<b>U.S. capital welcome but not its hegemonies, says Buddhadeb</b> <!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Lists achievements during his five-year term as Chief Minister
<i>Finance Minister Asim Dasgupta visiting U.S. to woo investments
State to set up Information Commission soon
Focus on primary and higher education, health and roads </i>
Kolkata: On a day when Left protests marked the commencement of Indo-U.S. military exercises, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said the State wanted U.S. capital, knowledge and its universities but it was against its weaponry.
Addressing a press conference at the Calcutta Press Club on Monday to mark his five years in office, Mr. Bhattacharjee said: "We will oppose U.S. hegemonies in military might. To demonstrate is our basic right, but we want U.S. investments."
.................<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->THE FIFTH COLUM LEFT DECLARES WAR ON AMRITA UNIVERSITY
<b>The Marxist Party controlled Students Federation of India has filed a law suit against Amrita University</b> demanding investigation and to withdraw Deemed University status awarded by government of India.
Amrita University was established at a time we are faced with sweeping changes in education, lifestyle, crumbling value systems and excessive consumerism in our society. <b>Amma has established schools, colleges, and professional institutions based an educational system encompassing values of truth, love, righteousness, conduct, peace and spirituality.</b> With these core elements for a holistic education, Amrita University has imparted excellent education and Samskaras, which provides a balanced and harmonious growth of the human mind, thoughts, behavior and attitudes. Amrita University is acclaimed as one of the best institutions for higher education and several foreign universities have collaborated with Amrita University in several projects. Some of the best brains are serving Ammaâs institutions of higher learning.
Today, Amma is the highest form of a teacher-a Jagat Guru, imparting true knowledge to the world. She is imparting education for life and living-creating the best professionals in all fields with professional expertise, the mental strength and the heart to serve the world. From Taiwan to Togo, from Peru to Philippines, Nepal to Netherlands, Amma is leading people from ignorance to wisdom with value based education.
Now enemies of our value based education are working around the clock to discredit, create obstacles, and destroy Amrita University. <b>The Communist party and its subservient organization SFI working as fifth column in India has filed a lawsuit in an attempt to move into action to defeat Amrita University</b> in its attempt to provide excellent value based education. While professionals around the world are praising Amrita University, the Fifth Column leftist in India is preparing to begin its own war against the esteemed university. <b>The plan is to cause major disruptions-illegal in nature, misinform the public, and manipulate students, and discredit Amrita University. </b>These nefarious actions will tie up educational institutions in courts and create a golden opportunity for domestic forces aligned with anti national foreign agents to subvert Amrita colleges and professional institutions.. The Fifth Column left is also planning student agitation against Amrita University.
The Marxist anarchists have established a nexus with fundamentalist organizations financed from abroad. They have been posing challenges ever since Amma has established value based educational system.
The attempt to sabotage Amrita University is not an exercise in freedom but to take away our freedom to impart value based education. It should be a wake-up call to all Hindus around the world to protect our educational, cultural and spiritual institutions. Since these saboteurs and Fifth Column left have not been deterred from their deadly ambitions, Hindus should join together and act decisively to protect our sacred institutions from the perpetrators. The anarchist ideology the Fifth Column leftist promote is dogmatism, immorality and radical fundamentalism, which, will tear apart our society, destroy our education and obscure our nationâs greatness. What the communist bosses are doing now is to bring Hindus to its knees. They are masters of deceit. Every citizen has a duty to learn about the menace that threaten our future, our scared tradition and the future of our children. It is a wake up call for Hindus to unite, expose these paradigm conspirators andwork together for system transformation.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Interesting link posted by Kautilya on BR..
http://www.mises.org/story/1952
Last year there were a series of articles on Pioneer about how Naxals are building bridges from AP to Nepal. The naxals from AP, Orissa, MP, Bihar, and Nepal have united and how the UnPrinciplesAlliance struck a deal with them and was going soft. It is now backfiring on Indians. Instead of going into 21st century, we are heading to 19th century. These lawless human garbage traitors whose brains are too small to work hard and use all the facilities given by India, the SCUMs are on a spree of murder and destruction. They are colluding with Islamic terrorists from B'desh, Pakistan, ISI, and terrorists from Assam. It does not matter to them even if those SCUMS kill Indians as long as they provide weapons to them.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/artic...294842.cms
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--> NEW DELHI: A noisy protest by Left students against Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) here on Monday sparked fierce clashes among rival groups and with police, leaving several people shaken and injured.
The trouble erupted as soon as Manmohan Singh reached an open-air theatre in the JNU campus to inaugurate a statue of first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, with members of the All India Students Association (AISA) shouting slogans against the government's economic and defence policies.
The AISA, which controls the presidency of the JNU Students Union, is affiliated to the Communist Party of India-Marxist Leninist (CPI-ML).
Slogans of "Manmohan Singh, Hai! Hai!" and "Manmohan Singh, go back!" rent the air. Some students waved black flags while a few others took off their black shirts and began to wave them furiously.
As policemen tried to control the situation, the sloganeering became more vocal, resulting first in fisticuffs with the police and then in violent clashes.
