Why India’s largest minority should treat Congress overtures with reservations

The more things change for India’s Muslims, the more they remain the same. Come elections and political parties invent ever new ways of wooing, using and exploiting them to reap their periodic harvest while the condition of Muslims worsens by the day.

Being the oldest and most experienced of them all, the Congress party has obviously mastered this art of fooling all the people all the time at the expense of some. But it’s not just the Congress; in this public bath, no one has a stitch on. With the crucial battle for five states heating up, the Muslims once again find themselves in the middle of a dirty, cynical game of one-upmanship with every political party using them as a football and a punching bag.

Uttar Pradesh is the big prize. Stakes couldn’t have been higher. Everyone from Mulayam’s Smajwadi to Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party, which first proposed a Muslim quota stealing the Congress’ thunder, is hungering after the pie. The main opposition BJP is in the big game hunt too and is sharpening its knives for the sacrificial lamb.

Adding to the fun is the new breed of party- and channel-hopping “Muslim leaders” parroting their newest party’s latest pitch swearing it to be God’s gift to the community. It gets so gross and nauseating at times you feel like throwing the TV remote at them!

The farce never seems to end. First, the Congress sends up the balloon of 4.5 percent quota for Muslims, rather conveniently, just before the poll dates were unveiled. It’s followed by the joke of a “minority quota” in the still-born Lokpal, the corruption watchdog.

Law and Minority Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid then takes the game to a new level by promising to double the quota to 9 percent. Interestingly, it came at his wife’s poll rally in Farrukhabad, raising a political storm and provoking the poll panel to freeze the quota. The Congress stands to lose nothing though. It could always demand the Muslim vote claiming it was committed to helping the community but its efforts were thwarted by the parties like the BJP and others.

The grand ol’ party has played this cynical game for so long that it knows too well how it’s all going to unfold and how the opposition and media would respond to it. All you have to do is throw those perfect promises and dazzling dreams at Muslims and the rest will follow.

Even if the Congress were serious and sincere about implementing the quota, even the paltry 4.5 percent, it makes little difference to the community in real terms if it is carved out of the existing 27 percent quota marked for the Other Backward Communities. Some Muslim groups like Ansaris (weavers) and Qureshis (butchers) are already covered under the 27 percent quota. It’s the economically struggling sections of the community that badly need hand holding.

And now with the EC staying the quota with courts likely to follow suit as happened in Andhra Pradesh, the Muslims have ended up once again with nothing while earning themselves a lot of ill will and resentment of the rest of the country, especially the OBCs. The cruel joke by a government fighting for its survival hasn’t just further isolated the community; it has ended up pitting it against communities that were once their allies and fellow travelers. But then we have been here before. This is how the Congress has always paid Muslims for their blind, unquestioning support since Independence. Muslims have received nothing but such clever-by-half and often dangerous tokenism from the party. We thought things would be different under Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh because they came from a different background and could transcend the cynical, forever calculating Congress mindset.

Only the blind could have missed the fact that the Muslim vote played a critical role in bringing the party to power in 2004 after long years of wilderness. The feat was repeated in 2009, riding on all the talk of change although the government didn’t lift a finger to implement the bold recommendations of Justice Sachar Committee and Ranganath Mishra Commission.

Both reports, especially the one by the Mishra Commission, make for disturbing reading as they turn the spotlight on the shocking state of a 200-million strong community. This is no time and place to go over them but in short both panels conclude that Muslims are right now at the lowest rung of the hierarchy in every respect. Lowest of the low, they are today stacked even below the Dalits, the long discriminated castes. Only 4.5 percent Muslims are to be found in government jobs. Their representation in other areas is even more pathetic. The credit for this state of affairs goes to the party that has been in power for the longest period of time since Independence. This is why you thought, if not for the wholehearted support it received in 2004 and 2009, this government would have implemented the recommendations of the two commissions it had formed in its wisdom.

If it had been serious about the minority welfare, it wouldn’t have slept on the recommendations of Justice Sachar and Justice Mishra for five years, only to remember the Muslims days ahead of the assembly elections. Personally, I have nothing but respect for Salman Khurshid. He comes from an illustrious family (grandson of the late President Dr. Zakir Hussain) and obviously means well but is condemned by the company he keeps. The mindset of his party being what it is – others are fast catching up – it just cannot help itself to look beyond its petty electoral calculations and permutations and combinations of caste and religion.

