This Week, I’m Coming to India, With Mixed Emotions

Violence. Rage. Out of Control.

Honestly, given how perennially poor, powerless and pedigree-less I have always been, I could be killed any time, many times.

And nobody would even notice.

Yet, India trips over the years — short or long – have always been exciting, no matter what.

Last year, around this time, I wrote about my then-imminent trip to India. Here I go again — go again — one more time. Here I write again — write again — one more time.

Last year, I quoted some Facebook comments I received from friends, in response to my trip announcement (read the blog: click on the link). This year, I do the same. Similar, I mean. Well…the format is similar, but the subject of the discussion is definitely not.

You’ll find out.

So, I posted on my Facebook wall this time:

THIS WEEK, I AM LEAVING FOR INDIA, my homeland, where men violate women, rich oppress poor, “high caste” beat up “low caste”…and guess what…powerful men and women of ALL societies exploit the powerless…AND MAKE MONEY. YET, you can’t call killers killers, liars liars and crooks crooks: media, police, politicians and social bosses will tell you what and how much you can say or do. They call it the largest secular democracy in the world!! Wish me well.

Oh boy…oh boy…did I open up a Pandora’s Box!

Responses came like a burst-open Hoover Dam. Or, keeping India in mind, like the Hoodroo Waterfalls in monsoon.

Some comments were quite mild. Like this one:

“I wish you didn’t make such an observation, Dada.” (Dada means big brother in Bengali).

My Motherland! All My Life!

Another innocuous one:

“All said and done India is our motherland…”

Of course! Who would disagree? So, I replied:

“If it’s our motherland, than treat the land as your mother.” (Like, don’t rape and kill and steal and soil and spoil and hit and hurt…the current India way!)

So far so good. People even started “like”ing the conversation.

Then, this.

“This expresn hurts us as we r livng in our mtherland u r nt. Don’t nacket our mother.”

Okay. Still okay with it. (Even though it hurts just a little…perhaps…whenever I see the you don’t live here snide. So, what if I don’t live there physically? I know about India inside out…believe me…I can teach you about India five times over…however “politically incorrect” that teaching might be — see below for clarification. And guess what: I’ve actually lived there for three decades — and that is where half of my heart still is. Does it make it a half-hearted passion? You decide. I don’t care.)

Then…a more “politically correct” comment.

“This is what Uma Narayan [author] calls “Death by Culture.” Your remark is so incorrect and the way you have stated your opinion is so problematic that it requires far more than a facebook reply. It would benefit you to actually educated yourself on gender-based violence, particularly in the post-colonial context.” (No edits done here.)

Well, first of all, I don’t even understand half of it: I’m not that politically educated…at least my language I never claim to be politically correct. And I don’t mind being a little more educated even though I’ve been getting education for half a century now, but some more wouldn’t hurt.

And I also got a long note:

“Exploitation is everywhere, the core countries exploit the peripheral states, the haves exploit the have nts, whites beat up blacks, police interrogate anybody wth a beard and a surname calld khan, presidnts have their underwear testd to cnfirm adultery,…ethnic groups clash, a schizophrenic runs amok and guns dwn schlchldren, the entire world is dark and brutal..lets nt singl out india nly..yes it has many negative aspects…bt its healthier if we see the general dgeneratn of nations as a whole..cultural imperialism has taken its toll on india and such countries. Advertisements, baywatch, sex n the city, these cmodify wmen..we have 2 indias..one whch thrives ôn the MTV inputs and the other an impoverishd india..there is hybridisatn of idntities coupld wth illiteracy whch makes india what u branded it nw..lets nt only thnk frm a macro level.”

[Did not change the typos or abbreviations at all: who knows I might be even more politically incorrect doing it.]

They Just Torched Their Village! Commonplace!

So, I tried to explain my status update (not sure why I have to do it every time — to my “friends…I mean, don’t they know me?)

I wrote:

“Indian govt, police and military kill innocent people (mostly inside the country). U.S. govt, police and military kill innocent people in faraway lands (and also in the country). Indian politicians and corporations have some of the most corrupt elements in the world. So do American politicians and corporations. But they tell me not to get into it. My friends and family warn me not to get into it. My fellow Indians hate me for saying unpleasant things about India. My fellow Americans get very unhappy when I say unpopular things about America. And I really should follow their advice and shut up, given how powerless and pedigree-less I am.”

I also wrote:

USA and Western corporate capitalist powers, with help from IMF and World Bank, have completely colonized India and such countries; most people do not understand the nature of this massive, unbelievable neocolonization mainly because media do not talk about it and it is not bloody on the outside. Nobody understands what Monsanto does, what Wal-Mart, Disney, Coke, McDonald’s, GE, Exxon, Goldman Sachs or HSBC does. The death and destruction is perhaps the biggest in human history; yet we have so little talk about it especially outside the election cycles. India is perhaps the biggest victim. The social, economic and political problems that are imploding the country are all connected to this neocolonizing powers and their paid puppets, politicians and police in India. I’m going to talk about it at every opportunity I get while I’m there. I’ve written about it for years. You can look up one such article at http://onefinalblog.wordpress.com/2012/05/26/new-imf-terror-in-india-can-kill-my-family/

[And I didn't even mention the Delhi gang rape preceded and followed by thousands of such horrific acts of violence on our sisters and daughters. I didn't even mention the gruesome one-in-every-thirty-minute Monsanto farmer suicide, the still-born babies from that 1984 Union Carbide gas chamber killing, the 1984 Sikh genocide by Congress Party killers, the 2002 Gujarat carnage of Muslims, or the continuous barbaric attacks on poor, "low castes" and "untouchables." I did not mention the unthinkable extent of female infanticide, bride burning and dowry deaths, or acid attacks on women, and zero justice for government and corporation-sponsored thugs and mafia that now rule India. I did not mention countless other such things -- old and new.]

Psalm for the Rich. Alms for the Poor. India. Always.

I AM poor, powerless and pedigree-less. I do not get quoted in news media. I do not feature in high-echelon accolades. I do not go to elite literary or musical conferences that New York Times reports. I do not have a car or even a family-owned house in India. I do not have followers. I do not have fans. Killing someone like me…is so easy in a place like India…or anywhere. My good friends, family and well wishers are often deeply worried about my well being. I’m not making it up.

I am scared to death too: for me, for my family, for my extended family living in India.

Yet, I got this last piece for now — another piece of wisdom from [I suppose] a more educated and politically correct person:

“Why do you think if a person isn’t making knee-jerk remarks that they are not as enraged or aware as you? Frankly, I find 90% of your remarks to be incorrect/inaccurate in some way or another. I hope you start to analyze the issues in a better way.”

And she even got rave reviews for her remarks:

“I ditto [...]. I fnd u too exhibitionist. Anyway gdluck.”

I think she means well. I’ll take it. Thank you.

Not all the responses were critical. Some were reassuring. I’d pay more attention to them (life would become a little less complex that way…I suppose. But who knows if I’m making a politically incorrect, illiterate comment here!)

Violent Protests Must Be Punished!

One friend cheered me up:

“The exploitation on women is universal, I suppose. The form of exploitation can be different from one to another. But still what you said about INDIA is also true.”

A young writer friend wrote:

“Welcome to our Shonar Bangla.” (Shonar Bangla is Tagore’s term for Golden Bengal — the old-glory, prosperous, pre-occupation, pre-colonization, pre-partitioned, pre-looted Bengal where lives and education and businesses and cultures and music and art and poetry and spirituality and such precious things flourished for centuries. Of course, nobody — not even Bengalis — cares to know.)

Even though Bengal is not golden anymore — thanks to a two century-long brutal, violent, plundering colonization and raping of the land followed by half a century of brutal, violent, plundering and raping of the land by a new class of “Independent India” rulers — I’ll take that “Shonar Bangla” omment with a cheerful heart too. It means something. It helps sustain a dream — to rise again, to prosperity and freedom to learn, think and analyze.

That is a dream I come back to every year. I hope those of you who do not like me and hate me and wish me go away do not kill me while I’m there. Even though Indian-Bengali poet D. L. Ray had said: “I wish to be reborn here and I wish to die here too…” honestly, that is not my wish right now.

I want to return. I wish to return — to you.

I am leaving for India again — with mixed emotions. I am excited, and I am nervous. I want to meet friends. And I am also apprehensive about meeting friends: who knows how they are going to talk and treat.

But it’s my mother’s land. I must come back to her.

Sincerely Writing,

Partha

Brooklyn, New York

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Mother’s Land of Poverty and Pain. I Must Love Her.

How to Stop the Rape Epidemic in India — Part 4: Your Ideas

In this segment, I’m going to include some of the feedback I’ve received from friends and readers — some of them activists working on the ground both in India and here in the U.S. I’m also including my anecdotal comments side by side to make it a meaningful conversation. I hope I get more ideas and suggestions from you in the coming days.