As the policemen began thrashing some of the protestors, activists of the Congress-affiliated National Students Union of India (NSUI) also began attacking the AISA members. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
and then this..
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Â The prime minister also said he enjoyed coming to the university, saying it was a nurturing ground for intellectuals... <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--emo&:blink:--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/blink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='blink.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Ok and this..
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--> Four students were taken into police custody. After the prime minister left, <b>men and women</b> supporters of AISA and NSUI clashed again, hitting one another, necessitating further police intervention. Some students were seen bleeding from their noses. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--emo&:felx--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/flex.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='flex.gif' /><!--endemo-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--> "Throw the Naxalites out of JNU!"Â <!--emo&:guitar--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/guitar.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='guitar.gif' /><!--endemo-->Â shouted some of the NSUI members, referring to AISA. AISA had been planning the protests for days.
The Students Federation of India (SFI), which is affiliated to the Communist Party of India-Marxist and has a strong presence among JNU students, also joined the demonstration. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-rajesh_g+Nov 14 2005, 10:41 AM-->QUOTE(rajesh_g @ Nov 14 2005, 10:41 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Maoists storm Jehanabad jail, kill 2</b> http://us.rediff.com/news/2005/nov/14bihar...?q=tp&file=.htm
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â District Magistrate Rana Avadhesh told a press conference here that three bodies, believed to be of kidnapped men of the 'Ranvir Sena', a banned militia of upper caste landowners locked in a feud with the Naxalites for over a decade, were recovered from the railway track near the jail.â<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The issue is coming across as an upper caste VS a lower caste fight.
There is some truth in this.
What is a deeper truth, is this is a leftover, from the old Zamindari/ feudal system, that existed in Rajastan, Andhra, Eastern U.P
In the Punjab and Western U.P, the Zamindari system never really took hold, and when abolished, first in the Punjab under Sir Chotu Ram, and then in U.P and Rajastan by Charan Singh and others, the farmers (or Kisans) got back the land they farmed, which had been hitherto given to a Zamindar. The zamindar was also known as a Thakur, or a Talukdar.
His function was collect revenue; pay a certain portion of the Government of the day( whether Islamic , Hindu or British). He, the Zamindar, had full rights over the rest of the revenue, the land, the people themselves. The people had no rights, not even to build a âpuccaâ house, or to cut a tree, or even dig a well. If the married they had to pay a cess, if they had a baby they had to pay a cess, if they died, and wanted their children to succeed to same dreary fields, and the daily grind, they had to pay a cess. They were taxed up to 98% of their income, and were reduced to total servitude.
The government of the day, first the islamics, and later the British, were only interested in the revenue, and confirmed by law, the status of the Zamindar, and thereby his total stranglehold on the now serfs and peasants.
To add to this, these Zamindars were largely absentee landlords. Their passion was âspending moneyâ and as a consequence they were largely in debt to the local moneylender or Mahajan.
Under this combination of the Zamindar, the moneylender, and the Administration, the poor peasant/serf, his family, his women, and children were ground into a demeaning existence- to a nothing.
Not many know that slavery was legal in Bihar and Bengal until Independence. This slavery has only continued.
This then a large part of the root cause for the social tensions that have gripped Eastern U. P., Bihar, Andhra.
Where Zamindari was effectively abolished, as in Rajasthan, -we see an increasingly productive society.
In Punjab, Haryana, and Western U.P., the Zamindari never really took hold, as these areas were largely republican and had fought off the would be Zamindars
People who are under economic and social stress will turn to other outlets. If society will not provide them with an outlet for their social and economic dreams then rebellions will occur.
Indian Naxalism is just that.
90% of India is still rural, and that is where most of our people live, and draw their day to day survival income.
Yet, sadly, what we have come to see, is not any progress in land reforms in these troubled areas, but rather confirmation of Zamindari rights to the new Zamindars- the politicians and bureaucrats of the day.
To compound it, it is portrayed as a caste war.
Ravi Chaudhary
Killing innocent people are not answer, neither commie "revolution". Its crime against people and it should be punished according to law.
Interesting and old, yet informative article that wraps a context...
Not sure if I agree with the concluding observations of the article (granted, this was from 1994), but what do resident experts think?
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The road to serfdom - fifty years on. (economist F.A. von Hayek's lasting influence)
History Today; 5/1/1994; Cockett, Richard
* March 10th, 1994, saw the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of F.A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, which can lay claim to being the single most influential political book published in Britain during this century. Indeed, The Road to Serfdom exercised as profound an influence upon subsequent generations of intellectuals and politicians as did The Communists Manifesto, written almost a century before in 1848. Much as Marx and Engels succeeded in reorientating European politics along class lines, so Hayek succeeded in establishing a new fault line in political discourse, between the freedom of the individual and the power of the state -- the rhetoric that has informed all political debate in this country since the 1970s. Hayek's book was addressed to |The Socialists of all Parties', and if Socialism as a living doctrine is now confined to the fringes of politics, this is largely due to the intellectual campaign waged against what Hayek would have preferred to call |collectivism' from 1944 until his death in 1992.
