clothianidin, a neonicotinoid manufactured by the chemical and pharmaceutical company Bayer, despite warnings from the EPA’s own scientists.

An internal EPA memo leaked by Wikileaks revealed that clothianidin has serious health impacts on bees that may be directly related to their disappearance. The memo reports that studies show clothianidin is highly toxic and that information from standard tests and field studies, alongside incident reports involving similar insecticides, suggests the potential for long term toxic risk to honeybees and other beneficial insects. In December, beekeepers and environmentalists in the US asked the EPA to remove its approval of the pesticide.

Nevertheless, the EPA has allowed the widespread use of the pesticide on corn, wheat and other staple food products. Meanwhile, Bayer raked in $262 million in 2009 from its sales of neonicotinoids to farmers.

In India, Dr Parthiba Basu, University of Calcutta, argues that India is also experiencing a decline. His research team’s findings show that the yields of pollinator-independent crops have continued to increase, whereas pollinator-dependent crops have levelled off. In an attempt to identify an underlying cause for the pollinator decline, the team is comparing conventional agriculture with ecological farming. Basu states there is an obvious indication that within the ecological farming setting (where harmful pesticides are not used), there is pollinator abundance.

He added that if the team’s findings were extrapolated, this would offer a clear indication that India was facing a decline in natural pollinators, as ecological farming was only practiced on about 10-20 per cent of the country’s arable land. There are serious implications. Unlike those with access to a varied diet, Basu says there are certain vegetable crops that many people living near the poverty threshold rely on. If there is a pollination crisis, Basu suggests nutritional security could be affected.

There’s still a lot we don’t know about the massive bee die-offs. But one thing we do know is that bees are in trouble — by implication, we are too. Another thing we know is that Bayer continues to export or manufacture its pesticides across the world, including in India. In fact, imidacloprid, another neonicotinoid, is one of India’s highest selling pesticides.

Given the revelations by WikiLeaks concerning the EPA in the US with regard to neonicotinoids, the civic activist organisation Avaaz.org argues that we can no longer leave our food chain or ecology in the hands of flawed research backed by and in support of the big chemical and pharmaceutical companies — nor can we rely on the regulating and policy bodies that are too often seen to be in their pockets. It may well be right.

Katy Perry, Indian Exotica and Foreign Celebrity Weddings

2011-01-03T14:10:00.022Z

Appeared in Deccan Herald on 8/1/2011

It seems that yet another foreign celebrity couple might be contemplating a wedding in India - Anjelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. Celebrity couples like Elizabeth Hurley and Arun Nayar and Katy Perry and Russell Brand seem to have set off a trend for glamorous weddings in exotic locales in India. Being waited on hand and foot, celebrities can actually believe they are an Indian prince and princess for a few days. And just think of all the spectacular trimmings that come with it – the silks, satins, jewellery, decked camels and elephants, troupes of entertainers – it is the ultimate Disney fantasy land.

According to Rita Banerji, founder of the 50 Million Missing campaign, the problem is that extravagant Indian weddings like these have a downside to them by fuelling the culture of greed and criminal extortion (in the form of dowry) that have become an inseparable part of weddings across all strata of Indian society. Rita’s campaign wants to draw attention to female foeticide and infanticide in India along with dowry related violence and murders. Some 60 million (no longer 50 million) women have been eliminated from India’s population as a result of such practices, and many women lead a life of subservience conforming to patriarchal traditions that regard a woman as the property of a man.

Rita believes these glamorous weddings reinforce the ethos of consumerism that underlies the demands for dowry and condone the immoral grabbing of wealth from the bride and her family in India. This is why it is so important to de-link wealth and weddings. She feels that celebrity couples who organise lavish weddings in India are condoning and reinforcing the ethos that connects wealth and weddings

Indians like to believe that weddings are about family, spirituality, and communal good will. Of course, such values are important but tend to get overshadowed by all the materialism. Celebrities who are considering getting married in India, might want to consider avoiding the five star hotels and wildlife parks and opt for a wedding in a village or a tribal community. It would probably be turned into a media pantomime, but it would hopefully funnel money into a place where it would directly help the people and community.

Rita suggests that foreign celebrities getting married in India should make a statement by avoiding the silk and satin costumes from exclusive boutiques. They should also set out to acquire the simplest hand-spun cotton purchased directly from the women who weave these cloths, and they should get one of the small tailors from the local market to stitch their clothes.

A few more pointers from Rita include not buying gold and jewellery from overpriced jewellers in exclusives shopping arcades, but getting colourful beads and handmade stuff from the little shops in the local market. Also, get one of those flower vendors you see running around the market to make garlands and bracelets for you. They need the money. Furthermore, instead of accepting or giving gifts, give some money to a charity or foundation or a poor family in the name of the bride and groom (and give them the cheque in an addressed envelope or a copy of a receipt you've got for the donation).

Such weddings receive a great deal of attention in the West when they happen, not least in the celebrity gossip columns and talk shows. It conforms to the cosy media-friendly image of India as a land of Bollywood-esque exotica, stripped bare of the reality that most people have to endure on the subcontinent, especially women. India is trivialised as a fantasy backdrop for the over-privileged to indulge themselves in their gut churning sentimentality, teary eyed romanticism and conspicuous consumption.

Remember how the international and Indian media reported on every lavish, exotic of Katy-Russell wedding? Rita Banerji asks us to think of how much good that could have been done with that kind of exposure if Perry and Brand had only thought a little more about the issues affecting the place where they decided to set up their dream-wedding. Perhaps Jolie and Pitt will do things differently if they decide to marry in India.

As Katy Perry left India behind by jet-setting back to the US on the back of her lavish Indian wedding, the reality for most Indian brides will be somewhat different. For many, a lifetime of subservience beckons. There will be no chauffer driven limo to the airport or five star lifestyle. The evidence suggests that their lives will take place in the shadow of violence – mental, physical or economic, if they ever consider stepping out of line. No, it’s not Katie Perry’s fault, but a bit more thoughtfulness wouldn’t have gone amiss.

Click here to read a review of the film 'Pink Saris'

Click here to watch a clip

British Retailers and Cheap Labour in India: High Cost of Cheap Fashion

2010-12-30T19:39:00.022Z

Appeared in Morning Star on 9/2/2011

Governments and big business love ‘globalisation’. Foreign concerns are moving into India and setting up shop on the back of the Indian government offering tax incentives and loosening legal requirements and employment regulations. The casual observer might say 'all well and good', but what does this mean in reality?

In the run up to Christmas in the UK, big British clothes retailer Marks and Spencer (M&S) was running a hugely expensive and glitzy TV advertising campaign with various high profile celebrities appearing in the danced themed commercials. The advertisement ended with the tagline “Quality worth every penny.” Every penny squeezed from cheap labour it appears.

M&S has traditionally offered decent prices for quality goods. While the result is that the UK consumer isn’t burdened with a heavy price, someone somewhere is paying the cost on their behalf. Look no further than India, according to the recent report ‘Taking Liberties: The Story behind the UK High-Street’.

The report by the campaign group Labour Behind the Label and the anti-poverty charity War on Want says helpers and thread cutters in Gurgaon producing clothes for M&S received only 4,349 rupees (60 UK pounds) a month, which is below half a recognised living wage of 9,100 rupees a month. Even skilled tailors and checkers were paid at most 4,739 rupees a month. The report looked at two factories, one employing 3,300 workers, the other 4,200.

But M&S was not the only company involved. One of the factories turned out clothes for other high street retailers such as Debenhams and Next, with other clients on their website including H&M and Arcadia, which includes Dorothy Perkins, BHS and Miss Selfridge. The other supplier looked at in the report made clothes for Next, and its website said Monsoon and Arcadia group brands were regular buyers too.

Sam Maher, author of the report, says that workers spoke of living in a climate of fear, where violence and systematic exclusion from rights was a daily reality. Maher believes these conditions and their poverty wages are inexcusable and that brands sourcing from Gurgaon must take action to stop violence against unionised workers and make sure they pay prices that allow for a living wage.

Workers suffered long hours in sweltering temperatures, verbal and physical abuse, unsafe water and poor sanitation, as well as casual employment, and were denied their entitlement to social rights, protection and benefits. Their everyday choices were limited by the contractors, factory owners, landlords and authorities who controlled their lives.

Though all the retailers highlighted in the report point to their code for voluntary overtime not exceeding 12 hours a week, workers at one factory had to toil up to 140 hours per month overtime, but were paid the standard rate. The other factory's employees were also forced to work until 2 am several times a month. Both suppliers banned workers from trade union activities. The workers often cannot afford breakfast and share one-room slum homes with their families or other staff. Most workers lack enough money to send their children to school.

Much of the manufacturing in Gurgaon takes place in export processing zones, which attract foreign investment through financial incentives and relaxed regulations. The city has drawn hundreds of thousands of migrant workers from other parts of India and neighbouring countries. But these migrants cannot obtain the documents needed for government services and support provided to registered citizens, and they seldom complain of employers' abuse through their fear of the authorities. Consequently, they provide ripe pickings for factory owners.

M&S profits for the 12 months year ending in March were 632.5 million UK pounds. The 15 million pounds that new chief executive Marc Bolland could earn if the retailer exceeds its targets would be the sum needed to ensure a living wage for around 10,000 garment workers for a year. Going by his financial rewards, Bolland matters to M&S. Going by the evidence, the workers in Gurgaon supplying his company do not.

Whenever Gurgaon is mentioned in the media, the focus is often on the glitzy shopping malls and shiny office blocks. Beneath the shiny veneer however lurks another Gurgaon. And beneath the celebrity endorsed gloss of the latest ad campaign by M&S in the UK lies a sinister hypocrisy. The report indicated that the workers made clothes not for cheap retailers and supermarkets that have often been linked with sweatshops, but for more expensive brands that actively promote quality and respectable standards.

When confronted with unsavoury findings in the past, the usual response from big corporations has been that they take such allegations very seriously and that they are in the process of addressing the matter. Similar responses from M&S and the other retailers mentioned in the report were given this time too. But does anything ever improve given that the ethos of outsourcing and globalisation is to drive down labour costs?

