untouchable EARTH

Irom Chanu Sharmila: 10 Years on hunger strike

nonibora@gmail.com (noni) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 04:32:00 +0000

Lokayat organises:

One Day token Hunger Strike in support of Sharmila Irom’s epic struggle

Poet and activist Sharmila Irom began her epic hunger strike on November 2, 2000. This is now the tenth year of her hunger strike. Her hunger strike has one single goal: withdrawal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, 1958 (AFSPA). imposed an even more murderous act, the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. This act is a harsher version of the act the British used to quell the 1942 Quit Indian Movement. This act allows not just officers but even Junior Commissioned Officers and Non-Commissioned Officers of the army to search, arrest, and even kill any person on grounds of mere “suspicion”.Yes, they can kill anyone with impunity, without fear of persecution! The armed forces have committed gross human rights violations under the cover of this act. The jawans of Assam Rifles daily arrest, beat up, torture nearly 80 to 100 people every day! Many women have suffered sexual abuse, rape, gang rape, and not one soldier has ever been prosecuted.

On November 2, 2000, the Assam Rifles (AR) gunned down 10 people at a bus stop in Malom village, near Imphal. Unknown insurgents had planted a bomb near the AR camp the previous day and, unable to locate the culprits, AR personnel hit out at random, killing many innocent citizens. Human rights organizations protested, to no avail. Shaken to the core by this injustice, poet and journalist Irom Sharmila decided to go on a hunger strike in protest.

Since then ten years have passed. The government and armed forces are adamantly refusing to withdraw the AFPSA, despite government appointed Justice Jeevan Reddy judicial commission recommending it. And Sharmila is determined that till it is withdrawn, she will continue her struggle.

This year, more than 140 organisations have decided to support Sharmila Irom’s hunger strike by organizing various programs during the week from November 2 to 7. The demands are:

   1. In all states where AFPSA is in force, all cases of rape and violence against women be investigated by a independent judicial body and those responsible be prosecuted under the law of the land.
   2. The AFPSA be withdrawn from Manipur and the other states where it in force.

In support of this countrywide protest, Lokayat is organizing the following program:

Program: One Day Hunger Strike in support of Sharmila Irom

Date:    November 7, Saturday

Time:   Morning 7 to Evening 7 pm

Venue: Tilak Putla, Mandai, Pune.

Wrong Monsoon

nonibora@gmail.com (noni) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 10:36:00 +0000

Whenever there is a green mountain

And rain

Often it says something to him loudly

Trees are seems like cables, falling from sky

He does venture in event horizon, in dark universe

He takes breath there and walked side by side with asteroids

He looks after of those wild white flowers

And fond of watching dragonflies

When they zooming their eyes in to interior of flowers

Some time he believes that there is wrong monsoon

Or he trapped in wrong monsoon

The Girl and the Ocean

nonibora@gmail.com (noni) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:44:00 +0000

A 16-year-old Australian steered her bright pink yacht out of Sydney Harbor on Sunday to start her bid to become the youngest person to sail solo and unassisted around the world.Jessica Watson's plan to make a 23,600-mile (38,000-kilometer) journey through some of the world's most treacherous waters sparked a debate in Australia about whether someone so young should be allowed to try such a potentially dangerous feat.Although she will sail solo and unassisted, she will be in constant contact with her support team via radio, e-mail and a blog."I know you are all anxious to hear from Jess, but she's a little preoccupied on her first day, so she asked me to post a quick note to let everyone know that the departure went well this morning," Julie Watson wrote on the blog.

Age of teens are time of winning the world and doing something , conquering some thing..lot adventure.....growing up with lovely earth...let be the world always like this...youthful with beauty..energetic and primarily raw..a raw earth.

Sail away Jessika..sail with your dream..all our wishes with you.

Her site: Jessica Watson

Blog Action Day 2009 – Climate Change

nonibora@gmail.com (noni) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 12:06:00 +0000

We don’t going have this earth forever, 700 million years from now the sun will blow up and will become a red giant. May some astronomer in coming years will discover a comet and path of that comet might in the line of planet earth, but it is plan of nature that Jupiter is there, mostly the Jupiter covered us as umbrella from those about to hit comets. There are lot cosmic ray out there and continuously emerging to the earth atmosphere, including deadly ultra violet. Again it is plan of nature that we have layer of Ozone and that protect earth from these rays. And earth geographical scenario is not always same and it will be change in coming years naturally.

But what about rapid climate change as we have seen now, and who courses it. It is human who shoot itself on the feet.

Year 2050 or approximately there will be shortage of fossil oils, and all short of energy crisis will hovering on planet earth. Nuclear energy is not safe fully. USA as most energy consuming country compared to other countries in the world and we have already seen what cost other country have to bear to maintain energy consumption same for another country like USA. All short of war imposed on lot of country in the name of “democracy”, “justice” etc.

Furthermore is digging up all earth, raping rain forest for increasing amount of greed all over and competition in corporate culture. One of the major root of this Climate Change is capitalism, so it is need to understand basic cause of the climate change more than some smooth actions which ask you to do some dull things ( ex, switch off your bulb when you not in the room , some NGOism with aimless actions) which do not affect anything to climate change.

So this post is in solidarity with those blogger who have concern for this planet, the only home to human and other species in the universe.

Blog Action Day 2009

Relevance of Bhagat Singh: A Tribute to birth centenary

nonibora@gmail.com (noni) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 10:58:00 +0000

Then, whatever bitterness the spectacle of the crumbling of an ancient world may have for our personal feelings, we have the right, in point of history, to exclaim with Goethe:
“Sollte these Qual uns quälen Da sie unsre Lust vermehrt, Hat nicht myriaden Seelen Timur’s Herrschaft aufgezehrt?”
[“Should this torture then torment us Since it brings us greater pleasure? Were not through the rule of Timur Souls devoured without measure?”]
[From Goethe’s “An Suleika”, Westöstlicher Diwan]

Marx quoted above in his wrting " British rule in India".

Bhagat Singh

His dreams are still dreamed by youth in South Asia. He was reading Lenin just before he was hanged and said to the police, "hold a minute, now a revolutionary meet an another revolutionary."

Anant Kanhare – hanged on 19.4.1910

Marching fearlessly after his arrest

These kinds of daring/passion are already somehow lost, what we see is salaried patriotism.

The exemplary courage and fearlessness, and total contempt towards the atrocities and punishments of the Britishers shown by revolutionaries, inspired young generation so much that they continued their valiant fight against British rule without any consideration for the safety of their life.

Sanyasi Revolutionary – died on 6.5.1924

Alluri Sitaram known as “Raju”, organized hill men and tribal of Vishakhapattam and Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh in Nov 1920. His main struggle was against govt. officials. Though Alluri was recognized as a religious man, he with the help of his two lieutenants Mallu Dorey and Gautom Dorey known as “Gam Brothers” began to attack police stations. On 23.9.1922 they destroyed an army contingent with two British commanders and 30 sept they totally destroyed one police barrack. In one of the fight against huge british army Alluri died along with his twelve comrades.
The “Gam Brothes” continued their fight against British authorities till their death.

Khudiram Bose - Hanged on 11.8.1908

For their writings against Bengal partition, some editors of Bengal were given harsh punishments by Kingsford, the magistrate of Kolkata. The daring deed of avenging this cruel act was entrusted to Khudiram and Prafull kumar. On 30.4.1908 they made unsuccessful attempt on the Kingsford and killing by mistake two British ladies. Prafull kumar committed suicide when he was encountered by police and Khudiram was executed on Majafferpur jail.

Santhal Sidhu – 1855

There is no such important national monument named after him, nothing goes after his name now, when lot place, forest, sports etc are flooded with name after members of one family, who virtually rule India as dynastic ruler.

Under the leadership of Sidhu thousand of “Santhal” declared their aims to overthrow the rule of East India Company. Around 30 to 50 thousand Santhal killed in the fight against British army.

Maulavi Ahmedshah – Died on 1858

He was courageous leader and brilliant commander. He organized a band of 80000 soldiers and drove away the British army from Ayodha (Yes, same Ayodha where Ram janambhumi conflicts still going on). However a treacherous Raja killed him.

Pics courtesy: Chapekar museum

A conversation with young Trotskyist friend
( He is 21 and interested in having an Ukrainian girl friend in near future. )

Here his input:

(italic text in bracket are my opinion)

On the permanent crisis of capitalism:

However, instead of permanent “crisis” I would prefer the terminology of permanent decay which more correctly brings out the fundamental character of the epoch of imperialism which we are in today. Competition from major branches of economy stand eliminated and substituted by monopoly capital. This is correct insofar as it reveals the predatory nature of monopoly however, competition on the whole has not been eliminated but rather replaced from the preceding free market competition to monopoly competition which brings out a much more aggravated , more reactionary and bloodthirsty nature of capitalism which is predatory in itself.

Imperialist globalization sounds a bit of an oxy moron. Globalization per se cannot be construed as imperialism as we understand it. To consider the same is to accept a Maoist / third-worldist perspective which considers the third world and the imperialist world as a homogenous whole. This is a flawed super-internationalist perspective that ignores altogether the very existence of nation-states which is a stark contradicting reality of the times. For the backward nations themselves I would further like to add, a uniform progress has hardly been reached by globalization and imperialism. For some nations globalization has appeared to bring about immense economic growth through tech transfer and access to international finance markets etc like India and China. For others it has brought about mass pauperization. Latin America and Africa are examples to that effect as well as some South East Asian countries like Indonesia. (I say in general all the same in all third world countries, unequal growth and misery to maximum number of peoples)

Brain-dead free market fundamentalists who have little to offer but they only to make astrologers look good. I cannot however, appreciate the following point as much which appears to avoid mention of the rise of the USA as an imperialist power as well as Japan over the decaying corpse of European imperialism which threw up the most reactionary capitalist institution yet seen in the form of fascism. The nature of the prolonged crisis of capitalism itself is more complex than in presented here which was shown by a crisis of overproduction and subsequent destruction of massive capital in the form of world war I and world war II each succeeding prolonged and painfully exploitative periods of deflation in which holders of credit are favored more than borrowers. Generally speaking it has summarized some of the key economic developments of the post world war reconstruction period which showed flawed efforts at controlling the tremendous financial mess threw up by the preceding periods however an omission has been made on the mention of the usury institution of the petro-dollar by America as a substitution of the gold standard. The succeeding section seems to summarize the character of the crisis of 1973 correctly as a crisis of overproduction wherein the resumption of global trajectory of capitalism was revived. In addition to this I would say this phase marked the end of productive reconstruction of capitalism in which finance capital temporarily played down. The same section should ideally have also included the phase b/w 1945 and 1973 in which there were global mass movements of the proletariat which were put down by the dual combination of fierce oppression and Stalinist bureaucratic treachery. The latter aspect is especially significant for our purposes of exposing the weaknesses of Stalinism.