The origins of The Road to Serfdom are to be found in an obscure academic debate of the 1930s, the |Economic Calculation' debate, which ranged the surviving free-market economists in Britain -- expertly marshalled by Lionel Robbins at the London School of Economics -- against those who advocated a greater role for the state in the economic affairs of the nation. The most prominent intellectual exponent of the latter view was, of course, John Maynard Keynes, and the battle between the economic liberals and the Keynesians during the 1930s in the correspondence columns and articles of the academic journals was later to dominate the political battle between all the major parties after the war.
The immediate background to the |Economic Calculation' debate was the Great Depression, and the two sides originally developed their arguments over the appropriate role of the state in the economy as a direct response to the government's search for a solution to the problems of the depression. They first locked horns on the Economic Advisory Council set up by Ramsay MacDonald in 1929 -- a sort of inter-war equivalent of today's |Seven Wise Men' appointed by Norman Lamont to advise the Treasury. However, the economic liberals and the Keynesians could trace their intellectual antecedents further back than 1929. The Keynesians could claim a lineal descent from the Fabians of the 1880s, who had first advanced practical collectivist measures for the redistribution of wealth by the state guarantee of a |national minimum for all', whereas the economic liberals owed their intellectual inspiration not only to the original |laissez-faire' economists such as Adam Smith, but also to the Austrian economist, Ludwig Von Mises, the first great modern critic of Socialism.
Von Mises' book Socialism, published in 1922, was the first coherent intellectual attack on Socialism, collectivism and planning -- which Von Mises lumped all together. In his famous chapter on |Economic Calculation' he demonstrated that without a price mechanism in a socialist state, |All economic change ... would involve operations the value of which could neither be predicted beforehand nor ascertained after they had taken place. Everything would be a leap in the dark'. <b>Hayek's life work would be to refine the work of Von Mises, his teacher in Vienna, and, more importantly, make this work accessible to a wider public. </b>
Hayek arrived in Britain from Vienna in 1931 to take up a position as Tooke Professor of Economic Science and Statistics at the LSE, a post he held until leaving for the United States in 1951. Lionel Robbins was the primary sponsor of his academic career in Britain, and the Robbins/Hayek partnership was to be as important to the development of economics in this country as that other Anglo-Austrian partnership of Russell and Wittgenstein was to be in the field of philosophy. (Hayek was also Wittgenstein's second cousin).
At the heart of the debate between Robbins, Hayek and the economic liberals on the one hand, and the Keynesians on the other during the 1930s, was the issue of how to sustain the Western model of liberal democracy in the face of the depression and unemployment that had plagued Britain since 1918. <b>The two camps agreed on ends, but disagreed profoundly on means.</b> To Keynes, liberal democracy could only be saved from going the way of Russia, Germany or Italy by the state taking on a greater burden of economic management, moving towards |Liberal Socialism', which he defined as a system |... where we can act as an organised community for common purposes and to promote economic and social justice, whilst respecting and protecting the individual -- his freedom of choice, his faith, his mind and its expression, his enterprise and his property'. Keynes' system of macro-economics and demand-management was to be characterised as the |middle-way', supposedly combining the best of the Soviet type system of planning with the traditional virtues of classical liberalism. This blend came to be known as |Butskellism' in the 1950s.
To Hayek, on the other hand, |Liberal Socialism' was a contribution in terms and the |middle way' a dangerous fallacy. <b>Taking his cue from Von Mises, Hayek argued that any increase in state intervention and planning to maintain high rates of employment would not preserve liberal democracy, but ultimately destroy it, because without the operation of a price mechanism and a free-market the government would have to actively intervene at such a detailed (or |micro') level in the economy that the freedom of the individual to plan his or her own economic and social life would eventually be completely eroded -- the road to serfdom. </b>The side effect of the Keynesian utopia would be runaway inflation, as governments were forced to print more money to compensate for the lack of a price mechanism as state industries became uncompetitive and unproductive. In order to try and control such inflation governments would have to impinge on the economic life of each individual in exactly the way that Keynes had sought to avoid -- the |wages and prices' freezes and |solemn and binding' TUC declarations of the 1960s and 1970s.
This was the kernel of the debate between Hayek and Keynes. Unfortunately for Hayek, the Second World War provided a huge impetus towards the collectivist and planned economy envisaged by the Keynesians, and much of the collectivist economic wisdom of the time was embodied in government reports such as the Beveridge Report of 1942 and the White Paper on Employment of 1944. It was for this reason that Hayek set out to write The Road to Serfdom in the autumn of 1942, as a warning as to where such legislation might lead.
Whereas Keynes, the brilliant self-publicist and fluent journalist, had already attracted a large intellectual and political following by the start of the war, principally because his ideas seemed to offer comparatively painless remedies to hard-pressed governments, the arguments of the economic liberals had gone largely by default.
The Road to Serfdom was written to correct the balance; Hayek called it his |war duty' to speak out. It was thus a self-consciously polemical book, summarising the arguments of the economic liberals in the Economic Calculation debate in clear and provocative language. In his aim to bring their arguments against collectivism to the centre of the political debate, Hayek succeeded beyond even his own expectations.