For years, British retailers have failed to keep their pledges on decent treatment for the people who make their clothes. Instead of continuing to look the other way, the British government should step in and hold its powerful corporations to account by allowing workers abroad to seek redress in the UK when they suffer from the buying practices of UK firms that force them into poverty. Ultimately, those workers in Gurgaon are the backbone of British retailing – something which, as far as workers’ rights are concerned, the UK government patently lacks.

Capitalism's Poisoned Ink: WikiLeaks Highlights Media's Massive Failings

2010-12-28T17:22:00.015Z

Appeared in Deccan Herald on 6/1/2011 and Morning Star on 29/12/2010

Why has the corporate media been so keen to fuel a smear campaign against Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks? He has been described as slippery, slimy, bizarre and irresponsible and has been accused of endangering lives and as being a self seeking publicist void of morals. The media has also made the most of the rape accusation, which emerged at a very convenient moment. Assange has had to endure a series of attacks on his personality and demeanour. Shock-horror - he is even castigated for wearing pointy boots and not having a house and owning few possessions. This smear campaign was as unsubtle as it was predictable.

Now, you could understand the US indulging in such tacky tactics given that WikiLeaks exposes its hypocrisy and wrongdoings, but why were so many journalists and media commentators willing to contribute this type of smear campaign, as indeed they did?

More 'serious' journalists have been a little more subtle when attacking Assange. They have criticised him for his apparent lack of 'ethical judgement' and for supposedly being unaccountable to anyone. Where is his objectivity, they have often asked. Of course, these journalists very often privilege their own positions under the guise that they adhere to rigid professional standards, are accountable and employ high levels of objectivity in their work. Under this smokescreen of respectability, they claim to be 'responsible' men and women to be revered by the public. But just what does this mean in reality?

To whom are journalists accountable and just who shapes their ethical standards? To find the answer to this we need look no further than media owners, advertisers, contacts in officialdom, lobbyists who shape agendas and a range of other influences that affect the production and reporting of news. News is the end-product of selective filtering by or on behalf of media owners and by managers and employed commentators of the corporate media. Corporate sponsored think tanks and scientists, advertisers, government spokespersons and PR machines also feed into the process. The outcome effectively keeps public discussion within a narrow range of officially sanctioned discourse, which ultimately provides support for certain state-corporate decisions and policies. This is not a conscious conspiracy, but a result of structural and commercial constraints within which the media operates under capitalism.

This is the respectability that journalists talk of. This is the basis of their spurious objectivity. This is the wobbly foundation of their professional neutrality and impartiality. This is the myth of their unbiased integrity.

As if to emphasise the point, WikiLeaks spokesperson Kristinn Hrafnsson recently brought attention to the media being much too close to the military industry and of being out of touch with the public mood. Recent events in India involving the blurring of the boundaries between journalism, politicians and corporate houses indicates the problem goes far beyond links with the military industry alone.

The internet has changed everything and WikiLeaks has used it to good effect. Professional journalists and media commentators are no longer the self-appointed high priests or priestesses of the truth. For ordinary people, WikiLeaks allows direct access to documents and can thus hold not only governments and corporations to account but mainstream journalists and their reporting too. And that is no bad thing.

In a wider sense, WikiLeaks and the Internet allow ordinary people to see how democracy really functions. In turn, much of the reaction to WikiLeaks exposes how the powerful react when their position or actions are questioned or highlighted. Look no further than the political pressure that has been exerted on supposedly independent organisations to close off Wikileaks's financial support and its ability to operate. Has Assange been convicted of any crime yet? No. But these actions against him show what officialdom does when it is challenged.

The mainstream corporate media has largely failed the public and has been doing so for decades. For instance, decisions are made behind closed doors by unaccountable individuals in big business in conjunction with top politicians and unelected bureaucrats. Close links between these groups ensure unity of interest and action. Parliaments are merely the final process where decisions become rubber stamped. The media however tends to adopt a shallow focus that often only shines an analytical light on 'parliamentary procedures', party politics or personalities. But, that is its purpose - to maintain the status quo, to focus on the rubber stamping and not on the elites and their undemocratic self serving power broking.

We need bodies like WikiLeaks. Assange and his organisation have revealed uncomfortable truths about the Iraq and Afghan wars and the nature of politics and corporate interests.

If you were to just read or watch the mainstream corporate media all the time, you would have quite limited insight into how democracy and its governments really function beyond the veneer of official ideology and parliamentary processes. That's a massive failing of mainstream journalism. And that is one reason why Assange irks both media and governments alike. Their legitimacy is undermined.

The Crazy World of 2010

2010-12-25T19:11:00.012Z

Appeared in Deccan Herald on 26/12/2010

So, that was 2010. From earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and a mega oil spill, to sporting events and the ongoing impact of the economic crisis, the year had the lot. Laden with tragedy and sorrow, jubilation and joy, it also had more than a few embarrassing gaffes thrown in for good measure.

For the ultimate story of hope and celebration, we had to look no further than Chile where 33 miners captured the world's imagination. In October, the men were finally brought to the surface after having been trapped together for 69 days, some 700 metres below ground. Media frenzy greeted each miner as one by one they surfaced into the daylight. If Chileans themselves were swelled by a sense of national pride, the world at large was galvanised by the human spirit and its ability to overcome adversity. This drawn out tale of collective endurance and survival was one of the highlights of the year.

Meanwhile, a global audience was also watching a somewhat different drama unfold elsewhere. Evoking bewilderment, amazement and disbelief in equal measures, the lead up to the Commonwealth Games had many wondering would it or wouldn't it take place and even should it or shouldn't it. The international media wasted little time in homing in on the chaos. Talk of widespread corruption, mismanagement and shoddy workmanship was in danger of turning the games into a laughing stock.

Instead of gleaming buildings and infrastructure, TV images treated everyone to a less than impressive display of leaking pipes, a four-legged friend taking a nap on a bed in the athletes' village, a newly constructed collapsing bridge and wiry women carrying bricks on heads on an assortment of building sites at various stages of completion.

We do things differently in India, the Delhi politicians said. Those whining foreigners just don't understand. Perhaps they didn't. Most of the world has never been to India. Those of us who had merely shrugged our shoulders because we knew that, at the last minute, some semblance of order would be plucked from the jaws of catastrophe. And it was. India managed to turn a potential crisis into a memorable event that went off relatively smoothly.

Other sporting events also occurred. During February in Canada, the less glamorous Olympic twin, the Winter Games, took pride of place against the beautiful frozen backdrop of Whistler and Vancouver. Then there was the 'big sleep' - sorry, I mean the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa - remembered less for the often coma-inducing football on show and more for the monotonous drone of vuvuzelas.

For genuine entertainment, however, Europe was the place to look. A merry-go-round of the nonsensical, laced with calamity, was played out across the continent. Greece almost went into meltdown as its sovereign credit rating was downgraded after a massive bailout. The euro plummeted, and a debt crisis followed. The public lost track of who owed what to whom as debt was shuffled around the countries of Europe.

Greece owed a wad of cash, mostly to other European economies. Ireland owed an even bigger wad of cash. Spain and Italy were in debt to each other and both owed the most cash of all ($1 trillion each), mainly to France, Britain and Germany. In turn, those nations were struggling because of the vast amounts of money they had lent to countries that couldn't possibly pay back what had been borrowed. As things slid from disaster to fiasco, the large economies that had lent the money were faced with having to bail out those who had borrowed from them.

How can a broke economy lend to another broke economy that hasn't got any money because it can't get back what it lent to another broke economy? I'm getting a migraine here, but you get the picture (I think). How can anyone pay back anyone else if no one has any money? Speculators were ditching the euro for the stronger dollar because the US economy was being kept afloat by… China. Confused? I certainly was.

Staying in Europe, the award for the biggest gaffe of 2010 goes to the then British PM Gordon Brown for referring to a lifelong party supporter he had encountered on a pre-election walkabout as “some bigoted woman.” Unfortunately for Brown, his comments were broadcast live on national TV. ‘Bigotgate’ played no small part in getting Brown voted out of office.

Close on the heels of Brown were Tony Hayward's howlers concerning the Deepwater Horizon oil platform explosion. The world watched in disbelief as for months the oil kept on spewing from the well, killing sea-life and damaging the US coastline. People in the US looked on in even greater disbelief as Hayward, the top man at BP, attempted to play down the spill with gems of wisdom like, “Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean” and the environmental impact of the spill will be “very, very modest.” As the devastation continued and coastal livelihoods were wrecked, his comment, “I would love my life back”, took indifference to new heights.

Natural disasters were never far from the news in 2010. When an erupting Icelandic volcano decided to growl and spew its ash across northern and western Europe, air traffic caught a cold and ground to a halt. Then there was Haiti. A 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck, and the impact on the country reverberated throughout the year and will continue to do so for some time to come. In February, an 8.8 magnitude earthquake tore into Chile, causing a tsunami over the Pacific, and almost 500 people lost their lives. Another earthquake struck in April, leaving 20,000 dead, this time in China.

Throughout the latter half of the year, the effects of heavy monsoon rains caused widespread flooding in Pakistan. Over 1,600 were killed and more than one million displaced. Other disasters left at least 400 dead in Indonesia, and volcanic eruptions in central Java led to the deaths of at least 240 people and forced hundreds of thousands to flee.

As if natural disasters weren't enough to be getting on with, the year also had the usual helping of manmade misery. The ongoing betrayal of the people of Bhopal by the Indian government made the headlines yet again, and tensions in Korea were cranked up between North and South Korea. Nine activists were killed in a clash with soldiers when Israel raided a flotilla of ships attempting to break the Gaza blockade, and ethnic upheaval occurred in Kyrgyzstan, resulting in the deaths of hundreds.

Events conspired to suck Pakistan into further turmoil, bloodshed continued in Nigeria, Colombia, Afghanistan, Iraq and in many other places, and the latest WikiLeaks had to offer was kicked from pillar to post by the media in an attempt to make sense of it all.

