By Saswat Pattanayak

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to Columbia University was arguably the most important step taken by a world leader to initiate the global peace that is so much needed in the clearly terrorized world we live in.

Ahmadinejad is a leader of significant importance—chief of a major country and representative of a major world religion-- who was humble enough to accept a university invitation, and tolerant enough to appear in front of the most hostile audience that any academic institute in the world could feel ashamed of. And despite the odds, he was clearly on a mission: to promote the spirit of peace and open the road to desirable dialogue.

So, how was he received at the Land of the Free? First, the New York City Mayor displayed his level of arrogance by refusing Ahmadinejad a visit to 9/11 memorial site. Second, the Columbia University President exhibited unparalleled level of ignorance by verbally abusing the Iranian President. Third, the American President bathed in his self glory by refusing to entertain any possibility of any urgent dialogue.

Columbia: Elite University, Elitist Mindsets:
Columbia University characterized the drama usually associated with the great American Hypocrisy that has led to several wars and ideological confrontations during past many decades. One important way in which the First World countries have justified their position as regards to Freedom of Speech is by boasting about it. To prove that America allows freedom of speech, American administration needs to allow a certain amount of dissent to take place. Both the dissent and the freedom then have to be televised appropriately. Finally, the melodramatic confrontations are then needed to be compared with the economically subjugated world so as to prove an innate superiority in the methods of the free world.

In Ahmadinejad’s visit, all the above aspects were clearly evident. First, he was invited by Columbia University as the speaker. He was invited despite vehement protests from various student groups. This proved the spirit of tolerance that American democracy boasts of. However, critically deconstructing such an obvious reflection, one would fathom that the real reason why he was invited was not so much as “despite”, as was “because” of the protests from various groups of people. He was invited to speak on campus, because of the amount of controversy it would generate. And clearly, Columbia University did not do anything to stop the protests. Indeed, it advertised on its website additional permissions to student groups to create the noise and requested the community to bear with the protests which would continue for the entire day. Such vehement noisy protests where anyone could attribute any ghastly name to another country’s chief showcased a circus that was well planned and organized. Students and other social groups were not protesting against Columbia University (which they could have legitimately done by asking people to boycott a visit to the campus), rather they were enjoying the centrestage of press attention by using placards that could allow them to equate Ahmadinejad with Hitler and use any amount of vulgar slangs to denounce Iranian politics. In a country where peace marchers including octogenarian peacenik grandmothers are imprisoned because of silent protests, the rowdy behaviors from various “free speech” and student groups in front of a university was in fact encouraged.

Why was Ahmadinejad invited to the campus if the university was well aware that there would be thousands of people on the streets to protest? It was because the university was not afraid that they will lose reputation. It was not because the university was going to be boycotted. Not because students who resent Ahmadinejad were going to dissuade potential applicants from joining the campus. After all, a university which invites a “Hitler” naturally was going to be branded as anti-semite and was going to get bad press, and was going to be mocked at. The university was going to lose its own face by inviting someone whom many people on campus considered or even studied as a dictator.

Then why did the Columbia University invite someone as a chief guest who was so deeply hated by many in the campus community? In fact, Ahmadinejad was unique because he was (and continues to be) hated by both conservatives and liberals alike. Even several Free Speech coalitions did not have kind words for him. None of the politically correct historians had good thoughts about him. None of the civil rights organizations thought Ahmadinejad should be tolerated.

Lee Bollinger’s speech answered why: Calling the Iranian President “brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated”, even before allowing him an audience, the Columbia University professor proved the invitation was premeditated to be insulting. “You exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator,” Bollinger called Ahmadinejad. It was with the sole purpose of insulting the Iranian head that Ahmadinejad was invited to speak. The spirit of sheer hatred continued as stealth mockery found resonance throughout Bollinger’s long introduction.

Lee Bollinger who in the mask of being a free speech advocate (Michigan Affirmative Action champion) went all the way to demonstrate how utterly vulgar and autocratic he could be. A proclaimed “free-speech” advocate, Bollinger not only did not feel sorry about Ahmadinejad not being granted the freedom to visit 9/11 site, but he went one step further. Even before Ahmadinejad could speak on his “defense”, the Columbian professor went on verbally attacking the Iranian head as befitting a liar, idiot, rogue and conman.

Bollinger said a number of Columbian graduates were the brave fighters serving the American troop in Iraq. That was spoken in order to praise the American war against the Iraqi people! He asked Iranian President on their behalf why “Iran is fighting a proxy war in Iraq killing US troops”. Whether it is a proxy war that Iran is fighting in Iraq is a matter of dispute. What, however has been true is that the US fought an unjust war in Iraq and American troops caused much military misconduct that have been quite extensively recorded in recent past. What the Columbia University President should have done was to apologize on behalf of the infamous troop that has caused much distress to the world citizenry by its brazen inhuman treatment of peaceful civilians. Even after prison tortures, and civilian rapes committed by American troops (yes the same “brave” Columbian graduates as cohorts), the highly educated and informed professor proved his agenda of falsehoods and pretensions time and again.

Bollinger continued with his series of malicious attacks that were not evidenced nor called for. He brought to the fore the issue of Iran’s nuclear deal, which suggested his lack of awareness about the matter. Contrary to his accusations against Iran as a country working to create an unsafe world, the UN’s agency (International Atomic Energy Agency) has been in close collaboration with Iran and has found no such threats as being decried by the professor. Inviting a guest, and accusing him and the country he leads in highly derogatory terms and verbally abusing him as insane and unintelligent without even having evidence or knowledge to back up marked the genius of Bollinger. Who does Bollinger quote to support his opinions? French president Sarkozy – a right wing conservative—who apparently has lost patience (according to Bollinger) with Iran. Did such trivial information make sense in an introductory speech provided to “welcome” an international guest?

Bollinger then asked Ahmadinejad, “Why have you made the people of your country vulnerable to sanctions?” If Bollinger had any sense of empathy or understanding, he could have instead asked why do the first world powers foster vulnerable conditions for Iranian civilians. In an unsurpassed level of academic elitism that should ideally call for much loath and disgrace, Professor Bollinger outdid his sense of self-glorification by finally challenging the head of state of Iran to respond to his speech: “Let me close with a comment. Frankly and in all candor, Mr President, I doubt you have the intellectual courage to answer these questions but your avoiding them will in itself be meaningful to us. I do expect you to exhibit the fanatical mindset that characterizes so much of what you say and do…I am only a professor who is also a university president, but today I feel all the weight of the modern civilized world yearning to express the revulsion of what you stand for. I only wish I could do better.”

A huge section of Columbia University audience cheered and clapped to their president’s hate speech and waited gleefully for Ahmadinejad to fail the test. In contrast to the obviously arrogant speech of Bollinger, Ahmadinejad’s talk was pensive, thoughtful, full of insights. Ahmadinejad asserted that he was still an instructor at a university and as an instructor he strived for the whole truth. Apart from the questionable religious wisdom and denial of homosexuality in Iran, Ahmadinejad’s speech was more than an answer to Bollinger’s outlandish accusations. Yes, he did not answer anything “straight”, despite pleading from the university for him to answer in “yes” or “no”. But that was more due to the fact that Islam logic is not necessarily as vertically dismissive as Christian expectations. In every sentence that Ahmadinejad spoke, there was humility, a touch of candor and empathetic understanding. In every sentiment of Ahmadinejad, there was a prayer for collaboration, a hope for global peace, a step towards mutual dialogue. In every answer of Ahmadinejad to the Q/A session, there was an assertion of a world leader who was humble enough to raise historical lessons, and of an educated non-elite who was unafraid to research.

Ahmadinejad was forced to revisit his stance on Holocaust. Clearly he had not come to the US to speak about his views on historical revisionism, but to extend a hand of friendship for future peace pacts. Even at that stage he said he was not a Holocaust denier, what he wanted instead was further research into the area of history that has led the world to prepare for the largest unrest in recent times. Palestine did not fight World War II. Europe did. And why are the Palestinians facing the crisis still? Not an easy answer to this question, and Ahmadinejad sought for further research into this aspect. Talking about the halt in Iranian progress, he dwelt on the root cause of the unrest and insecurity. Why was Iran under sanction? Why did the first world powers withdraw unilaterally after assuring nuclear energy support to Iran? Why should there be limitations imposed on Iran’s scientific endeavors especially when IAEA has not found any problem with Iran’s peaceful nuclear program?

Moreover, Ahmadinejad did not just ask questions that were uncalled for. He offered agreements. Despite the insults and abuses and threats outside the campus building that were encouraged by the university officials, he invited American students to visit Iran, attend the universities and speak with civilians. Whether he would agree to hold a dialogue with the White House regarding resolution of US-Iran disputes? Of course, anytime! Ahmadinejad requested for a peaceful dialogue. “Everything can be resolved over talks. We need to talk”.

White House ignored Ahmadinejad during the rest of his stay. Ahmadinejad even called for a meeting of religious leaders to initiate global peace talks and succeeded. Around 140 religious leaders attended the meeting in New York, with the sole exception of any Jewish leader who refused to attend.

On the Homosexuality Question:
I waited for a few days to study media response to such an uncivilized treatment meted out to a state’s head. The American corporate media of course bathing in its biased glories preferred to maintain the line adopted by Columbia University and at their best, tried to provide a “balanced” perspective to the issue that clearly called for critical intellectual intervention.

Most reports mocked at the ignorance of Ahmadinejad when it came to issue of homosexuality. They chose to play moral pundits while not mentioning how America treats its own LGBT community. The fact that the US has consistently failed to provide for basic human rights to homosexual population even after acknowledging their presence in every sphere in social life here is clearly amiss from all reports that attacked Iran’s condition. “Mr President, in your country, homosexuals are treated in this and that way” has been a standard line of both the Columbia University president and our enlightened western press. Not for once did the educated pause awhile to review the fact that not so long ago American Psychology Association (APA), the famed master of all things research, used to consider homosexuality as an abnormality. And even to this date, the major state religion whose dictums appear on the courtroom walls and classroom prayers has been the single biggest enemy to the cause of the LGBT community.

On the Holocaust Question:
Most amount of time devoted by the university professor in his speech and later on by the university during Q/A session, and by media reports before, during and after the visit of Ahmadinejad focused on the alleged “holocaust denial” of the Iranian head. It has been accused severally that he is an Anti-Semite, like most of anyone we know in the recent history who has challenged the Holocaust issue from different perspectives.

Even as we have succeeded in challenging the legacy of Columbus and George Washington, the only and perhaps the largest event of significance has remained beyond recent review. Bollinger, the academician said there was absolutely no need to do any further research on Holocaust while Ahmadinejad said to presume that research on a topic is already exhausted is to underestimate the power of knowledge itself.

The wisdom which Ahmadinejad brought to the conference hall of the New York based university was clearly demolished to pieces with overriding imposition that calling for research into Holocaust amounts to challenging the truth itself.

The fallacious logic applied by the dominant historical thread about Holocaust is clearly evident in the manner in which they are unwilling to entertain any slightest of suggestions that can be introduced to enrich our collective historical knowledge.

If the leading academicians of the western world are so vehement in their resistance to any further research into one specific historical event, then commonsense implies there is something wrong somewhere. Personally, for me, to deny Holocaust is a crime by itself, and I am sure Ahmadinejad has not committed that crime. However it is equally a crime if we refuse to allow any more research on a historical process that changed the geographical face of the planet. Like Ahmadinejad said, we need to conduct research into every possible field in the world. We do not know whether our beliefs will be restored or quashed. The motive behind conducting a research is not to prove one or the other side. The motive of conducting a research has been to excavate further truths that may or may not unsettle previously known knowledge. On the day of his speech, Professor Ahmadinejad had not forgotten the basics of research methods. Professor Bollinger, had clearly forgotten that. And in all earnest observation, Bollinger behaved every bit unlike a student, unlike a teacher. Where is the zeal to conceal truth coming from? What legacy does Holocaust hold?

This is a crucial question of our times. Let me state that each human being of this planet has a stake in this question and each of us have a moral responsibility to respect the multiple truths that emerge from the researches done, and researches awaiting to be done. Neither the professor at Columbia holds the key to a sole truth, nor the head of Israel, Iran or United States.

If fact be told as has been chronicled by every historian of our age, the truth is the people who are steadfastly holding onto the Holocaust theory are probably the ones to have distorted the truth. That is why we need further research into the field. If truth be told, the truth is the mainstream history by denouncing Stalin and Soviet Communism and trumpeting the capitalistic cause of the age have in fact automatically joined the world of holocaust deniers.

The fact is it was the Red Army which for the first time in the world discovered the Auschwitz camps that led to an understanding of the Holocaust. The fact is when Stalin’s administration tried to send out this message to the first world for it to react, none of the western countries came forward either to help the Red Army or the victims of Hitler’s camps as was required. Quite the contrary, as has been well-evidenced, the truth is Western Europe and America were foremost in denying access to the victims of the Nazi camps.