I’m not including names of the writers here only because I have not asked for their permission to use their thoughts they sent to my Facebook page. I don’t think it matters who wrote which comment: all of them are thoughtful. I want to keep writing about an all-inclusive, comprehensive set of proactive and reactive measures to stop this epidemic.

Body to buy? Who buys? Who sells? Who profits?

Friend #1 wrote:

Commodification of women has to stop and artists, poets, advertisers, movie makers need to become educators in a way, exerting their power to demonstrate responsibility in the portrayal of women, children, men’s bodies as commodities on one hand whereas the right positive education through removing and rectifying stereotyping in text books (we had started some of that work ) from childhood and mindful education to adolescents esp. boys to understand the fragility of women’s bodies and the natural difference of creation between men and women – posters, banners,punishment etc can go on – but to bring change our society needs to inculcate care as against violence -there are no shortcuts I’m afraid but the task though large is very much do-able.

She continued:

In fact much of the doings of the women’s movement in the years gone by are responsible for creating this generation of young protesters who are not afraid to voice themselves and claim the streets

Friend #2 wrote:

Partha- I am answering your question above on how to stop violence against women- we need to institutionalize the empowerment of women everywhere. When society as a whole frowns upon it rather than condones it, we will see it diminish.

She wrote again:

Society in India has institutionalized the abuse and marginalization of women there, Partha, and violence against women is no new thing- it has been with us throughout all of written history. We need to change the rules as well as follow the advice that others have given here.

She said:

Politically and especially ECONOMICALLY empower women- then you will see things change. Let’s start economically empowering women by acknowledging that a woman’s very real job of being a mother and running a household is not ‘private’ work that is worthy of no economic compensation. It is, as Oprah has stated many times, the most important job on earth, and in a world that depends on the monetary system for survival, it is a job that is deserving of dignified pay. We need to start acknowledging that ‘women’s work’ is real work and that it should no longer pay slave wages. Then, maybe the men of the world will stop treating us as slaves.

Where women are not afraid claiming their dignity and rights. There is no fear.

Friend #1 wrote here:

Let us try to break out of the paradigm of weighing everything through economic value , the woman’s role in society can never ever be compensated – let us think of happiness as the paradigm to be achieved as an example.

Let women not have to measure upto the man’s yardstick but reverse the paradigm – tilt the scales for a while before equalizing.

Friend #3 sent her thoughts:

Making short video clips of the different aspects of disrespect and its implication and reaching them out to the mass through MMS, television, community radio and also through NGO workers who has penetration in remote rural areas can be an option. Also I feel on personal level there should be more dialogue between the have and havenots. Lack of communication creates indifference and carelessness.

Friend #4 sent in his comments:

Start questioning and acting to change the cultural aspects that couches patriarchy at home. Second (if you allow) we need to take up community watch – ensure the beat cops/other cops/bureaucracy works by supporting those who need… this needs a strong community togetherness…

Finally, Friend #5 added in:

Passing and enforcing laws to protect girls and women is an important step. But the fact is education and culture must be addressed, worldwide, regarding the status of children, girls in particular and women to make the deeper and long-term change we all (writing here) desperately want. Politics, law and policy making are more immediate and central to more fundamental change. in my opinion.

In relation to some of the comments above demanding cultural shift in attitude toward women, I quote these lines from an American TV sitcom The Honeymooners (alas, U.S. media do not make such blue-collar, real-life shows anymore. Alice is the homemaker in the middle of the picture above. Her husband Ralph is the big man. He is a blue-collar worker.)

Alice: Let me tell you something. There’s an old, old saying Ralph. “Man works from sun to sun, but woman’s work is never done.”

Ralph: (In a snooty voice) Good gosh!

Alice: You men just think you own this planet.

Ralph: Yeah but you women get your revenge. You marry us.

[From: A Woman's Work Is Never Done, The Honeymooners, Season 5, Episode 4.]

(Please continue to Part 5 — last segment. Thank you.)

Yes, they are leaders. Unknown, unsung. But true leaders. Let’s follow their leadership.

I Am Bangladesh, I Am Palestine

A garment sweatshop in Dhaka, Bangladesh just killed over one hundred poor workers. UPDATE: A building collapsed in Dhaka, Bangladesh on April 25, killing at least 1200 workers. Many more are permanently crippled.

Bangladesh Body Bags, Again and Again.

This is a repeat slaughter of Bengali workers — mostly young women aged 12 to 24 or so — at a Wal-Mart, Disney, Gap, H&M, Hanes or Tommy Hilfiger outsourced factory run by these corporations and their international and domestic agents. Even New York Times expressed their disapproval. Even CNN thought it was not pleasant to have so many sweatshop workers killed so often.

I wrote before about Trayvon Martin when they killed the seventeen-year-old, unarmed kid because somebody thought he was a criminal and could therefore be killed. I said Trayvon was my kid. I wrote about Troy Davis when they killed him strapped on an electric chair. They killed Troy because somebody thought he did not deserve justice.

I wrote about Sikhs in America after 9/11. They started killing and hurting Sikh men and women because somebody thought they looked like Osama Bin Laden and therefore deserved hate.

I wrote about Muslims in Brooklyn after Afghanistan and Iraq. They started killing and hurting Muslims because some people thought all Muslims were terrorists and therefore they deserved random arrests, imprisonment and mass deportation.

I wrote about Latino immigrants in Bush, Cheney and Ashcroft’s America. I wrote straight from the Arizona-Nogales border — straight from a van we took to cross through the Sonoran desert when it was 115 degrees Fahrenheit. I wrote from the morgue where they kept unidentified dead bodies of women and children who perished walking across the scorching desert into the U.S.

I wrote about my experience in Israel and Palestine when I had an opportunity to visit the Middle East as a journalism student from a prestigious journalism school here in New York. I saw how Palestinians lived and suffered at the hands of the powerful. I went to see Golan Heights at the Syrian border where the Six-day War back in 1967 permanently displaced Palestinians from their own land and international big brothers made sure they remained destitute forever.

We Keep Mourning.

I wrote about the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation Struggle when some people decided a British-pauperized, partitioned East Bengal and its millions of newly-impoverished people had no right to food, freedom, dignity or even their own language, and they decided to send a Kissinger-crafted CIA war into that land through Pakistan, and killed ten million people, raped half a million women, and evicted ten million more from their homes and lands — to repeat a similarly bloody and catastrophic 1947 history in less than twenty five years.

I went to work on the borders of India and Bangladesh to see the suffering of those refugees first hand. I wrote about them.

I am now writing again to express my feelings about the poor Bangladeshi garment workers who were burnt alive yesterday in a repeat inferno at a Wal-Mart, Disney, Gap, H&M, Hanes or Tommy Hilfiger sweatshop at the outskirts of Dhaka.

Just a few days ago, I wrote about the barbaric killing of innocent Palestinian children in Gaza. A few weeks ago, I wrote about Obama’s drones that killed innocent children in Pakistan, Yemen and Mali.

I don’t know if my writing has any impact at all on the minds of the otherwise intelligent, educated and human rights-minded liberals in America and India — the two countries I know the best — or for that matter, anywhere else in the world. I have every doubt that such killings are now transient news blips that come on the surface, shake up a few minds for thirty seconds or less, shake up their conscience for an even smaller amount of time, and then disappear into oblivion.

They Keep Mourning.

Worse, these otherwise intelligent, educated, human rights-minded liberals in America and India — the two countries I know the best — or for that matter, anywhere else in the world keep supporting the Democratic Party and its leaders like Obama or Clinton, or the Congress Party and the Gandhi Dynasty in India…or…you put your favorite country and its political system and leaders…and by doing that, they sustain an inhumane, corrupt and cruel, exploitative socioeconomic system that is responsible for all these horrendous acts that are killing and torturing and maiming and starving and displacing and destroying millions of poor men, women and children — all over the world.

I have no hope that bringing up these horrendous acts of violence — political or economic — on the surface would make any long-term change within the status-quo minds of these intelligent, educated and human rights-minded people.

I have learned how not to hope anymore. Not from the elite liberals anways — American or Indian.

I just write about it because I have no other way to cleanse myself of my own sin — of being a part of this system.

She could’ve been my child. Or my sister.

Thank you for at least listening. Now if you want, you can go back and do your Christmas shopping at Wal-Mart, Disney, Gap, H&M, Hanes or Tommy Hilfiger. If you’re in India, find your favorite shopping mall for Diwali shopping. Soon, you’ll find Wal-Mart and Disney too…across the country.

Please do it. I wouldn’t mind at all.

Sincerely Writing (without caring about the outcome),

Partha

Brooklyn, New York

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The Global Inferno That Kills All of Us. One at a Time.

This Is Brooklyn, New York. Not Your United States!

Courtesy: http://warincontext.org

These days, I am trying to keep my patience and save my energy as much as possible.