In 2010, India lost veteran politician Jyoti Basu. Karaganahalli Subbaraya Ashwath also passed away, as did writer Howard Zinn and Hollywood legend Tony Curtis. There were sombre scenes in Poland as the nation mourned the death of its president and 96 others after their plane crashed in Russia. Other air crashes also occurred, including the one that took the lives of 158 people at Mangalore.

To round things off on a brighter note, there was a beacon of hope in Myanmar with opposition politician Aung San Suu Kyi being released from house arrest.

Of course, lots of other things happened in 2010. This has been just a brief selection of stories that the mainstream media got its teeth into. Many major events often went unreported or were simply quickly brushed aside by more headline grabbing stories. Tales about conflict and colonialist-type land grabs in Africa and the Amazon affecting millions, for instance, were always going to lose out to more ratings-friendly stories, such as those about the fate of 33 Chileans, Twenty20 cricket, or events surrounding the Delhi Games.

The failings of the mainstream media aside, what did we learn this year? We could say that deep sea oil drilling and mines should have in place necessary safety technology to prevent spills or collapses. We could even argue that the planning of sporting events shouldn't be left to the last minute. But we kind of know those things already. One thing that we did actually learn though is that, with ongoing conflicts and crises continuing around the planet, humanity’s propensity for creating havoc remains undiminished. However, I guess we could have predicted that too before the year began.

What we may not have anticipated though is the virtues that managed to shine through during 2010. The dignity of Aung San Suu Kyi, the sense of fellowship generated by 33 mine workers and the fortitude of those who helped pick up the pieces after devastating events across the planet, all served to restore our faith in the human condition. If we can take anything from this, it may well be that such fine examples of decency could serve to inspire us in our own day-to-day dealings with one another in 2011. Who knows, perhaps they will.

Christmas Cheer?

2010-12-18T19:45:00.006Z

Appeared in Deccan Herald on 19/12/2010

Once again, it’s time for ‘peace on earth and goodwill to all men’. In many ways, this saying has come to define the Christmas spirit. But, beneath the slogan, what does Christmas really mean? Indeed, just what does it represent in modern times?

Any positive feelings I have about Christmas stem from personal childhood memories. Back then, the sound of carols provided a soothing backdrop to the yuletide period, and the food, presents and decorations meant Christmas was a once a year feel-good winter wonderland of sensory delight. Even attending church was pleasurable, in the days before church-going went out of fashion in the UK. Watching Charles Dickens’ famous story, ‘A Christmas Carol’, on TV was an annual event, with the Ebenezer Scrooge character being despised or pitied until the end of the film, when he finally sees the light and realises the goodness in humankind. Yuletide crackled with platitudes about redemption, hope and forgiveness.

In these times of increasing secularisation in the West, however, a question often asked is, does the Christian God have much of a role in Christmas celebrations anymore? Indeed, some are calling for Christ to be put back into Christmas and mourn the commercialisation of the festival. But was he ever in it anyhow? Many say it was Christians who hijacked the event in the first place.

While Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ, the 25th of December is not really considered to be his actual birth date and may correspond with either the date of the winter solstice on the ancient Roman calendar, or one of various traditional winter festivals. And, as for Jesus himself, contrary to what Christian theologians assert, the more benevolent sceptics among us argue that perhaps there was once someone called Jesus, a charismatic preacher and a self-proclaimed son of God, but his birth, life and death are couched in so many myths, resulting in the blurring of reality and fantasy.

Long before Christianity became dominant, there were festivals and celebrations at the time of the winter solstice. Early Christianity subsequently annexed many traditional shrines, temples and festivals. Places where pagan gods proclaimed revelations became shrines and temples became churches. Ancient superstitions were played on and used to good effect. Only the names were changed in conjunction with a tinkering of the theology. In some European countries, old myths and festivals were modified and passed off as Christian, and gods and heroes were incorporated into the pantheon of Christian saints.

Modern Christmas combines evergreen decorations and feasting from rural pagan times with Christian sheen and a thick coating of humanist values and consumerism. In fact, Christmas is a time when commercial enterprises have their biggest annual turnover.

The exchange of gifts is a valid activity and any social anthropologist worth his or her salt will tell you it is one of the building blocks of human society, fostering and reaffirming reciprocity, social norms and mutual bonds. However, advertising agencies, retailers and drinks manufacturers have turned Christmas into a cash cow and are hell bent on supplementing the communal cup of Yuletide cheer with an excessive side order of hedonism. Who needs a saviour when ‘guitar hero’ will suffice? Who needs church when the shopping mall will do? The cash registers chime, the church bells ring, there’s a belly full of booze and a pocket full of money… I mean hope. Sorry, what are we celebrating again? Oh, that’s right, the birth of Christ. Christmas is one thing that consumer capitalism did not invent but probably wished it had.

In its favour, however, despite the commercialisation, Christmas is a time of the year when families actually do come together to eat, drink and make merry. God’s invitation may often appear to be stuck in the post, but people at least make an effort to reconnect with the core values of communality and camaraderie.

Most non-believers have no problem with joining in Christmas get-togethers to celebrate peace and goodwill. Many atheists might welcome the advice of British author Simon Singh who encourages people to spend Christmas tuning their radios to hear echoes of the big bang. After all, Christmas is a time for rejoicing in the wonder of birth and creation. Christians don’t have a monopoly on such sentiments. The great religious festivals the world over celebrate common themes that have universal appeal and are a way of helping us come to terms with or smooth over apparent dichotomies, such as retribution and forgiveness, the material and the non-material, the barren and the fertile, the self and the collective.

Over the years, I’ve spent many a yuletide period in India and when in Goa have managed to stumble across reminders of what Christmas was like in the England of my childhood. Goans know how to celebrate Christmas, with prayer recitals on the days leading up to the 25th, people attending church on the day itself and large groups calling on homes in the neighbourhood to sing carols. I guess it is similar in other places in India with large Christian communities. However, beyond those communities, apart from a Christmas tree appearing in a shopping mall and a bit of tinsel here and there, for the most part, the 25th of December to me often seems like just another typical day in India.

Things are changing though, particularly in the business world. Conspicuous giving and consumption are creeping in everywhere on the back of Christmas, and commercialisation is bringing a more secular celebration to the public sphere. In upmarket areas of Indian cities, I have noticed more shops selling images of Santa, balloons and Yuletide hangings in recent years. Perhaps, this is part of the overall trend to embrace all things western.

While designated annual religious celebrations may be fine by themselves, do they really count for much if the values of love and benevolence being celebrated are forgotten for the rest of the year? Perhaps, too often, Christmas celebrations get lost in an annual back slapping ‘all is well with the world’ mythology that has little bearing in reality. But let’s not get too serious — Christmas is special because it’s a feel-good event with a touch of escapism.

Christmas, like many religious festivals, reminds us that life on earth is temporary and all too brief. So, it’s good to rejoice at this time of the year. Even non-believers like me are not averse to celebrating. We cannot know when we will die, so why not enjoy a celebration of life, birth, togetherness and good will. Eat, drink and be merry… for tomorrow, it’s back to work!

From Copenhagen to Cancun: Population Control and The Ideology of the Privileged

2010-12-13T20:57:00.012Z

Appeared in Morning Star on 14/12/2010

The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Mexico recently caught my attention because of comments made by Ted Turner, multi millionaire and US media mogul, who suggested world leaders institute a global one-child policy to save the Earth’s environment.

At the same conference, Brian O’Neill from the US’s National Center for Atmospheric Research revealed findings from a study on the impact of demographic trends on future greenhouse gas emission. It concluded that a rapidly rising global population is contributing to an acceleration of emission growth and widespread availability of family planning could reduce the amount of emissions reductions required in 2050 by as much as 30 per cent.

The global population is now close to seven billion people and is expected to rise to 10 billion by 2050, with 80 per cent of that growth coming in developing countries. Turner says a total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal. He suggests countries should follow China’s lead in instituting a one-child policy to reduce global population. At the Copenhagen climate summit last year, national planning official Zhao Baige said Chinese population policy has resulted in 400 million fewer births since 1979. Zhao stated the lower birth rate converts to a reduction of 1.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year.

Michael Oppenheimer, Environmental Defense Fund, asserts that the only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States and that we can’t let other countries have the same number of cars and the amount of industrialisation currently in the US. His answer is to stop developing countries in their tracks to prevent this.

However, there are major problems with all of this. China’s one child policy has not only interfered with reproductive choice, but evidence indicates it has contributed to high levels of female infanticide and abortions. There are alternatives to such a drastic policy anyhow. Making contraception universally available on a voluntary basis would help drive down the birth rate. Educating girls in poor countries and ensuring they have access to the whole array of contraception options when they get older would help too.

Furthermore, even if population were a problem, large scale advancement in infrastructure, in conjunction with a supportive system of universal welfare, would mean families having fewer children, as has been the case in Western Europe. However, the rich, banks and corporations don't want to be taxed for such things, which would lead to all round better living standards for everyone.

The academic Gerard Francois Dumont notes it is worth considering that should the UN projection of supposed 9.3 billion humans by 2050 population be all regrouped on the territory of the US, the population density would barely reach the present 2010 density of the greater Paris region. The issue at hand may therefore have less to do with over population, and people like Turner might be putting the cart before the horse. Living within limits imposed by the environment and using the Earth’s resources effectively could well be the answer to the world's problems.

It’s not so much the case that there are too many people, but more about how policy makers decide to make use of resources and distribute them. It’s not about stopping developing countries in their tracks, but about changing a widespread mindset that is based an over reliance on oil and unsustainable depletion of natural resources, for example, and a headlong rush to adopt a western model of ‘development’.

In failing to move away from this mindset, what emerges is the type of assertion put forward by Turner. For him, it’s a case of carry on consuming regardless, as long as we limit the population that is ‘surplus to requirements’. This is the ideology of the privileged. Turner himself has five children and his comments appear tinged with more than a hint of hypocrisy. Apart from his enormous wealth, he used to own his own private jet too. His critics assert that he is merely espousing some kind of Malthusian eugenics.