The truth is when the Vatican learned of the secret chambers, it refused to act against the Nazi powers because the Communists had helped release the victims and for the church, communism as a political theory was more dangerous than Nazism was. The truth is Hitler’s army was heavily funded and in fact sustained by most of the leading business empires of America and Europe that continue to amass wealth and do great businesses worldwide. The capitalists during that time were aiding Hitler because for them badmouthing communism was more important than saving the lives of people who were victims of Hitler’s camps. The truth is those corporations today own most of the media business, most automobile industries. Both Ford and General Motors were aiding the Nazis then, and they are as household names in American families even now.

The truth is that the actual Holocaust deniers are those that have been hesitating to give due credits to Stalin and Red Army for their role in letting the world know about the secret chambers, by saving the lives of the remaining survivors, and by revealing the actual number of Nazi massacres to the world.

The truth is the Red Army, the only brave people who fought Hitler to his death, had put the number of dead as 4 million. This is the statistics that remained the only official figure for more than four decades. There was no question of anyone denying Hitler’s concentration camps. Of these 4 million, overwhelming majority of people were communists and communist sympathizers and fellow travelers. Hitler’s main ire—aided by his western capitalistic sponsors and the church—was against the consolidation of communism in the world. The world embracing communistic philosophy that aimed at redistributing private properties for social good was the biggest threat to the Fascist and Nazi forces that ruled the minds and hearts of rulers of every western imperial power then. Recently the formerly classified British intelligence reports have proven how the UK was a partner in crime with the Nazi forces in imprisoning, torturing and murdering communists during the WW II period. Countless American reports have suggested that the apparent threats of McCarthy seemed like a joke when compared to the actual CIA interventions in the lives of the progressives in the world. Anti-communism was the biggest single weapon that was used by Hitler then and continued till Reagan later. Interestingly, between the both, the fact is the same companies financed their respective empires wholeheartedly for them to rise and shine in power ladders.

However, to erase the fact that Communists were the actual victims of Nazi camps, the attempts on part of conservative religious groups finally led to the revision of the 4 million figure. The revisionist conservative historians conveniently “denied” the camps and its death toll and revised the number from 4 million to a little over 1 million. And the revisionists claimed that the number was much less that 4 million because 1 million of them were the Jews that were killed.

Much before Ahmadinejad proposed for a revision, it was Dr. Franciszek Piper who did revisionist research into the number of prison camps, and his research erased more than 3 million people from the total number. And the Poland’s museum which for four decades mentioned 4 million as the number of people killed by the Nazis was forced to revise the number to 1.1 million because of the revisionist historians.

The sole purpose of reducing the number was to discredit the Soviet role in combating Hitler, and to erase the historical truth about the majority of those who were killed. The majority from 4 million were actually murdered because of political reasons, and if research is led in this direction to actually demonstrate the way the Nazi-Capitalism-Church combine led their ugly war against the communists of that era, much academic curiosities will end up perhaps in suggesting the need for further research into this area of history.

Israel was built on the legacy of Holocaust. Soviet Union was disintegrated on the legacy of Communism, and the Third World was ravaged on the legacy of anti-imperialism. This is our history. We must demand to know why the 3 million victims of Nazi Capitalism were forgotten from the history. We must demand to know why the millions of Red Army soldiers were eminently discredited because they fought the Hitler to his death. We must demand to know why the Vatican and the America and the Europe did not admit the Communists to their countries even after aiding the perpetrators of the biggest genocide in recent world history. We must demand to know why the corporate houses and banks that materialized Hitler’s army and funded it to wipe off millions off the face of earth still continue to dominate businesses. We must demand to know why the inhabitants of the land, the Palestinians still continue to remain dispossessed in their own lands while the plans laid out by the perpetrators have been allowed to succeed to decide on their fates. We must demand to know why intellectually dishonest academicians and historians on their own sweet will decide what constitutes apt to be called a history despite their revising it, and why something will be rejected as history simply because they do not approve of it. We must demand to know. We must demand. History is about us.

Helpful Links:
Ahmadinejad Meets Clerics, and Decibels Drop a Notch

Iranian President Ahmadinejad speaks at Columbia University

Film: America and the Holocaust

Film: Amen

Tags: Saswat, Academic, Activism, Iran, USA, Capitalism, History, Cold War, Israel, Islam

By Saswat Pattanayak

[Originally published in
Radical Notes, 18 March 2007]

Vijay Prashad, The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World, The New Press, New York, 2007. Hardcover, 384 pp. Amazon/NP

The Darker Nations is a critical historiography of the Third World. Vijay Prashad's deeply instructive as well as occasionally mordant looks at events and processes that made up the history of oppressed peoples in the 20th century comprise this brilliant work. It is a book profound for being peremptory, and absolutely necessary for being so relevant today that it is imperative for activists and researchers alike.

For one, the various assumptions that form a dominant paradigm of Eurocentrism need radical reproving. Yet that would merely amount to a criticism of the thesis itself. Prashad goes beyond that and proposes an alternative narration to the history - not just of the Third World, but also through its lenses, the peoples' history of the world during the last century. Darker Nations in some ways could be appositely used to speak for aspirations of the oppressed everywhere. In this sense, the book is a celebration of collective hope, even as it traces the demise of a grand project based on it.

I

The thesis of the book circles around the Third World as a unique project on its own. Even as there have been far too many usages of "First" and "Second" Worlds in contrasts, the reader is never lost darker nationsto the main point: that is, the Third World was not merely in response or reaction to the prevailing 'cold war' grand narration, but it was more importantly an independent culmination out of unique historical necessities to combat neocolonialism and to promote internationalist nationalism.

To that extent, the author has conducted painful researches and unearthed valuable and often less quoted documents. The book thus does justice to the Suez Canal nationalization controversy and credits Nasser for his motives beyond cold war considerations. It brings Nehru alive through his letter drafted for the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) that argued against nuclearism, appealing to both Kennedy and Khrushchev. The book researches Che Guevara's UN speech that assumed a necessary political standpoint for all oppressed countries: "As Marxists, we maintain that peaceful co-existence does not include co-existence between exploiters and exploited, between oppressors and oppressed."

What, then, was common to the Third World? For the nationalist leaders, the fact that they were all colonized. Prashad writes, "For them, the nation had to be constructed out of two elements: the history of their struggles against colonialism, and their program for the creation of justice....The Third World form of nationalism is thus better understood as an internationalist nationalism." (p.12)

Prashad's assessment of "neopatriarchy" and domestic capitalism in the third world is quite worthwhile. This book is clearly a critical document for collective introspection of the oppressed peoples than an empty glorification of a united umbrella. In this sense, it is a necessary and long awaited work, which while marking the sites of struggle does not lose sight of the continuing struggles.

The author has cleverly named the chapters after the various sites of significance. Clever, because the chapters (Paris, New Delhi, Bali etc.,) have less to do with specific descriptions of the cities of those times than they have to do with bringing these otherwise disparate places together in context - at times stretching the contexts well out of bounds of the chapter title; at times celebrating the specificity with a poem by Neruda. One would be tempted to verify the header of the page several times while going through the texts just to make sure that she is in the right page. Yet such deliberate discursions are wisely scheduled to make for chapters that elucidate points contextually, rendering Prashad into a master narrator.

Illustratively, the author makes clear the intent of the book at the end of "Paris" chapter and perhaps leading one to wonder how much of the chapter was actually devoted to Paris. Of course that's the idea of a project, the professor would convince us: each section needs to have scope for a flow into the next without exhausting every specific reference. It's a project after all. A process, not a few events.

The book covers all that it promises to: Brussels meeting of "League against Imperialism", Afro-Asian gathering at Bandung, Women's conference at Cairo, NAM at Belgrade and Tricontinental Conference at Havana.

Prashad unearths the role of international communists in formation of the Brussels conference - a landmark event patronized by Einstein and attended by 37 countries/colonies. He writes about Pan-Africanism, Pan-Americanism, and Pan-Asianism in the context of colonial dominations, along with deconstructing the Kuomintang massacres of communists that might have contributed to severance of the ties between the Comintern and several nationalist leaders.

Prashad quotes W.E.B. DuBois in relation to Pan-Africanism within the Brussels context, although he omits Paul Robeson's solidarity with the colored peoples at Bandung. It was in 1955 that Robeson sent his famous greetings to Bandung: "...peoples come from the shores of the Ganges and the Nile, the Yangtse and the Niger. Nations of the vast Pacific waters, greetings on this historic occasion. It is my profound conviction that the very fact of the convening of the Conference of Asian and African nations at Bandung, Indonesia, in itself will be recorded as an historic turning point in all world affairs." Heralding it as a history-making conference, Robeson expressed, "Indeed the fact that the Asian and African nations, possessing similar yet different cultures, have come together to solve their common problems must stand as a shining example to the rest of the world."

Prashad aptly summarizes what Bandung achieved: "a format for what would eventually become Afro-Asian and then Afro-Asian-Latin American group in the UN." He also takes a stab at the inherent weaknesses of the member countries that lost moral grounds because of several reasons, from murdering communists to hoarding weapons, despite agreeing on some basic precepts of "cultural cooperation".

"Principle Problem" of Raul Prebisch is explained in context to economic policies, in the crucial introduction to the role of UNCTAD, of which he was the founding general secretary. If Buenos Aires is visited for economics, Tehran is the metaphoric site of cultural struggles. Khrushchev's betrayal of cultural workers in face of opposition to Shah regime is well articulated in a chapter that describes "roots of the Third World intellectual's quandary was how to create a new self in the new nations", thus reinforcing nationalism, democracy and rationalism.

Prashad's political argument that the relationship between Third World and Second turned tumultuous after the demise of Stalin may draw some criticisms, but he amply demonstrates its foundations. He argues that the "new leadership led by Khrushchev and Bulganin adopted peaceful co-existence and pledged their support to the bourgeois nationalist regimes (often against the domestic Communists). The unclear situation suggested that the USSR seemed keener to push its own national interests than those of the national Communist parties to which it pledged verbal fealty" (p. 97).

Prashad makes a point that is vital to understanding of the Third World formation and crisis. In the Soviet Union, the Second World indeed "had an attitude toward the former colonies that in some ways mimicked that of the First World." But this did not necessarily require pitiful stance at the Third World recipients. Prashad argues quoting Sauvy and Nkrumah that the Third World was not "prone, silent or unable to speak" before the powers. It was an independent political platform on its own, which according to Nehru stood for "political independence, nonviolent international relations, and the cultivation of the UN as the principle institution for planetary justice."

So he asks, "What about the two-thirds who remained outside the East-West circles; what of those 2 billion people?" The narration of the author is instructive in a poetic sense. As obviously gigantic is the scope of such an inquisitiveness, he offers a plethora of factors/voices that could have been representing this Third World.

The book analyzes the various complexities of state politics in the Third World countries. It correctly mentions the several betrayals of communist workers in the hands of Moscow and Peking leaderships in the aftermath of Stalin and Mao. The book describes accurately the growing militarization of the developing nations. Prashad, while upholding the vision of the Third World, well encapsulates the elements of utopianism inherently present in some of the documents.

As an instance, the Arusha Declaration validated the twin principles of liberty and equality, individual rights and collective well-being. Prashad argues, "The main problem with the Arusha-TANU project, however, came not in its goals but in its implementation." Though defying academic limitations, he does not give away credence to neoliberal economists/politicians like Rajaratnam of Singapore. Even as he describes the feud between Singapore on one extreme and Cuba on another, Prashad instructs us wisely about the pitfalls of economic liberalization. "The abandonment of economic sovereignty lost the national liberation regimes one of their two principal pillars of legitimacy. When IMF-led globalization became the modus operandi, the elites of the postcolonial world adopted a hidebound and ruthless xenophobia that masqueraded as patriotism", Prashad writes.

Succinctly enough, Prashad encapsulates the present scenario: "The mecca of IMF-driven globalization is therefore in the ability to open one's economy to stateless, soulless corporations while blaming the failure of well-being on religious, ethnic, sexual, and other minorities. That is the mecca of the post-Third World era."

II

Prashad's ending of the book with an obituary to Third World would have perhaps perplexed the writer he invokes in the beginning of his work: Franz Fanon. He even quotes the prophetic statements from The Wretched of the Earth: "The Third World today faces Europe like a colossal mass whose project should be to try to resolve the problems to which Europe has not been able to find the answers."

Prashad's persistent declaration in the book about demise of the Third World may bring back nostalgic chords, but would not undermine Fanon's question. Have the problems that bore out of colonialism been resolved? The answer is no. Has Europe or the USA been able to find the answers yet? The answer is no.

In that case, is it not too early to declare the Third World a dead project? Moreover, is the author at times tending to air the lost leaders' voices over the struggling peoples'?