In the midst of wartime Britain, busily planning for the |New Jerusalem', the book came as a bolt from the blue, <b>with its attack on the safe assumptions of the planners and its startling assertion that socialism, as in Germany, would only lead to National Socialism -- Nazism.</b> In particular, it gave the Conservative Party its theme for the 1945 general election. Churchill's celebrated reference to a socialist Gestapo in his opening election broadcast was but a garbled interpretation of Hayek's main thesis, as re-cycled to Churchill by the Party Chairman, Ralph Assheton. Conservative Central Office was so convinced of the propaganda value of the book that they were prepared to sacrifice a good proportion of their precious paper ration to rush out an abridged version of it for the election campaign.
Thus, at the moment of apotheosis for socialism, with Labour's landslide victory in the general election, Hayek had raised the flag of economic liberalism for future generations to rally round. The book's influence on certain Conservatives and Liberals was profound, and early readers of The Road to Serfdom included the young Somerville chemistry student Margaret Roberts. More importantly, Hayek's book gave the economic liberals a rallying point for future international co-operation that would develop a positive programme of policies such as privatisation and Trades Union Reform.
<b>Out of the publicity surrounding the publication of The Road to Serfdom Hayek brought together many of the leading anti-Keynesian economists in the world for the first conference of the Mont Pelerin Society in Switzerland in 1947. Their number included not only Von Mises and other members of the |Austrian School', but also several prominent British economists, the founders of the highly influential German school of the |Social Market Economy and the young Chicago professor Milton Friedman. </b>From 1947 to the 1980s the Mont Pelerin Society acted as a Comintern of the free-market, attracting to its conferences all the most important politicians and intellectuals interested in economic liberalism, including, from this country, Enoch Powell, Sir Geoffrey Howe, John Biffen and numerous academics, journalists and political activists.
As a direct result of reading the Readers Digest edition of The Road to Serfdom, Antony Fisher founded the Institute of Economic Affairs in London, which was to be the most important fount of free-market ideas in post-war Britain, and vitally important to the growth of the |New Right' in the 1980s. Fisher was to go on to found an international network of similar |think-tanks' around the globe which played similar roles in America and Eastern Europe.
The Centre for Policy Studies and the Adam Smith Institute both owed their intellectual inspiration to Hayek and the work of the IEA. Indeed, it would be hard to think of any other intellectual in Britain -- besides his arch rival Keynes -- who has had such a widespread impact on post-war British history as Hayek, and certainly not with the publication of one book. Margaret Thatcher herself was in no do this point. On Hayek's ninetieth birthday in 1989 she wrote to him that |none (of what her governments had achieved) would have been possible without the values and beliefs to set us on the right road and provide the right sense of direction. The leadership and inspiration that your work and thinking gave us were absolutely crucial, and we owe you a great debt'.
And what of The Road to Serfdom today? One can see the history of the last two centuries in Britain in terms of dialectical cycles of liberalism versus collectivism. The first cycle comprised the triumph of liberalism over mercantilism and feudalism lasting from the 1770s to the 1890s, a period divisible into two halves -- one prior to the 1820s, when the ideological war (of Adam Smith et al.) was fought and won, and the period thereafter, when economic liberalism became the ruling orthodoxy of all governments, whether they be led by Gladstone or Disraeli. The second cycle began in the 1880s and ended in the mid-1970s, and can be divided into the periods 1880 to the 1930s when the ideological battle against economic liberalism was fought and won (by the Fabians and Keynes) and the era of the 1940s to the 1970s when collectivism (or Butskellism) was likewise the ruling orthodoxy of all governments.
The third cycle began in the 1930s and is still in progress. The first part of this cycle was the period from those original debates on the Economic Advisory Council to the mid-1970s, when the ideological battle for economic liberalism was, again, fought and won by <b>Von Mises, Hayek and the IEA</b>; the second part of this cycle is still extant, the time from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s, <b>when the ideas of Hayek and the economic liberals became the ruling orthodoxy of all parties and governments.</b>Â After the Butskellite consensus, we now have the consensus of Major-Smith during the 1990s, <b>when very little divides the two main parties on the central principles of economic management</b>. The intellectual movement inspired by <b>The Road to Serfdom has now run its course, and the political economy of Major-Smith now awaits its Hayek.</b>
COPYRIGHT 1994 History Today Ltd.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-rajesh_g+Nov 13 2005, 11:39 PM-->QUOTE(rajesh_g @ Nov 13 2005, 11:39 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->Interesting link posted by Kautilya on BR..
http://www.mises.org/story/1952
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<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->http://headlines.sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=13984589
<b>Naxals bid to blow up BSNL tower foiled </b>
Tuesday, 15 November , 2005, 14:48
Mumbai: Police foiled a Naxalite bid to blow up a BSNL mobile tower in Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra, where ultras have called a bandh on Tuesday to protest the recently announced surrender policy of the state government.
Police also rounded up a prominent Naxalite in south Gadchiroli early on Tuesday morning after a fierce exchange of fire.
According to Gadchiroli SP, Shirish Jain, some Naxalites had placed explosives at a BSNL tower at Dehlenwadi village in a bid to blow it.
The attempt was foiled by a police patrol, who after being tipped off, reached the spot along with villagers, and forced the Naxalites to flee, Jain said, adding that posters and pamphlets regarding the bandh were seized from the spot.