In order for humans to survive on the planet, the emphasis should be placed on renewable energy sources and on serious money being put aside by the rich developed countries for developing countries to grow cleanly. But a change in our consumption patterns and the capacity for nations to live within environmental limits is also required. We need to acknowledge the importance of improving material living conditions, while encouraging the preservation and sustainable use of the environment.

Is this just wishful thinking? Not really. It is already happening on limited scales around the world. There are numerous projects and even nation states trying to put into practice this type of mindset, from Auroville to Bhutan and beyond. So why can’t it be done on a grander scale? The answer to that depends on the will and commitment of decision makers to act accordingly at both the national and international levels and to resist the powerful corporations that want to carry on regardless. Unfortunately, the line between elected policy makers and corporate interests has too often become blurred, almost beyond recognition.

WikiLeaks, The Arms Trade and The Bewildered Herd

2010-12-05T19:15:00.023Z

Appeared in Deccan Herald on 6/12/2010

Wikileaks is back in the headlines. Well, it never really went away, did it? Some of the new revelations gained from the content of diplomatic cables allege the US spied on leaders in the UN and made disparaging remarks about certain heads of state. Hardly earth shattering stuff. However, what is revealing is the reaction by the US to the leaks.

Back in the 1920s, US commentator Walter Lippmann believed that ‘responsible men’ make decisions and had to be protected from the bewildered herd — the public. The public should be subdued, obedient and distracted from what is really happening. Screaming patriotic slogans and fearing for their lives, they should be admiring with awe the leaders who save them from destruction and provide peace.

Based on such a notion of democracy, it’s not too surprising that officials express outrage whenever Wikileaks exposes irresponsibleness and cuts through the charade to provide the public with a glimpse of ‘democracy’ in action. The ‘bewildered herd’ then becomes a little less bewildered and leaders become jittery.

Hillary Clinton stated that the latest disclosures are not just an attack on US foreign policy, but also an attack on the international community, the alliances and partnerships, the conventions and negotiations that safeguard global security and advance economic prosperity. Peter King, a Republican congressman, claimed that WikiLeaks should even be classified as a terrorist organisation.

Of course, what western politicians really mean with such lofty talk of ‘international community’, ‘global safety’ and ‘prosperity’ is the West, its security and the economic interests of the corporations who are really running the show. If Hillary Clinton’s was a predictable establishment reaction, then Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, responded by saying that abusive, Titanic organisations when found out, in true Lippman-esque style, grasp at all sorts of ridiculous straws to try and distract the public from the true nature of the abuse.

But perhaps what is most disconcerting about the current batch of leaks is the manner by which politicians are playing fast and loose with the lives of millions of people by plying the wares of the arms trade. What’s more, the murky world of arms dealing seems to dislike public scrutiny, at least if comments by Prince Andrew of the UK are anything to go by.

One particular cable shows him criticising British anti-corruption investigators, who demonstrated ‘idiocy’ in almost scuttling a UK arms deal with Saudi Arabia. He also criticised journalists too for poking “their noses everywhere” — for investigating the deal. How dare they! Unsurprisingly, the investigation into alleged corruption was dropped after it was decided that ‘national security’ was at risk.

However, what is more revealing and troubling is the military shopping list that Wikileaks has exposed, much of which centres on West Asia. For instance, the crown prince of Bahrain seems to support US missile defence systems aimed at Iran. Then there is the the chief of staff of the UAE’s armed forces who told an American ambassador he wanted the US government to deploy Patriot batteries to the UAE, fearful that an Israeli strike on Iran would result in a retaliatory attack on other countries by Iran.

US state-of-the-art unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) were also in demand. One cable said Turkey requested the sale of armed UAVs. The UAE also wanted UAVs to protect itself against Iran.

It’s a fine balancing act though. For instance, the Israeli government expressed concern over the F-15 sale to Saudi Arabia and additional concerns about stationing these new aircraft at Tabuk airfield, close to the Israeli border. At the same meeting, the Israelis complained about the sale to Jordan of air-to-air missiles that could pose a threat to Israeli warplanes.

Yemen, according to one cable, asked the US for 12 armed helicopters, and Turkey not only wants to buy US-designed military helicopters but an international version of the Black Hawk helicopter too.

Disclosures discuss weapons sales between other countries as well. A message to the US Embassy in Paris notes US anger over a French company’s sales to China because the technology is supposedly being passed on to Iran. And then there is Armenia, which sold armaments to Iran that were subsequently used against the US in Iraq.

Apart from huge deals that hit the news, much of this sinister merry go round of pass the death-laced parcel remains low key and under the radar of public attention for the most part. It’s great business, and fears manufactured about the regional bogeyman, Iran, are the stuff of dreams for arms trade profiteers. Far from saving us from destruction, as Lippman wanted the public to regard the democratic system as doing, the powerful arms lobby seems to be cranking up tensions and leading us towards it, while happily walking off with both politicians and money stuffed in its collective back pocket.

While claims by President Ahmadinejad about the leaks being manipulated by the US to increase anti-Iran sentiment (by exaggerating Arab regimes' fears about Iran and thereby portraying it as a danger) and gain political capital must certainly be taken seriously, the ongoing series of disclosures does little to engender public confidence in the machinations of political leaders.

Under the cloak that such disclosures ‘cost lives’, Hillary Clinton and others are trying to win the moral high ground against Assange and Wikileaks. But it’s a ground they surrendered long ago when the US decided to embark on wars that cost the lives of hundreds of thousands in West Asia. What they really mean is US lives. Then again, they have wasted so many of those too — in the military: just “dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns,” as Henry Kissinger is reported to have once stated.

Philanthrocapitalism in India: More Take than Give

2010-11-22T19:06:00.011Z

Appeared in Deccan Herald on 23/11/2010

In India, giving does not rise with income and education. As a percentage of household income, donations by the wealthy actually decrease

In this time of global financial crisis, when so many are suffering financial hardship, most countries have increased their number of dollar millionaires. These ‘High Net-Worth Individuals’ (HNWI), according to a report by Capgemini and Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, have more than doubled in India. In 2008-09, India had 84,000 HNWIs. This year it rose by 50 per cent (1,26,700), the biggest increase of all countries.

In the worldwide list of dollar billionaires, India ranks third with 69, behind China (128) and the US (403). According to Forbes, however, the wealthiest 100 Indians are collectively worth $276 billion, while their top 100 Chinese counterparts are worth $170 billion. The three richest Indians together had more wealth the top 24 Chinese billionaires combined.

You don’t have to look very far for evidence of their wealth, with more than 30 luxury skyscrapers springing up in Mumbai. For the rich occupants, the taller, the better, to escape from the reality of India below — the railway tracks, low-rise tenements, choking traffic and the 55 per cent of the city’s population who live in slums. People are paying nearly two million dollars for a designer apartment, built in complexes with private cinemas, swimming pools, floodlit tennis courts and high-level security. Developers believe each year Mumbai can absorb between 30,000 and 40,000 more homes in the one million dollar-plus category.

Such extreme wealth doesn’t go unnoticed. In the UK, people are questioning the decision to keep giving India some $460 million of aid annually, which makes India the largest single recipient of British aid. Many ordinary Brits are asking if it can be right that the downtrodden British taxpayer gives such sums to a nation that boasts such wealth (albeit highly concentrated).

Perhaps the most damning comments recently came from French author Dominique Lapierre, whose book royalties from ‘City of Joy’ fund projects for the underprivileged in India. He is frustrated by the greed and corruption that he encounters here.

Lapierre’s non profit organisation, City of Joy Aid, runs a network of clinics, schools, rehabilitation centres and hospital boats. It operates 14 projects in India, most in the Sunderbans area. However, 90 per cent of free medicines get stolen in the journey from Delhi to Kolkata, and the project is thus forced to buy them at high prices from the market.

Three years ago, Lapierre set up in Delhi a trust which offers a tax-deductible certificate for all donations. With more than a hint of disappointment, he notes the foundation still does not have any funds from affluent Indians who seem reluctant to help their fellow country-folk.

According to the global management and consulting firm Bain, philanthropic donations amount to just 0.6 per cent of India’s GDP. This is very poor when compared to giving in the US and UK, for example, but is better than rates in other developing countries like Brazil and China. In the US, individuals and corporations are responsible for 75 per cent of charitable gifts. In India, individual and corporate donations make up only 10 per cent of charitable giving. Some 65 per cent comes from India’s central and state government, and the remaining gifts are provided by foreign organisations.

In India, giving does not rise with income and education. As a percentage of household income, donations by the wealthy actually decrease. From an analysis of 30 HNWIs in India, Bain noted that they contribute, on average, just around one-fourth of one per cent of their net worth to social and charitable causes. Will this change if laws and taxation policies are reformed to encourage a more supportive climate for potential donors and charitable organisations?

All of this is not meant to imply that philanthropy is absent in India. Vineet Nayyars recent Rs 30 crore gift to the Essel Social Welfare Foundation is a high-profile example of philanthropic giving. Over the years, Rohini Nilekani has donated $40 million to numerous causes that tackle the root causes of social problems and not merely the symptoms. Her biggest contribution has been to Arghyam, a Bangalore foundation that promotes clean water and hygiene, which now has projects in 800 villages.

Of course, what is really required is a proper redistributive system of taxation, effective state planned welfare provision and genuine economic democracy to help address inequality and poverty. In the absence of such things, wealthy ‘philanthrocapitalists’ will have a major say in deciding which problems are addressed and how, and some will be highly selective. For instance, critics of Bill Gates say his foundation often ends up favouring his commercial investments. The argument is that, instead of paying taxes to the state coffers, he donates his profits where it is favourable to him economically, such as supporting GM crops in Africa or high tech patented medicines. Arguably, ‘giving’ may often act as a smokescreen for ‘business as usual’.

Given the current neo-liberal system that legitimises and produces gross inequality, many nation states have been obliged to largely abdicate their financially redistributive role, resulting in the poor and disadvantaged too often having to rely on charity and private philanthropy to fill the gap. Unfortunately, for these people, the evidence suggests that India has some way to go before a widespread culture of visionary philanthropy takes root.