On the whole a negative omission of the political role of the Stalinist bureaucracy which played on the whole a dirigiste / protectionist role which acted in the best as a stop gap against imperialism and in the worst case as an agency of imperialism to restrain the revolutionary proletarian movements throughout the world. The current condition of the post Stalinist world and we may say that an implicit admission was made therein of the stop-gap like role played by world Stalinism against imperialism.

On World Economy and the Nation State:

The relations between the nation-state and world capitalism, as a whole is presented here as inherent contradiction between an economic system that socializes and a socio-political structure of the nation state which acts as a barrier to the same. Thus we see dialectical relation b/w imperialism and the nation-state. A dialectical relation is exists no doubt. My disagreement with the instant relation lies is in its presentation of the socio-political entity of the nation state as the main harbinger of capitalism. Historically, the emergence of the modern bourgeoisie nation-state appeared with the negation of the old feudal structure which subdued all political relations which would act in a way to unite the people of a given nation into a fragmented economic relation and a quasi centralized monarchy. In the modern nation state we see that it acting as a carrier of bourgeois property relations subdues all pre-existing relations into the bourgeois socio-political and economic framework in a transcendental incorporation. Hence, the gradual transformation from feudal property relations to capitalist also gave rise to the emergence of the nation state. The said form of property arrived not after but before the emergence of modern nation-states. Hence, capitalism itself appeared not with the appearance of the nation-state rather with the appearance of bourgeois property. In time global transitions from pre-capitalist to capitalist forms took place not through neat transitions as they had in Europe but through exploitation and imperialist adventure and which resulted in the imposition of European bourgeois property relations upon the orient and Africa. In other words the progressive national movements which arose in EuropeAsia and Africa and Latin America. Thus the national movements against imperialism have in themselves a progressive content working against the reactionary institution of imperialism. (Common, nation states are no more has its progressive role, Bourgeoisie national just becomes alter ego to British intruder of that period, a role repeated again, taken by Bourgeoisie this time to its own people as Marx said, “Now, the British in East India accepted from their predecessors the department of finance and of war, but they have neglected entirely that of public works. Hence the deterioration of an agriculture which is not capable of being conducted on the British principle of free competition, of laissez-faire and laissez-aller. But in Asiatic empires we are quite accustomed to see agriculture deteriorating under one government and reviving again under some other government. There the harvests correspond to good or bad government, as they change in Europe with good or bad seasons. Thus the oppression and neglect of agriculture, bad as it is, could not be looked upon as the final blow dealt to Indian society by the British intruder, had it not been attended by a circumstance of quite different importance, a novelty in the annals of the whole Asiatic world. However changing the political aspect of India’s past must appear, its social condition has remained unaltered since its remotest antiquity, until the first decennium of the 19th century.”) These struggles further class struggle in a progressive revolutionary direction and thus require our unconditional support. However, national-democratic goals are not an end in themselves and that develops uninterruptedly into the socialist revolution and the fulfillment of socialist proletarian goals. This is the essence of permanent revolution which shows their relevance all the more in every national struggle. They cannot possibly circumscribe national self determination but must begin from that and uninterruptedly mature into a socialist proletarian revolution. It would thus be criminal of us to take a view of nation-states as reactionary institutions of imperialism. The nation-states in themselves in this epoch of imperialism have outlived their progressive character economically and as political institutions. Their use for imperialism is little more than cannon fodder for providing a conducive atmosphere for the development of exploitative and usury relations. along with the movement against reactionary feudalism were realized in full with the realization of the socio-political entity of the nation-state. The same was restrained from arising in the colonized world in

On Vital importance of namely the international character of the socialist revolution:

It would thus naturally make space of an open analysis of international factors and forces which give rise to such a character of the socialist revolution. Quite unfortunately the clauses under the above mentioned section do not show such understanding. You have begun with the claim that the era of “national projects” had ended with the end of the First World War. This claim is so thoroughly detached from the practical experiences of the last century which far from showing the end of national “projects” as you call them has shown the emergence of a strong current of national movements culminating in the end of the colonial system this constitutes an important chapter of class struggles of the proletariat which has been entirely overlooked in this section. I would quote Marx where he said “Whilst the struggles of the proletariat are national in action they are international in essence”. This was the dialectics of proletarian internationalism as espoused by Marx himself. Your position in the aforementioned clause seems to almost thoroughly contradict this position where you call for the “orientation” of the masses flowing in the reverse direction to that of Marx’s when you say it must flow from international to national. While asserting the position of Marx which Trotsky later espoused you seem to conclude that the proletariat which begins its action on the national scale does so from the heightened awareness of an internationalist perspective. The points subsequent to these seem to be generally correct an exposition on the nature of imperialism and capitalism as well as posing the objective need for its revolutionary overthrow. I have in brief underlined my position regarding the history of class struggles the place of the Bolshevik revolution and the inadequacy of the Fifth Internationalist movement. I shall merely reiterate the same point here which seems to imply the formation of a new revolutionary international as a tool for the world working class to unite under a revolutionary international banner. (Ok thats something I agree upon) Even if it does not do so it still raises a question as to where precisely our position lays with respect to the divergent trends of the internationalist Trotskyist movement.

The revolution as it would unfold in India would have requisite characteristics of both the ideal formation of revolutions as they unfold in backward countries generally speaking as well as its own subjective peculiarities. It seems strives to explain our understanding of a socialist proletarian revolution as it would unfold in India. This is a rather large endeavor in itself which would require a thorough and concrete analysis of conditions as they exist in India in relation to the objective conditions as exists the world over. As far as this section is concerned, what is lacking is a thorough analysis of the objective conditions as it exists today in this pre-revolutionary phase of the country and how they would play out in the plane of class struggles as they emerge in its full revolutionary form culminating in the conquest of power by the proletariat. This is one of the basic pre-requisites of the building of a socialist economy in any country not just a backward one like India with a tremendous semi-feudal weight upon itself. However, questions of a fundamental nature relating to our impending political tasks and our view points on the various classes and parties as they stand do not find mention here. The omissions made in the sections apart, the omission of an appraisal of the classes and parties itself make the programme rather weak in this respect. I would suggest a brief statement to this effect be added. You have described the process of revolution in India as a “single process”. I am unable to understand what precisely you intend to explain by describing the revolution as a “single process”. Do you view the political capture of power by the proletariat an exclusively political exercise detached from social class dynamics? you seem to simplify the significance of India to mere geo-political equations without looking into the various economic dimensions of the Indian economy with relation to the world economy as a whole neither does it seem to consider the possible paths through which a revolution would unfold in India (ok, added here as in South Asia) and what impact it would have. The other observations with respect to these points are more or less factual relating to the degree in which the peasantry holds economic importance in India. The peasantry does not comprise 2/3rds of the Indian population rather the population of rural India is at about 56% of the national population and out of which about 70% are peasants. The economic contribution of agriculture to the Indian economy as a whole is marginal relative to its demographic weight. The characterization of the immediate tasks of the proletarian revolution in India is basically correct in the sense that the proletarian regime would be faced with solving the agrarian problem which is of great urgency. Without resolving this all important unfinished task of the bourgeoisie (yes, with some national questions, ethnic questions, dalit questions, caste questions etc.) the proletarian cannot hope to advance into socialism leaving a vast unfinished task of rural reform. On the ambiguity of the phrase “radical transformation of rural relations”, my doubt is that when we are speaking of such a “radical transformation” do we intend to do this keeping the institution of private property through limited land reforms? Or is it our intention to go in for the full nationalization of land? On this point I would like to further ask how pray do we intend to collectivize production in the countryside keeping the restraining institution of private property? The two are mutually contradicting. The correct dialectical understanding in this regard in my opinion is that the nationalization of land while depriving the usury propertied classes in India would provide relief to both marginal and deprived landless rural proletariat. The proletarian regime would at the first instance not merely gain the political alliance of the peasant and urban petty bourgeois class but also continue to hinge on the support of these elastic classes at least in the initial period of transformation of society upon conquering political power. This is more out of necessity than anything else especially in the case of a backward semi-feudal country like ours. the nature of the political party of the proletariat and its tactical functioning pertaining to the political independence of the party in relation to its political tasks, the support of the peasantry in the impending revolution, the central tasks of the proletarian regime in India and ultimately its impact on a world stage. Generally speaking they seem to treat these issues in a somewhat speculative manner rather then being concrete and objective. This is reflected which attempts to draw out a line for the Indian revolution and its impact on the world stage. In this epoch of imperialism where global integration of the economy and the saturation of the productive forces of capitalism have already taken place a revolution in a country of great political and economic significance would undoubtedly start out a climactic chain reaction of revolutionary upheavals not merely restricted to the South Asian region or even the Asian region but all across the world. But even so I would still caution on treading around this point too closely. The question of the later spread of revolution from India to the world is a matter that can only be decided upon the revolutionary conquest of power by the proletariat in India. Such conquest no matter how small the country in which it takes place has a naturally electrifying effect across the globe. In this I would like to draw attention to the impact the revolutionary struggles in Vietnam and Cuba have had. With respect to the “central task of the proletarian regime”, it seems that you have confused the “central task” of the regime with that of the immediate tasks. According to this the central task of the proletariat is not that of building socialism but that of spreading the revolution to the advanced countries! (Wow…spreading it to USA, London,etc, this I doubt as an Indian revolution can’t be a single transformation process somewhere in Earth, there is more possibility of chain events of revolutions in many countries.)You are in effect suggesting that because the proletariat in India is not an advanced proletariat they must resort to servicing the needs of the advanced workers of Europe, East Asia and America for their revolution! Further more I would like to question what precisely is meant here by the word “central task”. Immediately upon capturing power the central task of the Russian proletariat was the abolishing of feudalism and Tsarism. Thereafter, during the event of civil war the central task was the defense of the revolution against forces of counter revolution. And for the purpose of achieving the central task of building socialism in Russia it was evident that there was a necessity of the revolution to spread internationally. More specifically to Germany which was one of the 5 leading imperialist nations in the world as well as an immediate regional power with relation to Russia’s geo-political disposition. Thus, the central task of a revolutionary regime in IndiaIndia and for that matter the whole world is the abolition of capitalism and supplanting it with a socialist economic and socio-political structure. cannot be restricted to merely one goal under ideal conditions but the same must have a dynamic character to it. You seem to be considering the same as a static phenomenon which I hold is completely wrong. But then these doubts emanate from confusions regarding the way “the central tasks” have been described in the section. Looking at the long term the central task of the proletariat in