Jain said a standoff between police patrol parties and Naxalites was reported from Saraigaon-Murumgaon road in south Gadchiroli.
Naxalite also made three attempts to block the road in south Gadchiroli by felling trees and digging the road. But police teams have cleared the blockades, he added.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Lack of Indian Government will.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Left ultimatum to UPA on Iran vote </b>
Pioneer News Service / Thiruvananthapuram
Discuss now, or we take it up in Parliament: Karat--- The Left parties on Tuesday reiterated their threat to take the UPA Government to task if it votes in favour of a US or EU drafted resolution against Iran's nuclear programme at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) <b>meeting in Vienna scheduled for November 24.</b>Â Â
Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Prakash Karat demanded that the Manmohan Singh Government make clear its stand over the Iran issue before the IAEA governors meet.
Communist Party of India general secretary AB Bardhan went a step further, indicating the Left would consider pulling down the UPA Government if it once again voted against Iran on November 24.
Both leaders said they had the support of the Samajwadi Party and the Janata Dal (Secular) in the matter. The Left has upped its ante ever since India voted in favour of the EU3 draft against Iran at the IAEA meeting in Vienna on September 24.
Mr Karat, speaking to newspersons, said if the UPA Government did not make its stand clear on the issue before the IAEA meet slated for November 24, the Left parties would raise the matter in the Winter Session of Parliament commencing on November 23. Issuing a stern warning to the UPA Government for deviating from India's "independent foreign policy", Mr Karat said the details of how the issue should be dealt with in Parliament would be discussed among the Left and its allies. "One thing is for sure. We have decided to collectively take up the issue if the Government decides to take a stand against Iran," he added.
Speaking at a meet-the-press programme here, the CPI(M) general secretary said the Left parties had repeatedly expressed their anxiety over India's vote at the coming IAEA meet. "We consider that the UPA Government acted in this regard (on September 24) under American pressure.
The IAEA vote signifies a departure from the Government's commitment to follow an independent foreign policy. This is a matter of utmost concern," he said. Though the Left parties had suggested a discussion on this issue with the Congress before the November 24 meeting, the Government took the stand that it could be discussed only after the meeting. "We are still there for discussions. But they have to take the initiative," Mr Karat said.
To a query whether there is any divide with the UPA at the Centre, Mr Karat said, "The UPA was a necessary experiment to keep the BJP out of power. We have some differences of opinion in certain policy matters but they are being discussed between us."
He claimed that the Rural Employment Guarantee Act was the result of a combined effort and in the Winter Session a Bill would be tabled for giving rights to Adivasis on forestland. "These all are the plus points of the coalition. Despite differences, we are extending support based on the Common Minimum Programme," he said.
Mr Karat said the Left was not just blindly opposing investment and growth. "We want growth and investment but we don't want Enron type of investment. We are opposed to that since we lost millions of dollars on the Enron deal. When the previous and present governments went ahead with the proposal for foreign direct investment in retail trade, we objected to it since it will ring the death knell for small shopkeepers and traders. This will be disastrous for over four crore people employed in this field since it will be the question of their employment," he added.
According to him, the Left is opposed to the WTO negotiation on <b>commercialisation of education sector </b>"since it will put the future of several universities in the country in a fix. Hence the Left parties are of the strong opinion that we should have development but not at the cost of the people.
It should be pro-farmers and pro-people." Mr Karat said the Left parties support to the UPA Government had guaranteed economic sovereignty of the country. To a query, he answered that there was still space for a Third Front. "We will work towards it," Mr Karat, who was in the city to campaign for the LDF candidate for the ensuing Lok Sabha by-poll, said <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Why commies are supporting Iran?
1) They want to be anti-US.
2) Support muslims
3) Paid by Iran
4) Venezuela money in pocket
5) They are just trying to be best jerk on earth.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Why commies are supporting Iran?
1) They want to be anti-US.
2) Support muslims
3) Paid by Iran
4) Venezuela money in pocket
5) They are just trying to be best jerk on earth.
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The left has a predictable chinese inertial guidance system.
China is woried about a succesful US-India relationship. The nuke deal especially has given them a lot to worry about. What it means is that China's Pakistan card, to keep India perpetually tied down within the confines of the subcontinent in all, strategic matters, including nuclear matters, is now threatened. India is looking forward to break the restrictive strategic environment and come out as a responsible nuclear power accepted as such by the rest of the world. The fact that India seems to have US support is doubly worrisome for the chinese.
The left is asking India to support Iran not for Iran's sake, but for China's sake.Besides at current juncture of history, there is a convergence of interests between chinese-communists and Islamists all over the world.