Corporate India: Promised Land Devoid of Promise

2010-11-18T17:08:00.018Z

Appeared in the Morning Star on 19/11/2010

I recently stood on a platform in New Delhi railway station and watched packed trains come and go. The clatter of wheels on track, the soothing swaying from side to side and the inevitability of getting from point A to point B. The people inside peered out through the window bars in the belief that their current imprisonment would be the source of their eventual liberation. Hope springs eternal.

Over the past 15 years, I've seen at first hand India trying to propel itself into the brave new world of "development." And, for some, the train already appears to have arrived at the final destination.

Step inside the gated communities (if you can) or a plush 27-storey one billion dollar plus Mumbai house and arrive in a Forbes nightmare world of privilege and wealth. Step inside the brand spanking new shopping malls, and you could be forgiven for thinking that you were in London, Paris or New York, with the plastic food joints, bland international chains and an air-conditioned macburger world of cola dens and coffee bars. These swish temples of modernity are a statement of perhaps where India wanted to be, of where India thinks it now is.

India has exploded onto the scene. The country's population has almost expanded by 50 per cent and productivity has tripled in two decades. It is now the world's fourth largest in terms of purchasing power.

According to the West, India is an emerging economic superpower of 1.2 billion people. It therefore represents a giant potential market for corporations. The message from Obama, Merkel, Cameron et al seems to be "We welcome your rise and want to invest in you." Of course they do. This is the ideology of the rich. The logic of capitalism is to drive down costs and increase profits. Benevolence isn't part of the equation.

Politicians in the West are trying to change perceptions of India among their own populations. They are attempting to eradicate the notion of it being a land of call centres and BPOs that take jobs from the West and replace it with the idea that trade between India and the West is a two-way relationship that is creating jobs, growth and higher living standards for all concerned.

The reality is somewhat different, however. For example, the recent deal struck between India and the US for Harley-Davidsons will not benefit plants in the US because a new assembly unit in India is to be built. Setting up shop in India not only leads to the use of cheap labour, but also puts downward pressure on existing labour costs in the West. It's a win-win situation for CEOs and shareholders alike.

I suppose that servicing well-to-do urban Indians by providing them with Harleys, burgers, overpriced coffee and i-phones is what "development" is all about. But the urban-centric, urban-chic "new" India of retail centres, luxury motorcycles and the consumerist right-to-buy but not to criticise (try as they may, they just can't shut up Arundhati) ideology is largely built on the 80 per cent (World Bank estimate) that exists on less than two dollars a day.

On his recent visit, it was noticeable that Obama and his entourage had little to say about these people. Little was said about India's warped development that creates rich-list billionaires while driving agricultural workers into dire poverty. There seems to be no invite, no reservation at the top table, no impending arrival at destination corporate-driven-nirvana for those people and others like them.

Instead, Obama's remarks were aimed at the millionaire US CEOs who accompanied him and the millionaire Indian elite. In the West, workers' jobs and wages are heading one way - downwards. In large parts of India, with increasing food costs, things are just as tough. Listening to political leaders you'd be hard pressed to notice though. They and the media are adept in twisting the truth and passing off such things to their respective populations as necessary blips in the journey towards to some cheap con-trick notion of the promised-land.

When their stance is criticised, however, we are told this is the way of the world, we have to compete, its dog eat dog and there is no alternative. Of course, there are numerous credible alternatives, many of which are being put into practice within India by various organisations and in other places around the world.

But, forget all that. Climb aboard. Enjoy the the great Indian train ride. Become enraptured by the hypnotic trance of GDP growth figures, marvel at the latest retail mall to spring up and bow down to the national flag. If you can't find one, a billion- dollar Mumbai penthouse will do.

From Illich to Auroville: Rejecting Consumerism in Pursuit of Happiness

2010-11-13T19:30:00.017Z

Appeared in Deccan Herald on 14/11/2010

What makes us happy? Just what is happiness? Happiness is a rather subjective notion. Some regard it as an achievable spiritual state of being, others as a fleeting mood. It’s a tough thing to pin down. Yet, despite the difficulties, researchers have attempted to measure happiness and have come up with some interesting findings.

Although it might be tempting to believe happiness is mainly the result of an individual’s inherent disposition, French sociologist Emile Durkheim discovered long ago that feelings of well being are linked to the type of society we live in, its social fabric and belief systems. Durkheim noted that the compulsion to commit suicide was very often the result of society’s failure to inculcate people with collectively embraced values. When this occurred, he found that many experienced a state of anomie (normlessness) and that, consequently, the suicide rate went up.

If wider society is as influential in shaping personal feelings as he suggests, we may well then ask, just what type of society is best for nurturing happiness?

In 2006, the first ‘Happy Planet Index’ (HPI) measured happiness across 178 countries. The small south Pacific island of Vanuatu was the happiest nation. Germany ranked 81st, Japan 95th and the US 150th. The index was based on consumption levels, life expectancy and reported happiness. Although Vanuatu was top, it only ranked 207th out of 233 economies when measured against Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Over the last 60 years, living standards in the West have improved enormously, but, from these findings, it appears that people have not become much happier. However, the impact of wealth on happiness should not be discounted.

Ruut Veenhoven, from the World Database of Happiness (WDH), argues that wealth can actually be a very reliable predictor of happiness. According to the WDH, people in Denmark and Austria report being happier than people in the Philippines and India, and people in those nations report being happier than people in Armenia and Zimbabwe.

If this is the case, why do some wealthy countries, such as the US, rank lowly in certain happiness surveys? Well, high GDP doesn’t necessarily mean that any increase in wealth has been shared equally. Unsurprisingly, many citizens may therefore be unhappy. And, even when personal income has increased, always being on the verge of redundancy or experiencing other related insecurities can increase stress. Furthermore, as expectations rise due to society becoming more prosperous, a feeling of relative deprivation can become widespread if opportunities are blocked.

So, it appears that while wealthy western nations use up vast quantities of the world's scarce resources, many of their citizens are not much happier, or indeed less happy, than those who belong to poorer countries that use far fewer resources.

Some have therefore questioned the current focus on GDP. The endless striving to increase it may not only be ecologically destructive, but doesn't always deliver a better quality of life. In fact, Bhutan places emphasis on ‘Gross National Happiness’ (GNH). Although over 30 per cent of Bhutan’s people are in poverty, GDP per capita is among the highest in South Asia and it has made tremendous strides in education and tackling malaria. While the country recognises a need to modernise, it is attempting to do so within the framework of its Buddhist values. It acknowledges the importance of economic growth, but also encourages the promotion of culture and heritage and the preservation and sustainable use of the environment. GNH comprises nine components of happiness: psychological well-being, ecology, health, education, culture, living standards, time use, community vitality and good governance, all of which can be quantifiably measured.

What we may therefore need is for nations to live within their environmental limits. Perhaps we should look no further than Costa Rica. The 2009 version of the HPI ranked it 1st. Costa Rica also gained top spot in the WDH, which is based on respondents self reported happiness on a scale of one to 10. Costa Ricans scored 8.6. Denmark followed at 8.3 and Togo and Tanzania were last at 2.6.

Costa Rica dissolved its armed forces in 1949 and invested heavily in education. Increased schooling created a more stable society and boosted the economy. Rising education levels also nurtured impressive gender equality and improvements in health care, which means that life expectancy is now about the same as in the US. Education and health may therefore be a far better investment than military hardware for improving the quality of life and a general sense of happiness.

Countries that are highly unequal and lay great emphasis on military power, such as the US and UK, don’t always fare too well in happiness surveys. Perhaps, they could take a leaf from Costa Rica, or even Denmark.

According to the World Values Survey in 2007, Denmark was the planet’s happiest country. Denmark is not just wealthy, but its people feel safe because emphasis is placed on social equality and robust welfare policies. Indeed, Scandinavian countries always come out near the top of quality of life and well-being surveys, usually quite a bit ahead the UK and US, which have adopted more strident neo-liberal policies.

Countries that are said to be happier tend to avoid undermining the ability of future generations to prosper and people in other countries to live fulfilling lives. The policies of western countries have often run counter to this ethos, and, in the 1970s, the writer Ivan Illich developed a scathing critique of western institutions.

Illich criticised western style institutions by believing modern medicine is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety, military poise for national security and the rat race for productive work. He argued that the traditional social fabric has been ripped up, and, in a futile pursuit of happiness, in its place are institutions designed to facilitate social control and the craving for ever more consumer goods, resulting in a negative impact on social relations at home and abroad and the global environment.

In India, we don’t have to look far to see alternative models of development based on non-consumerist and communal forms of living. The Auroville community, in Puducherry, was set up in the 1960s as an experiment in human unity that is concerned with sustainable living and the cultural, environmental, social and spiritual needs of its 2,200 plus residents. Elsewhere, the Navdanya organisation has trained over 5,00,000 farmers in sustainable agriculture and is actively involved in the rejuvenation of indigenous knowledge and culture. Another example, recently in the news, has been the initiation of a government backed project in Dandi and surrounding villages in Gujarat, based on the Gandhian values of village development and environmental conservation.

Such projects acknowledge that the pursuit of material wealth to the exclusion of all else impacts negatively on health and the quality of personal relationships, which are among the most potent predictors of whether people report they are happy.

These initiatives may well be on the right track. According to the Human Development Index (HDI), economic growth in itself seems to have little to do with all round well being. Indeed, several poor countries have caught up with much richer ones in the non-income aspects of the HDI, such as life expectancy and literacy. Despite high GDP growth, India ranks 134th among 182 countries in the HDI.

An over emphasis on the pursuit of economic growth can undermine or destroy quality of life and lead to greater unhappiness. In fact, according to the World Map of Happiness, Indians are an unhappy lot. Based on standards of wealth, health and access to education, it ranks 125th out of 178 countries.

Look no further than India’s urban centres as to why this may be. In a headlong rush to blindly ape the West, its cities are increasingly defined by their traffic-jammed flyovers cutting through fume choked neighbourhoods that are denied access to clean drinking water and a decent infrastructure. Scratch a little deeper, and you can see that its institutions are being moulded to fuel the consumer culture that Ivan Illich was once so critical of. Away from the cities, the influence of agribusiness, dam building and state-corporate grabs for land are leading to upheaval, conflict, great unhappiness and ecological destruction.