I keep telling my students, colleagues, family and friends that one of the biggest challenges in life has become how to keep calm in the face of the numerous reasons you could otherwise be angry. I keep telling them that this is one of the top lessons we need to teach our young generation and children — i.e., those who still want to learn from oldies like us and have some faith and confidence in our wisdom. Honestly, we the older generation is leaving behind a horribly messed-up world for them; its up to them to decide whether they want to clean it up or destroy it even further. If they want to clean it up — and I hope they do — they need to learn how to stay calm, composed and focused in spite of the many provocations and turmoils caused by the people in power. They need to learn how to be stoic, and sift through small, mundane things to deal with the real important ones.

Now, what the heck does it have to do with the title of this post: This is Brooklyn, New York. [This is] Not your United States? What does it really mean? I mean, look at the sentences: on the surface, together, don’t even make any sense!

It has a little, real-life story behind it — as a vast majority of my blogs have had some kind of real-life connection. What happened was that this morning, I went to do some small groceries at a locally-owned store here in Brooklyn. I picked up some fruits and vegetables and stood in the line that had perhaps three or four people in front of me, and no one behind. It is a small store and there is not much space to move around near the cashier’s check-out machine. This is a store run by a Hispanic owner; most workers, if not all, are also Latino women and men.

So, waiting in the line, I saw an old white woman pushing her cart full of stuff she bought and she was tentatively looking at me as if she was trying to find out if she could get in front of me, or behind, in the line. I would have no problems letting her come in front of me especially when I was the last person in the line; in fact, my deep-rooted Indian courtesy for older people often makes me do such little acts of benevolence. So, I said, “Would you like to come in here?” Or, maybe, I thought, she was trying to sneak by me into the isle for milk and dairy products.

And then the old woman said something that was quite out of the blue. She yelled at me, really yelled at me on top of her voice, “This is United States. We don’t do it around here. In the United States, we do not come that way. This is United States…here…”

Oh my Gosh, why did I even bother to be nice and polite to her, I thought! I was so taken aback (a mild way) that I even told the cashier girl about my feelings. Of course, she didn’t want to comment: after all, she wouldn’t want to remark on another customer’s behavior. Maybe, she was all too familiar with such incidents happening regularly in her workplace.

Courtesy: http://diversenyc.blogspot.com

Obviously, this was an old woman who was probably quite a bit on the crazy side and didn’t know what she was talking about; it’s likely she was upset at something else and took it out on me at her first opportunity. It could be she thought she had reached that age where she thought she had the right to yell at anyone she met. Or, it could be that she thought I didn’t know the rules of “her” United States: obviously, with a brown skin, mustache and beard, and with a “non-mainstream” look, I definitely did not fit her traditional concept of someone who belonged in “her” United States, and she thought she could tell me that she was not happy that “we” invaded “her” United States.

I know I’m making a big deal out of it. Sure, I’m making a mountain out of a mole hill, so to speak. But I am doing it for a reason. I know that living in Brooklyn, New York, this is not a totally extraordinary incident; in fact, I have had such experiences — more memorable in nature — over the past few years. (No, I’m not talking about the post-9/11 anti-immigrant hate crimes and violence that I wrote about on this blog before; I’m only talking about small, personal, hard-to-deal-with experiences here in New York City, the so-called paradise of diversity and tolerance).

I know such things happen in life, and it was not in any way that bad or hurting. Living in a mega-city like New York, Calcutta or London has its pluses and minuses. We need to know how to deal with it and ignore the insignificant. But the incident still troubled me a little. I would not remember this morning’s experience for too long; but I would want to remember it for at least twenty-four hours before it slipped into oblivion.

I would not even want to say too much on it. But I would want to remind ourselves and our young generation about the absolute necessity to stay calm in the face of provocations — big or small.

Sincerely Writing,

Partha

Brooklyn, New York

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Courtesy: http://www.nickloper.com

November 6: Mundane, Memorable (and Obama Reelection Too)

This is exactly where I was!

11.45 P.M.

Congratulations, President Obama. And more congratulations to Elizabeth Warren.

I hope your second term is pro-people and radically different from your first term. Make Warren the Wall Street watchperson. Bring back Glass-Stegall. Pass Employee Free Choice Act and Comprehensive Immigration Reform.

Bring back the New Deal economy. Reward work and workers. Stop all wars and bombing and droning.

The American people have kept faith in you. You show us how pro-people you are. It’s time to sever ties with the same-old iron-walled elitist politics.

Come down to earth. This is where God is.

____________________________________________________________

This is what I wrote this evening, before Obama’s re-election. I want to remember it, for reflection and posterity.

November 6, 2012. Election Day. Barack Obama wants to be re-elected today. He knows it’s not easy this time. Well…we’ve talked about it over and over again. It’s not my fault if he loses.

But I do hope he wins. ONLY because I never want extremists and war mongers to win.

Anyway…it’s too early for politics.

5 A.M. — Alarm rang. It’s too early. Too dark. Had to wake up. Got stuff to do.

5.30 A.M. — Started that old car and warmed it up for a while. That sucker may not run in this cold. Man, it looks like freezing chill in the backyard.

5.45 A.M. — Drove a sleepy wife to the polling station. She works there every time there’s an election. She is really the helping type. Always helps. Wants to help. Just a couple of days ago, she went to a shelter at Brooklyn Armory where hundreds of people began spending nights since that hurricane Sandy struck. She distributed food. She cooked food. She took a whole bunch of blankets and sweaters and shirts and pants, without asking me, and gave them away. Ah, well…I did my part too. Calcutta, Bengal, flood, drought, collecting rice and dal and clothes…campaigning by car…announcing with a hand-held microphone…truckloads of donated supplies…some money…completely honestly handing it all over to Ramakrishna Mission…yeah…I did it all!

A shelter for hurricane victims.

6 A.M. — Did not go back home. Normally, after dropping her off, I go back and take an extra hour to sleep. Not this time. Got stuff to do.

6.15 A.M. — Drove up to a gas station where my friend Sinha works as the head mechanic. He said last night they were going to pump gasoline at 4 A.M. today. Had to be there. Sandy sucked New York and New Jersey dry of gas.

Oh God, the line was already so long! Cops were managing the long line of cars and people. Stood behind the line. Turned off the engine. Waited…waited…

Drove up one inch at a start. This stupid, old car is gonna quit soon with so many starts and stops.

Moving…slowly…slowly…like a metallic snail…

America. Energy Crisis. Inevitable.

7.15 A.M. — Finally I can see the gas station. It’s still not totally morning yet. Even though, just two nights ago, they turned the clock back to end the daylight saving time. Without it, it would now be really dark. At least, I can see the gas station and the people lining up long lines…with containers, big water jars, whatever they got…to get petrol.

I kept thinking of my old Calcutta school days when I would stand up behind long lines to get kerosene, or coal, or bread…remembered those war-torn days in the sixties…

7.30 A.M. — Got gas. Filled up the tank. Paid by credit card. Off I go…

I’m not returning home. Let’s go straight to work. Had to work from home yesterday. No gas, no subway. And I can’t fly to work!

8.05 A.M. — Work. Office. Yesss! Turned on my office computer. Turned on my personal laptop too.

Worked. Had tea. Somebody’s class had extra bagels. Picked up a couple. Not bad. Didn’t have time for any breakfast in that hurry.

11.30 A.M. — 12.30 P.M. — My colleague cum director asked us to come out help load some trucks with bags full of supplies for the hurricane victims. That was not bad, doing it like they do it in an army supply line…pick up bags, throw bags to the next person…like passing the baton in a relay race…catching bags…throwing it to the next person over…bags get loaded…trucks full of bags of supplies…not bad…not bad…did something good…worthwhile…

Worked more…putting together materials for classes…labor workshop for next year…other classes…writing reports for past classes…not bad…not bad…

4.30 P.M. — Had to leave. Didn’t have lunch. Hungry. Got a piece of Sicilian pizza and some coffee. Off to the road…back on Jackie Robinson Parkway…Pennsylvania Avenue…Atlantic Avenue…home.

5.30 P.M. — Parked that old car in the garage. It’s cold, man. Chilly! Need to go pick up wifey very late. She says long voter lines. She might be working until 11 P.M. or midnight!

Mundane. Not exciting this time. Not at all!

6 P.M. — Walked to vote at our usual school building. Long line again. Man, this is a day for lines. Lines. Lines. Spiral lines. So many people are voting…Why? What do they think? Next four years will be different from the last four? Sheesh!!

6.30 P.M. — Voted. Filled up the scan sheet. Scanned through the machine. DONE!

Voted. Because I am a completely nonviolent person. Nonviolent thinker. Activist. Writer. My middle name is nonviolence. My second middle name is mainstream.

Regardless of how many vote. Regardless of how many can stay nonviolent.

P.S. — 1 A.M. — I drove my wife back home from the polling center where she worked since 5.45 A.M. (yesterday). She will make a few hundred dollars. Peanuts…compared to what the people who just got elected would make.

That’s the ultimate irony of this so-called democracy!