From tehelka.. <!--emo&:o--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/ohmy.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='ohmy.gif' /><!--endemo-->
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main15.asp?fi...605The_Left.asp
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The Left not looking right
Communists may be playing a perilous game with Indian Shias
By Sankarshan Thakur
The sudden muddying of Indiaâs position on the iaea Iran vote, courtesy nervous outbursts of the beleaguered Natwar Singh, does little credit to a country that sees itself â and is increasingly seen by others â as a sure-mature adult in the comity of nations. Decisions such as these â India had cast itself against Iran in the last iaea meet â are taken with due deliberation, not merely on the specific issue concerned, but also on wider implications such decisions might have. For a domestic scandal to suddenly plunge a key international decision into uncertainty is not the sign of a grown up polity, irrespective of whether that decision is right or wrong. There were reasons India decided to vote against Iran at the iaea; the travails of Natwar Singh cannot be seen to be altering those reasons, or Indian foreign policy. But there is a far more alarming trend unfolding around Indiaâs position at the iaea over Iran â sensitive domestic concerns are being linked to what is essentially a foreign policy issue. And the Left, otherwise the more enlightened of our political formations, is leading the way up what could be a perilous path. For well-established ideological reasons, the Left was opposed to India voting with the United States and other western countries against Iran at the iaea. But when Natwar Singh suddenly found himself engulfed by the Volcker revelations, the Left saw its chance and moved even harder; it went out of its way to support Natwar Singh, it may even have encouraged him to threaten a flip of the vote on live television. There is a basic fallacy here with the Leftist argument. At home, they support, and very rightly, a secular dispensation; the religious politics of the Hindu Right is anathema to them. And so it should be in a country constitutionally and emotionally committed to secular principles. But in the case of Iran, they are prepared to back a regime that is the flip side of what a Hindu Rashtra might be. As events made apparent, the Left was prepared to go even further. At a rally in Lucknow, Left leaders openly spoke of the close cultural links Indian Shias have with Iran in order to beat up support for a change in the Indian vote. There is no questioning the strong religious and cultural links Shias in this country â and the world over â have with Iran. But to argue that foreign policy should be altered because of these links is to open the Shias to exactly the kind of allegation that Right-wing zealots in this country have been making about Indian Muslims at large â that their loyalties lie elsewhere. Were Iran to put a foot wrong tomorrow â and it could, given the tenor of its ruling dispensation â are we to then justify persecuting Indian Shias for the actions of the Iranian regime? Slicing off Indian Shia sentiment and linking it to our foreign policy is a dangerous tactic. It will only make Indiaâs minorities even more vulnerable.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Marxist window opens to jihad
Balbir K Punj
A day after 500 well-armed Naxalites raided Jehanabad jail in Bihar and freed 389 prisoners including fellow insurgents, students of ultra-Marxist AISA jeered at Prime Minister Manmohan Singh calling him an American agent while he was addressing them at New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University campus. They responded by waving black flags at him.
The left and right halves of devil's factory - the Marxist brain - seem to be in perfect synergy. One half refuses to recognise the state, sovereignty, law and order and indulges in guerrilla warfare. The other half has successfully woven itself into the Indian establishment and tried to wreck the system from within. One destroys openly, the other through sleaze and intrigues.
The Naxalites, in a giant blood stained pamphlet that they left behind, claimed their 'Operation Jailbreak' was conducted to coincide with the Russian Revolution of 1917. They are not only mistaken about the date on which it occurred (Russian Revolution took place on November 7 not 13) but ahead by one century.
The cost of USSR's suicidal experiment with Communism in the 20th century is still being remitted by Russia in the 21st century. The blood-letting heralded by Lenin and continued by Stalin led to wanton destruction of life. Its impact was so profound that even today's Russia is a 'state withering away', losing half a million lives every year. China escaped the fate of the Soviet Union by reinventing itself under Deng Xiaoping. Today, China is offering help to India to crush the Naxalites.
But Naxalites of Bihar are more honest than armchair communists of JNU. They are wedded to their guns, lead a hard pressed existence and often on the periphery of society. Poverty, unemployment, underdevelopment and a caste-ridden society of Bihar is the hard reality for them.
Many of them are not educated although they are indoctrinated with Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. Their cadres perhaps do not even know where Germany is, the country where Marx was born, or Russia where the 1917 Revolution took place, or for that matter the location of China. I am sure many of them don't know that the USSR no longer exists and that Deng Xiaoping has reoriented Mao's China.
But the same cannot be said of the JNU Marxists, who are mostly students and teachers of liberal arts like history, sociology, political science, philosophy, economics. Their learning has little market value but is of much cost to the Government.
JNU has productive and constructive wings as well like Centre for Biotechnology, School of Physical Sciences, and Special Centre for Molecular Medicine, centre for environmental studies. It also has school for language, literature and culture. But it has a reputation of being a bastion of Marxist thought. JNU was established by the Indira Gandhi in name of her father to gather Communists from all over the country and give them a forum. It was reflective of the Congress outsourcing its think tank to the Leftists, a policy started by Jawaharlal Nehru.
Why was Prime Minister Manmohan Singh hooted as an American agent by the students of AISA in JNU? No matter what their ideological differences, all including the Prime Minister have a right to put forward his views. The AISA boys and girls are, after all, students of an academic institution. But perhaps it is too much ask even that much courtesy from the Leftists. History shows they are not only intolerant but utterly abusive towards their opponents.
The readers have not forgotten another shameful incident that took place in JNU in May 2000 while an Indo-Pakistan mushaira was being held. It was 'secular' brigade's attempt at encouraging Indo-Pakistan bonhomie after the bitter Kargil War was over in 1999.