I am not most comfortable with this whole quota business offering special treatment, or affirmative action as the Americans call it, for a particular group or community. Ideally, it should be equal opportunity for all. But we are not in an ideal situation. At times, extraordinary solutions are needed for extraordinary situations. Affirmative action has transformed the lives of millions of the long oppressed Dalits and African Americans, helping them break free of the centuries old cycle of inhumane abuse and exploitation. It could make a difference to Muslims too, if political parties allowed it and stopped looking at the issue from a religious prism. The Muslim empowerment could actually mean lifting of a huge chunk of India’s population out of misery. But even if a quota for the politically and economically dispossessed Muslims becomes a reality, it might end up doing more harm than good thanks to the cut-throat nature of Indian politics, not to mention our Hindutva friends.

Perhaps it’s about time Muslims gave up their fond, innocent hopes of political action to end their political and economic deprivation. Instead of waiting for those crumbs and doles from politicians, they must take charge of their destiny. In the end if anyone is going to help them, it’s themselves.

Aijaz Zaka Syed is a Dubai-based journalist and commentator. Write him at aijaz.syed@hotmail.com

Now that Oslo had admitted that the Norway-led Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) received intelligence from both the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), those running the peace process couldn’t have been unaware of LTTE’s preparations for war, Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa said yesterday.

He was commenting on the Norwegian peace evaluation report released in Oslo last Friday.

“In spite of foreign intelligence services confirming our own assessment regarding LTTE preparations for war, those spearheading the peace process turned a blind eye to the rapidly deteriorating situation,” Rajapaksa said.

The Norwegian study quoted SLMM head as having said that RAW only reached them through informal channels, therefore they couldn’t be fully trusted.

“They weren’t giving it to us to be nice. We would always ask ourselves why they want us to know this. Intelligence provided by NATO only confirmed what they already knew,” the SLMM Chief was quoted as having said.

However, the Oslo-funded study revealed that the Norwegians had high level meetings in New Delhi with RAW.

The Norwegian-led SLMM comprised men from Scandinavian countries.

The study also cited the SLMM as having alleged that Sri Lanka, the LTTE and India opposed the mission having radar surveillance.

Defence Secretary Rajapaksa said that the Norwegian report only proved the failures on the part of those running the peace process.

In fact, the SLMM could reveal the intelligence it had received from NATO or any other regional or global power, the Gajaba veteran said. He said that the failed Sri Lankan peace process should be a case study for the global community.

Commenting on a query attributed to Hanssen Bauer and Brattskar whether the ethnic and political problems in Sri Lanka could be solved by military means for which he was quoted as having said, ‘yes’, the Defence Secretary emphasized that the crisis caused by the LTTE needed a military response. “What really surprised me is that a section of the global community still seems to believe in a political solution to a terrorist problem,” Rajapaksa said.

The Defence Secretary pointed out that the report also admitted the Sri Lankan military had been denied an opportunity to take part in substantive negotiations, while Norwegian military experts were involved in ‘military technicalities of de-escalation, advanced positions and front lines.’

Former Navy Commander Vice Admiral Daya Sandagiri told the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) the step-motherly treatment given to the Sri Lankan military in the run-up to the finalization of the CFA.

The Defence Secretary asserted that the Norwegian revelations had highlighted the need to re-examine the whole process, particularly military and intelligence aspects.

In the light of Norwegian admission of the involvement of its military in the CFA, the issue was whether a third party had access to SLA deployment plans on the northern theatre, Rajapaksa said.

The LTTE’s focus was on the Jaffna frontline extending from Kilali to Nagarkovil through Muhamalai, where the SLA had some of its most experienced fighting formations backed by artillery and armour deployed.

Rome: Economist Mario Monti accepted the monumental task Sunday of trying to form a new government that can rescue Italy from financial ruin, expressing confidence that the nation can beat the crisis if its people pull together.

His selection came a day after Silvio Berlusconi reluctantly resigned as premier, bowing out after world markets pummeled Italy’s borrowing ability, reflecting a loss of faith in the 75-year-old media mogul’s leadership. Berlusconi quit after the Italian parliament approved new reform measures demanded by the European Union and central bank officials – but even those are not considered enough to right Italy’s ailing economy.

“There is an emergency, but we can overcome it with a common effort,” Monti told the nation, shortly after Italy’s president formally asked him to see if he can muster enough political support to lead the country out of one of its most trying hours since World War II.

“In a moment of particular difficulty, Italy must win the challenge to bounce back, we must be an element of strength and not weakness in the European Union, of which we are founders,” he added.

Monti must now draw up a Cabinet, lay out his priorities, and see if he has enough support in Parliament to govern. Rival political parties offered various degrees of support, including one demand from Berlusconi’s party – the largest in Parliament – that his government last only as long enough as it takes to heal Italy’s finances and revive the economy.

The 68-year-old economics professor is no pushover, earning a reputation for staring down challenges as a tough EU competition commissioner. But he’ll have to win a confidence vote in Parliament before he can lead the nation.