Sincerely Writing,

Partha

Brooklyn, New York

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Obama and the Huge Hurricane

Note: This is my last blog post before the November 6 elections.

_________________

Hurricane Sandy just left us.

The superstorm left behind a huge trail of devastation. Here in New York, millions of people are without power. Many homes and neighborhoods are flooded. Many people are spending nights in local shelters. Some forty people have perished in the storm.

I want to say a word of prayer for all those who suffered.

New York’s mayor Bloomberg graciously toured the devastated areas in his God’ly helicopter. On the other hand, New Jersey’s governor and some other city mayors and elected council members worked with affected people and brave rescue workers, standing in knee-deep water, shoulder to shoulder. Thousands of construction workers, electrical workers, plumbers, pipe fitters, sanitation workers, subway workers, glass workers, carpenters, health care workers, doctors, nurses, paramedics, police officers, firefighters, National Guard volunteers, and numerous other professionals are working 24/7 to pull America out of this incredible mess.

I want to say a word of prayer for these brave souls too. These workers are our unsung heroes.

I wish Barack Obama left all his campaign stops over the next few days, and did just the same, round the clock. But who am I to say it? He has his privileged, elite professional aides to direct him. (I was happy to see he spent some time on the ground to help the victims; I wish he did much more. That is the real campaign: campaign to work for the poor and vulnerable.)

In just a week, United States of America is going to elect its president. Chances are, Barack Obama will be unseated by Mitt Romney. I had predicted this outcome — however sad and unfortunate and undesirable – in early August through an article on this blog. You can read it here.

Some of my friends — a large majority of them Democrats — got upset at my prediction and sent me messages expressing their disapproval and anger. Some of them un-friended me from their Facebook. I am deeply sorry that I made them so unhappy. As someone who worked very hard and with high energy and hopes for Obama’s victory in 2008, a looming Obama defeat in 2012, and that too, at the hands of Mitt Romney — someone most Americans never heard of and a super-rich, elitist politician even his Republican Party was not excited about just three months ago — was not something I had envisioned. But it is now a real possibility.

The entire scenario has made me extremely tired. I don’t want to write much more. In fact, I expressed my terrible frustration in a post I called My Last Letter to President Obama. You can read that here too.

In this post, I’m only quoting a few messages myself and some of my friends have wrote on my Facebook page over the past couple of days — since Hurricane Sandy hit the Eastern Seaboard. I hope some people notice and think about it. I have no money, no media power, and no pedigree. Even though some of my friends blame me (at least partially) for my so-called “anti-Obama” blogs for an Obama defeat next week, I really I have no such power to make or break anything — especially something of this grand magnitude.

Republicans on women and government

I still want Obama to win over Romney. I shall never vote for Romney and Ryan.

You can be upset with me, but honestly, your blame is misplaced. You should have been upset with Obama, his administration and the Democratic Party that simply failed to deliver. Plus, you have the right-wing media such as Fox TV or Rush Limbaugh radio show who slandered Obama and punched him below the belt; on the other hand, the so-called liberal media neither exposed the real criminals behind the economic crisis on one hand (because of their own ties with some of them) nor did they chastise the Obama government on their terribly wrong moves and horrible choices of top executives who failed the ordinary, working Americans the second time over.

The American voters who were raped by the Bush administration for eight years were raped all over again by these sinister people and their policies over the past four years. And knowingly or not, Obama did not do much to stop them. Republicans took advantage of it.

Then came Obama’s disastrous first debate that tipped the election — so far on Obama’s side — to Romney’s favor. Obama squandered a golden opportunity the Mother Jones “47-percent” undercover exposé landed on his lap.

I wrote a number of articles to show how we expected Obama to work differently — away from the elite-iron-walled Democratic mode, and drastically away from the Republican path. I am citing one of those posts here too, in case you are interested to read.

So, here’ the final few passages from my Facebook page — in the backdrop of Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath. Hope you read them once and perhaps, if you please, read them twice.

I wrote as my status update during and post-Hurricane Sandy:

1. WE ARE OKAY here in mid-Brooklyn. Thank God. New Jersey, Manhattan and Long Island were not so lucky. Many of my labor union colleagues and immigrant friends are having a hard time right now. This unprecedented late-October mega-storm off the Atlantic Ocean is big-time proof of drastic climate change and global warming. ALSO, I keep wondering how Americans still can’t see the important role of the government especially at such difficult times. Just think if there were no FEMA, OSHA or EPA (and private companies ran their jobs!). Government, in restraint, is a friend and not a foe. Ronald Reagan was wrong.

Beware of the Bain’s!

2. IF I WERE OBAMA. – I would just show the enormous, massive work American workers are doing right now to pull the country out of this huge environmental calamity. I would show the important role the [restrained] government is playing with help from FEMA, EPA or OSHA. I would just show the president providing leadership to the rescue operation. Not like Bloomberg flying on a helicopter, but standing in knee-deep water, shoulder to shoulder with the ordinary, suffering men and women. There would be no need for any more campaign blitz. (But who am I? They have all the power, and I don’t. They have their media and machinery and money, and they must be more intelligent than I am.)

3. MY FIVE POINTS FOR REAL CHANGE. — (1) A pro-working people coalition of moderate left and right that believes in true equal opportunity (class, race and gender-wise) for upward social mobility, (2) A Keynesian economic system that rewards labor, helps the poor, and regulates-restricts corporations (including war and prison corporations), (3) Refrain from too much power for the government ensuring rights, justice, liberty and freedom, (4) Find alternative environment, energy and peace policies, and (5) Do not promote or sustain a global, violent hegemonic power and economic aggression. For whatever its worth, this must be the future education for our children. It’s a start.

Hurricane Sandy in Cuba

4. HURRICANE IN NEW YORK. — It was a new experience for us here in Brooklyn to go through this big storm. We survived, except for some power cuts, broken trees and small house damage. Yet, can’t help thinking how people all over the world — in Bangladesh, Orissa, Cuba, Haiti, Indonesia, etc. deal with it ALL THE TIME, and we take their lifelong suffering for granted. Maybe, we need to wake up. Or, will we, ever? I doubt it.

5. THIS ELECTION AND MY PREDICTION. — Who cares if predictions I made over two months ago turned out to be correct? Nobody is going to give me any money, fame or award (and some people are pretty upset at me, as if I am partially responsible for the outcome). Plus, I’d be terrified, petrified myself that fascists, racists and bigots came back to power, that Obama squandered an historic opportunity, and that the world is back on the doom and destruction track again. Don’t blame me. Blame them!

Think about it.

Sorry about the somewhat incoherent way to put it all together. But I hope you can find the underlying messages I tried to send across. I hope we can engage in an honest and sincere, urgently necessary conversation — NOW and also after the November 6 elections.

I still hope Obama wins and Romney loses. Just because I would NEVER want racists, sexists, war mongers, supremacists and bigots come back to power.

But our conversation and grassroots bridge-building will go on, regardless of the election outcome.

Sincerely writing,

Partha

Brooklyn, New York

###

Obama didn’t deliver. But Republicans didn’t want him to deliver, either!

My Last Letter To President Obama

NOTE: I wrote this article using my own time and resources. This is purely my personal opinion.

____________________

I hope you read it. It might help you.

October 12, 2012
New York

Dear President Obama:

This is my last letter to you. I don’t know if you have time to read it. But I hope you do.

I’m not going to say anything revealing to you; I’m going to say things that many of us tried to say to you over these four years since we worked hard with huge excitement, energy and enthusiasm for your victory in 2008. We were euphoric when you became the president of the United States. I played my small part to celebrate: I wrote a number of articles and spoke at a number of seminars, conferences and meetings to congratulate you, and explain to my audiences the significance of your election. An entire generation of young people shared my excitement; for me, I shared the ultimate vindication of my black brothers and sisters.

Guess what, I still have the Obama-2008 bumber sticker stuck on my old American car.

We all thought you were going to use your enormously powerful position to drive this country and virtually the entire world back to the direction of the ordinary working people and families, promote economic equality, hold the corporate criminals accountable and bring them to justice. We thought your leadership would stop global warfare and bloodshed, and bring some peace to mankind especially after the horrors of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft.

I am very sorry and dejected to tell you that you have not fulfilled our hopes, dreams and aspirations. You have let us down.

Two months ago, I posted an article on this blog where I had predicted you were going to lose in this November’s election. I analyzed some issues I thought were responsible for your likely loss. Some of my Democratic friends were angry reading it; they thought I was playing the role of a party pooper. Some of them unfriended me from their Facebook.

Yet, at the same time, I challenged the Romney-Ryan ticket with maximum force. I posed some questions to your Republican opponents — questions I thought media should have asked them but never did. Please visit the questions here if you are interested to know.