No doubt, Prashad's book is unique in its stress on women's movements in the Third World - an aspect that's comfortably overlooked when such taxonomies are applied to political texts. In his Cairo chapter, Prashad examines the role of women in Third World liberation struggles - from Rameshwari Nehru to Aisha Abdul-Rahman. This is significantly noteworthy, as women have joined the guerrilla wars as well as street protests in almost all of the Third World countries. And yet many progressive forces have difficulties in understanding gender relations, thereby resulting in mere "state feminisms". However, was this chapter written because Cairo had women members on its podium necessitating a mention/discussion, or because a tribute to women activists is necessary to understand the Third World project? In either way, the book does not employ a lens of the women to understand the movement, although does a commendable job at understanding women struggles through the lens of the Third World. Considering that only this chapter has a portion devoted to a few women activists in context to Cairo, while the rest of the book mostly quotes the three "titans" or famous "fives" in explaining the history, I would say there are quite a few questions unanswered still.

The chief criticism against this work would primarily come from two quarters: One, from a strictly Third Wave (interesting how the growth of Third Wave coincides with the recognition of the Third World) feminist critique: independent struggles by women could have been much better encompassed within this book, given its scope. Prashad does a cursory mention of the alternative movement (considering that third-world women had a movement within, and against the larger movement) limiting it to a chapter and focusing on a couple of eminent speakers. Would the Third World have been different had the precepts for it not written by the "titans" and "giants", but by women comrades who were voices of resentments against the hierarchies of nationalist and communist parties? Prashad does not dwell on this aspect.

Two, the criticism may become more scathing from the perspectives of militant activists. Third World, like Rome, was not built in a day. And certainly not through some leaders of few countries. Prashad is arguably right in crediting the giants and bringing forth the canons, but at the same time, these very leaders certainly rode the wave of success utilizing the larger unrest that was recognized by the anti-status-quo forces, often united through guerrilla wars, and almost going unnoticed after making vital impacts. Would the Third World have been different had the precepts for it not written by the giants, but by the larger oppressed peoples engaged in organized and otherwise struggles? We do not know for sure, but it would have been worthwhile to ponder over that a bit more than the book does.

The more crucial question then, is if such precepts were actually already written (or worked on with) by the peoples who did not find mentions in the historical documents that Prashad cites towards the book's end spanning 60 pages. The focus of the book, although is in continuance of Prashadisque tradition of Afro-Asian unity, is slightly away from Africa. In fact, Mandela is mentioned just once in the book (that too as a pure travesty - citing a Ruth First memorial). The truth is Third World texts had been written in South Africa as well as in Nepal. However, such underground struggles went largely amiss from the work. Sure, the book by the author's admission is inexhaustive and merely illustrative, but even a 300-page work could have inculcated some unknown peoples' movements than chronicling lesser known leaders' engagements.

Ironically enough, before proceeding to Havana chapter, Prashad mentions "From the early 1960s to the late 1970s, the rhetorical denunciation of imperialism reached its apogee even as the Third World began to lose its voice". This is a dangerous statement to make if one considers that indeed from the 1970s onwards, the peoples voice in the Third World had immensely proliferated. No doubt the leaders - those giants who we find exalted throughout the work - had fallen to deaths or arrests, but the period thereafter also signaled the end of dominant and diplomatic voices, and somewhere alongside highlighted the obscure and powerful ones.

People who spoke truth to power were the people on the streets that challenged the nationalist parties which came to power in the pretext of newfound freedom from the foreign rulers. The growth of domestic capitalist classes in comfortable alliance with these nationalist parties were indication enough that the new powers were no less different from the old ones, except in their make-up and "patriotism". In fact, these illusive weapons of nationalism and patriotism helped strengthen exploitative capitalism on basis of trusts of the "own" people. Such betrayals of faiths, notwithstanding goodwill of the famous leaders, were also being fought against on a daily basis in the Third World. Beyond the conferences and meetings and gatherings of Third World leaders under different names, there were large-scale protests of poverty and unemployment. Beyond the famous rhetoric of anti-nuclearism (while proliferating conventional weapons domestically) and socialist development (while harassing voices of dissent at home), people had on their own formed two classes in the society. The haves went to the ruling elites that apparently "voiced" the Third World for few years, and the have-nots remained with the unknown millions of peoples whose only commonality was their resentment against the power-grabbers. Be it Nehru or Indira in India, Sukarno or Suharto in Indonesia, the popular imagination went beyond such leaders that treaded the careful path all the while claiming to be representing the Third World.

Third World was neither the name of a place nor merely a documented project. And certainly it did not die. Considering that its origin was a necessity in itself, a necessity borne of conditions of colonialism, about which Sartre (another contextually grand omission from the book except for one mention - his writings on neocolonialism were far more instructive) writes in the preface to Albert Memmi's 'The Colonizer and the Colonized': "Colonialism denies human rights to people it has subjugated by violence, and whom it keeps in poverty and ignorance by force, therefore, as Marx would say, in a state of 'sub-humanity'." This sub-humanity does not see its history changing with the midnight bells of colonialist departures. It takes quite a while for the real freedom to be conquested for even after the colonialists are gone. This is why South Africa's period of struggle just began after Mandela came to power. South Africa's Third World status will not die anytime soon.

So the assumption that "the Third World began to lose its voice" may have been made a little too early. Keeping in line of the eloquent narration of events as Prashad has done (for example, referring to revived "armed struggle not only as a tactic of anticolonialism but significantly as a strategy in itself"), the book perhaps wished away the Third World before examining its overbearing presence today. Do we have a Second World? I have no answer to that. But if the name Third World was admittedly accepted by the oppressed people of several continents basing on their historical heritage, then the phrase is as relevant today as it was before. Perhaps some countries would want not a place in it. Earlier, China was a question. Today, Singapore is. All the same, for the rest of the countries, nothing much has changed, except that the capitalist exploitation has intensified and expanded manifold, the national regimes have lost faith and people are more politically conscious.

If the Third World was imagined out of former colonies and if the colonial problem was chiefly an economic one, then the Third World has become even all the more relevant today. Simplistic as it may sound, there is a greater need for Afro-Asian-Latin solidarity today in the world than ever before. And Prashad, a remarkably profound scholar who gave to us treasures of arguments through his previous works about the need for alliances of the oppressed, would be among the firsts to acknowledge the necessity of such unity.

III

However, apart from remaining in want of more comprehensive analysis of women's movements and of peoples' liberation movements (both-dually oppressed by former colonizers as well as the nationalist rulers, and more importantly conflicted between the both - male and female comrades), the book also offers cursory looks at the external roles played by the First World in maintaining indirect subjugation of the Third.

Prashad rightly critiques the predominant views held by leftists about the role of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He argues that such a minimalist assumption renders people of the Third World insignificant and often passive audience in the larger world stage. Whereas he is absolutely correct in this critique - largely identified by the radical feminist movements worldwide - there is no harm in going through the roles of the CIA that have been well documented in a work that does chronicle interactions of the Third World "leaders" with the First World instigators. Many conflicting situations have been initiated and fuelled through CIA interventions in the Third World politics and that should have found a deserved mention. For instance, a critique of the Nixon administration vis-à-vis the Third World (including the recently released notes with Kissinger) is found lacking.

One need not subscribe to conspiracy theories to gain insights about how the First World allies in the "neocolonial" period have acted towards the Third World: less through coercion, and more through lucrative measures such as economic aids, western education and religion. Prashad misses out on the role of the Catholic Church that was the first body to significantly recognize the Third World as an entity worth pondering over. The large money, the pool of debts that would crumble the economic backbone of the Third World came from the consent of the Vatican during the early 1960s.

Prashad mentions religion quite casually, when he describes how "Mother Teresa would soon get more positive airtime as the white savior of the dark hordes than would the self-directed projects of the Third World nationalist governments." Immediately following this, he goes on to make references to military invasions and embargoes.

Here the book could have made a crucial connection between the recognition of the Third World by the First World through the Catholic Church decisions. Mother Teresa's airtimes were neither incidental nor were to be seen only through a liberal critique. The missing piece is that Vatican Council II which was the 21st ecumenical (general) council of the Roman Catholic Church was crucial to recognition of the Third World in an official manner.

In fact this council brought the most far-reaching reforms within the Catholic Church in 1000 years. This most significant reform movement in the world's leading religion was brought forth during its four sessions in Rome during (the first Council after its suspension in 1870). The idea was to aim for aggiornamento (renewal and updating of Catholic life and teaching). Such a vital step was taken by the Vatican as a result of emergence of the Third World. This council altered the nature of the church from being a European-centered institution to become a worldwide one so as to acknowledge the Third World countries, where it counted most of its followers. Mother Teresa and her likes were thus byproducts of this acceptance of the third force in the world.

Prashad says that Nehru, Sukarno and Nasser among other leaders did not use Third World to describe their domains, but does not corroborate their reasons, if any. For the framework of this book, the constant usages of "First World", "Second World" and "Third World" is imperative, but considering that Prashad is eager to lash out against the "camp mentality" or "East-West" conflicts, he does avoid a critical exposition of the limitations that such three "Worlds" may bring for the readers.

One way to understand why the three "worlds" were not sufficient explanations (although necessary at many junctures) is to detail how the three worlds could not be thus compartmentalized either in degree or by their types. More importantly, the countries thus categorized under such headings definitely had uniquely different histories (colonial and otherwise), treated differently by their respective partners in their perceived specific worlds. On the one hand, Singapore had a different colonial experience than India. On the other, China's Security Council membership put it on a unique platform, and there is no comparing between Soviet Union and Hungary. What is vital to this discussion is also the fact that there was not a yardstick that was used to specify categories either for the First, the Second or the Third. As much as the Third World was a movement against colonialism, such a usage of categories would still render it as a site affected by Eurocentric worldviews.

Prashad says Nehru et al., instead of calling themselves to be part of the Third World, "spoke of themselves" as the NAM, G-77 or the colonized continents. Although accurate, here the author's own argument that kickstarts the book will be subject to questioning. Prashad says in the first line of the book, "The Third World was not a place. It was a project". And yet he compares the project with some conferences and places (continents) to bring home the point that the leaders evaded "Third World". Certainly there were other reasons why all Third World titans did not prefer the phrase (if at all). And that, we are still unsure of.

The author writes: "The phrase 'East-West conflict' distorts the history of the Cold War because it makes it seem as if the First and Second Worlds confronted each other in a condition of equality." He contends that the USSR was socially and economically way behind due to its unique recent history. "The dominant classes in the First World used the shortages and repression in the USSR as an instructive tool to wield over the heads of their own working class, and so on both economic and political grounds the First World bore advantages over the Second." Whereas this could be one truth, it does underscore the fact that more countries on the earth joined the Second World than they could be declared as the First World also because of the lacunae starkly evident in the First World. Whereas massive racism was predominant in the First World, economic depression and political censorships in the capitalist countries also contributed to popularity of the Second World.

A connection between the third world "project" and the United Nations (UN) is well established in the book. What perhaps amiss is a discussion on manners in which either of them might have contributed to the downfall of the other. Prashad says, "Today there is no such vehicle for local dreams". The larger question then would be if the United Nations played a role in obliterating its dependant. On the other hand, a stark reality in the post-Iraq scene is the redundancy of a forum such as the United Nations today that effectively has no role either in shaping a collective conscience or implementing a pro-people agenda. Least of all, the UN has failed to safeguard the sovereign nations from external aggressions. It has failed to overcome the elitism of its Security Council, almost unquestionably letting the powerful countries to run their own little League of Nations inside the UN. Amidst such cynicism that the UN has contributed to, what responsibilities must the Third World project shoulder.

Amidst several responsibilities, the Third World still has to its credit a Non-Aligned News Agencies Pool (NANAP), a fact that is missing a mention in the book. Over 40 news agencies in non-aligned countries of Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe have pooled their resources for the exchange of news reports and information to defy the vertical information flow of corporate media. The "Pool" was adopted at the Fourth Summit Conference of Non-Aligned Countries, held in Algiers in 1973. During that period, the New World Information and Communication Order was also proposed to democratize the knowledge domain of the world. No doubt, UNESCO was criticized by the American and European intellectuals, but the MacBride Commission succeeded in recognizing the divergent voices of the Third World in order to challenge the media hegemony world over. Responsibilities of the Third World still include an informed opposition to militarization, providing alternative channels to western corporate media, campaigning for need-based distribution of world resources, and most of all, representing the popular voices of dissent, opposition and celebrations. One wonders if the struggles to attain the above has waned any bit, if looked from the peoples' perspectives. And in this context, the Third World still holds hopes, possibilities and victory. One is perhaps disappointed if the Third World is perceived to be voicing only a limited elite constituency - often opposed to the peoples' dissents.

IV

Hence, finally, the book questions not the constitution of the Third World itself. If it was brought around through its various leaderships under certain historical period, what expectations should we have of this "project"? Were such leaders to be expected to play the truly internationalist roles, and to what avail? In the preliminary draft thesis on the National and the Colonial Questions, for the Second Congress of the Communist International, Lenin wrote: "Petty-bourgeois nationalism proclaims as internationalism the mere recognition of the equality of nations and nothing more. Quite apart from the fact that this recognition is purely verbal, petty-bourgeois nationalism preserves national self-interest intact, whereas proletarian internationalism demands, first, that the interests of the proletarian struggle in any one country should be subordinated to the interests of that struggle on a world-wide scale, and, second, that a nation which is achieving victory over the bourgeoisie should be able and willing to make the greatest national sacrifices for the overthrow of international capital." Between the elite internationalism founded on peaceful co-existence and peoples' internationalism based upon rejection of the international capitalist order, did the Third World got somewhere hijacked or we refuse to acknowledge its existence because we already defined its proponents?