Monti told reporters he will carry out his task “with a great sense of responsibility and service toward this nation.” Italy must heal its finances and resume growth because “we owe it to our children, to give them a concrete future of dignity and hope.”

Berlusconi’s party also demanded that only technocrats – not politicians – make up Monti’s Cabinet in exchange for its crucial support.

Monti faces a daunting challenge – preventing an Italian default that could tear apart the 17-nation eurozone and send Europe and the U.S. into new recessions.

Italy’s economy is hampered by high wage costs, low productivity, fat government payrolls, excessive taxes, choking bureaucracy, and an educational system that produces one of the lowest levels of college graduates among rich countries.

In addition, as the third-largest economy in the eurozone, Italy is considered too big for Europe to bail out like Greece, Portugal and Ireland have been.

The next Italian government needs to push through even more painful reforms and austerity measures to deal with euro1.9 trillion ($2.6 trillion) in debt – about 120 percent of the country’s economic output. And many of those debts are coming due soon – Italy has to roll over more than euro300 billion ($410 billion) of its debts next year alone.

Some political forces, including some from Berlusconi’s ranks and that of his allies, have been clamoring for early elections. But President Giorgio Napolitano cited approaching treasury bond auctions – one as early as Monday and other bonds maturing in the next few months – as a main reason he decided to “avoid early elections and the consequent government vacuum” until a new one could be formed.

Asked by journalists if he thought Monti could form his government by week’s end, Napolitano responded positively.

The yield on Italian 10-year bonds fell to 6.48 percent Friday, below the crisis level of 7 percent reached earlier last week, a level that forced the three other EU nations into international bailouts.

Centrist and center-left parties in the opposition during Berlusconi’s rule offered their support for Monti.

“Italian parties are at fork in the road. Either they speculate on the situation, hoping that they can get some campaign capital from it, or they take up their responsibilities to save the country,” said centrist opposition leader Pier Ferdinando Casini.

The leader of Italy’s largest labor confedation, the left-wing CGIL, Susanna Camusso, expressed hope that Monti could pull together a government capable of “giving back the international credibility that we have lost in these years.”

Union leaders, along with industrialists, have accused Berlusconi of doing virtually nothing to create jobs during his tenure.

Berlusconi’s main ally in his 17 years of politics, Umberto Bossi, said his Northern League, a regional party with its power base in the affluent north, would stay in the opposition and insisted early elections are the true solution.

“We won’t give him any blank check,” Bossi said of Monti.

Warmly welcoming the new prime minister-designate were European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and European Council President Herman Van Rompuy.

“We believe that it sends a further encouraging signal,” following Italy’s final passage Saturday of new austerity measures, they said in a statement, adding that the EU will keep monitoring Italy’s implementation of the measures “with the aim of pursuing policies that foster growth.”

The measures that were passed Saturday include raising the retirement age to 67 by 2026 and to 70 by 2050 and selling off state property.

Some analysts expect the return of the property tax on primary residences, a tax that Berlusconi had abolished.

A crowd of supporters applauded Berlusconi on Sunday at his private residence in Rome – in sharp contrast to the hundreds Saturday night who heckled and jeered him and popped open bottles of sparking wine to toast his departure.

It was an ignoble end for the billionaire media mogul, who came to power for the first time in 1994 using a soccer chant “Let’s Go Italy” as the name of his political party and selling Italians on a dream of prosperity with own transformation from cruise-ship crooner to Italy’s richest man.

While he became Italy’s longest-serving postwar premier, Berlusconi’s three stints as premier were tainted by corruption trials and accusations that he used his political power to help his business interests. His last term was marred by sex scandals, “bunga bunga” parties and criminal charges he paid a 17-year-old girl to have sex – accusations he denies.

Berlusconi appeared on TV in a recorded message Sunday, pledging to stay a vigorous political force in Parliament, where he is still a lawmaker.

“(I) resigned out of a sense of responsibility and of state, to ward off more speculative financial attacks on Italy,” he said.

Looking somber, Berlusconi said he was sad that his “generous gesture” of resignation was greeted by “hoots and insults” from the crowds.

Tunisians, Egyptians, Bahrainis and Yemenis are occupying the streets and blogging furiously. Europeans and North Americans have followed suit to create their own Liberty Squares. To varying degrees, all are middle and working class movements that appear to recognize the manner in which the current global order serves a select few at the expense of the many, world-wide.

The middle and working classes of Pakistan are occupying an altogether different space. Political parties from so-called Liberals to Islamists have arranged spectacular rallies across the country of late, both pro and anti-government. But they were mostly of the rented variety – a plate of biryani, as they say, for every man, woman or child ready to chant party slogans. Those who don’t need the free food have stayed home.