Of course, at that time very few people thought you could lose; and I wrote the article even before that scandalous and racist ”47 percent” Romney speech Mother Jones magazine broke: speech at a $50,000 per plate fundraising dinner Romney had in Florida ($50,000 is the average annual income for an American family; in many Third World countries, it’s the annual income for an entire city, perhaps). When that exposé came out, hardly anybody thought you could ever lose; in fact, even diehard Republicans thought Romney threw the elections straight in your lap; the Florida speech was so devastatingly damaging for him and the Republican Party. But who knows, maybe, that episode had made you overconfident, and you took the first presidential debate casually with no preparation whatsoever; your election prospects since then took a nose dive. Boy, how quickly things turn!

You took that debate with your now-familiar demeanor: you took your audience — your supporters and sympathizers and onlookers across the country — for granted. That non-performance in the debate was really symptomatic of your four years of non-performance. That abject failure to rise up and overpower your fierce, well-oiled opponents and their media with measured documents and reasons was symptomatic of your four years of abject failure to rise up and do the right thing at the most critical moment.

You’re going to be paying a hefty price for that non-performance. And you’re going to drag us all down with you, by your non-performance and lackluster presidency. Your elite circle of advisors — dubious and ill-reputed political insiders who are really part of the now-infamous 1 percent, exposed because of Occupy Wall Street’s resistance and challenge — have ill-advised you. You believed in them, and took us for granted. Your drones killed many innocent people overseas; your political actions killed hopes and dreams of many here in the U.S.

I can never vote for racists and bigots.

President Obama, let me be clear. I would be very sad and disheartened if you get a shock defeat in this election. I would get a chill in my bones if someone like Romney whose racism and hypocrisy is now exposed becomes the president of America. I know he’s going to start another devastating war in Iran: the war industries and Karl Rove are working hard for his victory. I would be frozen to death if a social and economic extremist like Ryan with his Tea Party Glenn Beck doctrine becomes the vice president of this country. I know he is going to kill off the last remnant of the New Deal, including Medicare and Social Security as well as collective bargaining and such precious rights of the working people of America. His party will probably overturn Roe v Wade too, destroying women’s precious reproductive rights. Corporate America, NRA and Koch Brothers as well as organized bigoted groups are working hard for his victory.

Even though I have serious, major issues with your presidency and every single day, I feel cheated by the promises you and your administration didn’t keep, just because I NEVER want a racist and a bigot become the world’s top leaders, I would want you to win.

The only problem is that deep inside, I feel you are not going to win. And you can blame nobody other than yourself for this looming, historic defeat. Your likely loss would be the final letdown of the billions of people — particularly the young generation here in America and peace and democracy soldiers all across the world — who believed so much in your message of hope. They believed in YOU!

You let them all down. How terrible this letdown has been!

Sincerely Writing,

Partha Banerjee

Brooklyn, New York

###

Manmohan *Mir Jafar* Singh!

You perhaps know that Manmohan Singh is the head of the country of India — its prime minister.

The Queen Mother and Her Bishop

Do you know who Mir Jafar was? And why I called Mr. Singh Mir Jafar? Believe me, a lot of Indians — including some of my best friends — would be terribly upset when they see this article. The most common reaction would be: “Please, Manmohan Singh and Mir Jafar? We are familiar with your hyperbole, but this is a new low for you.” Another common response would be: “We all know Singh is a puppet of Sonia Gandhi, and we also know he failed to lift India out of its horrific corruption, but he is a decent, honest man.”

But truly, I’m not the first person making such a comparison. Recently, when West Bengal’s firebrand chief minister Mamata Banerjee opposed the election of India’s longtime finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, an IMF-chosen leader, as the next president of the country, Singh and Mukherjee’s ruling Congress Party called Mamata the Mir Jafar for her lone opposition from the ruling coalition’s side (she left the coalition since then). Mir Jafar, for historical reasons, has become synonymous with someone people consider a national traitor.

So, I’m only following the footsteps of those Congress Party leaders.

It’s a very sensitive subject: calling the prime minister of India a traitor is no trivial matter. I must come up with evidence to prove my point. Plus, it’s more about the policy than the person.

I have decided to take on this subject after a lot of thinking. I have decided that someone must tell the true story of India — a country that I identify with very closely – that connects India’s dark, colonial past with the presently-unfolding new colonialism. This is a very scary neoliberal, economic takeover and occupation of modern India — neocolonization that would completely devastate and disintegrate the country and its one billion poor people, and that too, in a very short time. I have written about it before. If you’re interested to read about it, please click on this link.

But in order to understand the story, I seek your permission to give you a quick history lesson.

-One-

In 1757, East India Company — a British merchants’ group — came to then-prosperous, undivided India with a sole, sinister motive: to occupy and colonize the country. Over the previous few decades, they used India’s fractious sociopolitical system with no central rule and Hindu kings and Muslim nawabs fighting with each other, and by using various methods — bribes here and battles there, took over huge areas of land paying minimum taxes to the local rulers, and started shipping raw materials from India to Britain to run the engine of a new Industrial Revolution.

But then they decided that they would completely displace the Indian sociopolitical system with a colonial rule, and thus they created desperate situations where the otherwise lazy nawab of perhaps the most prosperous place of all — Bengal — decided to resist the British onslaught in a war now known as the Battle of Plassey. Muslim Nawab Siraj-Ud-Daulah had a big, formidable army with cannons and Hindu generals such as Mohan Lal known for their bravery, and it was apparent that the British army would be no match for the unified Hindu-Muslim regiment.

But the British had other plans.

The British commander in chief Lord Robert Clive had found a few senior, corrupt confidantes of the nawab and promised them tons of money and gold and also tax-free, fertile Bengal land. Jagat Seth, Umi Chand and such traitors with their leader Mir Jafar betrayed the nawab, divulged the top secret battle plans to Clive, moved their own regiments away from the battlefield at a very crucial moment, and the British army in the Battle of Plassey vanquished Nawab Siraj Daulah. The gallant generals under the nawab perished in the war, Clive beheaded the nawab, and after conquering Bengal, East India Company slowly declared the land of India to be a colony of the British monarchy.

Mir Jafar was made the ceremonial nawab of Bengal — only to be replaced by another puppet in a few years.

British created man-made famines in India, killing millions.

For the next two hundred years, British Raj plundered Bengal and India, brutalized and exploited their Indian subjects, forced them to plant indigo in fertile rice fields and manufacture other products used in Europe for their newly developing industries, looted coal, textile, and enormous amounts of gold and diamond. They created famines — unheard of in Bengal before they took over — and millions of farmers with their families and children died of starvation. All the rebellions across India against the British Raj were ruthlessly crushed for two centuries, and the rebels and revolutionaries were shot to death, hanged or imprisoned for life.

In 1947, the British finally gave up on the colonial rule of India, mainly because of critical economic and political turmoil in their own country in the aftermath of World War II, and left  after partitioning the country in three pieces, creating incredible misery and bloodshed.

The British also left, putting their handpicked feudal Indian rulers — ruling class that would later continue the British colonial system in a so-called free country.

That is modern Indian history as we all know it — until the next episode.

-Two-

In late December of 1984, two Sikh bodyguards of India’s mighty prime minister Indira Gandhi shot her to death, allegedly as a revenge for the leader’s desecration of a major Sikh temple in Punjab. Indira Gandhi, just like her father Jawaharlal Nehru the first prime minister of India, pampered and perpetuated a dynasty rule, and her elder son Rajiv Gandhi who had no experience or interest in politics suddenly became India’s “leader.”

He chose Dr. Manmohan Singh as his director for India’s Reserve Bank (RBI); later, Singh became the national finance minister. With help from IMF, World Bank and Western corporate world, Singh massively deregulated and privatized India’s erstwhile semi-socialistic market. Foreign corporations entered the newly-opened floodgate, and very soon, India saw a huge spike in prices of essential commodities that was always kept under control for the poor, drastic devaluation of its currency, and even more outrageous income inequality that the country had ever seen. At the same time, middle class Indians with this new economy saw prosperity that they hadn’t seen before, and however temporary the luxury was and however far their personal debts grew, were greatly reassured by this so-called prosperity. Indian Chamber of Commerce, Wall Street and corporate media showered praise on this new “reform.”

Indira Rajiv Sonia — the dynasty

Rajiv Gandhi was also assassinated a few years later by Tamil extremists, and after a couple of short stints of prime ministership by non-Gandhi-dynasty politicians, Manmohan Singh became the prime minister — this time, with the return and patronization of Rajiv’s widow Sonia Gandhi whom the Indian and Western media soon made the de facto queen mother of India’s politics. Manmohan Singh has since been India’s prime minister for almost ten years, blessed by Sonia Gandhi and sponsored by India’s corporate media. In these ten years, India’s politics and economy has created the worst-possible corruption, largest rich-poor divide, steepest inflation with out-of-control price rise of oil and essential commodities, horrific human rights violations, and most drastic devaluation of the Indian Rupee.