Needless to state, the criticisms above demand for more literature for inclusion into the book, than specifically target the author's works. Such a case arises only because the book is an extraordinarily brilliant effort that is bound to encourage readers to plunge more into the relevance of the subject. All of that credit goes to the humanely written, accessibly crafted work that shuns academic elitism and genuinely attempts at a peoples' history of the oppressed world.

Tags: Saswat, History, Third World, UN, Communism, Cold War, Literature

By Saswat Pattanayak

Today marks the beginning of a new era. The demise of United Nations as we ever knew it. With Kofi Annan, the last conscience keeper of the largest global association formally retiring yesterday, the hopes that the UN has some utilities any longer are tarnished.

Far from being skeptical, this is perhaps a desired opinion. After all, do we really need a United Nations that functions as a casino for a few fraud whitejackers—those conmen who own the place and its crooked tables?

The UN has been converted into the League of Nations of 21st Century. Like the Axis powers using the League to further their war goals, the UN is being categorically used these days for the mere purpose of legitimizing imperialist war as “democratic” crusades.

I recently visited the UN Headquarters to pay my tribute to the rich legacy it inherited from ‘The Declaration of the United Nations’ signed exactly 65 years ago, on January 1, 1942. Comrade Stalin, the then Time Magazine ‘Man of the Year’ and the most celebrated icon in the US for having stopped Hitler, had initiated the idea of creating a global peacemaking organization. And much as Einstein’s expressed desire, the major powers—Soviet Union, United States and United Kingdom—assumed responsibility of their actions to shape a global organization. The idea would subsequently be furthered by internationalists in Africa and Asia, from Robeson to Nasser to Nehru. Peace and sovereignty proved to be the foundations of this high and unique ideal.

Not anymore, sad as it may sound. The relevance of the UN as a pillar of global conscience had waned since three decades now, with revisionism within communist bloc and resignations among non-aligned front. Sovereignty of independent states no more featured on the UN agenda. And consequently, annihilation of peace concept at the alter of destroying sovereignty took precedence.

But what is worse now is that even the foundations have changed. The UN ideals have been replaced while an American ally takes over as new Secretary General today (after competing with other petty candidates, most prominently the Indian representative Shashi Tharoor—that infamous SaiBaba and sly Godmen promoter). South Korean diplomat Ban Ki-moon ends up joining a UN that’s based on sycophancy, wars and unipolarism, as best exhibited by the veto powers vested in the hands of its Security Council that’s no more than a conglomerate of power abusing business empires. Ban Ki-moon is the famous chair of the CTBTO (Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty) commission that has binding effects on all the countries, save for the rogue powerful nations. In fact, it is to get North Korea to sign the treaty, that such a commission was founded. But will he be able to force the US to at least ratify the treaty? Seemingly, it will be quite the contrary. The US is not North Korea, after all. So, the Security Council thought Ban Ki-moon was the only contestant who did not need a veto against him.

And no wonder, the UN today is not just a replica of failure to keep peace and uphold sovereignty, but has been reduced to become an instrument of nepotism for the European-American chamber of UN council that legitimizes international and illegal aggressions.

A result of such nepotism, Kofi Annan, in his farewell speech last month clearly emphasized his ignorance about how the peace processes work. Annan placed beautifully his naïve arguments and vast hearsay rhetoric all the while as he stood silently for the wars to tear apart the world in last 10 years of his tenure. None should be surprised. Annan had got it entirely wrong. After all, he was nominated to play his role, after the make-believe showdown between the US and France got over in terms of their chosen one.

In the speech, he began by eulogizing Truman who according to him was the force behind the United Nations. That’s because Annan looked up a lame history textbook to trace the year the UN was founded formally. And 1945 was Truman’s time. Alas, while paying tribute to Truman, Annan forgot that the UN was planned since long time by Stalin and FDR and Churchill, much before Truman had any such idea. Instead Truman was only six months into his presidentship when UN was formed in ’45, and indeed he was the man behind the downfall of UN ideals.

Annan recollects: “Truman's name will for ever be associated with the memory of far-sighted American leadership in a great global endeavor.”

He conveniently forgets that Truman Doctrine, the infamous anti-communist propaganda lies, was the cornerstone of UN fallibility. Not to mention his legacy of usage of Atom Bomb, not to end the World War II, but to herald the so-called Cold War. Truman was not the “master-builder” of the United Nations, as Annan recollects. Rather, he was the master-builder of a war fanatic organization called North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the elite association of war mongers that he founded in 1949, that would subsequently prove nemesis to the ideals of the United Nations and land UN in such a precarious condition today.

Kofi Annan, the last failed secretary general also misread the history of UN role in peacekeeping, which is why, his own attempts at curbing assaults on Iraq despite WMD myths failed pathetically. According to Annan, Marshall Plan the hateful red-scare treaty was a success, and not just that, the Korean War was an instance of wisdom!

Dangerous omission of critical historical knowledge leads us to pathetic leaderships. The lip-serviced fashionable criticism of American hegemony is far from the desired objective. Despite Annan’s farewell speech being nothing more than a glorification of Truman legacies, the mainstream media portrayed that as critical of America’s stance in Iraq. This is utter ridiculous. At any stretch of imagination, if Truman was right, as the two-term secretary general would point out, then I wonder where did the Bush regimes go wrong.

UN needs not just leaderships that have astute knowledge of world history and processes of war and peace, but also great visionaries who can implement changes on accords of social justice. Not stooges of an elite club of capitalists and neo-liberal bullshitters on the elite security council.

At the very least, the veto powers of these powers have to go, now that these 15 members have proved themselves to be perfectly incapable of holding a moral position of authority with their shrewd, cruel and crude methods at handling Iraq to mention just the latest, and the democratization must begin. UN must be tuned to actually prevent wars, withdraw engaged troops, collect arrears from defaulting countries (the US tops the list with $1.25 billion default) and radically engage in returning the lands to the landless (in much of Africa and Asia where the populations have been evacuated and countries have been forced into debt traps).

Else, it has to go. We urgently need to replace this League of United Nations. If we don’t want to see another series of inactions perpetuating mass scale imperialistic wars, then the time to act is now.

Tags: Saswat, Capitalism, USA, Korea, UN, Third World, History, Cold War

By Saswat Pattanayak

Call me superstitious, but somehow I always tend to hope for the maxim that speaks: All’s well that ends well. And hence, certainly in the last week of this month, I had not imagined the year 2006 would leave such bitter memories behind.

It all started with one death: Gerald Ford’s. And ended with one execution: Saddam Hussein’s.

What has Ford got to do with Hussein? I would probably have not wondered aloud such an analogy on another occasion. After all, one was the celebrated president of world’s oldest democracy, and the other was the disgraced president of a dictatorial regime. For celebration of Ford’s legacies, there are museums, schools, world leaders and history books. For Hussein, only condemnations follow from all above quarters. We are observing memorial services cherishing the memories of Ford beginning Friday, whereas the global condemnation ceremonies to mark the former Iraqi head have started from Saturday. New York Times while pouring in rich tributes for Ford churned out a news story out of an obituary, headlined its editorial as “Gerald R Ford” to portray the legend on Thursday. And yet on Saturday, the liberal paper had made an editorial out of a hard news piece, and headlined its lead story of the day thus: “Dictator Who Ruled Iraq With Violence Is Hanged for Crimes Against Humanity.” Yes, that’s the headline from world’s most respected newspaper, not a sentence from some kangaroo court.

And yet, amidst the word-games of the colonial language that accentuates the stark differences perpetuated by its mainstream media masters, I am struck by few similarities between the two dead former leaders.

Both climbed the ladders of politics not through legitimate elections, but by assuming power. Ford quietly succeeded a corrupt tax evader Spiro Agnew to become the vice president, and with a lot of pomp and show, inherited a corrupt war criminal Richard Nixon’s throne to become the president. Similar “corrupt bargains” were made in Iraq for Saddam to remain in power. Hussein quickly ascended Ba’ath Party ladders without the credentials, political, military, or otherwise. And earned his fame and glory in his attempt to assassinate the then Iraqi head Abdul Qassim. Ironically, just like Ford who rose to power without any mandate except merely with approval from the US Congress, Saddam’s claim to fame was reached through the American interventions in Iraq to fund the Ba’athists to get rid of left-leaning Qassim. In a sure manner well recorded, but seldom quoted, the US war machine created both Saddam, and Ford.

A New York Times columnist in an editorial piece had done some elaboration, at least about Saddam, a few years back:

“The Iraqi leader seen as a grave threat in 1963 was Abdel Karim Kassem, a general who five years earlier had deposed the Western-allied Iraqi monarchy. Washington's role in the coup went unreported at the time and has been little noted since. America's anti-Kassem intrigue has been widely substantiated, however, in disclosures by the Senate Committee on Intelligence and in the work of journalists and historians like David Wise, an authority on the C.I.A.

From 1958 to 1960, despite Kassem's harsh repression, the Eisenhower administration abided him as a counter to Washington's Arab nemesis of the era, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt -- much as Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush would aid Saddam Hussein in the 1980's against the common foe of Iran.

Then, on Feb. 8, 1963, the conspirators staged a coup in Baghdad. For a time the government held out, but eventually Kassem gave up, and after a swift trial was shot; his body was later shown on Baghdad television. Washington immediately befriended the successor regime. ''Almost certainly a gain for our side,'' Robert Komer, a National Security Council aide, wrote to Kennedy the day of the takeover.

As its instrument the C.I.A. had chosen the authoritarian and anti-Communist Baath Party, in 1963 still a relatively small political faction influential in the Iraqi Army. According to the former Baathist leader Hani Fkaiki, among party members colluding with the C.I.A. in 1962 and 1963 was Saddam Hussein, then a 25-year-old who had fled to Cairo after taking part in a failed assassination of Kassem in 1958.

According to Western scholars, as well as Iraqi refugees and a British human rights organization, the 1963 coup was accompanied by a bloodbath. Using lists of suspected Communists and other leftists provided by the C.I.A., the Baathists systematically murdered untold numbers of Iraq's educated elite -- killings in which Saddam Hussein himself is said to have participated. No one knows the exact toll, but accounts agree that the victims included hundreds of doctors, teachers, technicians, lawyers and other professionals as well as military and political figures.”

The US war mongers funded the Iraqi despot to continue murdering communists and innocent civilians. At the same time, back home, they got Ford to continue the same legacy. Not surprisingly, Ford became not just the only unelected president, but even the most unpopular one at his time. He pardoned without any conditions whatsoever the biggest war criminal of recent times: Richard Nixon, the officially recognized disgraced president. Like Hussein, Nixon was a zealot anti-communist, a massive war and hate proponent. And Gerald Ford whose six day national mourning continues with half-mast flags, was the greatest supporter of Nixon. He provided all the support that Nixon required to save face, and his life. And no, all thanks to Ford, Nixon was not hanged.

Times have changed. But times do not change philosophically on their own tunes. They change just the way the ruling classes decide. And as predicted, after an initial hue and cry by the marketplace of ideas, Ford continued to be cherished for having pardoned Nixon and saved America’s image. Saddam, soon after the demise of communist powers, was brushed off as forgotten legacy that could have otherwise tarnished America’s image.

Today, alas, if we recall history accurately in its sequence and reasoning and ruling class motives and working peoples resentments, there is just one fallen guy between the two. And not surprisingly, Ford has been pardoned.

But there is worse in store. Now that Saddam is not there anymore, perhaps true to the nature of obituaries, true to the nature of support lent to Ford’s legacies after his death, many of us would invariably see light in Saddam as well. In the battle of ideologies, perhaps it would seem as though Saddam fought a different battle than that of American power elites. And after much accentuation of these differences, the corporate media would have succeeded in establishing a hyper reality of virtues and vices. And the reification of historical insanities may again begin when we either pay rich tributes to Saddam to posit him against America or vice versa. Or like the European allies in the war, when we take the moralist positions against capital punishment in order to oppose Saddam’s death.

Saddam’s death should have been quite predictable. After all, those that stop serving the masters, are condemned to harsh course. It’s the masters that we need to beware of. The masters that enslaved Africa, colonized Asia, and impoverished majority of world population through global capitalism. If they kill their disobedient agents, that’s not a bother. We didn’t ask for the agent anyway. The point is we need not take the masters any longer either.

And neither do we want any more of their agents. Some of them may rally behind the masters, like Pinochet who died a natural honorable death recently. And some may yet go pose a challenge, like Bin Laden who may end up in Saddam’s shoes one day soon. But any indulgence in positing the agents against the masters is well playing into the plans. Its like supporting the European leaderships today who are their virtuous best in the criticism of American punishment degrees. Or listening to New York Times declaring how the criminal against humanity is our man no more.