On Classes in Indian society and their role in the revolutionary struggle:

Earlier one comrade had suggested the formation of a new constituent assembly of workers and peasants as a tool to win them over. It is a good suggestion and presents itself as an aspect of the transitional demand which provides a bridge between the present capitalist structure of society and economy and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. However, this suggestion does not auger well with the specific task of winning over the peasantry. Considering the experience of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia in 1917 and later revolutionary upheavals the task of winning over the peasantry had been intrinsically linked with the transformation of land relations in the countryside. This radical transformation which culminates in the collectivization of production can only be achieved by the full nationalization of land. This for the small peasantry does not amount to its seizure and the forced displacement of the peasant from his land but rather acts to secure his life which is tied in with the produce of the land. This will act only to the detriment of the usury classes of rural India the landholders, moneylenders etc. Thus I forward the demand for the nationalization of land in India as a transitional demand for the revolutionary transformation of productive relations in the countryside and thereafter the gradual and voluntary transformation from individual peasant production to collectivized productive relations. With regard to the nature of the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat the draft appears to give a rather undue significance to the rural aspect of the impending tasks of the revolutionary proletariat. This I say not just for this section but even the foregoing sections. India it must be understood is a far more proletarianized country then Russia was at the time of revolution. Today nearly half of India resides in cities. (I don’t think it is correct statics, not half of India resides in cities) A great swathe of the population has been expropriated from the country side (I’d say brutally starved out by the advance of capitalism) and incorporated into the city as the urban proletariat. Thus, the working class holds a paramount significance in terms of its economic strength more or less at par with the national bourgeoisie. This objective pre-requisite of revolution has already been fulfilled. What is lacking more seriously is the lack of the subjective factor of revolutionary leadership which can transform the proletariat into a fighting force which will in the long run be able to take the reigns of power and complete the revolutionary overthrow of the dictatorship of capitalism. I agree with the characterization of the peasantry which very correctly identifies its political elasticity and general characterless and sheer lack of revolutionary understanding however, this does not diminish the significance of the peasantry as a revolutionary auxiliary to the proletariat in its quest to conquer power from the bourgeoisie. One other point the draft almost completely misses out on is the question of the rural proletariat, the large and middle peasants. They too generally speaking assume the role of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie in a rural setting however; in relation to the small and marginal peasants they are on a more secure economic footing then the semi-pauperized marginal and small farmers. How we intend to reconcile these differences in the countryside and what the role of these classes will be in the revolutionary struggle remains an open question which the draft does not answer in this section.

The subsequent section which deals with the national bourgeoisie is another significant section however, not as significant as the preceding section which deals with the peasantry. Its importance lay in the present day positioning of this national bourgeois in relation to world capitalism as a whole and the characteristics it displays. The instant section is correct in so far as it identifies the failures of the bourgeoisie to accomplish the national democratic tasks that history had set before it however I cannot but disagree with the characterization in the second half of the section. It seems to overlook the structure of the Indian economy and the changes that it underwent since the establishment of the dictatorship of the Indian bourgeois in 1947 and straight away uncritically analyzes the import of foreign capital as one that has reduced India to a complete dependency of the same. The facts belie the assertion that India is a semi-colony in any sense or a neo-colony. ( read INDIA BECOMING A COLONY AGAIN ) The fact is that India today has achieved the heights of capitalist development which has allowed for the emergence of a largely monopolistic economy and thereafter the export of capital and the super exploitation of foreign labor. India as of 2009 exported roughly $69 billion worth of fdi mostly in African Asian and Latin American countries. It has emerged as a lender nation lending loans upto $ 4billion to backward countries which in every way show more semi-colonial characteristics than India does or ever did (e.g Afghanistan). However, India has reached this advanced stage of capitalism which shows itself in the monopolistic structure of the economy more or less divided among giant monopolistic corporations both privately owned as well as state owned. The draft is correct in so far as it identifies the shortcomings of the Stalinists and Maoists in understanding the fact that the national bourgeoisie has expended all its productive potential however it fails to identify the rather myopic perspectives of Maoists and Stalinists who forward a somewhat Menshevik alternative of limited reforms of the Indian economy aimed at a more protectionist structure that had existed earlier in India in the 4 decades that succeeded the attainment of bourgeois independence in 1947. This alternative economic solution which seems to suggest that India is a semi-colony or will become one if it allows in more foreign capital into India completely ignores the dynamics of the modern day economy of India which has emerged imperialist in its own right. The Maoist and Stalinist arguments against the entrance of foreign capital almost suggests as though nationalized industry under the rule of the bourgeois would constitute a ready bulwark against imperialism as a whole! They seem to have either forgotten or deliberately ignored Lenin’s conclusions on imperialism and the nature of the same that he had deduced. Imperialism and by that I mean modern imperialism based on monopoly capital and the dominance of finance capital on industrial capital arises not on the arbitrary will of any monopolist or even as a matter of policy decisions by bourgeois governments but arises as a natural formation of capitalism as a result of the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall which gives rise to monopoly capital and the peculiar manner in which it behaves namely the export of capital to compensate for the inadequacy of mere export of goods. These fundamental characteristics of imperialism exist in India. What is significant in this regard is that India has arrived at this stage without fulfilling some of the rudimentary national bourgeois goals which include the transformation of social relations in the countryside and the abolition of old pre-capitalist relations in the form of the caste system this stark contrast between the advance of capitalism and the existence of pre-capitalist relations provides a perfect case for the proletarian revolution. The fact of India’s emergence into imperialism merely adds more political and economic strength to the otherwise backward Indian proletariat who has yet to taste the levels of advancement which the major imperialist nations of Europe, America and East Asia have achieved. Under conditions of revolution this very nation that in lieu with world imperialism enslaves the workers and peasants of other nation would transform itself and become their liberator! The dismantling of India’s imperialist edifice in fact would amount to the fulfillment of national democratic tasks which history has thrust upon the proletariat of India. This would be done through the undoing of partition and the merger of India Pakistan and Bangladesh into a free union of Socialist republics (once the revolutionary tide has swept into these nations) the proclamation for independence of Kashmir, and the unconditional granting of independence to all oppressed nationalities (yeah..sure). The return of occupied lands of Nepal, and the absolute repudiation of all pending debts owed to India by third world nations and the exit of India from imperialistic bi-lateral organizations like the IMF and the ADB ( in which India is incidentally the 6^th largest stake holder after China ). However, these are based on observations only regarding the present status of India in the greater scheme of world imperialism. These positions are by no means absolute and by no means static and would be subject to regular updating considering the world situation and the conditions as existing in the nation. I am not trying to provide a cookbook solution to the issues revolving around the imperialist tendencies of India nor am I saying that these would automatically resolve all standing issues which have their own complexities. (I understand it… pal) However, the general direction of the revolutionary struggle of the Indian proletarian would be incomplete without taking into consideration aspects of anti-imperialism within India i.e anti-‘Indian imperialism’. The proletarian must be mobilized to act against its own nation in the interest of the world proletarian whenever its bourgeois acts in an imperialist / oppressive way. This is the essence of proletarian international solidarity. This is vital importance for the impending revolution. And then there is the question of political positions with regard to aggressions upon India and aggressions made by India on other nations. Considering India’s imperialist dynamic it becomes outright betrayal to let the sons of workers and peasants in the army march into the enemies ranks for the sake of imperialist designs. My stance with regard to an Indo-Pak war is to call for unconditional revolutionary defeat of the Indian bourgeois in the instance that it is the aggressor and to call for the same even in case of an invasion by Pakistan upon India but simultaneously calling for the transformation of the revolutionary transformation of the imperialist war on Pakistan’s end into an anti-imperialist civil war aimed at its comprador bourgeois which takes its orders from Washington rather than Islamabad and is by now an absolute slave of IMF loans which seem to flow into their nation at a unbelievable pace each year. This in my view is keeping in line with both the strategy of revolutionary defeatism as well as the essence of proletarian internationalism. This is in brief my views on the nature of the national bourgeois and from this point stems my disagreement with the draft’s position on the same. The possibility (or rather the impossibility) of forming united fronts with bourgeois parties I feel the same has been improperly treated and leaves a huge grey area. The question of united fronts is not so simple. In the last 80 years of the last century we have had several conflicting examples of united fronts some ending in brilliant success and some ending in dismal failure. In India it is the latter we have seen with regard to the narrow electoral alliance between the Congress and the CPIM and the latter’s eventual liquidation as a significant political force in the country. On the other side of the spectrum we have a most successful example of its application in the second Chinese revolution which leads to the overthrow of the semi-fascist bourgeois KMT from China then there is also the united front of the Bolsheviks and Kerenesky against the Cossack hordes of Kornilov. The united front as I view it differs from that of a popular front in that is allows for the party of the proletariat to organize independent of its ally while fighting against a common enemy. This position is summarized by the beautiful dialectic of “March separately but strike together”. This dialectic must be borne in mind when speaking of any kind of united front with the bourgeois or anyone else. You completely ignored it and gone in with a somewhat ultra leftist position as was taken by the German KPD with regard to posing a united front with the SPD against Hitler. Had the United front formed there would have been a chance of defeating Hitler and arresting the rise of Fascism in Germany at a very critical juncture when they had arisen as a mass force. From these above significant examples (which I may add are by no means exhaustive) one can construe some fundamental pre-conditions for calling a united front into existence. If I were to summarize it would be thus:

1. That there must be an urgent threat against the proletariat in which the forces of the proletarian may not be sufficient to counter the same.