I have emphasized a number of times how with help from India’s finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, who was the country’s official IMF director during his tenure, Manmohan Singh promulgated IMF-dictated Structural Adjustment Program, and privatization and corporatization of the Indian economy have risen up to a new level.

-Three-

Now, just a few weeks ago, since Pranab Mukherjee the IMF-chosen finance minister became the president of India, Manmohan Singh with blessing from Sonia Gandhi has taken it to a new level. He announced that India’s economy is not growing at the rate IMF and World Bank would like to see, and therefore he said he would open up India’s economy to foreign markets even more widely. One of the primary policy changes Singh announced was in the area of FDI or Foreign Direct Investment: he invited retail chains such as Wal-Mart to open up their shops in India, and he also made sure global corporations such as the infamous oil companies, or Rupert Murdoch and his Fox Network, would get major access to the Indian market. To expedite these processes, Singh government began distributing enormous amounts of India’s land — much of it fertile, agricultural land that Indian farmers have depended for their living for centuries — so that the foreign corporations could start constructions there immediately.

Following a massive policy change proposal in the U.S., the Singh government also has proposed privatization and investment into the private equity market India’s vast life insurance sector — a public sector — putting in severe peril the only life’s savings ordinary people managed to have.

Manmohan Singh, Pranab Mukherjee and Sonia Gandhi call this process necessary for jump starting India’s economic growth; Indian and Western media have again showered high praise for Singh’s “bold and courageous” stand. Media compared Singh a “roaring lion.”

People and politicians who challenged this completely outrageous economic overhaul that in their opinion would destroy India’s national economy (of whatever was left after the first decade’s “reform”) were quickly blasted by the Congress Party, Indian Chamber of Commerce, Wall Street, and Indian and Western corporate media. Mamata Banerjee has become the whipping horse for the press: there is little discussion on WHY her quitting the privileged position in the national government is a principled, pro-people stand. On the other hand, the largest opposition party in India — BJP — has always been lamblasted by India’s media on the pretext that they are far right and always against anything liberal; BJP’s social and religious dogma mimicking the Republican Party here in the U.S. did not help them either to be at the forefront of any economic policy discussion. Further, Congress Party has characteristically bribed and bought off some other opposition parties to find support for this newest round of “reform.”

IMF and Greece

This new round of reform is IMF and World Bank dictated, and their neoliberal reform policies have devastated other countries in recent months. Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal have been the latest victims. Argentina went through their horror a decade ago. Unemployment, inflation and massive layoff of public sector workers have gone out of control. Just like the Indian president, IMF has also chosen their men to be presidents of Italy and Spain, and Greece is going through a horrendous turmoil because they refused to let IMF select their own destiny.

Labor unions and teacher unions and student unions have took the hardest hit — because of their resistance and opposition to this new, horrendous, anti-people “reform.”

For India, this so-called reform at the behest of Manmohan Singh would be even more catastrophic and millions of poor people will starve and die. I have written about it before. I have also written about Malaysia’s former prime minister Mohathir Bin Mohamad who resisted the IMF onslaught a few years ago before he became a slaughter lamb himself for his outspoken criticism of this new global economic terror.

I re-quote Mahathir Bin Mohamad.

“In the old days you needed to conquer a country with military force, and then you could control that country. Today it’s not necessary at all. You can destabilize a country, make it poor, and then make it request [IMF] help. And [in exchange] for the help that is given, you gain control over the policies of the country, and when you gain control over the policies of a country, effectively you have colonized that country.”

India is country where I still have a lot of belongingness. I feel very strongly for India even after being in the U.S. for twenty five years. I can see how Wal-Mart, GE, Monsanto (which in ten years has forced 200,000 Indian farmers to commit suicide), Fox, Coke, KFC, MTV and McDonald’s — along with their Indian corporate counterparts and cheerleading media — are going to change the face of the country, once and for all.

I can see how the farming lands and forests and villages and their people who have survived and prospered since the ages of Ramayana and Mahabharata will soon be destroyed, once and for all.

British aggressors forced Indian farmers to plant indigo in their fertile rice fields. Now, the new FDI and IMF aggressors will force Indian farmers to simply go extinct.

This is neocolonization happening right in front of our eyes. And it is going to enslave one billion poor Indians for many years to come, just the same way the British once colonized India with help from the country’s Mir Jafars. Mir Jafars sold India off to foreign traders.

It’s a very scary, bone-chilling deja vu unfolding right now.

Manmohan Singh once said after the horrific Union Carbide disaster: “Bhopals will happen, but India must move on.”

Are we okay with that kind of moving on?

You decide.

Sincerely Writing,

Partha

Brooklyn, New York

###

Mir Jafar: Mamata or Manmohan? You decide!

Trickle-down Lies

People often ask me why I never find anything good our leaders do for us.

We always talk about trickle-down economics, where in a pyramidal system, money and other powers trickle down from the top to the bottom, and the people in power tell us that would make us all happy and we’ll be rich and famous and happy in this life.

But in reality, it never happens. It’s a lie. It’s a lie the powerful people manufactured, refined and propagandized with help of their media. Whether in the U.S. or in India — the two countries I know — with a very few exceptions that are statistically insignificant, this system never creates any upward social mobility. In short, the poor remains poor and gets poorer, middle class declines, and the rich gets richer.

That has been the history of USA and India for most of their modern history.

But what about trickle-down lies? What does it really mean?

Well, I don’t want to give away the explanation immediately. Otherwise, you would not take the time to read through what I have to say here. And I wouldn’t even give it away explicitly. I ask you to think about it based on what you read. I challenge to your mind to guess, to imagine, to surmise, and to come up with your conclusion.

I hope it’s not an unfair game. At least, it’s not a dishonest game. Everything I say here is 100 percent truth.

Now, let’s cut to the chase, without further ado.

Some of my friends, students and readers complain that I never explain why I don’t see anything positive in the world affairs. They label me as a true leader of the glass half-empty club. They say I should float a Half Empty Party and run for elections; they say I might at last find fame and prosperity if I did.

People who have known me for many years and love me deeply question my state of mind. They suggest that I found a way to calm down my nerves. Otherwise, they say, I might lose my ability to live a normal life.

I do not doubt about their doubts about me. I do not ever not appreciate their observation, judgment and word of wisdom and caution. I know deep in my heart how deeply they care about me, and how deeply they are concerned about my well being. I deeply thank their heart-most feelings about the condition of my heart, from the bottom of my heart.

I love you all. Your love and care show me that love and care still exist. And that is enough reason for me to love and care and exist.

In fact, I am so non-violent and such a strong believer in life that I always know that I shall live nonviolently. I’ve seen enough deaths in my life. I’ve experienced enough violence in my life. Death and violence do not impress me. They do not attract me at all. I do not find them sexy. Seeing them so much so up close made me absolutely anti-death and anti-violence.

Or, to spin the statement positively, I want to say I am a pro-life and pro-peace person.

And that is my choice.

Now, before I digress too much especially in this state of mind that troubles so many so often, let’s examine the first statement I wrote. I copy and paste it here.

“People often ask me why I never find anything good our leaders do for us.”

Let’s take one concern at a time.

Leaders:

Who are these leaders I never find anything good they do for us? Are these are elected political leaders — such as Barack Obama who failed to keep his 2008 promises, Bill Clinton who destroyed U.S. welfare for the poor, Hillary Clinton whose Middle East work did not pay off as obvious by the newest massive violence and Israeli government did not budge an inch? Are these leaders like Manmohan Singh the prime minister of India who yesterday floodgate-opened the Indian market to Wal-Mart, or Pranab Mukherjee the newly elected president of India who has been the India director of IMF when he was the country’s longtime finance minister? Is it Mitt Romney the Republican candidate for the American presidential election this year who doesn’t know what he’s talking about other than the fact that he wants to wage new wars and wants to be even richer using U.S. presidency?

Most importantly, how they became our leaders? If it’s through voting, is the election process fair? Did we hear answers to all our questions and concerns from these leaders? For that matter, did we ever get to ask them our questions? What made their election possible: is it the amount of money they were able to spend, ads they were able to buy on mass media, influence they could exercise in their parties that made their inside decisions possible, or were they in bed with big powers that made their election possible?

If the leaders were not elected leaders (see below), what social, political and economic scenarios made them leaders in their “non-political” fields possible? Family connection, pedigree, wealth, media ownership, or some other ways never fully disclosed to us? What and who kept those untold secrets away from us?

G8 heads. Don’t worry: these are only costumes.

Are they leaders of the economic world — such as Alan Greenspan the former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, Robert Rubin or Henry Paulson the two big Wall Street CEOs who became treasury secretaries in Clinton and Bush’s Democratic and Republican administrations, General Electric’s chief who is now a chief financial advisor for the Obama administration, or Bill Gates of Microsoft or say, GE’s chief who also by default heads the manufacturing wing of war machineries including its nuclear submarines? Or, maybe, the drone manufacturers that manufacture drones Obama is now using at the ratio of 13 to 1 compared to Bush — to drop remote-control bombs on various countries, without any U.N. approval or following any international laws?