But we are told that this is ‘development’ and ‘good’ for ‘the country’. I guess it depends on just ‘who’ the country is meant to be and therefore whom all this turmoil happens to be good for.

Many less wealthy countries do well in happiness surveys because cultural priority is placed on family and friends, on social capital rather than financial capital, on social equity rather than corporate power. When decisions are taken to invest heavily in education and health as well as in self sustaining communities, local economies and the environment, happiness is boosted.

In September, world leaders attended the annual UN General Assembly. The PM of Bhutan proposed that happiness be included as the 9th Millenium Development Goal. Some laughter ensued, followed by a round of applause. Taken as a bit of a joke perhaps? But why should it be? World leaders could do much worse by taking a firm lead from the Bhutans and Costa Ricas of the world. They seem to be doing something right.

What Makes Us Happy?

2010-11-13T19:03:00.012Z

Appeared in Deccan Herald on 14/11/2010

The happiest nations on earth offer a good quality of life and provide citizens with a general sense of well being. But, on an individual level, what makes people feel good? What activities make us happy, sad or just plain indifferent? The difficulty in providing an answer is that one person’s pleasure can very much turn out to be another’s poison.

A friend once encouraged me to read Paulo Coelho’s book The Alchemist. He told me it was an absolute must-read and it would change my life. After such a marvellous build up, I just had get hold of a copy. Carrying it back from the shop, I thought about what a fantastic book this must be. It will change my life. It will send me into ecstasy. It will be the best read ever. Sliced bread was a world beating invention, but this would surely knock even that into second place.

I read it, hated it, and felt more than a little cheated after having finished it. In fact, rather than making me happy, it left me feeling rather confused and even angry – how on earth could anyone actually like such childlike preposterous meanderings (sorry to all those Alchemist fans).

But it’s not the fault of Paulo Coelho that some people just do not take to his writing. It’s the way of the world. Many things in life can have a polarising effect. Take air travel, for example. While the some love every aspect of flying, others regard it as a necessary but excruciating evil and board a plane as paranoid wrecks.

Being an airline pilot must be a wonderful occupation. Just imagine, soaring above the ground every day and cutting through the cloud to glimpse the most amazing sunsets and sunrises. What a sense of freedom, even ecstasy. And you get paid for it! But spare a thought for those who see things rather differently.

Notions of being seven miles above the ground, hurtling and shaking through the air at 550 miles per hour in a fragile metal tube do little for the ‘hate-to-fly’ brigade. While flying in first or business class may help ease the trauma somewhat, spending the next nine hours in economy class with screaming babies and the grumpiest of staff who have just graduated from cabin crew grump school with first class honours in 'grudge' can prove to be a less than uplifting experience.

And then there is the usual ‘safety’ advice to add to the trepidation. At some stage, it will be stated that if the plane lands on water, certain actions should be taken. Do they really expect you to believe heading for the ocean at some ridiculous speed that the plane will ‘land on’ the water? This fragile tube is likely to ‘plunge into’ the water, break up on impact and then sink to the bottom of some shark infested sea. But paying attention on to how to wear those orange life jackets and blow into the inflating tubes will save you though.

And so to the flight itself. As those fearful passengers count down the hours, shake around in no man's land as the turbulence kicks in and have packets of peanuts and hot, wet towels thrown at them, they stay strapped into their seat – because just like the orange inflatable jackets, they know those flimsy seat belts will save them from any body crushing episode that might come their way. Yes, flying can help a person appreciate that there is a fine line between utter joy, embodied by those flying the plane, and terrible unhappiness, epitomised by those who dislike flying. But you don’t have to fly to appreciate this.

Do you ever get sick and tired of coming across those awful TV programmes or glossy magazine articles showing some celebrity basking in their cheap displays of wealth and sense of perceived personal achievement? The thin line is upon us once again. Watching or reading about someone gloating endlessly about their happiness can send others, as a result of witnessing the said gloating, into a pit of never-ending despair.

How about cracking open signature bottles of joy or puff some tobacco sticks, not because an alcohol-tobacco induced daze would necessarily make you happy, but because it would make reading about people who feel the need to gloat about their happiness more tolerable. Happiness at times can entail just making certain things bearable.

The problem is that, in today’s world, a certain type of one-dimensional ‘happiness’ is thrust down the throat. We are encouraged to feel disillusioned and unhappy and to seek instant gratification. We live in a culture of failure.

Thanks to the advertising industry, people are made to feel ugly. Apparently, we all have bad hair, do not possess the latest gadgetry that will make us supremely happy and our diet is lacking, fingernails poor, eyes faded, skin sagging and taste in food, fashion and lifestyle choices questionable. We are a total mess!

Six months ago, you ran out to buy the latest miracle product to hit the shelves. Now you are told that that particular cutting edge commodity is obsolete and useless when compared to the super-improved-edge version. Or do they mean that you are obsolete and useless? Of course, what you really need to make you happy is some miracle facial cream, a plasma TV screen and the latest upgraded credit card that will enable you to shop till you drop beneath an even greater burden of debt.

But happiness isn’t complicated, nor is it based on some advertising executive’s illusion. So, what is it?

To find out, how about sinking into a warm bath, working out down at the gym, listening to music, watching your favourite film or walking in the countryside in the rain with the scent of wet soil and grass filling you lungs? Our pets, treasured personal memories, doing a good deed and the company of friends can all do the trick too.

And there you have it. When all is said and done, the cornerstone of true happiness is quite simply — simplicity itself.

The Arms Industry: Obama and The Merchants of Death

2010-11-10T19:20:00.016Z

Appeared in Deccan Herald on 11/11/10

(Also appeared in North East Times and Meghalaya Guardian 15/11/10)

India is rapidly turning into one of the world’s most lucrative arms markets, and Washington views it as a counterbalance to China

Barack Obama will continue his 10 day tour of Asia at a poignant time. It is poignant because much of the tour is not only concerned with arms deals, but will include November 11, Remembrance Day (or Veterans Day in the US), which marks the death and sacrifices of armed forces personnel and civilians in times of war. It coincides with the anniversary of the end of the First World War in 1918. Due to the scale of slaughter involved, that conflict was commonly referred to as the war to end all wars.

In Mumbai, Obama announced $10 billion worth of business deals with India, which he claimed will contribute to 50,000 new jobs in the US. It is estimated that half the transactions will be for India’s purchase of US military equipment and half the new jobs will be created in the defence sector. This and the pending $60 billion US deal with Saudi Arabia may help kick-start the American economy.

Obama has said that the relationship between India and the US is going to be one of the defining partnerships of the 21st century. What he really means is that it could well be one of the decisive political-military alliances.

Don’t expect it to be an equal relationship by any means. Nicholas Burns, under secretary for political affairs, recently stated that India’s rise is deeply in the strategic interest of the United States. With 800 military bases all over the world and with it spending more on its military than the rest of the world together, the US isn’t expecting a bilateral relationship any time soon, with India or anyone else.

India is rapidly turning into one of the world’s most lucrative arms markets, and Washington views it as a counterbalance to China. It represents ripe pickings for the US. India’s economic growth gives it the clout to join Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates as the world’s biggest arms buyers. American defence sales to India since 2001 have totalled around $12-13 billion. The US consulting firm, KPMG, in its newly released report, claims that India is expected to spend $112 billion on arms in the next six years.

While a certain amount of military hardware may be required for a nation’s protection, it is in the interests of the likes of General Electric, Boeing, Lockhead Martin and other players in the US military-industrial sector to sell and sell again. So what if it cranks up tensions and regional arms races? So what if India spends trillions of rupees on arms, diverting money from projects that could help the poor? Some think it’s much better to line the pockets of the elite interests involved.

It is often said the past is often a good predictor of the future. On just one day during the First World War, the Battle of the Somme accounted for 20,000 British lives. In a four and a half month period, over a million men became casualties in the long and bitter struggle on the Somme. The offensive cost Britain and its colonies 4,19,654 casualties, 1,25,000 of them dead. A German staff officer described the Somme as ‘the muddy grave of the German field army.’

One who survived to vent his scorn on the generals who planned and implemented the carnage was Cyril José, who had signed up as a 15-year-old in 1914. Writing after his experience, he said that it was such a pity that General Haig and his ‘Brass Hats’ did not lead troops into battle instead of urging them on from their safe positions in the rear because they might not then have survived to sacrifice hundreds of thousands more of his generation. He felt that so many lives were wasted to cover up the generals’ incompetence and thus there were so many less to witness the great betrayal by the politicians.

His is one of many voices from the battle, which all these years later stand testimony to the utter waste and brutality that had hitherto been unimaginable.

As Obama ends his trip to Asia, he and his entourage of 250 business executives will no doubt return home happy in the knowledge of having increased the coffers of the arms industry and pledged support to US client states in the region, such as Japan and South Korea. Much of the work put in will be justified on the basis of the threats to regional security from China. Those who are critical may well have their voices drowned out by the usual media fanfare that heralds mind boggling multi-billion dollar arms deals and cosying up to the US as constituting ‘success’.

Since 1918, there have been countless millions like Cyril José, whether military personnel or civilians, who could have recounted similar tales of horrific slaughter to his as a result of needless conflict fuelled by political expediency and greed.

At this time of the year, it may be worth reflecting on the fact that the First World War was certainly not the war to end all wars. Vladimer Lenin, for one, knew this long before most. As long as militarism and imperialism continue, he said there would be a second then a third — a case of perpetual war (or fear of war). On the back of Obama’s trip and the mentality that underpins it, things seem to be moving along quite nicely.

Slow Death, Fast Profits: India, Pesticdes and Monsanto

2010-10-21T15:12:00.022+01:00

Appeared in Deccan Herald on 22/10/2010, Morning Star on 27/10/10, State Times (Jammu & Kashmir) on 30/10/10, Kisan Ki Awaaz (Voice of the Farmers - India's national magazine for farmers - November edition) and in North East Times and Meghalaya Guardian on 25/10/10

The next time you serve up a good old ‘wholesome’ meal of rice and various vegetables, you will probably take in half a milligram of pesticide also, around a pin prick. That would be more than 40 times what an average North American person would consume.