When a Pakistani poet made a scathing though ridiculous remark that India was the aggressor in Kargil, two self-respecting jawans of Army, present at the function, vehemently protested. At this a group of students of JNU, who were actually Muslims from the Leftist camp, attacked the jawans. Had it not been for providential intervention from the rest of the gathering, they would have certainly blinded the jawans. The incident made headlines and highlighted the anti-national aspect of Marxist jihadis.
Is the case qualitatively different now? Will the Government reshape its defence policy on the advice of AISA students by calling off the Indo-American joint air exercise at Kalaikunda? Will these embarrassing specimens of Indians who will not shed a drop of sweat for the defence of India, now frame the country's defence policy? Had such an incident taken place in the Communist China, how would have the authorities reacted? They might have bombed a part of the university. It would have been considered an anti-national act. Genteel Prime Minister Manmohan Singh responded to the students' outrage with eulogistic remarks about JNU, 'the centre of excellence' and spoke about the necessity of freedom of expression.
The Chinese Government had responded to a students' demonstration, albeit for a nationalistic cause, with a massacre. In the Tiananmen Square incident that occurred in Beijing in May 1989, 50,000 students went on demonstration protesting against China's economic instability and political corruption. The demonstration was crushed with guns and tanks, smothering the voice of hundreds of Chinese youth.
The event attracted universal condemnation across the world. But PRC's inhuman action found an apologist in JNU in form of Mr Sitaram Yechuri. He showed some videotapes in his alma mater JNU and explained that Tiananmen Square was actually a conspiracy of capitalist America to destabilise China.
Mr Yechuri is also loath to admitting that China was the aggressor in 1962. Once on a television programme Aap Ki Adalat (Zee TV) he skirted the issue every time the question was put to him. He said that it would not be in 'national interest' to argue over the issue since it had 'international ramifications' (China vs India - Who's Yechuri batting for?, The Indian Express, February 28, 1997).
The Marxists are a prop to the UPA Government although they seem unhappy with its policy on all matters. At one time they disappeared from the Coordination Committee but returned after a hiatus. Now they have threatened to withdraw support to the UPA Government on a strange issue. The Government was wrong, according to them, in voting at International Atomic Energy Association against Iran's nuclear programme. They perceive this as a fallout of American pressure, whereas in reality, except for Venezuela, all other concerned countries had either voted against Iran or abstained.
The Marxist point of view did not dither for a moment even when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, a mullah by training, declared at a convention in Tehran that Israel should be wiped off the map. It is natural to infer that Iran, an oil and gas rich country, is bereft of any policy aimed at peaceful use of nuclear energy and only wants to use it against Israel.
Iran has been a theocracy since Islamic Revolution of 1979. Its Leftists have either been butchered or they have fled the country. Its nuclear programme is shrouded in mystery. But Marxists are overzealous to see that Iran's nuclear programme is not throttled. Are they actually jihadi mercenaries who sometimes batted for the erstwhile USSR, at other times for China and now for Islamic theocracies?
Why are Marxists, for whom 'independent foreign policy' is the latest signature tune, so keen to see Iran's nuclear programme in its place? Are not these the same people who criticised Pokhran-II in the vilest of terms? They dubbed it as Hindutva chauvinism which would spur an arms race in the subcontinent.
Will not Iran's acquiring a nuclear weapon disturb the strategic balance in West Asia? It is sure to lead to a war with Israel. But when it comes to India the Marxists are against even a peaceful nuclear programme if it is developed with the help of the US. India badly needs a phase in nuclear development programme for its energy security. That, however, is a non-issue for the Marxists. Marxism now seems an extension counter to Islamists.
(The writer, a Rajya Sabha MP and convener of BJP's think-tank, can be contacted at bpunj@email.com)
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Familiar names...
http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=59189
NGO pulls curtains down on âanti-USâ Pak play
ASIT SRIVASTAVA
Posted online: Wednesday, November 30, 2005 at 0303 hours IST
Updated: Wednesday, November 30, 2005 at 0352 hours IST
For these 11 theatre actors from Pakistan, the show has ended even before it began. Invited by an NGO â the Womenâs Initiative for Peace in South Asia (WIPSA) â to stage plays across the country, the Pakistani troupe was allegedly told to pack their bags because their production, Zikr-e-Nashunida (Discussing the Unheeded), expressed anti-US sentiments.
Speaking to Newsline, Sheema Kermani, head of the Karachi-based group, alleged that one of the WIPSA members â the organisers â warned them that if they continued to go against US sentiments through their play, they would be handed over to the police. The NGO also reportedly threatened to take away their tickets if they didnât leave the city as soon as possible.
And at around 7 am today, the Pakistani actors were made to leave their accommodation at Isabella Thoubourn College. Later in the day, Magsaysay awardee Sandeep Pandey stepped in to their aid, making arrangements for their stay at a city hotel. When contacted, Nirmala Deshpande, founder member of WIPSA, said: ââItâs very shocking. Bahut galat hua. Sandeep told me about the sequence of events that took place today... Itâs shameful.ââ
According to Kermani, their play focussed on the aftermath of war, especially in relation to the Vietnam war. ââIn our show, we highlighted images of wars that often go unheard and unrecorded. WIPSA reacted very strongly to this. So strongly that the NGO, which invited us to India, has now left us stranded,ââ she said.