Are these leaders owners of the various media corporations: Rupert Murdoch of Fox Network, or the Salzburger family of the New York Times, Ted Turner of CNN, Walt Disney Corporation that is the owner of ABC TV network and its powerful offsprings such as ESPN, or again, General Electric that owns NBC TV and its powerful offsprings such as CNBC? Are these leaders I’m referring to owners, business managers or directors of Hollywood or Bollywood movie industries? Like, the Universal Studios, Pixar, Disney that also owns ABC TV and ESPN, Paramount, Columbia, or India’s god-like movie icon Amitabh Bachchan, or the other up and coming icon Amir Khan who is the official spokesperson for Coca Cola in that country of one billion people? Are they owners of big media houses in India such as the Telegraph, Times of India, Ananda Bazar and all?

Or, are they leaders of the executive board that runs India’s mega-billion-dollar cricket industry — people who are also political leaders of the country’s ruling Congress Party? What about the cricket players such as Dhoni or Tendulkar who made so much nauseating amount of money from playing and advertising that nobody knows how much nauseating amount of money they really made, and media never challenged them on the nauseating amount of money they made playing cricket in a country where millions of people still die of hunger, poverty and malnutrition, and where the literacy rate is still less than half of the population, and where village women walk barefooted miles every day to get water?

I could go on and on. But I just remembered what I wrote when I started writing this piece. So, to refresh my memory (I’m sure you’d like to remember it too), I copy and paste it here.

“People who have known me for many years and love me deeply question my state of mind. They suggest that I found a way to calm down my nerves. Otherwise, they say, I might lose my ability to live a normal life.”

For the sake of these people, and for the sake of keeping some of my sanity and ability to live a normal life, I’d stop making the list of leaders any longer. I think you can easily understand what I’m trying to say here: what kind of leaders I’m referring to.

So, for the sake of time, and not to test your patience anymore, I’d quickly move on to the second part of my first statement.

Horse racing. Deal making.

Good our leaders do for us:

Now, this appears to be a simple sentence, or in this case, simple fragment of a sentence. But read it one more time. Good our leaders do for us. We’ve already analyzed who these leaders are. But the question remains: good they do for us. That part is not as simple as it seems. Let’s look at it this way:

What is good? (i.e., the definition of good — is it to be rich, to be famous, to be rich and famous, or is it some other measure that makes it good?)

Who decides what is good? (i.e., is there any democratic and open process that helps us all to decide what is good for us the vast majority 99% vis-a-vis what is good for the 1%?)

Why are they doing it FOR us? (i.e., why are they not doing it WITH us, together in a collective — or at least open and transparent and democratic process?)

So, as you can see, the heart of my heartfelt question is really about openness, collective, justice and watchdog – I guess, four important pillars of democracy. I do not believe for a moment that in this trickle-down system, the people in power are giving a damn about these four pillars of democracy. Therefore, without the absence of these pillars, the democracy edifice might soon collapse; when it does, we who believe we’re under its shelter, will be crushed to death.

There will be no democracy edifice for the children we leave behind.

I shall stop now. Because people who deeply care about me and love me express serious concern that my heart’s state of affairs is not truly normal, I leave the question on democracy, trickle-down and lies as they relate to our real and raw, day-to-day lives — open-ended, for you to answer your way. You might say it is an open-heart question.

I ask you to do it if you do not want to die of a massive shock. You might say, I’m trying my best to help save your life, and my life too.

To put it bluntly, my bottom of the heart question needs an open-heart surgery.

Sincerely Writing,

Partha

Brooklyn, New York

It’s a million-dollar question. Do I have enough insurance to ask it?

Obama, Support Chicago Teachers. Or Lose My Vote.

Terrorists, communists, socialists…teachers…mothers…grandmothers! They’re all the same!

Note: This is purely my personal opinion. I wrote it using my personal time and resources.

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I almost titled it: Bangladesh or USA, Italy or Greece — it’s the same union-busting game.

Then I changed the title to: Find cross-labor solidarity (the UPS way). Rahm and Romney will cringe!

My third title was: Rahm, Romney and Ryan are on the same side. Which side are you on?

(In case you don’t know, UPS won its 1997 strike garnering cross-labor solidarity. Fedex and many other unions came out in support of their UPS brothers and sisters. I always talk about solidarity across the moderate working class — both from the so-called left and right. You can read about my alliance-building model by clicking on this link.)

Anyway, either title would have been just as fine. I could’ve also included IMF and 1% in the title. All of the above would have been just as fine. And just as true. And just as powerful. And just as appropriate.

But I settled on the Obama and vote title. Just because I thought it might find a wider audience if I made is a little more controversial, sensitive, sexy.

Now, my title might backfire. Chances are, if the strike drags for a few more days, big bosses would heap praises both for the striking teachers and Chicago mayor Rahm Emmanuel (a close Obama ally and a Democrat, for those who don’t know), throw some temporary, stop-gap solutions…until after the big elections are over. And then, as soon as the elections are over, and either Obama or Romney becomes the next president, Rahm Emmanuel will crush the teachers’ union — just the same way Scott Walker, the viciously anti-union Republican governor of Wisconsin clamped down on the state’s public employees’ union.

Now that Rahm Emmanuel has found such strong support from Romney and Ryan — Republican candidates one of whom is far right Tea Party and the other is a known union basher and private outsourcer — who’s going to block his path? Plus, Koch Brothers and Murdoch and Heritage Foundation and some other big media (and foam-in-the-mouth Rush) will pump in big money and other resources to support Rahm. Who knows, maybe, he will be the education secretary in a new Romney-Ryan cabinet!

In fact, New York Times wrote a scathing anti-union editorial just when I was writing this blog! Read it here. And read their own readers’ responses too.

Unbelievable to see the anti-labor-union sentiment in this country called USA where the entire middle class was built with the blood, sweat and tears of the working people and labor unions — for at least forty years. Most of these people who are calling the striking union names, blaming the teachers for all the problems of the poor and failing students, and expressing outrage that these teachers are asking for better wages and benefits either lie about or are ignorant about that glorious history from not too long ago.

It’s absolutely unbelievable to see that there is so little in-depth information and analysis on mainstream media about the key demands of the striking teachers and what forced them to finally come to this point where they have no other way but to strike. Why historic? Because they risk losing and they’re fighting to expose both big parties and their anti-union agenda — one explicit and the other hidden.

Even in the mighty, all-important New York Times, there is hardly any serious analysis of the CTU strike with drawing connection between this strike and other recent strikes across the U.S. and other places of the world. I have already mentioned the UPS strike of 1997. There is hardly any serious discussion of labor unrest and what economic and political games global powers are playing to crush organized labor. How many people know what International Monetary Fund’s Structural Adjustment Program is that works so closely with global political powers, as well as multinational corporations — GE, Wal-Mart, Disney, McDonald’s or Monsanto — that are so infamous for their long history of oppression and violence on any labor mobilization?

How many people know the deep-rooted connections between all these dots?

Yet, that discussion would be so critical at this point. New York Times and Wall Street Journal and CNN would not get into that discussion. So, as I often say, the onus is on us.

Huge labor solidarity in Chicago today! Way to go, brothers and sisters!

Now, today on September 11, Jobs with Justice — an activist group that emphasizes rights and justice for the working people of America — threw their support behind the CTU strikers, and huge rallies came out on the streets of Chicago. That is reassuring, even though I have doubts how long the public school teachers’ union would be able to sustain their energy and strength, especially when mighty forces such as Obama and Clinton on the Democratic side and Romney and Ryan on the Republican side would clamp down on them so heavily, with help from corporate and mentor media.

I have worked with unions closely here in America, and also in India — for many years. My father was a factory employee most of his life. I have seen good unions with honest and caring and efficient leadership. I’ve also seen unions with dishonest and inefficient bosses.

But regardless of the good or bad union bosses and their good or bad politics, I have every drop of blood in my body to support the cause of organized labor. Labor unions are the last stumbling block for the elite, powerful 1 percent and their absolute, global economic tyranny against the poor and middle class working people and families. I’ve talked about it before. Check it out here.

Now, people who are expressing their outrage at the striking teachers of Chicago, have the same-old points that anti-union power such as Scott Walker or Mitt Romney or the union-busting corporations (yes, some companies only specialize in union busting, for a hefty fee) always use. They are:

(1) Union workers (in this case, the striking public school teachers) are asking for too much salary and benefits; they already make a lot. Plus, this is the time for austerity: the country is going through a severe recession. There must be austerity now.

(2) Students are failing because these teachers are incompetent and lazy. So instead of giving them tenure, the education department and mayor should fire them.

(3) Labor unions (in this case, the striking teachers) only care about themselves; they don’t care about the larger society, or the students or their parents. That’s why the striking teachers are against the teacher evaluation system.