India is one of the world’s largest users of pesticides and a profitable market for the corporations that manufacture them. Ladyfinger, cabbage, tomato and cauliflower in particular may contain dangerously high levels because farmers tend to harvest them almost immediately after spraying. Fruit and vegetables are sprayed and tampered with to make them more colourful, and harmful fungicides are sprayed on fruit to ripen them in order to rush them off to market.

Research by the School of Natural Sciences and Engineering at the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bangalore has indicated disturbing trends in the increased use of pesticide. In 2008, it reported that many crops for export had been rejected internationally due to high pesticide residues.

Kasargod in Kerala is notorious for the indiscriminate spraying of endosulfan. The government-owned Plantation Corporation of Kerala aerially sprayed the harmful pesticide on cashews for a period of over 20 years. Consequently, it got into rivers, streams and drinking water. Families and their children have been living with physical deformities, cancers and disorders of the central nervous system ever since.

Officials and the pesticide companies benefited from the spraying. At the time, cashew was grown without pesticides throughout Kerala, but the government run plantation invested millions of rupees of public money in spraying the deadly pesticide. Endosulfen poisoning cases also emerged elsewhere, including Karnataka.

Monsanto’s controversial Round Up is now being used in place of endosulfan, which is in fact still being used in various parts of the country despite the health dangers.

According to the writer Marie-Monique Robin, whoever controls the food (and pesticide) business controls the world. She claims that Monsanto, backed by the US Government, wants to do this through its genetically manipulated (GM) seeds and its pesticides and weedicides. Monsanto already controls 84% of the global GM seeds market.

Monsanto has been responsible for manufacturing polychlorinated biphenols that cause cancer, dioxins that lead to chloracne, GM bovine growth hormone that produce mastitis in cattle and genetically modified organisms containing insect toxins, including GM corn, GM soya and Bt cotton, which are strongly associated with a range of health hazards. It also produced Agent Orange which the US dropped on Vietnam to destroy jungle and consequently led to mass death, disease and deformities. In June 2001, adding insult to injury, Monsanto was accused by farmers of Ninh Thuan province of pressuring them to use genetically modified seeds that resulted in corn and maize crop failures and economic ruin.

What’s more, many of its tactics, claims and advertising have been questionable and sometimes downright illegal. In Indonesia, the corporation bribed more than 140 government officials to have its Bt cotton released without an environmental risk assessment.

Dr Meryl Hammond, founder of the Campaign for Alternatives to Pesticides, recently told a Canadian parliament committee that a raft of studies published in prestigious peer-reviewed journals point to strong associations between chemical pesticides and serious health consequences, including endocrine disruption and fertility problems, birth defects, brain tumours and brain cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, childhood leukaemia, cancer clusters in communities, gastric or stomach cancer, learning disabilities, non-Hodgkin's lymphomaand canine malignant lymphoma

The committee heard testimony from 85 witnesses and analysed over 50 briefs, which produced a frightening overview on the effects of pesticides and their pervasiveness in the environment.

There is also evidence demonstrating a potentially dangerous link between many pesticides and naturally occurring substances. For example, a British study done way back in the 1970s and reported in the journal Nature indicated that the insecticide carbaryl can combine with nitrites from food additives in the stomach and create a carcinogenic and highly mutagenic substance.

In addition to health risks, there are the well documented issues relating to seed patenting, biodiversity and the subsequent impoverishment of farmers. There are also concerns over dead soil. A recent scientific study carried out in India by the Navdanya organisation found that Bt-cotton had significantly reduced vital soil enzymes and bacteria, so much so that within a decade of planting GM cotton, or any GM crop with Bt genes, the destruction of soil organisms could be complete, resulting in dead soil unable to produce food.

But there is hope. Earlier this year, India's Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh halted the commercial cultivation of ‘Bt brinjal’, the world's first genetically modified eggplant containing insecticidal toxin protein. Ramesh was widely praised for not giving in to intense pressure from the USA and vested interests.

Pesticides and GM food can cause serious damage to health, but the manufacturers have so much invested and possess great influence. Throughout the world, the public is increasingly calling these companies to account. In many respects, there are parallels with the tussle with tobacco companies over lung cancer. But this time the effects are much more pervasive and impact the entire planet.

If someone was standing in front of you threatening your life or the lives of your children, wouldn’t you take action? There’s no difference between that situation and what the corporations are doing to your food.

India Unheard: Giving Voice to the Voiceless

2010-10-15T20:16:00.013+01:00

Appeared in Deccan Herald on 16/10/2010

The mainstream media is often criticised for privileging state-corporate messages and the concerns of the better off over those of the disadvantaged and poor. However, groups who have been denied a voice are turning to new forms of technology to get their views across.

Digital technology and social media are increasingly being used as vehicles for raising awareness about issues that have been neglected or under reported by traditional media outlets. For instance, Democracy Now, a community public service news, analysis and opinion based outlet in the US and Canada, broadcasts alternative non-mainstream views over the internet, radio and TV and is funded entirely through contributions from listeners, viewers and foundations. Elsewhere, Video Volunteers (VVs) is encouraging the world’s poorest citizens to participate in the community media movement to right injustices.

VVs has offices in the US and India and works with various NGOs and enterprises in a number of countries in an attempt to provide poor and often rural communities with media technology to advance justice and equality. By providing disadvantaged communities with journalistic and technology skills through its ‘community video unit’ project, it has helped to set up various media production companies that are financially self-sustaining and locally owned and controlled. In doing so, it actively builds people’s capacity to articulate and share perspectives on issues that are relevant to them.

IndiaUnheard is VVs latest venture. As a community news service, IndiaUnheard comprises a network of individual correspondents who are trained to report on concerns affecting their own communities, which would otherwise be left untold. Started in May, the long-term goal is to feed content to national and international outlets, such as mainstream television channels and social networking sites.

Internet and mobile phone based technology is key to IndiaUnheard, and the initiative is based on the premise that communities require a media outlet that can both educate and provide a platform for unheard voices, particularly the most neglected parts of society — the ‘lower’ castes, women and religious and sexual minorities.

Local community members were initially trained to use readily accessible and inexpensive cameras. They were trained to be ‘video journalists’ capable of conceptualising, identifying and shooting a story by themselves. The journalists were also familiarised with new media, including SMS updates, Twitter and Facebook. There are now 31 roving reporters or community correspondents (CCs) across 24 Indian states.

The correspondents are based in places such as Karauli in Rajasthan, the Dang tribal district of Gujarat, Jharkhand, Manipur, Himachal Pradesh and Chennai. Each correspondent has personally experienced hardship and their communities have faced long standing concerns over corruption and discrimination.

Their videos are sent to VVs office in Goa to be edited and uploaded by media specialists. They are then posted on the IndiaUnheard website, which acts as a one-stop online portal for accessing the stories produced. The videos are also distributed through social media sites so that viewers can connect with individual correspondents and receive updates posted by the correspondents (using their mobile phones) from their often distant and remote locations.

Although IndiaUnheard wants information to reach national and international audiences in order to raise awareness, it also aims to make policy makers better informed so they can better tackle issues, including rural corruption and gender inequality. The project is not just about lobbying for resources or government action, however, but is also viewed as a tool for challenging taken for granted practices or unspoken issues, such as child marriage and domestic violence. When CCs take it on themselves to report and investigate these issues within their communities, the unspoken finally becomes articulated and the potential for change occurs.

IndiaUnheard is already having an impact. For example, one of the CCs from Manipur made a video about a lack of life saving medical facilities in a local village. A Manipuri IndiaUnheard viewer living in Bangalore saw the film and wanted to help. Video Volunteers connected him with the Manipuri CC, who was put in touch with a local NGO. Together, they organised the distribution of medicines in the local area to over 500 people.

In order to fully appreciate the potential of IndiaUnheard, one need look no further than VVs community video units. Unlike IndiaUnheard, a nationwide project based on the endeavours of many highly committed individual reporters, the community video units are local production companies based within and run by poor communities. After having watched a video, slum dwellers in Mumbai became aware of their rights and took action that resulted in the quick clearance of the garbage and clogged drains by the authorities. In another case, the government of Gujarat re-opened a water treatment plant and brought clean water to 3,000 people after the producers exposed a dangerously high level of flourosis.

Genuine ‘press (or media) freedom’ goes beyond a handful of rich corporations being able to disseminate information, which is often sourced from similar news agencies and based on mainstream agendas that focus on narrow concerns. To date, in India, genuine freedom of expression resulting in the ability to influence policy makers has been limited to certain privileged sections of society. By mobilising previously neglected grassroots level opinion through effective citizen journalism, IndiaUnheard is in the process of changing this.

The Pernicious, Tired World of Conspiracy Theories

2010-10-05T10:29:00.016+01:00

Appeared in Morning Star on 18/12/2010

In a media driven age, populist explanations for world events often take the form of anti-establishment conspiracy theories, which have to some extent filled the vacuum created by the absence of serious analysis in the mainstream media, most notably from the left. Why bother having an informed understanding of the dynamics of the modern world based on rigorous research, when current trends and events can simply be explained as being the result of some secret, manipulative elite or amphibians from outer space with an agenda to control the world?

Instead of trying to appreciate the logic and processes of capital accumulation and economic crises, for instance, or even the historical antecedents of modernity according to recognised scholarly analysis in an attempt to understand the world, it is much easier to assume that the members of some shadowy group have been in charge all this time - the Illuminati, the Bilderberg Group, Bohemian Grove, Babylonian paganism, all the world’s Jewish people or even giant green space lizards - the wonderful theory of the UK’s David Icke!

No matter how much evidence can be piled up to falsify a conspiracy theory, conspiracy theorists counter by saying that such evidence is put out in order to throw ordinary people off the scent. Perhaps this article is all part of the anti-conspiracy theory conspiracy.