Either way, we would miss the boat. The issue is not in differences between two such elements borne out of greed, competition and oppressions. Not the difference between Ford and Hussein. It’s the similarities among them that should make us shiver.

Brother Malcolm X used to open his address with: “brothers and sisters, friends and enemies.” If we succeeded in identifying the categories, we hopefully would have left the worst of times behind as we start marking a new year tomorrow.

(Originally published in Radical Notes)

Tags: Saswat, Iraq, USA, Capitalism, Cold War, War, History, Communism

A complete depiction of events that unfolded during 1917. In six parts. Original texts and artworks belong to Progress Publishers, Moscow.

Tags: Saswat, USSR, Communism, Cold War, History

Thanks to Dr Todd S Burroughs, who sent this article link. A very insightful writing. Indicative not just of the veteran US and major Europe, but also new free market economies like India. Indeed the Indian administrations since early 1990s have been often depicted as Fascist in orientation for their shifts in focus from eradication of poverty to appeasement of the homegrown capitalists and foreign investors, all the while, preaching "nationalistic" sentiments! Read More...

Tags: Saswat, Cold War, Imperialism, Capitalism

By Saswat Pattanayak

(Also published by Anaavoice.)


The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars hosted an event “Human Rights in Pakistan--The Way Forward” with Asma Jehangir, chairperson, Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and Larry Robinson, former political counselor, U.S. Embassy, Islamabad this afternoon.

Clearly there was no sign that anything was moving forward apart from the discourse. But the points of their differences are something everyone should think over while contextualizing the case of Pakistan.

Robinson analyzed the Pakistan society from his lens (mostly the American way): there are two different types of elites in Pakistan. One political which is dynastic, and second the military which is meritocratic. Both are corrupt but in different ways. While the political elites are individually corrupt and use their money to buy access to power, the military elites are corrupt institutionally, looking for money to exercise power.

Both although have notable conflicts, stand to reinforce the status quo of elitism. The traditional liberal critics like Jehangir find that the army was responsible for most problems, Robinson said. What he saw, was quite different. It’s the members of political class which are oppressed by the army. If exile of former prime ministers or jailing of businessmen is oppression, then the army is instrumental. “But ordinary people seldom complain about army,” Robinson observed. He said it’s the political class which actually oppressed.

Robinson had his recipe for Pakistan’s development: reforms at the levels of education and judiciary.

Of course it all sounded politically correct, even if he had given a clean chit to Musharraf government, until Jehangir responded to Robinson’s assumptions. There she goes: “if the US has same analysis and simplistic recipe, then Allah is the only one who can help us and I will even join those groups who think Allah is the solution. I can’t disagree with him more.”

Doing a post colonial deconstruction, she said that the empowerment of people cannot come with a military government. There has been no civilian government in full control of nuclear or foreign policies and even the political elites have been created by the military themselves. The current regime far from breaking with the past has actually made the atmosphere more vicious. “If Musharraf is reformer for the US, then I am looking at Allah to rescue,” Asma said.

Larry talked about how US government had put in money through USAID to promote education. But of course most were converted to guest houses by ruling elites subsequently. So this time, the US is trying to focus on the teachers rather than the buildings. As for the judicial reform, quite a few governments are working and the US is finding hard to figure out where to start. Robinson admitted that there have been case of military coercing codes to make favorable decisions.

During the Q/A, Jehangir needed to clarify the difference between Islam and Islamists. Politicization of any religion is dangerous. Just like the right wing Christians convert people into their religion is, she contended. “I have issues with the right wing Christians or militant Muslims who will tell me if I will cover my head or not.”

There is religious significance for Pakistan just because of the way it was founded. The civil society took it in their stride until during 1980’s when Jihad started in Pakistan because of both Pakistan and the United States. “Both of us were responsible for it and it will not go away suddenly by placing dictators on us. We have to create a political melting pot. We don’t need USAID to reform education. We need Pakistan to do it. The marriage between the US, the military and the Mullah may be a bad marriage, but its reality and its stunting the civil society in Pakistan and creating an elite society,” she said.

Larry differed to the extent that he claimed there was politicization of religion in Pakistan ever since the beginning (1949? Well 1947). People who have been leading religio-political wings in Pakistan are direct descendents of those who were opposed to partition. Gandhi was opposed to it. So was Jinnah. But even before Jinnah died, there were efforts to place Islamic ideology which was not a program of Jinnah. Larry said:

“Yes, it escalated in 1980 and we as Americans must take a much closer look at our own role in developing the concept of growth of Jehad. We thought it will be unidirectional to go against the godless Communism. We are all in it together-US., Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia.”

The way forward, Asma added, was for Americans to realize that there is a mannerism in the way the war has to be fought. There are two sides: military and political. Killing people wont help. In her recent visit, people brought little fingers of kids who were killed. She heard about two girls who were picked up and detained as alleged suicide bombers and the government would not explain. This is the government that the US lends support today. “I am a believer that the means is as important as ends. I am not for extremism or militancy. I think the manner in which the war is being fought today is not proper.”

The way to go would be for a government of national consensus to lay foundation of an independent commission where a) parties should have a consensus on how elections of the judges be done, and b) how will Pakistan have inter-party discourses. This will be the first step. “We have fair and genuine elections. We still will have regional parties and popular election will make sure that the religious parties will be wiped out as they always have been in the past. This can take place through international cooperation, but this does not mean any dictation. Transparency and accountability are the most important factors against any war on terror.”

On a question on whether America understands Asian psyche in general and Pakistan’s in particular, she said that its a global world and we should understand it. Freedom of Pakistan people was her priority. She has respect for American freedom, “but naturally I will care for my people more. I know they (Americans) are caring for theirs. Their paths will be counterproductive for me and it will be for them too.”

Larry seconded with everything and more. “In the long run, the global struggles against fundamental terrorism can be won by building up societies, by respecting human rights, ideally, preferably through democracy. Democracy is important for Pakistan. But given the track record of both, its hard to see how you get their in a short time.”

Asma also admitted that there has been no meaningful resistance movement in Pakistan. “While we cannot change governments, we can make the sitting government very uncomfortable. Bar association, trade unions, freedom of press, are all positive. But there is no such movement. But personally, I think there is a fatigue factor in Pakistan.

They have tried everything and its is beyond them since they are fighting a huge military and its not easy since the military has very powerful friends.”

Tags: Saswat, Pakistan, India, USA, Cold War, History

By Saswat Pattanayak

Exactly 21 years ago, Indira Gandhi was assassinated.

And as the war mongers have triumphed ever since, her character sketches are being redrawn.

Latest one is related to the Mitrokhin papers. Vasili Mitrokhin is no more, but the defected ghost continues to hunt the lesser politicians of India and even prompting some right wing nick pickers to demand that they want to see the Supreme Court inquire into the allegations. Apparently the press world over have taken uncanny interest in his work, claiming that he is the most credible source to speak on KGB.

Of course, the serious observers know that Mitrokhin is a disgraced KGB man. Even at the peak of Soviet era, he was being assigned to accompany the Soviet team to Olympic Games. In 1956, he was removed from any field work related to KGB after his mishandling of operational assignments. That was the reason why he was shifted from operational work to archives work and told that he would never be able to work on field again (this indicates his failure as a operative of any worth, and not again, being relegated to the job, not an archivist anyway to begin with or skilled with). Even as an archivist, he was known to be one who stole documents. Traveling (not escaping or anything) to Latvia, well after the era of communism was over in USSR, his first door was CIA. Even in 1992, CIA did not consider him credible and no one believed his fake documents. Clearly American intelligence agency which had outwitted KGB scores of times before leading to the demise of the communist state, was dismissive of this man.

Finally he found a buyer in M16, an agency which is less active than Indian RAW in the post-world war period. And he found a publisher too. So much ado about nothing.

The issues he espouses about India (that Indian politicians have taken money from KGB) are pretty stale and unimportant. Even if they were accurate, there is no reason why anyone in the Congress Party need to be ashamed. In the era of the Cold War, it is an open knowledge that India was on principle supportive of many Soviet stances than the American. The way his book has now snowballed into a major political controversy in India with the opposition BJP demanding that the government should come out with a white paper on the sources of funding of political parties from abroad and set up an inquiry by Supreme Court judge into the allegation contained in the records of the disgraced KGB official, it seems the right wing leaders of India are yet to mature.

Unless of course BJP and the family support what President Nixon and Henry Kissinger were speaking about Indians during the period. Of course during the 70's, the right wingers were all so glued to the Americanization. Decades later, what seems obnoxious must be sounding so just and sane to the right wingers in India.

Is the issue at hand something about money that the Soviet Union’s Ambassador in New Delhi from 1977 to 1983 Yuri Vorontsov has publicly declined? “It’s rubbish! Indira Gandhi or her Congress Party never took KGB money,” he said recently ridiculing the Mitrokhin Papers. He has even further logic:
“Gandhi and the Congress as the ruling party could have raised any amount of money through Indian business houses and were not in need of foreign funds. Yes, I know that the Communist Party received funds from the CPSU (Soviet Communist party) like any Communist Party of the world. It was never a secret for anyone. They (funds) were transferred through non-diplomatic channels, so I am not aware of any transactions,” Vorontsov said.

Or is the real issue about Indira Gandhi’s decision at that point: to support Soviet Union or to submit to the United States?

Here are excerpts from Gandhi’s letter to Nixon:

New Delhi, August 7, 1971.

It is not for us to object to the United States maintaining, as you, Mr. President, have put it, "a constructive relationship with Pakistan" so that the U.S. may "retain some influence in working with them towards important decisions to be made in that country." We have waited patiently and with restraint, hoping for a turn in the tide of events which the Government, Parliament and people of India could recognize as a step towards a political settlement.

I believe that the Government of the United States supports the view that the posting of U.N. observers on either side of the frontiers of India and East Bengal could solve the problem of the refugees. We regret that we do not see the situation in this light. India is an open democracy. We have a large diplomatic corps and many representatives of the world press. We have had visits of parliamentary delegations from various countries. All are free to travel and to visit the refugee camps. They see for themselves that although we are doing all we can for the refugees, life in the camps is one of deprivation and acute discomfort. Hence it is unrealistic to think that the presence of a group of U.N. observers could give any feeling of assurance to the evacuees when every day they see new evacuees pouring in with stories of atrocities. Would the League of Nations Observers have succeeded in persuading the refugees who fled from Hitler's tyranny to return even whilst the pogroms against the Jews and political opponents of Nazism continued unabated? In our view, the intentions of the U.N. Observers might be more credible if their efforts were directed at stopping the continuing outflow of these unfortunate people and at creating conditions which, to any reasonable person, would assure the safety of life and liberty of the refugee who wishes to return to East Bengal.

I should like to mention one other matter. Our Government was greatly embarrassed that soon after our Foreign Minister's return from his Washington visit and despite the statements made by Ambassador Keating in Bombay on April 16 and by the State Department's spokesman on April 15, 1971, came the news of fresh supplies of U.S. arms to Pakistan.

It was a sad chapter in the history of our subcontinent when the United States began to supply arms to Pakistan in 1954 and continued doing so up to 1965. These arms have been used against us, as indeed we feared they would be. And now these arms are being used against their own people whose only fault appears to be that they took seriously President Yahya Khan's promises to restore democracy.

In the midst of all the human tragedy, it is some relief to contemplate the voyage of the astronauts in the Apollo-15. These valiant men and the team of scientists supporting them represent man's eternal longing to break from the constraints of time and space. As I write this, the astronauts are heading homewards, back to our earth. We pray for their safety and success. Please accept, Mr. President, our warm felicitations.

I was glad to have your message regarding your initiative to normalise relations with the People's Republic of China. We have welcomed this move and we wish you well.


And here is what Nixon and Kissinger were upto:

President Nixon and Henry Kissinger met in the Oval Office of the White House on the morning of November 5, 1971, to discuss Nixon's conversation with Prime Minister Gandhi on the previous day. Kissinger's overall assessment was that “the Indians are bastards anyway. They are starting a war there. To them East Pakistan is no longer the issue. Now, I found it very interesting how she carried on to you yesterday about West Pakistan.” He felt, however, that Nixon had achieved his objective in the conversation: “While she was a bitch, we got what we wanted too. She will not be able to go home and say that the United States didn't give her a warm reception and therefore in despair she's got to go to war.” Kissinger judged that Gandhi had been thwarted in her objective: “She would rather have had you give her a cool reception so that she could say that she was really put upon.” Nixon agreed: “We really slobbered over the old witch.” Kissinger felt that on matters of substance, nothing of importance had been conceded: “You slobbered over her in things that did not matter, but in things that did matter, you didn't give her an inch.” Nixon and Kissinger agreed that in the upcoming conversation with Gandhi the approach to take was to be “a shade cooler” and allow her to do more to carry the conversation than had been the case in the initial conversation. (National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials, White House Tapes, Recording of conversation between Nixon and Kissinger, November 5, 1971, 8:51-9:00 a.m., Oval Office, Conversation No. 615-4)

Now if there would have any reason for outrage, Indians very well have one. When will the BJP, keeping aside its hawkish mindset, get it straight.