(4) Union leaders are all thugs and crooks; they make big money and cut secret deals with the government.

(5) Public sector enterprises (in this case, public education system) have failed; it’s time to kill the government and government organizations. People should not finance public employees, public teachers and public health officials, etc. with their hard-earned money and taxes.

There may be more points. I am sure you can find more points to add here.

Sure! We all know where you’re coming from. You can find it all in Heritage Foundation or IMF’s manuals. Or, just read Ronald Reagan’s biography.

Let’s take these points one at a time.

1. Union workers make too much money. — Chicago striking teachers make too much money already. How much do they make? In a major city like Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston or New York, where the living expenses are way too high, a $70,000 per year salary for a family of four is not that high. In fact, if you have to pay back your high income taxes, student loans (or help your grown-up children to pay back theirs), car loans, house mortgage (or apartment rent) and car insurance (most places in America do not have public transportation: you must have a car to go to work) on top of your other monthly expenses, it’s definitely not much. In fact, with that kind of salary with no perks or bonuses, you have to be very careful not to get into additional debt.

But most importantly, why not talk about the obnoxious, outrageous, unconscionable income gap that middle class (including these teachers) has with the affluent of this country? I’m not even talking about the nauseating money Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Countrywide, Merrill Lynch, Chase or AIG executives made before or even after the 2007-2008 crash. How much Lehman Brothers CEO made when he was actually driving his company into ground? I’m not talking about how GE didn’t pay their income taxes. I’m talking about an AVERAGE worker’s salary at Goldman Sachs, which is over $600,000. Why do they make so much, and produce or manufacture or create NOTHING (except more wealth for themselves), and yet nobody talks about their outrageous earnings?

Why don’t these people talk about the fact that in the U.S., an AVERAGE CEO makes 450 TIMES more than the average working person at the same company? In other words, for an average worker to make the kind of money their CEO makes in one year, they have to work for 450 years. Nice!

A New Jersey comparison of teacher’s salary with corporate reformers’ salary. Bloomberg’s ex-education czar Joe Klein, now a Rupert Murdoch ally, is one of the reformers!

What about the corporate reformers who always tell us that teachers make too much money? Here’s a recent chart.

2. Students are failing because of these incompetent teachers. – Is it really the teachers or a failed education system that funnels and shifts money and resources from public education to charter schools or other elite schools, sucking the already-malnourished public schools dry? I’ll give you two examples from my own experience. I know very well about Stuyvesant High School, located next to Ground Zero (today is a stark reminder: some of our students saw the WTC terrorist attack from their chemistry lab on 9/11). New York City pumped in maximum resources for their prestigious public schools such as Stuyvesant, Bronx Science or Brooklyn Tech — and you wouldn’t believe how affluent these schools are. Yet, so many public schools in the vicinity of Stuyvasant have practically nothing: they are in such as sad state of affairs with no money to repair their classrooms, fix their toilets, and upgrade their chemistry lab. Or, maybe, they don’t have a chemistry lab. I know they definitely don’t have an Olympic-size swimming pool that Stuyvesant has — indoor.

I also worked with an East Harlem public school when I was a journalism student at Columbia University; I wrote a feature on one of the teachers there. She showed me their biology lab; the entire high school had only one microscope for its entire body of students. She showed me how the ceilings were leaky and students sometimes had to sit outside of the classroom when it rained hard. The students told me how they worked hard, but were depressed that they would not be able to go to a good college because they were not well-prepared, or didn’t have money for college.

I published a letter in the New York Times some years ago when the education chancellor of NYC expressed surprise that the elite public school had so few Hispanic and black students. Nobody but the chancellor was surprised; do you know what it takes for these students to get into Stuyvesant and Bronx Science? Only the kids that had the best education and best family support system at elementary and middle school could do well in the extremely competitive entrance tests.

And I’m not even talking about the privileged private schools. Even within the public school system, there is so much outrageous disparity. Teachers’ fault? Really?

3. Teachers are against the evaluation system and uncaring about the students and parents. – I’ll answer the second part first. I have been a teacher all my life. I have taught in an extremely poor village in India for years before coming to America. Here in the U.S., I have taught at schools near Chicago and then I have taught in two cities in New York. I am a teacher now. Teachers care. Teachers care about the students, and teachers care about the parents. Teachers go out of their way to help their students. This is true across the board — public or private school teachers. Guess what…many of these teachers are parents themselves! They experience the process of education both various sides of the issue. In fact, these teachers know how parents feel when the student doesn’t do well; they know what needs to be done. But again, public schools everywhere have gone through major budget cuts draining their scant resources even more. In many places in the U.S., pro-privatization governments with help from corporations have funneled money from public schools to charter schools.

In case of the striking Chicago teachers, they have never said no to a fair evaluation system. But Rahm Emmanuel’s administration has imposed more and more rigorous and threatening evaluations on the teachers: they’ve recently increased the share of student performance in the evaluation process from 25% to 40%. Teachers failed to negotiate with the arrogant mayor; in fact, Rahm refused to see the teachers at the bargaining table for months. Many say that had he not been so arrogant to sit down with the teachers, this strike would not have taken place.

How many care to know? This is all taken for granted!

4. Union leaders are all thugs and crooks; they make big money and cut secret deals with the government. – This is a ploy anti-union politicians and media use all the time — all over the world. But U.S. media have taken it one step further. You never hear a pro-union story on radio, watch on TV or read in the big newspapers. You never get to see the working, struggling side of labor. You never get to see the Labor Day parade. You never know the contribution of the labor movement in building a strong middle class. Organized labor, through many years of anti-labor propaganda on the media, has lost its popularity and reputation it had. Most people here in America believe that labor union is a bad thing and has no relevance in a modern society. Nobody knows that Dr. Martin Luther King was a labor leader too; in fact, the last speech he gave the day before his assassination in Memphis was to a group of poor, striking sanitation workers. Nobody knows what collective bargaining really means. Nobody knows what some of the rights and benefits we enjoy today — and ALL workers blue-collar or white-collar enjoy them — ONLY because labor unions fought so hard for them, for generations. Anti-union propaganda has really reached a new low in this country. I know from personal experience that India is the other country where similar propaganda has tarnished the image of labor unions.

5. Finally, pro-privatization forces are now extremely powerful. USA and India are two places I know where the public sector has suffered enormously. Public schools, public hospitals and health care facilities, public employment, public transportation and all such government programs especially for the poor and middle class have declined miserably. Conservative think tanks and corporate media have blasted anything connected with the government; in the U.S., the schools of Ayn Rand, Milton Freedman and Alan Greenspan with their powerful libertarian followers in the seat of power have maligned the concept of the government altogether. Now, both the Tea Party far right in the Republican camp and Blue Dog Democrats have given away the economy of this country to private corporations. That was the primary cause of the current financial disaster.

With help from IMF, World Bank and such global organizations, and with special help for corporate media, a so-called economic reform has neocolonized the entire world: the two largest democracies such as the U.S. and India perhaps have suffered the most. In my classes and workshops, I simply this process for the students and show them the four most important policy doctrines that have expedited this global economic aggression. They are:

(A) Deregulation of every aspect of the economy, which has caused havoc to the U.S. economy.

(B) Tax cuts for rich individuals and corporations, which has created even more debt to an already-depleted U.S. treasury. Federal Reserve, which is anything but federal, has been given historic, unprecedented powers by the government to print money and loan it to the government itself, at a high interest rate. Major wars have contribute to the debt.

(C) Drastic cuts in public assistance and welfare for the needy and underprivileged. Ronald Reagan started the process, and Clinton continued it through cutting the U.S. welfare system, virtually ending the New Deal economy that was the cornerstone of American democracy for forty years.

(D) Clamping down on labor unions. There won’t be any collective bargaining anymore. Do away with all the pro-labor laws that working men and women fought for over centuries.

I began this article with a few other tentative titles for it. I mentioned Bangladesh to show how in the less-law-enforced Third World, labor leaders who are mobilizing against this global tyranny are being repressed and killed. Just a few days ago, Aminul Islam — noted textile workers’ leader in Bangladesh — was killed. In the eighties, many say, CIA broke down a massive textile workers’ strike in Bombay, India and planted its own man Bal Thackeray — who has turned out to be as much a bigot and fascist as there can be: perhaps only KKK would come close. In more law-enforced countries such as U.K., Italy, Greece or USA, the people in power and their media have clamped down on the labor movement differently. The newest barrage of hate on the right-wing media and more subtle, moderate-looking opinion pieces in so-called neutral, liberal media are doing just the same.

Who could have saved labor unions, and at this particular moment, the striking Chicago teachers, from such draconian repression?

I would think it’s someone like Barack Obama.

Think about it, Mr. President. I don’t have much power. But I SHALL decide on my vote — based on your actions.

I’ll wait to hear from you.

_____________________________

Sincerely Writing,

Partha

Brooklyn, New York

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You tell me, President Obama. I’m waiting to hear from you.