Of course, conspiracy theories have been found on the left and right of the political spectrum over the years. While the right saw reds under the bed everywhere, the left regarded every negative event as a consequence of capitalist imperialism. But, we now live in different times. Today’s conspiracy theories often have a whiff of neo-conservativism (and even anti-Semitism) with their anti-government agendas - better for some to have the distracting effects of a conspiracy theory that points the finger at government bureaucrats, green lizards and a ‘new world order’, rather than the socialists of yesteryear howling at the gates of big business and capitalism.

Conspiracy theories are quick-fix explanations in a complex world, where the ordinary person feels powerless, confused and craves easily digestible answers. It thus becomes easy to regard certain events, like the 9/11 attacks in New York or the current economic crisis, as being the work of identifiable targets such as ‘the government’ or some other group who are accused of deliberately controlling the situation behind the scenes.

Such theories are good rallying points for venting frustration, but have little to say about, for instance, how imperialism in West Asia ultimately led to the conditions spawning ‘Al Quada’, or how different societies took different routes to modernity and produced different outcomes based on the struggles between disparate groups and interests. Instead, for followers of conspiracy theorists, the nature of the modern world can be explained away by resorting to a Dan Brown type conspiracy theory combined with a warped interpretation of history or some simplistic Hollywood-esque inspired political or sci-fi narrative.

Conspiracy theories provide limited insight into the dynamics of power, oppression and resistance in the 21st century. There is indeed no broad sociological analysis pointing to cultural, historical and economic factors and, therefore, no credible alternative agenda offered for change. In the absence of this, we are left with the crude assumptions of the conspiracy monger who plays on the prejudices and fears of ordinary people, who in turn latch on to the explanation offered as a substitute for the underlying causes of their powerlessness and frustrations.

When people do actually conspire to shape events, they do so within a framework that conspiracy theorists fail to appreciate. For example, corporations conspire to produce price cartels, media barons conspire to dominate and state-corporate interests embark on military jaunts to control markets and resources. But this has to be placed within the wider context of the logic of capitalism and the need to maximise profits and exert influence. Consequently, the compulsion to survive, compete, dominate and pursue profit casts long shadows over virtually every social and cultural institution, from government and politics to education, law, agriculture and entertainment.

Few conspiracy theorists and their followers appreciate this and merely speculate about the intentions of and existence of groups of people acting together in unison. So, at one extreme, we have the belief that giant lizards from outer space are to blame for purposively bringing about the economic crisis or indeed just about anything else you care to think of. While some take at face value the belief in the lizard conspiracy, some critics (of David Icke in particular) regard it as a metaphor for the manipulation of the world by Jewish people.

Not everything in life can be neatly explained away, as the Austro-British philosopher Karl Popper once famously argued. He noted that it can be easy for conspiracy theories to overlook the pervasive unintended consequences of political and social action and assume that all consequences must have been intended. Unpredictability abounds.

Not for many modern day conspiracy theorists though. If it can be placed inside their theory (and it usually can be), then it most probably will be. After all, why look a gift horse in the mouth - some make a good living from it.

Oh Brother! Miliband Leads Labour

2010-09-26T20:25:00.017+01:00

Appeared in Deccan Herald on 27/9/2010

The British Labour Party has a new leader. Since Gordon Brown’s resignation and the party’s election defeat in May, the main tussle for the leadership has been between the two Miliband brothers. It was announced on Saturday that Ed, the younger of the two, had defeated David to take the crown. It remains to be seen in which direction Ed Miliband will now steer the party.

To date, all three main parties have been advocating huge cuts to public services in order to reduce the national debt brought about by the crisis in the banking sector and the subsequent massive bail out. The only difference is that Labour has been arguing for a slower pace of cuts to try to avoid a double dip recession.

The UK will shortly get to know the extent of the cuts. Job losses and slashes to services will follow. As leader of the main opposition party, just how far Ed Miliband will be prepared to go in standing up for millions of ordinary people who will bear the cost remains to be seen.

Under Tony Blair, Labour won three straight elections. However, critics say that gaining electoral office by ditching the party’s core left wing values merely served to produce power without real substance and no radical improvement to the lives of ordinary working class people – Labour’s traditional core supporters. Arguably, this was the ultimate reason for the election defeat, with such people having finally abandoned the party.

For some time now, all three mainstream parties have been pro-privatisation, pro-big business and anti-trade union. Some Labour supporters hope the party will now move towards establishing clear ground between itself and the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government. They are hoping that, under Ed Miliband, Labour can rediscover its commitment to social equity and justice and show greater enthusiasm for tackling the causes and impact of social inequality, which widened during the party’s 13 years in government.

More radical voices are beginning to emerge within the labour movement that advocate an alternative to the cross party consensus that cuts are necessary. The national debt is in fact smaller than in 1945 when huge amounts of public money were used to create the welfare state. There are thus concerns that the ‘cuts are necessary’ mantra is being used by the government as a device to drive through an ideologically driven agenda for the privatisation and dismantling of huge swathes of the public sector and the welfare state.

Instead of slashing public spending, certain trade union leaders and activists are calling for, among other things, firmer taxation policies for the rich and the nationalisation or renationalisation of the massively profitable energy, rail, banking and insurance industries. But, with Ed Miliband at the helm, it is almost certain that Labour will not revert to a socialist agenda it ditched years ago.

Exactly how much support Ed Miliband offers to those who bear the brunt of the cuts will be crucial, however. Too much support and he risks alienating middle class voters and the right wing media; too little and he risks alienating further traditional working class voters.

Under New Labour, the party’s raison d’etre was to acquire and hold on to power. After 18 years in opposition, this had become its core value, seemingly void of genuine commitment to a wider political philosophy that embraced serious social change. When faced with the ubiquitous shadow cast by powerful big business and a forceful right wing media, Labour reinvented itself as New Labour by deciding to ‘play the game’ and rid itself of most of its left leaning policies. In doing so, some argue that it became a rather vacuous but very successful election winning machine.

As someone associated with the previous New Labour government, Ed Miliband may well continue to support the prevailing cross-party consensus on cuts and not mount any significant defence of jobs and services. If so, he could find himself between a rock and a hard place. His leadership campaign had good support from the trade unions. They may expect payback when the cuts begin to bite.

Ed Miliband is more of a technocrat than radical, more middle manager than firebrand. In an era of advanced capitalism, the role of mainstream political leaders is to demonstrate competence when it comes to managing the machinery of state in order to fine tune the status quo, not overhaul it. A role worth having? As potential future PM, Ed Miliband might certainly say so. Those who want Labour to be a genuine party of the left would disagree. Labour’s new leader could be in for a very bumpy ride.

Watch from 2:10 onwards

The Shifting Sands of Unshakable Truth

2010-09-08T18:16:00.010+01:00

Appeared in the Morning Star on 9/9/2010

People drive cars packed with explosives into market places killing hundreds of innocents. Pilgrims journey to Rome to bow down to the pope. The oil rich fundamentalists of the Bush era rolled into Iraq with their hired armies. Bow to the lord or bow the flag, the result will be the same.

The ignorance of faith and the delusion of reason. The word of god and the speeches of politicians. It's good versus evil, and both are interchangeable. There is moral outrage in the West about the 'barbaric' laws of Iran or Afghanistan. Women denied education, no freedom of thought or death by stoning. Quick, follow the compass, send in the troops and let's teach those barbarians how things should be done.

Not the magnetic compass, but the dodgy one of morality. The people of science and rationality versus the people of darkness and ignorance. Well, that's how the story goes. We have seen the light. We found it through the lens of a microscope and at the bottom of a test tube and were blinded with it as we discovered nuclear fission and all manner of technological delights. We found the answer, we found the truth.

But the truth isn't really the truth, it's only a version of the truth, built on shaky stilts on shifting foundations. But as long as the impression is given that the supports and foundations are set in immovable stone, then the truth is unshakable.

And so the modern world bows down to the myth of scientific reason. But for every scientific expert who says that one theory is correct, there is usually another who will disagree. As Karl Popper implied, theories don't actually 'verify' much at all, but merely demonstrate a robustness in terms of their ability to withstand being falsified. From Newton to Einstein, theoretical paradigms come and go and knowledge, the truth, shifts accordingly or is even turned on its head. In this day and age, some high placed lobby group or expensively funded campaign targeted at the press, TV or social networking media can convince almost anyone that some incredulous outlook is the truth. I refer you to the 'science' and logic of the creationists, the pro-war lobby or the anti-global warming brigades.

Science has undoubtedly led to great technological advances and has improved life for millions. But what does it say about us as a species when people can sit and watch a probe going to the moon but turn a blind eye to millions a couple of hundred kilometres away living in the direst situations imaginable. Where is the 'progress' in a world, where people kill in the name of peace, destroy the ecology for the sake of profit, impose trade agreements in the name of 'freedom' or impose sanctions and hardship in the name of morality. Hate your next door neighbour, but don't forget to pray.

Whether it's religion and science, both promise nirvana but have left the world on the brink of catastrophe. They both have a history of colluding with the powerful to produce the mess they claim to have the remedy for. Did we become closer to god and goodness when religion ruled the planet? Did we find the light when the scientists ended up in the pay of governments and wealthy corporations? Or did we become blinded by ignorance, apathy and warped morality?

The ability to genetically modify foods or use science to con farmers into ditching centuries old tried and tested methods of crop production accounts for little when it results in death, starvation, increased disease and fear of the future. Patent your product and foist it on some hapless farmer or patent another and make it too costly for the common person to treat his or her life threatening disease. The result is the will of god, or should I say the will of the profiteers and some cost-benefit analyst who worked it all out on a spreadsheet?

But god is watching. No, wait a minute, it's not god, it's the CCTV cameras and the security agencies. God was kicked out of the building and was replaced with technology long ago. Hold on though, I just found him under lock and key in the store cupboard to be brought out occasionally in an attempt to inject a bit of morality into the expediency of it all.

Forget heaven, nirvana or any other form of man made version of salvation. Book your ticket to the promised land now. Have faith in science. Become cryogenically frozen and hope to awake in some future brave new world. It could well be an even worse version of what you thought you had left behind.