Maybe this time. Here is the telephonic conversation between President Nixon (P) and Kissinger (K):


/1/ Source: Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Kissinger Papers, Box 370, Telephone Conversations, Chronological File. No classification marking. The President vacationed in Key Biscayne, Florida, December 3-5; Kissinger was in Washington.

December 3, 1971, 10:45 a.m.

K: Two matters I want to raise. It appears that West Pakistan has attacked because situation in East collapsing. State wants to use it as a pretext not to put out statement/2/ at noon. I think it's more reason to cancel programs. State believes and I agree that we should take it to the Security Council once actions are confirmed. If a major war [develops] without going to the Security Council it would be a confession of poverty.

/2/ Reference is to a statement announcing the cut-off of military assistance to India.

P: Who will object?

K: India and the Soviet Union.

P: So we have to.

K: Apparently no one else will. Even the liberal papers are supporting that.

P: I am for that. We have to cut off arms aid to India. We should have done it earlier. Allow India bias.

K: Yes.

P: Sisco's part? He isn't pro-Indian. It's what they want below.

K: Sisco has no convictions. Liberal, [omission in the source text], socialist syndrome. The Indians will just add-

P: I have decided it and there is no appeal.

K: I also think-

P: I wrote it independently of anyone and I am surprised it hasn't been done.

K: It won't reach the UN tomorrow or late today. We shouldn't make a catastrophe of everything we have done and why Indian actions unjustified.

P: So West Pakistan giving trouble there.

K: If they lose half of their country without fighting they will be destroyed. They may also be destroyed this way but they will go down fighting.

P: They will have enough for a few days. It puts the Soviets on the spot.

K: I think I should give a brief note to the Russians so that they don't jump around about conversation yesterday and say we are going on your conversation with Gromyko./3/ A strong blast at their Vietnam friends and behavior on India. We are moving on our side but they are not doing enough on theirs.

P: On India certainly but on VN I wonder if it sounds hollow.

[Omitted here is discussion unrelated to South Asia.]

P: Pakistan thing makes your heart sick. For them to be done so by the Indians and after we have warned the bitch. Their [omission in the source text] and that but they have brought it on. We have to cut off arms. Why not? Because attacked by W. Pakistan. Tell them that when India talked about W. Pakistan attacking them it's like Russian claiming to be attacked by Finland.

K: They will do it or we will do it from Key Biscayne. It's a hell of a way but we can do it and I will get that message to the Soviets.

Tags: Saswat, India, USSR, USA, Cold War, Imperialism

By Saswat Pattanayak

I was afraid of the hypodermic bullet effects of the Time magazine’s story on Hiroshima. In an earlier post I was apprehensive that people may not have reasons not to believe the myth that bombings on “Japan led to end of war”, since the magazine had orchestrated the story so well (with a Japanese victim-model actually heralding the bomb on the cover and “eyewitnesses” inside thanking the bombs)!

For me, the reading was a macabre humor. So I was wondering how would readers react. Just hope against hope. M-pyre had a brave story. Apart from them, I did not discover much on the blogosphere either on the issue. Finally, the Aug 22nd issue of Time has published the readers’ views. And my worst fears have come true. Unlike other issues where readers are at least partially divided on a cover story perspective, this time, not a single letter writer feels disgusted! And everyone (all 8 of the published letters talk about Hiroshima and all of them are happy that the bombing was done) has congratulated and thanked Time for the efforts to educate us about why bombing was a good thing. Here are a couple of reactions (statutory apology: If you feel slighted, insulted, hurt, hold Time responsible for publishing them. I do not personally agree with the views on the letters):

I hope the US servicemen know they are heroes. They helped end WWII and ensured that my grandpa and millions of other grandpas would go home instead of invading Japan. It was estimated that an invasion might have caused 1 million Allied casualties. There would have a lot fewer dads and grandpas of ours around today had that taken place.

–says one officer candidate of Illinois Army National Guard.

How much longer do Americans have to feel guilty about Hiroshima? By dropping the atom bombs, the US delivered millions of people from the jaws of the Japanese war machines.

-- says a reader from Hong Kong.

As a young Marine who would probably have played a role in the scheduled invasion of Japan, I cheered when I heard the news about the bombing. Since then, 60 years of reflection have tempered my enthusiasm

-- says a reader from California.

Sounds incredible, but each letter is a reflection of the war-mongering selves of the highly educated yet such ignorant minds. As one observed that he believes that bombing saved “our dads and grandpas”. OUR? Our people’s lives have worth and not theirs? The undercurrent is there has been no war since then to have claimed a large number of lives. The other advocacy suggests that we did not have to invade Japan since bomb helped us committing from the act. One other letter even thanks the Japanese for living the horrible effects of bombs, which helped us never to use the bomb again.

Each of these is not mere opinion emanating from innocent observations. These are well cultivated attitudinal issues. I don’t blame Time for having planted these propaganda in popular minds. Indeed no form of mass media is capable of carrying out propaganda. We are socialized in fashions (along with family, peers, teachers) that make us vulnerable to thinking in a way that gets reinforced by the mass media we choose to play the role of mediators. So whereas the needle theory may have been misplaced, the effects cannot be completely overlooked.

For a fact, war was not ended because of the bombs. The so-called World-War II had ended well before that. Secondly, there is no difference between Our Dad and the Japanese Dad. When human lives are lost such recklessly because one political leader wants to have a good time, then only ignorant fools seek nationalities of the dead (after deaths anyway the body does not belong to a country anymore. Then why kill because someone is Japanese?) Thirdly, Japan was definitely the evil country. But to blame its innocent civilians for it would be to suggest the most fallacious assumption. The bombs were never aimed at the evil ruling class of Japan, it was aimed as an experiment of mass destruction (which caused generations of deaths of people who were themselves oppressed under authoritarian rule). There is absolutely no logic behind an assumption that because “x” country is evil (which is so grossly wrongly phrased and overplayed by our cautious media, that it’s pathetic), its citizens need to be taught a lesson.

What happens in effect is for everyone to note. The dictatorial rulers ably supported by the ruling class of America including to name just a few, Batista of Cuba, Bolkiah of Brunei, Botha of South Africa, Diem of South Viet Nam, Franco of Spain, Hitler of Germany, Marcos of the Philippines, Pinochet of Chile, or Videla of Argentina have all lived well. Its another matter, even their lands were not attacked. But when it was, in case of former allies like Saddam or Bin Laden (Afghanistan is one of his playing fields) they were never sent to gas chamber anyway. Actually none of these dictators were ever punished. Only the people of the countries they ruled were subjected to unnecessary deaths.

The end of war was a myth. The world was in fact divided up in blocs soon after the bombs. And in name of cold-war, millions were annihilated systematically. American invasions never ended. In fact, it quadrupled. Vietnam continued for 11 years. Several countries went for nuclear bombs to “safeguard” their interests. The world is much more dangerous a place today because of the misuse of bombs. Just because an atomic bomb has not been used for the second time does not prove a thing. 60 years in the history of world is a short chapter. Too short to conclude predictions.

Moreover the lives lost last century (continuing draconically this century too, as if it were a logic) because of wars after the 1940’s should serve reminders of the evil of wars and those who perpetuate them. Not feel glad that we killed them, when in effect all that people have done is play the cards of the motivated politicians (who never send their kids to war front ever—and even if they were—still it would not make any sense for the child to play by the dad’s whims), and kill fellow human beings who have had no role in creating the prejudices.



The fact is that Hiroshima bombing was the most dastardly act ever committed. And not all Americans need to feel guilty about it. Only those must feel guilty irrespective of the countries they come from, who think American leadership made the right decision by going ahead with the bombs. Those who support the people who do business with these military-corporate nexus should feel guilty too. Those who think harboring bombs is a effective tool for whatever reason should feel guilty too. Those who kill people in the name of faiths and nationalities should feel guilty. And those who support these people on principle must feel guilty too. In conclusion, that’s not many people, if you count. Spare the rest of us the pain. Guilt is the last thing on the minds of the peace-loving citizenry of the world. They must work towards rewriting the history of the world so that the future generations are not misled anymore into the web of misinformation, lies, and anti-people propaganda.

Tags: Saswat, Media, Japan, Cold War, War, History

A song on the singer! A radical lyric about the radical poet. Adrian Mitchell has written to the tune of Arlo Guthrie!
Revolutionary songs were always meant to be simple. Straight. Honest. About unsung peoples. And heroic Fights. Jara led the exemplary life. Guthrie, son of the legendary Woody, pays tribute… Read More...

Tags: Saswat, Music, Communism, Chile, Cold War

Counterpunch has the news to muse today.
Tom Barry's story about Inside Bush's "World Movement for Democracy" shines!

The “world’s democratic movement” is not another one of the transnational citizens’ movements, like the anti-globalization or anti-war movements, that prides itself on having no central structure, no dogma, or even an office.

This movement is highly organized, better funded, and even has its own “secretariat.” Unlike other leaderless but world-shaking transnational citizens’ networks that emerged after the end of the Cold War, the “world’s democratic movement” is not a product of global civil society but a quasi-governmental initiative based in Washington, DC.

Tags: Saswat, Communism, Cold War, Activism

By Saswat Pattanayak

Welcome to the world of History-telling. American ishtyle.

Time on its cover story (anniversary special) educates the readers about Hiroshima, with a Japanese witness on its cover holding a picture postcard.

The essay by Michael Elliott says:

The atom bombs dropped over Japan ended a terrible war and persuaded the world never to use nuclear weapons again. Time quotes Van Kirk on the B-29 remembering that "somebody said—and I thought so too--'This war is over.'"

Eight days later, Elliot says, it was over. According to him, if the first bomb was not enough justification to call it over, the second must have been, since Nagasaki was attacked on August 9.

Ever since, there has been controversy over when the war would have ended had the bomb not been dropped on Hiroshima--a second was detonated over the city of Nagasaki on Aug. 9—and how many Japanese and Americans would have died before it did.

Not only the war was presumably over, the act of throwing the bomb was a beautiful act also. As Elliot has a Japanese eyewitness describe the greatest disaster to have ever caused as something, “like a burst of light from an unearthly photo shoot, big enough to cover the sky, "blue-yellow and very beautiful."

Time goes on:

But, plainly, the most terrible war ever known ended earlier than it would have because of the Enola Gay's mission. The bombs cost tens of thousands of lives—perhaps 120,000 were killed immediately in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with many more dying later from the effects of radiation—but they saved lives too.

More celebrations!

When he heard the news of Hiroshima, writer Paul Fussell, then a 21-year-old second lieutenant leading a rifle platoon in France and mentally preparing for the hell that an invasion of Japan was bound to be, thought, "We were going to live. We were going to grow up to adulthood after all."

And the aftermath, according to Time:

An awful weapon had saved lives; a terrible instrument of war had brought peace…..

Buried in silos in the wheat fields of North Dakota, tucked into the torpedo tubes of Soviet submarines parked in the North Atlantic, slung in the bomb bays of B-52s, the American and Soviet nuclear arsenals mutually assured the destruction of both sides if hostilities commenced. The cold war turned into a long peace.

Sounds sick to my stomach. Such narrative that proclaims that the world war was over because Japan was bombed (nay, even more sophisticatedly, detonated, not attacked!). For, some of us who are among the rest of those who don’t subscribe to this narrative know for sure when and how the war was ended. And if we still wondered why US had to bomb Japan even after the war was over, now we know the news: that the war was not actually over. It needed one Hiroshima and then again, one Nagasaki to call it over!

What logic does Elliot has in saying Hiroshima was not enough to call it over, if at all in his weirdest philosophy, all we need is some bombings to end wars? Why did we need another bomb after 8 days? No logic, just plain statement: “An awful weapon had saved lives; a terrible instrument of war had brought peace…..”

Brought peace? For whom? For the generations of Japanese who lived with the scar and became numb enough to traverse from royal monarchies to economic imperialists without an utter?

The underlying theme of the Anniversary Special (see the celebratory tone! Calling it an anniversary special than maybe a Guilt-ridden Summer Remembrance) of the magazine is to say that we needed to bomb Japan so that we shall have peace. Moreover, it was not a bad thing to bomb after all. Hey, we got an eyewitness to say that the after-effects of the bombing was “blue-yellow and very beautiful”!

Such sick!

And finally Time declares that the bombs (which are bad in the hands of the “terrorists”, it concludes too) led to nuclear arsenal competitions leading to cold war which brought long lasting peace!