2. That the ally in a united front must pose as an alternative that would be better than the extreme reaction, this would threaten even rudimentary gains made by it. (E.g. Kerensky in relation to Kornilov was a lesser evil since the latter would reinstate the Czar and defeat even the limited freedoms of bourgeois democracy)

3. The front is only a temporary formation which dissolves once its central aims are fulfilled. (E.g the defeat of the imperialist aggression of Japan upon China)

The above summary is by no means any exhaustive text of the united front but a brief explanation of the political tactic. Keeping the above in mind I conclude that the position to be taken in this regard should take into considerations the conditions present in the country that can justify the necessary evil of allying with the political formations of the class enemy. United fronts cannot be called into existence in a sui generis manner as had been done by the CPIM so many times in the Indian context under various pretexts ignoring completely the class character of the political parties or the class forces playing out in India at any given time. I would like to further add that while condemning the much abused policies of Stalinists who it is needless to say understand next to nothing about the tactics of the united front, you have not made so much as a whisper on the much abused policies of several revisionist Trotskyist groups who practice the most condemnable compromises under the pretext of the now proven failure of entryism. Time and again this flawed policy which so completely compromises the organizational independence of the proletarian party has lead to the complete disintegration and in worse cases dissolution of political parties. We have seen the same happen in the case of the BLPI whose historical role in class struggles in India has been almost completely omitted. The instant section which deals with the national bourgeois also omits the role played by reactionary fascist parties and where they stand in the political spectrum in India and how their presence will affect the course of class struggles. The question of fascist and semi-fascist parties is all the more important while considering the question of the united front with liberal bourgeois parties.

One of important political question is our position on Stalinist and Maoist parties in India. Ideologically hardly any difference exists in the core ideas of the Stalinist and Maoist, root them in “the common soil of stagism”. However, that’s where most if not all the similarities end. When we speak of Stalinist formations in India we generally refer to the parliamentary cretins of the CPIM and CPI who despite their bureaucratic formation and organization are rooted in the working class nonetheless but while we speak of the Maoists generally it is pertaining to those parties who base themselves largely on the peasantry and more specifically to the Naxalites who have reduced revolutionary class struggle to the military exercise of protracted guerilla struggle (“quick and dead” policies). I am neither against armed tactics nor even against guerilla tactics generally speaking (more I think as left RAMBO actions). I am however stringently opposed to the universalization of tactics and raising tactical questions to the plane of strategy. Both the Stalinists and Maoists are guilty of making this blunder. The same has not found mention in the instant section. I would like to point out the factual incorrectness of the assertion that the Stalinist “two stages” theory developed in accordance to their world view. The advent of the bourgeois in central and Eastern Europe took place at a belated period owing to the failure of revolutions in Prussia in 1848 and the incompleteness of the Italian revolution. In both cases the unfulfilled tasks of the bourgeois revolution and the belated entry of the bourgeois into the era of capitalism gave rise to the phenomenon of fascism which found a fertile ground in the semi pauperized petty bourgeois in these countries. This of course deals more with the question of fascism and less with Stalinism and Maoism and its role in India. A question on the Stalinists and Maoist formations in the country which I would raise which is related to the question of the united front is whether in the instance of a threat of an urgent nature we would ally with a Stalinist or Maoist formation to counter say a fascist force who are an imminent threat to the working class. In the aforementioned point which deals with the question of formation of united fronts seems to indicate this where you say that we only propose united fronts with working class parties. The Stalinists and Maoists have bureaucratic and heavily centralized political formations which stratify the leadership of these political formations from the class that they base themselves on. This however must not be confused as being the complete detachment from the class. The Stalinists and Maoist parties are essentially workers parties however they behave in a way that acts ultimately to the detriment of the class they represent.

On trade unions:

Its significant both as a practical question as well as making for an interesting topic for theoretical deliberations. The question of trade unions has been a bone of contention for many a revolutionary as is evident from the various polemical texts from the foremost revolutionaries of the last century. Lenin, Trotsky and Rosa generally speaking tend to take a rather pessimistic view on this question while Marx and Engels took a relatively optimistic view of the same. This is the general understanding. The LRCI document on trade unions which I have attached along with this mail in my opinion is a pragmatic take on the question of the trade unions which is most consistent with the correct revolutionary outlooks on the same as espoused by Trotsky, Marx and Lenin. The same pragmatic position finds an expression in the transitional programme wherein Trotsky admits the role of the trade union as an elemental organizational need of the proletarian before the attainment of higher forms of organization like Factory Committees and Worker’s Soviets. We cannot circumscribe the elemental organizations of the working class and reach directly at these higher forms of organization which are the products of a very advanced stage of the class struggle. We must keep in mind that the revolutionary class isn’t revolutionary at all times. It may not always be readily willing to form such advanced forms of organizations of dual power which challenge bourgeois rule to its very bare essence. We have to work with the existing tools that the workers posses in their struggle against the dictatorship of capital. However, Trotsky as well as Lenin had very correctly criticized the approaches of the Anarchists towards the question of the Trade Unions as well as identified the negative tendencies of trade unions. The Anarchist approach hitherto has been to form isolated revolutionary trade unions counter posed to the more bureaucratized apparatuses. This amounts to nothing more than an ultra leftist Puritanism and a pinprick on capitalism. Lenin in Left Wing Communism had underlined the correct approach towards reactionary trade unions (who form the majority of India’s unionized workforce) wherein he mentioned the radical intervention of revolutionary workers into the unions as a means of challenging the rigid trade union bureaucracies. Only through such interventions can the real ailment plaguing unions can be cured namely that of bureaucratic control. The fight against the union apparatuses is in essence a fight against their leadership and not the union itself which presents the least bad possibility to the working class between having a union which may provide some redress and not having any organization in the absence of which they do not find any means of expressing their grievance or having any organized apparatus to fight the bourgeoisie with. However, notwithstanding these aforesaid positions, in the instant section you seem to have gone with the pessimistic line of the ICFI which claims that Trade unions have only a negative role in the class struggles of the proletariat which make them repressive tools of the bourgeois under conditions of highly centralized monopoly structure against the period of progressive “free market” capitalism. The assertion is only partially true. Whilst it is true that monopoly capitalism has restrained the freedom of formation and action of unions to an unbelievable extent we cannot write off unions entirely. The present disposition of trade unions as subordinated to the control of the capitalist class in the workplace only makes the case for formation of higher more democratic and independent organizations of the workers and a revolutionary struggle against the bureaucratic apparatuses of the unions which serve the interests of the capital first and foremost as a consequence of its commitment to defending its own privileged position in relation to the large majority of workers. The other assertion that the era of “free market” capitalism represented the era of the progressive fighting unions is rather suspect. Judging by the fragmented nature of the Chartist movement in England and its limited reformist perspective I wouldn’t say that the vitality of the union movement was any greater in the era of “free market” laissez faire capitalism then it is now. Rather if we consider the tremendous socialization of production and the formation of unions as mass organizations as was the case with the German union movement the era of imperialism showed the most progressive trend hitherto seen in the Trade Union movement wherein the mass unison of the proletariat has been achieved under the organization of the Trade Union. However, the same phenomenon of concentration of capital and integration of finance capital and industrial capital in the era of imperialism produces a dialectal phenomenon wherein the socialization and organization of labor is counter posed to the formation of restrictive bureaucratic apparatuses in the Trade Union as a consequence of monopoly capitalism. I’ll conclude by stating my position with regard to the question of Trade unions thus: Recognizing that they are but an elemental need of the working class and simultaneously admitting their degeneration as bureaucratic apparatuses under the de facto control of the bourgeois for the purposes of containing the proletarian at the workplace I conclude that the fight against unionism is in essence a fight against its bureaucratic leadership and not the union itself nor against unionism per se. We call for the overthrow of the bureaucratic leadership which bring the union under the constraints imposed by the bourgeois and strive to achieve the fullest independence of the union from the clutches of the bourgeois capitalists. This can only be done through the conscious intervention of the revolutionary party of the proletariat.

On National struggles and self determination:

I would like to draw your attention to the comments made in the earlier mail relating to the treatment of nationalism. The general treatment of nationalism as observed earlier seems to have had their culmination which held that the nation-state had become entirely invalid and that all national movements for self-determination are necessarily redundant. How then do we reconcile the movements for self-determination where there are actually oppressed nationalities? Is not national self-determination a national democratic goal left unfinished by the bourgeois whose completion must be made at the hands of the proletarian regime? I leave it at this question.

On “Identity” movements:

Such movements are in essence reactionary currents which only harm international and national working class solidarity and attempt to divide them into rival “communities” or “identities”. It thus has the effect of supplanting class consciousness with a reactionary communal consciousness. The worker would cease to identify himself as a worker and his main enemy as the class enemy and identify the communal enemy or the rival community as his main enemy. This only serves the interests of the bourgeois who from time to time resort to such reactionary currents in the event they are unable to control the militant rebellious proletariat. It thus inevitably becomes a tool of oppression of the bourgeois.

me: Ok ok....but we seems see all virtual revolutionary, laptop revolutionary, keybord revolutionary....where is field practice..
he said: you are.. a skeptic..

I lit my cigarette

me: look at time line, 1857 - first indian uprising, birth of nations, nationalities, just after almost hundread year 1947 - power shifted to national bourgeise...then what do you think about 2040/50...
he said: ha ha ha ha ha...comon don't go with mathamatics.....social history does not go with mathamatics

me: lets we find a bar now...

My Romanticism - 1

nonibora@gmail.com (noni) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 10:42:00 +0000

One day I will go to Munich, Germany to attend this beer festival and drink..drink....drink......

Hofbräu beer tent on the second day of the Oktoberfest beer festival on September 20, 2009. Munich, Germany

Visitors rest against a wall during Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany. Me also lying there after attending the fest.

More pics of Oktoberfest here

Another one of the people's times and RUMI'S voice

nonibora@gmail.com (noni) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 07:35:00 +0000

More at The Real News

Zelaya's return to Honduras met with force

Ousted president makes surprise return to the capital, coup government responds with vicious crackdown

Eighty-six days after he was summarily kidnapped and forced out of the country by the military, and on his third attempt to return, ousted Honduran president Manuel Zelaya appeared at the Brazilian embassy in the capital city of Tegucigalpa on Monday morning. Hondurans flooded into the streets to support his return, to which the coup regime responded by instituting a curfew. When thousands of Hondurans refused to adhere to return to their homes, the regime resorted to brute force.

Produced by Jesse Freeston.

A piece of poetry by Rumi:

get up! do not sleep! we have come close.
we have already heard the dog and the rooster
of that neighborhood.
by god they were signs from the village of the beloved:
all the flowers that we grazed on.
get up! do not sleep! it is daytime.
the morning star has risen and we see the footprints.
it was night and the whole caravan
was locked up in a Caravanserai;
get up! for we have rid ourselves of the dark and of the prison.

Landscape on canvas - medium oil

nonibora@gmail.com (noni) — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 05:40:00 +0000

Due to swine flu pandemic, city was almost shut for one week, so two full days stay at home I able to produce two landscape. (And realize I should more frequent on paint)

Landscapes are originated from the regions of north east India.