ââThey asked us to change the theme as they claimed it went against American sentiments. All this has been done because the NGO is financially supported by the Ford Foundation, an American organisation,ââ alleged Kermani, whose family is originally from Lucknow.
According to the Pakistani troupe, WIPSA had readily accepted the theme of their play when they issued the invite about two months back. ââThey called us to stage our play at Lucknow, Varanasi and Bhubaneswar,ââ said Kermani.
They were part of the NGOâs programme to ââcreate culture of peace through stage showsââ, for which they had invited theatre groups from South Asian countries. Among the other participants were actors from Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka.
http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.ph...d=59189The Pakistani actors arrived in the city on November 24, in time for the first performance in the city on November 27 which was held as scheduled. They were all set to leave for Varanasi for their second show on November 30, when WIPSA pulled down the curtains.
So, even as the organisers and the other teams left for Varanasi, the Pakistanis were told to go home, much before their scheduled departure on December 8. The Bhubaneswar performance was to have been staged on December 3.
Interestingly, the director of the play is an Indian â Prasanna Ramaswamy. ââInitially, we presented an excerpt of our play at a city school whose administration had invited us to participate in a programme based on nuclear disarmament. The organisers had then reprimanded us for participating in the programme without their permission,ââ he said.
ââLater, when we pointed out that we hadnât signed any agreement prohibiting us from performing outside, they asked us to change the theme of our play. Since we refused to bow before them, they resorted to such an action,ââ added Ramaswamy.
Meanwhile, Magsaysay awardee Sandeep Pandey said: ââThey were to leave India on December 8, but they will be heading for Pakistan within a couple of days. They are slated to reach Delhi tomorrow.â
Sandeep Pandey helps Paki actors that do anti US play
http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=59189
NGO pulls curtains down on âanti-USâ Pak play
ASIT SRIVASTAVA
Posted online: Wednesday, November 30, 2005 at 0303 hours IST
Updated: Wednesday, November 30, 2005 at 0352 hours IST
For these 11 theatre actors from Pakistan, the show has ended even before it began. Invited by an NGO â the Womenâs Initiative for Peace in South Asia (WIPSA) â to stage plays across the country, the Pakistani troupe was allegedly told to pack their bags because their production, Zikr-e-Nashunida (Discussing the Unheeded), expressed anti-US sentiments.
Speaking to Newsline, Sheema Kermani, head of the Karachi-based group, alleged that one of the WIPSA members â the organisers â warned them that if they continued to go against US sentiments through their play, they would be handed over to the police. The NGO also reportedly threatened to take away their tickets if they didnât leave the city as soon as possible.
And at around 7 am today, the Pakistani actors were made to leave their accommodation at Isabella Thoubourn College. Later in the day, Magsaysay awardee Sandeep Pandey stepped in to their aid, making arrangements for their stay at a city hotel. When contacted, Nirmala Deshpande, founder member of WIPSA, said: ââItâs very shocking. Bahut galat hua. Sandeep told me about the sequence of events that took place today... Itâs shameful.ââ
According to Kermani, their play focussed on the aftermath of war, especially in relation to the Vietnam war. ââIn our show, we highlighted images of wars that often go unheard and unrecorded. WIPSA reacted very strongly to this. So strongly that the NGO, which invited us to India, has now left us stranded,ââ she said.
ââThey asked us to change the theme as they claimed it went against American sentiments. All this has been done because the NGO is financially supported by the Ford Foundation, an American organisation,ââ alleged Kermani, whose family is originally from Lucknow.
According to the Pakistani troupe, WIPSA had readily accepted the theme of their play when they issued the invite about two months back. ââThey called us to stage our play at Lucknow, Varanasi and Bhubaneswar,ââ said Kermani.
They were part of the NGOâs programme to ââcreate culture of peace through stage showsââ, for which they had invited theatre groups from South Asian countries. Among the other participants were actors from Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka.
The Pakistani actors arrived in the city on November 24, in time for the first performance in the city on November 27 which was held as scheduled. They were all set to leave for Varanasi for their second show on November 30, when WIPSA pulled down the curtains.
So, even as the organisers and the other teams left for Varanasi, the Pakistanis were told to go home, much before their scheduled departure on December 8. The Bhubaneswar performance was to have been staged on December 3.
Interestingly, the director of the play is an Indian â Prasanna Ramaswamy. ââInitially, we presented an excerpt of our play at a city school whose administration had invited us to participate in a programme based on nuclear disarmament. The organisers had then reprimanded us for participating in the programme without their permission,ââ he said.
ââLater, when we pointed out that we hadnât signed any agreement prohibiting us from performing outside, they asked us to change the theme of our play. Since we refused to bow before them, they resorted to such an action,ââ added Ramaswamy.
Meanwhile, Magsaysay awardee Sandeep Pandey said: ââThey were to leave India on December 8, but they will be heading for Pakistan within a couple of days. They are slated to reach Delhi tomorrow.ââ <!--emo&  --><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tongue.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tongue.gif' /><!--endemo-->
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