Notice the web of lies: First, that the war got over because of the bomb (whereas in actual, the war had long ended after which US surprised everyone by bombing Japan mercilessly, first Hiroshima and then again Nagasaki), second, that the after-effects of bombing was beautiful experience (whereas the gruesome truth is that all of us know what happened to generations of people, even as Time could manage to get an old man stand with a picture of the bombing as to show how beautiful event it was to celebrate), third, that the bombings saved lives (whereas we know that millions have died for no good reason at all), fourth, that the people after all grew up to live well (whereas we know the systematic tortures on Japanese-Americans which go largely untold for several suppressive reasons), fifth, that cold war brought peace (whereas nothing could be further from the truth).

Cold war was not that cold. We know millions of innocent civilians who have been systematically annihilated in the name of protecting them from Communism (even within the country, McCarthyism was such a reality) with active interventions in third-world countries of Asia, Latin America and Africa. That was the hottest war series ever continued. And thanks to the whole suspicion trail of nuclear arsenal acquisitions of rivaling blocs.

And today, after the end of so-called Cold War, we know that the same bomb greed has led many countries to feel insecure, join the arms race, whereas they could involve in developmental works they have drained out resources to build arsenals to join the club, we know of the numerous nuclear plant leaks and disasters--most of which are so embarrassing that they are not discussed, we also know that many misguided youth and deliberately led religious fanatics are in quest of the formula too, not to be left out of the race.

And the world is most unsafe than ever before. We are having televised wars and children are bombing neighbors on their video games. More bombs don’t make the world safer place. I am sure the readers of Time know of this. Or I doubt. I am still waiting to read few letters to the editor.

Tags: Saswat, Cold War, Imperialism, USA, Communism, War, Media, History

The rebel-poet of a bygone era. And his spell.
Why a poet must choose a side. Even as Dylan himself would dispute his activism. A generation or two stayed awake. Thanks to him. Read More...

Tags: Saswat, Literature, Communism, Cold War, USA, Imperialism, Atheism

A movie based on the assassination of the prominent leftist doctor Grigoris Lambrakis, that led to the military junta in Greece.

Simply one of the greatest political thrillers. A must-see for anyone interested in the cold-war, red-scare, CIA interventions, Costa-Gavras, Oscar nominations, pacifism, socialism, press freedom, democracy, the letter Z (he is alive!).

Tags: Saswat, Film, Communism, Cold War, Greece

By Saswat Pattanayak

Let’s revisit Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, the man who did the Capitalism proud. The only person whose accounts in form of two books, are the sacred texts so far to have been used by the West to attack the Soviet history.

He was a Cossack intellectual, meaning a Cossack elite.

Who is a Cossack? In the 15th century, the Cossack society was a loose federation of independent military units, entirely separate and sovereign.

The two states they represented, Cossacks of Zaporizhia and Don Cossack State had a unique warrior culture, whose main source of income was the pillaging their neighbors although they didn't shy from plundering other neighbors. They were famous also for their raids against the Ottoman Empire. Ottoman Empire, led by a Sultan was one of the mightiest empires in Europe, whose fight against the Russia in Crimean War was notable.

The Russians initially had used their advanced defense mechanisms and out-maneuvered the Ottomans using their Armenian allies within the empire. They of course subsequently persecuted the Armenians in a genocidal fashion. It was not until the Communist revolution in Russia that the Russian forces retreated, leading to Ottoman victory on this front.

Not only was he a Cossack intellectual who supported the interests of the elite section of the ruling regimes in the pre-revolution period, but his prerogative was in highlighting the glories of Tsarist period! In presenting alternatives to the Soviet regime, Solzhenitsyn tended to reject Western emphases on democracy and individual freedom and instead favored the formation of a benevolent authoritarian regime that would draw upon the resources of Russia's traditional Christian values.

Authoritarian traditional Christian rule!

In other words he represented the counter-revolutionary ethos that wanted Tsar regime back. For whom the communists were infidels. The primary resistance to the Holocaust is well known silence of the Vatican since Hitler was fighting Stalin and the Church wanted the ouster of Communism at any cost, even if it would mean the Jewish extermination. Solzhenitsyn of course was not in any way opposition to the Vatican’s silence. Far from it, at first notice, America’s silence over Jewish question was welcomed by him, a country he would make home for 20 years.

On the contrary, what had been provided in the USSR then? Lenin (and please…not Stalin) had while categorically espousing the interests of the revolutionary class of peasants and workers, had clearly stated, “confiscation of all properties”. Majority of people who were in spirits with the movement of course did allow for the confiscation to take place. Several countries in the world indeed went ahead for wealth distribution. Mythically Robin Hood still continues to do so.

But what was happening was contrary to everything Solzhenitsyn believed in. A purged Christianity was unacceptable to the largest groups of believers in the world. Solzhenitsyn became their voice. He helped them compare the Gulags with the Nazi Holocaust. Of course the plights of the Armenians, Africans-Americans, Japanese-Americans of those days also were excused. For the plights of the Jews in Germany, a supremacist country whom Soviet Union contributed the most in defeating, there were none among the Allies who would stand up. Solzhenitsyn remained blind to the reality out of his desire to overthrow the Communism and replace it with traditional Christian values. Apparently after he wrote a letter to Stalin, he was sent to the camp, which formed the base for two of his books: Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. These books apparently rocked the world!

It led the media to focus on the new victims: the Gulago. Nazis were called even subtler than the Soviets! Of course contextualizing it, it will seem natural that they felt it the same way all along. One side Hitler supported by the Christians (yes the Catholics), whose common enemy of course was Communism. And on the other Stalin and the non-believers. And of course the Red Army famously defeating the White Army of the imperial Russia and nullifying every White Order.

Solzhenitsyn, unfazed by the divided ideologies, and possibly because of it, authored a fiction “One Day in the Life…”which was widely targeted for the American audience. Naturally! And the other book “Gulag ..” whose most compelling chapter was claimed to have been a recollection of incidents by fellow prisoner Georgi Tenno, who was invited by Solzhenitsyn to be the co-author. Tenno refused the offer.

And what happened to Solzhenitsyn at the labor camp which has been used by the western critics of communism to be of even more gruesome than the Nazi camps?

He was political prisoner after war years for 8 years, for his criticism of Soviet policies, and holding talks with religious forces. 8 years? Yes.

After that, the same draconic system produced a fine mathematics teacher of him and he began to write. Leading Soviet literary periodical Novy Mir ("New World") also published his short novel “One Day in the Life..” Soon after he could publish his works abroad thanks to the interests generated by this novel. In 1960’s he had several foreign publications of ambitious works including V kruge pervom (The First Circle). Rakovy korpus (1968; Cancer Ward) talked about his hospitalization and successful treatment for terminally diagnosed cancer during his forced exile in Kazakstan during the mid-1950s.

Something interesting happened in 1970. He was awarded Nobel Prize, but he did not go to receive it claiming that he shall not be allowed to re-enter the country. But at the same time, he was quite conveniently publishing his works abroad. He went on to publish a celebration of German military in Avgust 1914 (1971; August 1914), a historical novel treating Germany's crushing victory over Russia during World War I, the Battle of Tannenburg!

In December 1973 he published first part of Arkhipelag Gulag (The Gulag Archipelago) in Paris! The news circulated that he was arrested and was being tried for treason. According to his logic, the punishment should have been death! Like previously under Stalin, people believed millions were killed in the camps he was at. Only he was saved to tell the story?...like previously it was believed that he would be killed in exile in hospital. Cancer and he was cured? So that he will tell the story? And now what happens? On Feb. 12, 1974, he is charged. And the next day, on Feb 13, 1974, he is exiled? Where to and how long? Still unharmed by the most evil empire?

Sounds incredible? Well, in December he goes and gleefully received his Nobel Prize! In 1975, he produces another novel Lenin v Tsyurikhe: glavy (Lenin in Zurich: Chapters). He settles in the Unites States, especially aware that he was, of America’s role in the Holocaust. Of course he mentions nothing about America and Holocaust.

Then on, he surges forward. Two more series of Gulag comes up. He refuses to call it his landmark book. Instead says history of Russia as he was working on was. And safely returns to his country of dreams, the Christian Russia in 1994.

So much ado about Gulag!

Two things emerge in this discourse. History as we all have studied thus far, can be a very twisted text, and sometimes sacred at that. Leading us not to question the upfront issues. First, comparing Gulag with Nazi camps is horrendous. That’s missing the whole point, actually. The people who kept silent during Nazi extermination were among the people who were sent to the camp in Soviet Union. No logic of passivity can work if one advocates pacifism by claiming that we could allow the Hitler to go on mass murdering people on gas chambers by calling Jews, Negroes and Communists did not deserve to live. To such claims many world leaders did not openly oppose and the Vatican too remained stoic. All aided this process only because they were scared of the spectre of Communism.

We live today to reflect much of bogus that have been taught to us as sacred. We were told Columbus discovered America! That Native Americans were Christians. And that the religious leaders all pray for peace. That the greatest democracy was greatest democracy even when its presidents owned slaves. That color of the skin could determine the intelligence of human beings. That intelligence was to be measured by a Binet Scale. That Communists were out to destroy the world. And what if the Russians Came?

Secondly, what was Gulag? And why were people so shocked by it? And who were the people at the Gulag? Do people even talk if there are 100,000 people at the Gulags now, in 2005? What were they traditionally doing? What do they continue to do? Is the Church against the Gulags now? Or as they as stoic as they were in case of Jews? Are these people in Gulags not Jews now? Or are they the converts? One can read about them now and imagine, what a fateful twist in history is this.

Tags: Saswat, History, USSR, Cold War, Communism, Capitalism

By Saswat Pattanayak

The questions on war need to be repositioned. I do not think the ethics of peace can ever invalidate the reasons for war.

The conflictual and often contradictory separatism existing between the war mongers and the peaceniks is one of no useful consequence. Extremisms that characterize both the cases make them ineffective. “War at any cost” or “Peace at any cost” lend themselves to the fallacy of self-contradiction, because “any cost”, when attached to the “events” such as war or peace is militarist in nature. Instead, “any cost” can be suitably applied to the “process”. By this it is implied that “progress” can be made at any cost—a progress that does not smack of opportune rise of one interest group to the exclusion of the most others, rather just the other way around.

Often the arguments of the day have sided with Peace and War as binaries and there where lies the inherent source of flaws. Peace may just be the time to prepare for war and war may just be teaching the lessons of history. In both the ways of extreme sense, they are dangerous. Because what we often forget to ask are, “Peace for whom” and “Whose war”.

Contextualizing the situations of peace and war can help shape the way we can lead better lives. The war mongers always serve the interest of a business group which intends to sell its goods. That’s just about it. There is no other rationale for the war mongers to be existent. The sole cause is money making for a few. To validate it, they go any extent and as histories are witnesses, nationalism, internal security, anti-communism, religious intolerance are among the few excuses that the military-industrial complex have always utilized to thrive.

As for peaceniks, it has been a utopian journey all throughout. When Lennon proclaimed the End of the War, all he asked was of people was to imagine. “The War is Over – If you want it”, ran the billboards across Canada during John and Yoko’s bed-in peace demonstrations. What they and the peace marchers forgot to mention was that the War was actually not over and it had nothing to do with people wanting it. In a subtle unintentional way they were implying that people did not want the war to end. This was far from the truth. It was a certain section of capitalists who wanted the war business to go on in the name of protecting Vietnam from the “monstrous Communism”. The catchline should have been “The War must begin—Against the war mongers”.

This was the feeling which so classically embedded in case of the Soviet defense against the Nazis. It was very important to defeat Hitler in a bloody war, for the entire earth to survive. Almost exhausting majority of its able men force of the country (more than 6 million deaths and millions of families affected), the Soviets contributed their biggest lot to the rest of the world, by relentlessly fighting the gory battle to stop the expansion of the radical right wingers. Today no one even among the most politically correct would denounce the defeat of Hitler. The war was not such bad after all.

In the post-cold war phases, the danger subsequently was in a school of propaganda which equated freedom with anything that ran a so-called democratic form of government and called everything else authoritarian dictatorships. In other words, a false claim was made to justify the subsequent phase of the cold war period, which took millions of lives all over the world in the name of defeating the spread of communism. And what we had was a prevailing situation of intolerance with anyone who differed from the mainstream model of electoral governance (howsoever fraud it might be owing to the various vote scams). All socialist governments fell pray. Almost all Islamic regimes over the world were attacked. The ones who agreed to do business at the terms of the democratic warriors were of course spared.

As the wars escalated, the peaceniks among us cried out against all forms of attacks. The paradigm shifted to discuss the dangers of wars. Nobel laureates attributed lack of democracy as a necessary cause for breeding grounds of war. To spread democracy, wars were validated. And civilians who had no need and idea of ballot boxes were forced to see their houses bombed if they were lucky to survive. All in the name of democracy.

The question of “who caused the war” shifted to “why we must stop the war”. In the process of course that big joke, the United Nations called every step by sovereign countries to protect themselves as “aggression” and every step by the militarist nations to attack foreign lands as “peacekeeping”.

With such peacekeepings, of course who needed wars?