Ponyo: Hayao Miyazaki's new gift

nonibora@gmail.com (noni) — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 08:23:00 +0000

After animation masterpieces such as“Howl's Moving Castle”, “Spirited Away” etc, Ponyo is the new animated feature from master film maker Hayao Miyazaki. Some time there are things that may be related to race and I sense it as some things are can be done only by particular race (don’t take it wrong). The movies created by Hayao Miyazaki are so fresh, so Japanese and completes with distinctively unique in style, and at the same time is universal. The creation of “Ponyo” can be only done by a Japanese.

Although creations of Moebius , Walt Disney etc. other master creator stands in different arena and also different in style and tradition.

This old man is symbol of purity. Beauty and treatments in his films are seems like visuals and resonance of some Haiku words. Of course also results of extreme hard work, focus and integrity.

Ponyo is a story about a goldfish named Ponyo who becomes friends with a young boy and decides to live among the humans. However, once Ponyo makes the decision it creates a crack in an ancient magic spell that puts the world order in danger.

That enormous pile of paper actually is even bigger and radiates with the devotion of Studio Ghibli's animators. About 320,000 pictures were drawn till the completion of the film and even though Ponyo's length is only 1 hour and 40 minutes, it used by far the most pictures a Ghibli movie ever needed.

Ponyo (100 min 54 sec): 170,653 pictures used

John Lasseter: Can you talk a little bit about how you develop your stories?

Hayao Miyazaki: My process is thinking, thinking, thinking. Thinking about my stories for a long time. If you have a better way, please let me know. (Comic-Con)

I do all my work by storyboard. As I draw the storyboards, the world gets more and more complex. As a result, my north, south, east, west kind of shift and go offbase, but it seems like my staff, as well as the audience, doesn't quite realize this has happened. (Press conference)

HAYAO MIYAZAKI TALKS PONYO!

Here is an conversation with Hayao Miyazaki about animation

Kelts wondered why in films like Nausicaä and even in Ponyo there's a great tsunami that threatens to destroy the setting?

Miyazaki responded that people tend to think they are separate from nature; but, he doesn't believe people are separate from nature. Nature is included within people. The nature that's inside Ponyo becomes the tsunami, which is the way she reaches the town where the boy Sosuke lives. The tsunami doesn't destroy the town or hurt the people there; it's more a magical tsunami that cleanses the town and the people who live there. Miyazaki finds hope in the power of nature.

Kelts asked Miyazaki to lay out for audiences accustomed to CGI animation what the value is of hand-drawn animation?

Miyazaki responded that-since drawing by hand can be sheer drudgery-they considered the option that it might be easier to use computer graphics. They hired a young person to explore computer drawing; but, soon realized they could draw faster by hand than by computer. For Miyazaki, it's a matter of thinking that animators should be more casual about drawing animation. He thinks an animator is more free, drawing by hand. When a character is feeling downtrodden, an animator can draw the character thin and small, and when a character is feeling full of confidence, they can draw his head bigger and show his feelings. It's difficult for computers to intuit human feelings.

TSE2009 at Tawang - Arunachal Pradesh

nonibora@gmail.com (noni) — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 08:20:00 +0000

My ill luck that I was not able to been places where TSE2009 occurred fully , even in my place visibility was 90%, but we missed the phenomenon due to raining.

JVP (Jyoti Vidya Parishantha) was on TSE2009 mission at Arunachal Pradesh, here some pics taken by Parimal Dave. Parimal is an amateur astronomer.

Part of his message:

Hi ......

We arrived back just yesterday night. We missed the Corona but could see the eclipse though the clouds.

.....Parimal

Solar Halo - 22 degree halo as observed from Tawang town

Eclipse - partial phase

Eclipse - Before full Eclipse

JVP team at Tawang Monastery - At work

Parimal, busy with his Telescope

Sky during Totality and Tawang Town under darkness

End of eclipse

Rainbow - on the way to Sela Pass - (Arunachal Pradesh)

Sela Pass - (Arunachal Pradesh) - It was rainy - no snow - one of the highest motorable roads of the world

Heavy rains at Sela - very windy - less oxygen

The falls at Jang -No words

Flowers paradise at Sela pass

Original Master - An interview with Sergei Parajanov

nonibora@gmail.com (noni) — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 10:41:00 +0000

Sergei Parajanov was a Soviet Armenian film director and artist, widely regarded as one of the 20th century's greatest masters of cinema.

On the above

nonibora@gmail.com (noni) — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 05:41:00 +0000

40 years ago some earthlings landed on the moon. Those earthlings landed on a place which was out of this world. That said symbolically something huge and its mean lot for human philosophically, although it was a scientific milestone in human history.

I used to read Flash Gordon comics in my teens and those were amazing reading time with wonderful graphics of outer world, space travel, cosmic perspective, time wrap, space adventure etc. This picture (taken from the Moon in Apollo Mission) is one of my favorite pictures. It depicts a perspective which one now very much real, not like a fantasy adventure of Flash Gordon. The perspective which is altered our outlook as seeing things from earth perspective in opposite way. This picture let you allow sit outside of this world and you can participate in Einstein’s vision/experiment imaginatively and this picture and perspective let you allow to falling in love with 3rd planet of Sun Solar System called earth.

“Gatatri Amavasya” was celebrated yesterday, from this day onward people of some part of India use to not eat Non-Veg/Alcohol for complete one month as this month from Indian calendar treated as sacred month traditionally.

Yes, I have got an invitation from a friend and I had some good eating/drinking time and spent a complete gambling night (teen patti/three cards, lose some money as end result).

The Carnival of Socialism

nonibora@gmail.com (noni) — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 05:01:00 +0000

Compiled by Renegade Eye

The Carnival of Socialism # 40 is here. At it's description profile it says, "The Carnival of Socialism attempts to bring a fortnightly round up of everything that's going on in the global socialist blogosphere." Hopfully this carnival, will introduce a few new blogs for your consideration, at other carnivals as well.

Kasama caught my interest with a post entitled Mao Zedong: Should Reactionaries Have Free Speech?.

American Left History should be a regular stop on your blog reading. This blog centers on American history and culture, from a socialist view. Markin's love of history and art shine through.

The Third Estate managed to interview political icon in the UK Tony Benn.

Left in East Dakota notes Obama's base being disillusioned with him.

Worker's Press criritiques Obama on healthcare.

River's Edge notes that the UK anti-terror units, only find rightist plots, "it is invariably more by luck than by design".

Vengeance and Fashion has an interesting post about a schoolteacher who was abused by his students and snapped. There are Facebook groups supporting both sides. It is unusual for socialists to write about such a subject so close to home.

The Trotsky Museum has a blog of its own.

Querida Celia Hart Is a Spanish blog that honors Celia Hart Santamaria, the Cuban revolutionary who died last year in an auto accident related to the Cuban Hurricane. Celia opened doors for socialist democracy in Cuba.

From Turkey Mehmet Çagatay writes about Michael Jackson.

The Red Mantis tackles Iranian unrest, and asks who leads and where is it going?

Histomat replies to a BBC documentary about Leon Trotsky, based on the book The Exile and Murder of Leon Trotsky. Histomat writes, "Just as Stalin smeared the Jewish Trotsky as an agent of Hitler, so Richard Overy describes Trotsky's supporters as a 'motley crew', while Trotsky himself suffered from a 'blindness to any sense of humanity' and apparently 'never had any scruples about killing those in the way of the Marxist utopia'. It is a pity that Overy has seemingly not made time to read Trotsky's Their Morals and Ours where he answered exactly Overy's critique about 'moral scruple' over seventy years ago:"

Socialism or Barbarism reviews the Irish economy, in a two part series.

Celticfire writes about a Portland transit riders union.

The Daily Maybe discovered the Trotskyist soft drink Red Kola.

Untouchable Earth writes from India about the will of the Iranian people. This blog is oriented to socialism, art and astronomy.

Madam Miaow gives us good analysis of the Uighur uprising in China. At my local coffeeshop Madam Miaow's blog is blocked by the computer's filtering software. What's wrong with Anna Mae Wong?

A Reader's Word from India, takes on the myth of micro finance.

The next Carnival will be August 02, 2009 at Red Wombat

Renegade Eye

TSE2009 - Live Workshop in SURAT

nonibora@gmail.com (noni) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 08:07:00 +0000

Total Solar Eclipse 2009 Path

This year, on morning of 22nd of July, the umbral shadow of the moon will be passing over the rich heritage of our country. The Greatest eclipse of the century is just few days away from us and is tailor-made for India. It crosses the entire breadth of India starting from the westernmost state of Gujarat to the easternmost state, Arunachal Pradesh. The path of totality passes over 13 Indian states including the small area called the Chicken's Neck in West Bengal. Not only this, partial eclipse is visible throughout the country.

Total Solar Eclipse 2009 Program by Amateur Astronomers Association of Surat- AAAS

International Live Workshop on Total Solar Eclipse 2009
Total Solar Eclipse 22 July 2009
Live Webcast from SURAT !!!

Dear All,
AAAS is organizing a special event on "International Live Workshop on Total Solar Eclipse 2009" on 21-22 July 2009 collaboratively with Aatmiya Vidyamandir School at Surat. Eminent scientists ,from PRL and ISRO, and Astronomy experts are going to join the event.

Venue: Aatmiya Vidya Mandir- An International Residential School, Koli-Parthana Road, Taluka- Kamrej, District- Surat 394180

Date: 21-22 July 2009 (Tuesday-Wednesday)

Registration Fee: Rs.200/- Including Food, Accommodation and Kit

Those who have their own Telescopes/Binoculars/Solar Filters are requested to bring it with them. The campus and place is safe for all those Astronomy Items. Rest Assured!

Regards,
AAAS, Surat

Tentative Schedule:

Day- 1 : 21st July, 2009
11:00 - 11:30......Opening Ceremony
11:30 - 12:15......Keynote Address
12:15 - 1:00........Lecture-1
01:00 - 02:00......Lunch
02:00 - 03:00......Lecture-2
03:00 - 04:00......Lecture-3
04:00 - 04:15......Tea Break
04:15 - 05:00......Lecture-4
05:00 - 07:00......Group Activities
07:00 -08:00.......Dinner
09:00 - 10:00......Star Party

Day- 2: 22nd July, 2009
05:30 - 08:30.....Eclipse Viewing Programme
09:00 - 09:30.....Data Collection
09:30 - 10:00.....Breakfast
10:00..................Valedictory Function

For more information and Registration/Application visit here

Although now all type of rubbish, superstitious programs are started broadcasting on various mainstream media TV, ignore all these rubbish talk, discussion and if possible just witness this natural celestial phenomenon.

Only you need to take some guidance/precaution from expert while observing TSE2009

The missing poetry in Terminator -Salvation

nonibora@gmail.com (noni) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 12:15:00 +0000

What missing in Terminator -Salvation is musical structure and the poetry that genuinely presents in Terminator 2: Judgment Day .

Again it is the influence of the Terminator 2: Judgment Day for what usually we draw in toward any terminator related films and always wish to see some visual magic, impressive presentation that we witnessed in T2. But Terminator -Salvation is just nothing but a disappointment, only some hopeless visual.

Hollywood usually always like to show fire powers, blasting, big blowing up, big fights as a core presentation in most of Hollywood productions. Sometimes it seems like exhibitions of macho USA against other countries. Diverse war equipments, variety guns etc. are frequents accessory and components of most of Hollywood films from the beginning. Latest Terminator -Salvation is just another supreme example of this show business and an example of how much it can be more dreadful. This movie depicts only some big fire show, big blowing up from start to end with great technical achievements. It is your eyes and ears that make you busy during watching of this movie, not the brain, not your feelings, intellects.

We have seen some fire shows, big blowing up in T2, yet T2 able to captured, created some great filmic scene and got some cine achievement, above all T2 is sensual in nature. The T2 remains in the true film tradition always and may be it is real film genius of James Cameroon that T2 is became a one of the true great action film in film history.

The T2 as a whole is a beautiful poetry start to end, composed in a wonderful musical structure or musical notes. Visual of T2 are polite and lyrical. Transition of shot selection is also smooth and not jerky. All scenes dominate its central intent, not allowing too much exhibitionism. We have witnessed amazing cinematography as it varied with color, tone and motif. The film was edited frame by frame, scenes are cut and joined where it needed in proper time, and not one extra single frame is added or deleted. Back ground score (including theme music) also clutched the movie in to its soul and body of the film.

After he pushed the limit of computer-generated special effects in The Abyss, director James Cameron turned his sequel to Terminator1 into a well-written, action-packed showcase with more advanced special effects. Terminator 2: Judgment Day is a justifiable sequel: a story of leather-clad android that arrives from the future to protect a rebellious teenager and future leader from being killed by the indomitable T-1000 robot, whose liquid-metal design makes him apparently unstoppable and posing as a single minded lethal killer.

Though from the same director, and much of the same cast and writers, "Terminator 2" is a vastly different movie from the 1984 original. There is strong underlying message about the value of human life, to the extent that even the emotionless Terminator appears to learn sensibility as we heard in the last scene when T-800 said, "Now I know why you cry".

Sarah, is a patient at a mental institution, sentenced there after she was caught trying to blow up the Cyberdyne System, the computer company building – the company that will eventually build the SkyNet computer that responsible for starting war against human. Her son John has become a cynical teenager, who is raised by foster parents.

The two Terminators come together on John, both searching for and finding him at the mall. We also see that that Schwarzenegger’s character is here to protect John, while other one for kill.

James Cameron conceived a total package, almost two decades later, the film still looks great. The effects of the morphing terminator were so visually impressive, very much mathematical. Logically, the time-travel elements are very complex, it causes lot of ontological paradoxes and it is mingling with the idea of proper cause-and-effect and confusing.

Apart from pioneering FX work, other element that works also at best and effective is acting of the cast. One of it is Linda Hamilton's performance. She quite effectively plays the scratched rebel who's driven to do anything, no matter how terrible, to stop the war.

For all of its real entertainment value, Terminator 2 just feels in so many ways. But it may look better than its predecessor and recent sequels, but it's not a complete better film, and in many ways it's weak also. Its cautionary message falls flat as the terminator, supposedly the dispassionate voice of pure, hard algorithmic data, to make the claim "It's in your people nature to destroy yourselves." But, actual evolutionary biologists say opposite way, that human nature tends towards cooperation and compassion.

James Cameron films trapped in attempts at intellectual social commentary and in treatment mostly concentrating on the shit blowing up, big blasting, big savaging, with big technical howdy. Because, it is general believes in Hollywood that, the big shit blowing up looks really cool.

But still T2 is amazing in its structure, its poetical presence. James does not all the time allow technique to dominate his film, it his poetic visual imagery and understanding of musical notes and it application mostly controls his shots.

He able to placed himself as an artist first then we see another James Cameron with his managerial and technical entities.

Big Blow business but in control manner

Human vs Cyborg, human uncomfortable and tend to contradict with belief, choice and decision.

Machine and Human, relative adaptability, anxiety of human

Another human face in the film, this time a kid , more innocent, edgy, focus or balance point of the film

Another human face, a doctor, cynical perspective of the film, may be perspective of director too.

Another human face, cry out in nuclear destruction, trapped, powerlessness

.........................................
Feeling nostalgic…ok here is a scene link from T2.

Terminator 2 Judgment Day Intro (Theme Song)

This is title scene of the film T2. We can see here how aesthetically blended the entire shot in a musical rhythm. The elements of park are shown in slow motion with wonderful composition while flames are in normal motion, which create a definitive lyrical blend captured through smooth camera tracking. James Cameron used flames also in lyrical manner such as it seems like some dancing flames, layer by layers it appears and goes. Sometime white and dark gray black patches of flame appears in moving around right to left, bottom to top and vice-versa.

And last but not least, added treasure in this scene is wonderful back ground score by Brad Fiedel.

They gone, two great music maestro of our time

nonibora@gmail.com (noni) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 10:34:00 +0000





























Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, acknowledged as one of the world's greatest musicians, passed away peacefully at his home in San Anselmo, California, on June 18 after a prolonged illness.

Ustad Ali Akbar Khan once said that “music is the only thing that you can share with a million people and you don't lose, you gain”.

Here a beautiful piece of music by Ustad Ali Akbar Khan - Raag Madhuwanti

AAK-Madhuvanti-Liv...

Hosted by eSnips





We are the World







































Emi has started a mission that carries the massage of late Micheal Jackson.



[it is interesting and little unreasonable that why black MJ wanted to become a white MJ,  is this all for inferiority and social dilemma, his dislike of big nose, black skin and his likeness of Caucasian appeal, for this effort we some friends were irritated with him, actually we more to music of dire straits, pink floyd, scorpions etc, in our growing up, we usually avoided pop genre, but we listen and we bound to listen songs like “we are the world”, “heal the world”, “black and white” etc, all these song with so strong social massage and somehow reflects MJ’s anger to all injustice, social prejudice. Later part of his life he converted to Islam (according to news) and this also remind us another great black American Mohammad Ali and cause of this conversion was racial discrimination. Mother of his children is stripped off from parental right to her son and daughter in exchange of money which is also very much ironical.

But the end of the day it is his music that wins, that win heart of people, through his music he able to possess in the heart of countless people around the world, it is his music which is tirelessly propagating a true human spirit “we are the world”.]

*Start Copy Here*

You do not have to be tagged to play along. The game is simple and so are the rules.

1. Copy from *Start Copy Here* through *End Copy Here*

2. Add your site(s) to the list. Just be sure to post at each site you add.

3. Tag as many bloggers as you like so the list keeps on growing.

4. Let me know your blog’s name and url by leaving me a comment HERE. I will add you to the master list.

5. Come back and copy the master list back to your site, often. This process will allow late-comers to get as much link benefit as the first ones in.

We Are The World Bloggers Master List:

1. Emila Yusof 2. The Other Side of Emila 3. Mariuca 4. Mariuca’s Perfume Gallery 5. Meow Diaries 11. Unlisted One 7. Spiff, the Spaceman 8. My Sweet Escape 9. Nota Nurul 10. Life’s Tapestry 11. Spontaneous Insignificancy 12. LadyJava 13. Miss Igorota 14. AnnyBoo 15. Yoon See 16. Jia’s Life 17. Nessa’s Mumblings 18. Also Mommy 19. The Walk of Life 20.Pretty Firefly 21.untouchable EARTH

*End Copy Here*

So, Start moon walking and join the mission.....

Inner will of Iranian people

nonibora@gmail.com (noni) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 08:27:00 +0000

As everybody, every moviegoer know about Iranian films and its influences in many part of the world. Domination of Iranian movies is an usual sight in almost all film festival around the world.

Me too as a big fan of Iranian movies, watching them with uttermost interest, specially movies of Abbas Kairostami, Jafaor Panahi, Mahsin Makhmalbaf, Majid Majidi and many more. All these are part of a generation of filmmakers in the Iranian New Wave.

The Iranian government has refused to permit the screening some of their films in their native Iran and banned their some of movies. It is after math of Islamic revolution in Iran that created few path for new explorations, bringing rich historical Sufi influences in their films and new innovative method of film making that perused by most of Iranian film makers today. Instead of luxury and sophistication of big studios, without technical significance or technical extravaganza Iranian directors looks in to more in social realism and find some wonderful way to making a film.

Very interesting way Iranian movies are experimenting with new styles that are varied with different layers of life of many commoner of Iran. Critics such as Jonathan Rosenbaum argues that disagreements and controversy over Kiarostami's movies have arisen from his style of filmmaking because what in Hollywood would count as essential narrative information is frequently missing from Kiarostami's films.

Apart from Kiarostami other his contemporary also almost began to consciously avoid and ignore what usually called as a popular narrative structure of film making. They bring out and explored those idioms and inner voices of Iranian people that hidden and suppressed under Iranian authorities and far right regime. And the best part of it they embraced a method what is called as a social realism. They used actors from ordinary life, their actor talked in bressonian way. They shoot film on real location, real situation. They are filming a scene in a documentary style but still remains far away from an objective docu-drama. What is unveiled through their film is spirit of Iranian people, inner will of Iranian people, soul of Iranian culture, above all reverberation of an universal appeal.

What we have witnessed now, the volcano already erupted in Iran in the form of mass uprising, sign of it already captured on many Iranian new wave films.

Here is a disturbing video, in perspective of a film its a tragic example of ultra realism which really gone too far, but captured something raw truth in the name of information and objective use of a technical tool .

A woman gunned down during protests in Iran

This video may not be suitable for minors.

More about Neda Agha-Soltan, the woman who killed in gun shot here

You know us; Support us!

nonibora@gmail.com (noni) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 08:35:00 +0000

People of the world!

We are your neighbours, friends, lovers, colleagues, and comrades.

You know us.