The burden of the peace man goes on today without questioning if these are the ones who need to be fought against? Are not the arms dealers and racketeers the worthy causes for active resistance? It’s not the war which is at fault. It’s our inability to distinguish the elements who should be targeted at. The question needs to be turned on its head: for once we need a war—against the original perpetrators who had no business to start it.

Tags: Saswat, Philosophy, Peace, War, Cold War, History

By Saswat Pattanayak

In March 2000, US President Bill Clinton made a noteworthy visit to India (that loathed nuclear power..), the first by a sitting U.S. president in 22 years! It was followed up by Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee who visited the US in September that year, addressed a joint session of Congress, and became the chief guest at the largest-ever state dinner hosted by the America. So much ado about nuclear non-proliferation!

The tragedy about America and India are not their peoples (who by the way have from time to time shown promises of peace efforts, only to be truncated by five-year democratic rules changing norms). Its their self-proclaimed leaderships. Misleading people into believing in anti-Arab or anti-Pakistan rhetoric, the leaders, irrespective of whether they are from Republican/Democrat or BJP/Congress, have been willing pawns in the hands of the defense lobbies.

The popular narrative has always focused on how the innocent India is always bullied by the US in matters of its defense priorities. Vajpayee even had famously spoken at the UN (yes that Hindi speech for which Indians were told to feel proud about) to stress on “India’s commitment” to nuclear non-proliferation and how countries were making it difficult for India. It was the same Vajpayee who sadistically was laughing his guts out after secretly declaring India a nuclear power. Many Indian politicians over the time have thrived only by denouncing the double speak of the American treadmill (like the famous anti-cola Goerge Fernandes who became defense minister and lured to American defense principles had to resign in shame following Tehelka). This was very noble, except that all throughout, the Indian secret defense establishment (the holy cow which was exposed by Tehelka for its willingness to sellout for sleaze, sex, money and a hoax American company’s letterhead) has only served the American military-industrial interests.

So when in November 2001 in Washington D.C., PM Vajpayee and President Bush reiterated their “commitment to transform India-U. S. relations”, they were basically bullshitting. Their excuse: “The common democratic traditions of our countries remain the bedrock of their relationship and the foundation for long-term strategic cooperation.” Neither of them of course would talk about all those “non-democratic” countries they are oh-so-friendly with (we know who they are of course). And this bedrock of relationship between democracies anyway just emerged recently. India did not talk of Kashmir and Pakistan, because that’s such an old story. The new one was Bin Laden in Afghanistan (yeah those days when Saddam was still not the public enemy number 1) and I remember how I was forced to stop my car on the road because we were required to condemn 9/11 terrorism. It seemed to us on the road that day that terrorism was some alien thing our leaders never approved of!!!! Of course to prove that, leaders came up with Patriot Acts and what not. The patriots!

By the way before I forget, the meetings between US and India are of “Defense co-operation”, not “Peaceful existence co-operation”. There is a crucial difference here too. So the fruitful meet between Vajpayee and Bush concluded that the Joint Technical Group under the US-India Defense Policy Group (DPG) were to meet in February-March 2002 to discuss the promotion of bilateral ties in the field of defense production and research. The U.S. Joint Staff and the Indian Chief of Integrated Defense Staff were to meet in spring of 2002, before the next DPG, and regularly thereafter to discuss tri-service institutions, military planning, and tri- service doctrine. And a new structured dialogue between the U.S. Defense Department’s Office of Net Assessment and its Indian counterpart were to develop exchanges between the defense research and analyses communities in both countries.

The Indian player: Vajpayee. That ironic symbol of nuclear disarmament whom Nehru trusted to be a world leader of peace, and who of course subsequently betrayed an entire country by hiding from its billion population that he was secretly testing nuclear bombs with another secretive scientist who he plans to catapult to the post of an accomplice President.

So logically, quite contrary to that popular narrative of how much US despised the third world nuclear countries, what followed was another meeting of India-U.S. Defense Policy Group during May 2002 in Washington, DC. Broadly they discusses issues for which both the parties involved should have been tried in International Court of Justice (but of course they don’t give two hoots). These “broad” areas included how to improve the security environment in Afghanistan, including reconstruction efforts and building of the Afghan National Army. Not only were these disgusting talks about other sovereign nations not brought into media headlines, even the specificities which should have been enough to cause a riot were played in an ah-so-noble manner that the democracies celebrated their democracies without taking their people’s opinions (What’s new?).

They discussed the combined naval patrols in the Strait of Malacca. For the uninitiated, the 621 mile long Strait of Malacca links the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and thereby becomes the shortest sea route between three most populous countries of the world-- India, China, and Indonesia. Another attack on sovereignty? Come on, these are so hot romantic hunks of Baywatch. How can they go wrong?

The other aspects dealt with the resumption of defense trade, beginning with the "Firefinder" radar sale (why else the talks, if no billion dollars commitments are involved). Firefinder by the way literally means something which tracks down the “Agni”, India’s defense experiment icon. Of course the sale would not find any opposition anywhere. In American history, no foreign military sale formally presented by the Defense Department has ever been rejected by lawmakers!

Not just some forlorn oceanic area, combined special forces (read American interventionism) airborne exercises in Agra were planned. There was to be a U.S.-India Ballistic Missile Defense workshop in Colorado Springs (of course!), and the signing of a General Security of Military Information Agreement to facilitate cooperation in defense technology (so that we know, so that people won’t know).

It was also planned that specialized training programs and joint exercises were to be carried out by the armed services of the two countries during the next year. This was to be carried out with a resumption of technical cooperation in defense research, development and production, following the meeting of the Joint Technical Group in New Delhi in early March.

And finally, they decided to develop a defense supply relationship, including through the Government-to-Government Foreign Military Sales program. The two delegations agreed on the need to work closely for speedier approvals of export licenses in the United States. (we know what it means: it’s a vertical agreement where US is the seller. Of course India does not sell its junks to America unless the US generous capitalists put up few sweatshops across where they can exploit the poor workers who have by now learnt how to change their pronunciations anyway. Earlier, they were British apes. Now they are American copycats. After they produce junks, US can then sell them to Turkey).

Come 2003, the group reviewed what they had “accomplished”. Of course they don’t do these regular reviews about hunger and homelessness. Awww….that so boring. Lets review interesting things. Bombs, missiles, the television crew. Well here we come, the patriots, the worthy sons!

Among the things they had already achieved were formation of combined special forces for counterinsurgency exercise in Northeast India (yeah those seven unfortunate children of lesser Indian God). There were complex naval exercises on the East Coast of India and Alaska, the "Firefinder" radars had been delivered already, senior-level missile defense talks and master information exchange agreement to facilitate cooperation in research and development of defense technologies had been concluded.

They hoped further to conduct specialized training programs and joint exercises to be carried out by the armed services of the two countries, including an air combat training exercise. The suitable development of a defense supply relationship was to be continued, through the Government-to-Government Foreign Military Sales program. A U.S. team was to travel India in September to discuss the details of a possible sales of P-3 maritime patrol aircraft. (wow!) Now that sale was legal and welcome, the U.S. was also to sale to India the training materials and specialized equipment to support India’s peacekeeping training capabilities (peacekeeping is the name of the game).

This ongoing process of love and cooperation between one military giant and another ardent supporter continued to January 2004 even with a new government in India. How do the parties matter when they are all part of the same free market democracy? Clinton or Bush, Manmohan or Atal Behari, they are made of the same stuffs—same military-industrial mentality. Suddenly the sophisticated Congress Party which replaced the rightist party BJP, acted out that it was clueless about how to response radically different to the DPG which was formed under the BJP. And it said it to itself: oh come on, we don’t care about principles. We are the principles. Look at how we buried Gandhi and Nehru. What’s the deal?

The deal came in June 2005, when we had the continuation of the Indian rightist program when India and the United States signed a 10-year defense pact agreement that takes the relationship to “unprecedented levels of cooperation”. Unprecedented, in terms of television ratings. Here today, gone tomorrow. But mind you, tomorrow there will be even more vulgar shows. More ratings. More wars.

Tags: Saswat, Pakistan, India, USA, War, Cold War, History

By Saswat Pattanayak

The recent India-US defense pact was not as “unprecedented” as being hyped. Indeed the collaboration (read US surveillance) has been going around for quite some time now.

With the fallout of a state stable economy and emergence of irresponsible globalization, defense deals became one of the fallouts. It was only natural that India’s declaration of itself as a Nuclear State in 1998 was less to affirm some nationalistic pride, more to buy into a defense market of the future. The step only benefited the Western defense contractors since India was going to show the roadmap to Pakistan (which was equally equipped to flaunt its consumerist power at the war mall) eventually and the third world was going to be vulnerable to the war mongering bazaar.

Little wonder then that following the nuclear states status of India and Pakistan, their relationship with the US only has “improved” substantially. Never in the history of these countries was US at the forefront of decision making as it is the case today. Indeed in the past, Indo-Soviet relations, India's espousal of nonalignment and refusal to join U.S. alliance during the Cold War had only earned ire. Even though Pakistan was supported by the US, the aim was only to get India to submit under pressure.

Post-1998, with the right wing Indian government in power, India played its game to satisfy the US defense lobbies. For all the anti-nuclear hypocritical talks that the leaders of the West engaged in (and they excel with it anyway, considering the NATO history), India far from being penalized started being celebrated as a “global major power”.

India is indeed a major power of widespread unemployment and poverty. But to the defense lobbies, like the media industry they partner with, a free market democracy like US or India only need to be glamorized into being touted as potentially viable markets, more than anything else.

So after India disgustingly went nuclear, few events too place. Five months after the test (November 1999), the first round of consultations took place between India and US regarding weapons of mass destruction (that tragically funny phrase as we know it today) export controls. Of course we were told that America was bossing around, interfering etc. What eventually took place was of course further strengthening of their relationships. The “fabled enemies” as I see them, India and Pakistan two months after that (Feburary 2000), had a friendship dialogue called “Lahore Summit” to express to each other about how much they were common, now that they had the same boss!

In March, US again talked about the export controls issue with India (basically implying that kill yourselves in Asia, just don’t experiment in Pearl Harbor. Clinton actually went on to say, "Only India can determine its own interests.” With such moral supporter of India in regards to bombs, who can oppose US, except some creepy leftist peacenik propagandists). Result of all these friendly talks between India-US-Pakistan: The “undeclared Kargil aggression” which took place just after two months (May 1999). It was as undeclared as was the N-Test at Pokhran! The world was led to believe that US did not know if such a war was coming.

When India and Pakistan went nuclear, US could not guess! When they went on war, US could not guess! So much for American defense intelligence. Is a link missing in the chain? You bet. Who wins when wars take place? Who profits? We know the answer. How many politician’s children fight at the borders? We know the answer to it too. So who wants the war to take place? Of course we know it. We know it. We know it. The point is how much do we want to stop it.

But of course the assumption is that we don’t stop wars. It’s the visionary leaders like Powell and Bush who stop war, terrorism, violence!

So what happened after 2000? Did the wars stop?

Tags: Saswat, Pakistan, India, USA, Cold War, War, History

By Saswat Pattanayak

The European Union will stay a wishful nightmare. After the French, the Dutch have now stomped down the proposed bill to create the second elite world of “United States of Europe,” throwing the Britain on the spot.

This clearly is a major victory against the capitalist propagandists who intended to use the Union as a commercial and defense weapon. Three cheers to the grassroots activism shown by the working class population of French and the Dutch who have time and again defeated the interests of classicist, elitist and colonialist ruling classes of their countries.

History bears witness to the recent past misadventures of the European colonialists in the Third World countries. The French occupation of Indo-China and Algeria are gross reminders of how blissfully draconic have stayed a certain section of imperialists even towards the 1970s. South Africa was more recent an example of ravaged peoples who were allowed seats of power only in the 1990s. Of course, not with a condition that the brute rulers would leave the land and compensate the exploited people with their dues. Rather, in an unenviable situation where the former rulers continued to dominate all economic sectors and refused to let go of any privileges.

Lest history also be forgotten for convenience, some progressive people have come up against any coalition of the hegemonists in the Europe any more. No more allies and axis this time, they triumphantly have declared.

But I do not think all people voted against such proposed legislation out of an altruistic intention of not going the American way. On the contrary, learning from history, it could be well argued that self-interests inherent in nationalistic prides (therefore, racial and fascistic) have led to such decision on most parts. Because as it appears, the solution does not lie in not believing in a union of colonialist states, the solution instead lies in building up the coalition of a world body that would address global concern from local standpoints. And of course a world body which would punish unapologetic apostles of lynching, for example, and punish the oppressive war-wagers.

Unless the Dutch and the French fellow citizens not demand for a referendum to disband the NATO and join a global coalition of working class people to form a World Body without an elitist security council, its not believable that the intentions of our awakened peoples are in the desirable direction, and not in yet another dangerously nationalist, segregationist path.

And no one is even asking for a referendum to see how many come forward to apologize for the bloody history of interventionist policies historically taken up in the name of NATO, and before that, White Pride.

Tags: Saswat, EU, Third World, Cold War, Imperialism, Capitalism