We have lived together and fought together – whether for labour rights, against Sharia, for civil rights, asylum rights, against executions and stonings, against cultural relativism, against faith schools and apostasy laws, for freedom of expression, rationalism and secularism, against political Islam and US militarism…

Today, our revolution – the one we have been preparing and waiting for - has begun in Iran.

We need you to support it full force.

The battle you see unfolding on the streets of Iran is not about the farce of an election, though that is what the western media wants you to think. Everyone knows that elections in Iran are anything but. In fact, people are taking advantage of the intensified infighting between the regime’s factions to raise their own demands and they – like the rest of us - want the Islamic regime to go.

And it has to go.

Thirty years of medievalism and brutality is enough.

If nothing else, one thing is clear.

The mass movement that is going to bring this regime in Iran to its knees and break the back of the political Islamic movement internationally has begun.

Your support and solidarity will strengthen this revolutionary movement. Come out and condemn the regime and its brutality; exert pressure on western governments to politically isolate the regime. Join us in front of the Islamic regime’s embassies across the globe to call for them to be shut down. Call for the prosecution of all those involved in the killings, for the immediate release of all detainees and political prisoners, unconditional freedoms, including for organisation, strike and protest, an end to compulsory veiling, a living wage and an end to sexual apartheid. Send your messages to the protesting people of Iran to be read on our 24 hour New Channel TV station. Support us and our party, the Worker-communist Party of Iran.

Mark our words; like racial apartheid in the former South Africa, a regime of sexual apartheid can and will be relegated to the dustbins of history.

The future is ours.

Maryam Namazie
Mina Ahadi
Fariborz Pooya
Bahram Soroush
Mahin Alipour
Afsaneh Vahdat
Abe Asadi
Farshad Husseini
Farideh Arman
Karim Shahmohammadi
Fereshteh Moradi

For regular updates on people’s protests in Iran, click here.

Email your messages to the people of Iran to Maryam Namazie at wpibriefing@gmail.com.

Addicted Time Traveler

nonibora@gmail.com (noni) — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 09:59:00 +0000

Great marijuana times
Rivers flowing through
Mist Mountain
Perusing lucrative narcotics,
The course is redefined
He lost somewhere
By swallowing pills,

Accessing in Andromeda Galaxy
Holographic love of a mother
Digital kiss of a lover

Flavor of time wrap
Its naked influences
Having inside
Narrow roads and tall grasses

Emerged inside an old jungle
Walking beside
The bamboo trees, owl and rhinoceros
Wild Orchids, white flowers
Still smells in another time dimension

Running on 1857
Travel back to 1947
So yet another 100 years
Then leaping directly inside
3rd Indian INTIFADA

In the shore of ocean
Kinematics of smiles
Children, splashing Walrus
Playing hide and seek

Hurrah to a
Regular time traveler
Addicted time traveler
Regular addicted time traveler

Tiny Katerina: A good movie

nonibora@gmail.com (noni) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 04:15:00 +0000

Tiny Katerina : Director: Ivan Golovnev
Produced In: 2004

Synopsis: Northwestern Siberia, Russia. Small Khanty girl Katerina observes and understands the outer world. She learns the voices of people, animals and other beings. Gradually she approaches the unknown and the unknown comes closer - not far from Katerina's nomad camp an oil rig appears.

A Joycean treatment, a soulful journey constructed without any sophistications/luxury of studio movie making. Far away from all kind of gimmickry which associated with consumerist films. Again apart from all monster movies here oil rig itself a huge monster. A sad disassociation with so-called development and whole mechanical development posed here as invader. A monster emerges through market systems, who act with capitalist values and devouring all morality, earthly sensitivity.
Yet Tiny Katrina reminds us lot about whole basic human rawness, all necessary upbringing values which are collected through out the time long ago. She reminds us how we bonded with nature, part of it inseparable way and nature as guiding light, healing power.
But displacement of her family, terrible state of her family tells same story of million around the worlds.
Director’s use of sound is marvelous. The film consists with lot of beautiful moments around Katerina, her interaction, observation and absorption with earth, one of it we see her mumbling to a reindeer.
Simple in making or in presentation yet an intensified good movie with strong message.

90 years since the founding of the Communist International

nonibora@gmail.com (noni) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 09:44:00 +0000

90 years since the founding of the Communist International By Mick Brooks

90 years ago, he was right: Celebrating the 1919 Eclipse at Príncipe

nonibora@gmail.com (noni) — Fri, 29 May 2009 07:14:00 +0000

It was this day, 90 years ago, when Einstein was proven right and became world famous. A revolution was happened in science history of humankind and evevrything change in our perspective toward universe. A new theory emerged and established itself strongly.

In a world torn apart by first world war, it was hailed as a ray of hope that "a new theory of the universe, the brain-child of a German Jew working in Berlin, had been confirmed by an English Quaker on a small African island" (J. P. McEnvoy).

Einstein's new theory predicted that light does not necessarily travel in straight lines, but can be deflected when it passes something as heavy as the sun. This gravitational deflection of light by the sun's mass provided the first experimental verification of Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity.

This International Year of Astronomy special project will celebrate the expedition's 90th anniversary: to explain the historic significance of Príncipe, and the way in which gravitational lensing is shaping contemporary scientific understanding of the Universe.

Celebrating the 1919 Eclipse at Príncipe

Off the record: World largest democracy

nonibora@gmail.com (noni) — Thu, 21 May 2009 10:41:00 +0000

World largest democracy is practicing parliamentary election now and we have seen all kind of dramas before the election09. After and before election, main stream media seems very much engaged and busy with extreme mathematics, calculation, live shows and most of political parties are indulging in bourgeoisie practice of opportunism, burglary, live motion animation such as famous Indian show Rope climbing/ Snake Charmers and obviously Monkey dance.

The United Progressive Alliance manages to win emphatically in the 15th Lok Sabha elections. National Democratic Alliance to sit on opposition headed by the Bharatiya Janata Party, while the left suffers its worst defeat in many years and they lost because of their anti people boomerang policy in West Bengal and Kerala.

The result as we seen is equivalent to what can be called as wining of Neoliberal economy. So next 5 years seized for free run by INC (National Congress) and most of liberal reforms are suppose to be on the forefront again which are blocked by left front in last governance.

India is ready for….some patch work/bandage policy such as NREGA (National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) etc and on the other hand more privatization, full implementation of all Neoliberal economic policies, nourishment of bourgeoisie elite class.

Cartoon Sourse

Here an article written by Neeraj Jain published on lokayat on the eve of a protest rally demanding “free Vinayak sen”

India is at war with its own people
by Neeraj Jain

Ever since1991, when the Indian government decided to accept the conditions of the World Bank-IMF and begin the globalization of the Indian economy, remove all restrictions on inflows of foreign capital and goods and remove all restrictions on profiteering, the people of India have become second grade citizens, or non citizens, in their own land. Helots, as the Roman citizens used to call the others.

The country is now being run solely for the profit maximisation of giant corporations, both Indian and foreign. Laws are being modified to facilitate their plunder. All welfare services, including education, health, electricity, transport, the public distribution system designed to provide food to the poor at affordable rates, even drinking water facilities, are being taken over by these corporations and transformed into instruments of naked profiteering.

The corporations want to take control of the agricultural lands, forests, rivers, mountains, coastal lands. So that they can commandeer the resources – bauxite, iron ore, coal, water... Or set up special economic zones, infrastructural projects… Or build resorts, golf courses, villas, etc. Overnight, the people living on these lands and forests since times immemorial have become encroachers, and have been told to shoo off.

According to the Amnesty International Report of 2008, people are being displaced in every state in the country, including West Bengal, Orissa, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry, Maharashtra and Meghalaya. How many are being displaced? No one knows. The Government collects volumes of statistics every year, on every aspect of the economy. But it does not have a figure for the number of people that have been, or are being, displaced by big projects or sacrificed in other ways at the altars of 'National Progress'.

What happens to these displaced people? How do they earn a living? No one knows. The government of India does not have a National Rehabilitation Policy. According to the Land Acquisition Act of 1894 (amended in 1984), the Government is not legally bound to provide a displaced person anything but a cash compensation. Most tribal people and small farmers have as much use for money as a Supreme Court judge has for a bag of fertilizer. In any case, most adivasis do not have formal title to their lands and therefore need not be given compensation.

Many millions are being displaced. Where do they go? No one knows. They don’t exist anymore.

A great majority of the displaced eventually land up in the slums existing in the peripheries of our great cities. To live and work in the most degrading, dehumanizing conditions. True, they are not being sent to the gas chambers, but their quality of life is not better than Hitler’s concentration camps.

Still their nightmare does not end. They continue to be uprooted even from their hellish hovels so that big corporations can build huge residential complexes, shopping plazas, multiplexes, airports…

●●●

The people are obviously not willing to be displaced without a fight. And so the Indian rulers are using every possible weapon in their war on the people: friendly courts, trigger friendly police, most draconian laws, corporate friendly media…

Ever since the beginnings of globalization, the higher Indian judiciary has taken a nakedly pro-corporate stance. They have passed judgements permitting displacement and thereby destruction of livelihoods of lakhs of people, in violation of their own previous judgements wherein they had declared the right to food, education, shelter as being fundamental rights. In the Narmada Bachao Andolan case, the courts allowed the project to go ahead, despite the fact that the mandatory environmental impact studies had not been done. In the Tehri Dam case, even though the government’s own expert committee had pointed out serious irregularities in the environmental clearance given to the project, the Supreme Court gave the go-ahead to the construction of the Dam. Likewise, the Supreme Court gave permission to Vedanta to mine bauxite from the Niyamgiri hills in Orissa, despite the fact that its own environmental panel had accused Vedanta of violating environmental guidelines and urged that the environmental clearance given to the project be cancelled. The project will displace thousands of adivasis living in the area and destroy the pristine environment of the region. Four years ago, in a absolutely shocking judgement, the Delhi High Court, at the behest of the Delhi government, ordered the demolition of slums in Yamuna Pushta, affecting nearly one lakh people - the government wanted the land cleared so that five star hotels and shopping malls could be built there. In an even more blatant display of pro-rich bias, the courts have ordered demolition of slum in cities without even issuing notices to the people whose homes were being demolished, simply on the grounds that they were polluting the environment! Likewise, orders were passed for removal of hawkers from the streets of many cities. Orders were also passed to remove cycle rickshaw pullers from Delhi roads, just so that the rich can drive their luxury cars comfortably on what are supposed to be public roads and on which everyone should have equal rights!

The police are behaving like the private armies of the corporate elites. To evict people from their homes, they are resorting to indiscriminate arrests, brutal lathicharges, custodial torture and in many cases firings with the deliberate intention of killing the agitating people. The Amnesty International Report of 2008 mentioned above alleges that in several states where big projects are being implemented resulting in displacement and destruction of people’s livelihoods, unlawful methods are increasingly used to deal with such protests, and impunity for abuses is widespread.

In Nandigram (West Bengal), where people refused to give their fertile lands for a special economic zone, the police and private militias owing allegiance to the ruling CPM brutally attacked the people, and indulged in unlawful killings, abductions, sexual assault on women; in open collusion with the attackers, the authorities denied access and information to the media and human rights organizations, harassed human rights defenders and even denied justice to the victims. Just a few months ago, in December 2008, police opened fire on a peaceful protest by 7000 adivasis in Dumka, Jharkhand, murdering at least 3 people. The adivasis were protesting against the setting up of a 1000 MW coal based power plant in their area by CESC, an RPG group company. In Jagatsinghpur, Orissa, the state has deployed thousands of armed police to brutally crush the local people who have been fighting for the last three years to prevent their lands, resources and livelihoods from being taken over for a mega steel plant and port by POSCO, a South Korean giant. Not very far from there, in Kalinganagar, on January 2, 2006 police gunned down 13 people in a bid to terrorise and subjugate tribals protesting against acquisition of their lands for a massive steel plant being set up by the Tatas. Five corpses returned after post-mortem were mutilated; one dead woman’s breast was ripped off, and a young boy (also killed in the firing) had his genitals mutilated. All had their palms chopped off. Since September 2007, government officials and police have virtually unleashed a war on the people of two mandals in East Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh an effort to forcibly acquire 4000 acres of land for the Kakinada SEZ. Nearer home, in 2004-05, the police and local administration brutally demolished homes of more than 4 lakh slum dwellers; probably another million more will have to suffer the same fate; the state government is seeking to acquire their lands for huge infrastructural projects and transform Mumbai into Shanghai. Likewise, most of the city’s 300,000 hawkers are being evicted.

●●●

In the French Canadian wars of the 1770s, Lord Amherst exterminated most of Canada's Native Indians by offering them blankets infested with the small-pox virus. Being a democracy, India’s rulers have to find less obvious ways of achieving similar ends. The people of the country are waging heroic struggles to prevent the destruction of their livelihoods by the corporations-bureaucracy-police nexus. In many places, like in Nandigram-Singur-Kakinada-Jagatsinghpur, they have been able to keep these bloodhounds at bay. And so, India’s ruling classes are passing the most draconian laws to enable the police to attack people’s struggles even more ferociously.

Taking advantage of the shock created by the Mumbai terror attacks of November 2008, the government rushed through the Parliament amendments to the already draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act on December 15, 2008. These amendments make this law as harsh as the infamous Prevention of Terrorism Act (Pota). Pota had been repealed by the UPA government just four years ago following widespread protests over its misuse – more than 98% of the people charge sheeted under this Act were found to be innocent and were acquitted. Now the very same government has surreptitiously brought it back.

Under the new law, the police have been given the powers to search, arrest, and keep in police custody and in jail persons on mere subjective suspicion – even if there is no evidence of their being involved in any terrorist acts. Even if no chargesheet is filed, those arrested can be kept in jail for six months. The bail provisions have been made more stringent. It’s an ingenious law – the government can now use it to stifle criticism, arrest adivasis protesting against displacement, clamp down on people fighting to save their livelihoods, incarcerate Muslims, Christians and Dalits. Pota, which had precisely the same provisions, was used in the very same way. By the time the thousands arrested under Pota were acquitted and released, their reputation, health, the economic conditions of their families, their very lives, had been ruined. The purpose had been served.

The new law extends the maximum period of police custody from 15 to 30 days. The police now have more time to hang people upside down and beat them up, burn them with cigarette butts, put iron rods up their anuses. Even without the harsher provisions of this new law, police torture was rampant in India. According to the national director of the European Union supported National Project on Preventing Torture in India (NPPT), “In the name of investigating crimes, extracting confessions and punishing perpetrators, torture is inflicted not only upon the accused, but also upon bona fide petitioners, complainants and informants. Torture in the form of custodial death; custodial rape; threats; psychological humiliation; and deprivation of food, water, sleep and medical attention is rampant in our country.” An extrapolation of the NPPT data suggests that a staggering 18 lakh people in India fall victim to police torture every year!

In Jammu and Kashmir and many North Eastern States – particularly Nagaland, Manipur and Tripura – the government has imposed an even more murderous act, the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. It’s a harsher version of the act the British used to quell the 1942 Quit Indian Movement. This act allows not just officers but even Junior Commissioned Officers and Non-Commissioned Officers of the army to use force on (and even kill) any person on suspicion of disturbing public order or carrying a weapon. Yes, they can kill anyone with impunity, without fear of persecution! Nobody who lives in India can harbour any illusions about what that leads to. The documentation of instances of torture, disappearances, custodial deaths, rape and gang-rape (by security forces) is enough to make your blood run cold. Despite all this, most middle class Indians and even the international community still believes India to be a democracy. It’s a fantastic public relations coup!!

●●●

The country’s political parties are waging a war on the people of the country to hand over the country’s wealth – lands, rivers, forests, coasts, minerals, mountains – to a handful of giant foreign and Indian corporations.

A tiny minority, the country’s elites, are seeking to seize control of the nation’s wealth – lands, rivers, forests, coasts, minerals, mountains. And so, they are waging a war on the people of the country. Simultaneously, they are also driving the country into the cauldron of fascism.

Just to recall recent well known incidences: in Gujarat in 2002, the fascist thugs organised and led mobs 10,000-15,000 strong that butchered 2000 Muslims, stripped, gang-raped and then burnt alive Muslim women, looted and burnt shops, homes and mosques, and drove out more than one hundred and fifty thousand Muslims from their homes; In Orissa, fundamentalist goons instigated and led mobs of poor tribals into attacking poor Christian Dalits in Orissa – the orgy of lootings, burnings, murder began in August 2008 and continued for nearly two and a half months, left more than 40 dead, and led to forty thousand people fleeing their homes with nothing but the clothes on their backs; in Karnataka, fascist goons vandalised churches, attacked women in pubs, declared a ban on girls and boys from different communities intermingling with each other, and they did all this with impunity – their leaders openly held press conferences and issued threatening press statements.

The country’s anti-terror laws are not applied on the fascist leaders of these murderous mobs. Not only do they roam free openly spouting their poisonous venom in society, they are allowed to contest elections and sit in Parliament despite openly violating the Constitution of India, and are feted by the country’s top corporate houses for their leadership qualities. Because it is in the interests of India’s ruling classes to promote communal divisions and push the country towards fascism; all major political parties are willing to play the communal card to a greater or lesser extent. In the words of Arundhati Roy, “The Government is conducting an extraordinary dual orchestra. While one arm is busy selling the nation's assets in chunks (to the foreign and Indian corporate houses), the other, to divert attention, is arranging a baying, howling, deranged chorus of cultural nationalism.” The hatred preached by the fundamentalists, together with the frustration of relentless impoverishment caused by corporate globalization, acts as fuel for violence – of the poor against the poor. It’s perfect for the elites, they are happy with the poor killing the poor, because the poor are not challenging the power structure of society, the robbery of the country’s wealth by the rich.

●●●

So, then, what do we do? How do we, the ordinary people, fight this increasingly violent, brutal state?

The hope lies in the numerous people’s struggles taking place all over the country fighting the dispossession and violation of fundamental rights caused by our current model of “Development”. It is true that at present, they are scattered, small, isolated, have little money and resources, and are fighting an uphill battle. Nevertheless, they are magnificent. With time, many of them will grow, build links with each other, and become a force to challenge the corporations-politicians-bureaucracy-criminals ruling the country.

Friends, we also need to begin our own small initiatives, come together and build our own small movements to challenge the loot and plunder of the ruling elites, and gradually link up with the people’s struggles taking place all over the country. There is no need to be despondent about the power of the ruling classes and our own small numbers and weaknesses. The biggest and tallest trees all ultimately sprout from the Earth.

To begin, we must find the courage to dream. To dream of building a new and beautiful society, where there would be justice, freedom and dignity for all. The same dream which inspired Dr. Binayak Sen to set up health services for the tribals in Chattisgarh where none existed, the same dream which gave him the courage to speak out against the violations of their human rights by the state government and corporate houses, the same dream which has kept his spirit alive despite his incarceration for the past two years on absolutely fictitious grounds. The same dream which inspires Irom Sharmila to continue her hunger strike for nine years now, demanding the repeal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act… Come, let us begin, by sharing their dreams…

Eyes on the Skies: 400 Years Of Telescopic Discovery

nonibora@gmail.com (noni) — Fri, 08 May 2009 10:19:00 +0000

EYES ON THE SKIES - The International Astronomical Union's book and movie celebrating the 400th anniversary of the telescope.

THE INVENTION OF THE TELESCOPE has been by far the most revolutionary development in the history of astronomy. For thousands of years, astronomers had to rely on their eyes in unravelling the mysteries of the Universe. The telescope revealed an embarrassment of astronomical riches, and led to a dramatic increase of knowledge about the wider world we live in.

The "Eyes on the Skies" movie explores the many facets of the telescope - the historical development, the scientific importance, the technological breakthroughs, and also the people behind this ground-breaking invention, their triumphs and failures. It is presented by Dr. J, aka Dr. Joe Liske, a professional astronomer from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and host of the Hubblecast video podcast.

"Eyes on the Skies" is an official movie for the International Year of Astronomy 2009 and the International Astronomical Union, produced by ESA/Hubble.

The ability to control fire was a major change in the habits of early humans. Making fire to generate heat and light made it possible for people to cook food, increasing the variety and availability of nutrients.

Most authorities regard the wheel as one of the oldest and most important inventions and the wheel has also become a strong cultural and spiritual metaphor for a cycle or regular repetition.

Telescope is also not less in authenticity and noteworthy then these above two major inventions in human history. Now Telescope already becomes eye of human to look beyond. The invention of the telescope has been by far one of the most revolutionary developments in the history of astronomy.

Two Oil Works on Canvas

nonibora@gmail.com (noni) — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 04:17:00 +0000

Click on pic for enlarge view

ENYA: YEAR ONE

medium: oil on canvas

No manipulation done afterward on taken digital camera shot, yet some original color , depth and brush strokes missed out here.