That is not to say that Pakistanis are oblivious to the ‘Arab Spring.’ Although Pakistanis are not Arabs, journalists and bloggers have ensured that at least the middle class is well-informed. The papers and TV channels continue to report on daily events in the Arab World. Editorialists and bloggers offer a dizzying array analysis. Neither the distance of ethnicity nor a dearth of exposure can be assumed to explain why similar movements have not risen in Pakistan, when they have in New York or Madrid.

Nor can lack of empathy with the ideals of the Arab Spring be considered a constraining factor. In a recent study of Pakistan’s middle classes, Iftikhar Malik found “increased clarity and unity…regarding democracy…accountability, and a vocal criticism of Talibanization and the American militarist interventionism” (Pakistan: Terrorism, Democracy and the Building of a Nation (2010), 122). Malik adds that mobilization as a class has been historically inhibited by the tendency to cleave along liberal and conservative, pro- and anti-military, ethnic and sectarian lines, only incidentally coming together to protect “against encroachment from the lower classes” (112-22). Yet, the Arab Spring itself illustrates that such fissures do not necessarily prevent anti-imperialist, pro-democracy activism. The alienation of the Pakistani middle and working classes from the activism of the Arab Spring requires further explanation.

One contributing factor seems to be Pakistani attitudes and relations with the Arab World. For example, a widely read Dawn-blogger, Nadeem Paracha, advises those admiring of Arab activism to remember that “Pakistan was actually the first Muslim country (in the post-colonial world) to have a ‘revolution’ like the ones we are celebrating today.” From 1968 to 1970, the mobilization of the “urban bourgeoisie…pushed the country out of a dictatorship and towards democracy.” It was a failure in the long-run, he admits, due to the same types of cleavages identified by Malik, but only to offer the Arabs “lessons” on the pitfalls ahead of them. He does not take-on the differences between the activism of the 1960′s and the present, and makes no argument for or against ‘revolution’ in Pakistan today.

Sidra Jafri goes a step further in New Pakistan. She views calls for a “Pakistani Spring” as an invitation to “anarchic mayhem.” She explains that people in Arab countries “have to build institutions. We already HAVE institutions. We have the office of the President, Prime Minister, a number of Ministries, a National Assembly. We have the executive, legislative and judicial branches, each with its own catalog of powers and jurisdiction.”

Paracha and Jafri’s attitudes, which resonate more broadly through Pakistan’s middle class, illustrate the role of nationalist chauvinism, a naive appraisal of Pakistan’s political institutions and utter ignorance of Arab history in shaping Pakistani responses to the Arab Spring. That this is an apologetic pride has been implied by various measures, the latest being 107th place (out of 110 states) on the 2011 Legatum Prosperity Index. Needless to say, the assumptions of such indexes leave room for error, but it cannot be ignored that all of the Arab countries included measured higher, despite their supposedly late moves “out of dictatorship and towards democracy.”

Such chauvinistic and apologetic attitudes are complemented by a more insidious silence on actual relations with the Arab World. The Pakistani political elite is, in fact, working to undermine the Arab Spring and its global ripples. President Zardari and Prime Minister Gilani have been busy shuttling between Pakistan and the US-backed Gulf Arab states most threatened by the voices of change. The expansion of ties with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain is a matter of public policy, no matter the party in charge of Pakistan. Although framed in economic and cultural terms, these relations are not restricted to jobs, foreign exchange remittances and Muslim brotherhood. It should be recalled that Saudi Arabia and the UAE have provided refuge for two former Pakistani ‘democrats’ in self-imposed exile: Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, respectively. Military cooperation is no less important. In the case of Bahrain, Pakistani police and army personnel have been exported to shore-up the beleaguered monarchy’s security forces. Little else can be expected from a Pakistani establishment that is no less autocratic and no more sovereign than Gulf emirs. The Pakistani middle and working classes’ scant regard for these realities speaks of different problems altogether.

The failure of Pakistan’s political elites – military and civilian, secular and Islamist – to provide even sufficient electricity and water for the needs of the country’s people clearly augments the appeal of Gulf Arab states for many Pakistanis. No matter the abuses of labor and discrimination faced, hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis of all classes are already residents of the Arabian Peninsula. For the middle classes, apart from jobs and pay commensurate with their educations, the Gulf further compensates with a stable infrastructure and the amenities of a consumer lifestyle. Although the experience exposes these Pakistanis to Arabs from Morocco to Yemen, the Arab World relayed to Pakistan passes through the lens of Riyadh and Dubai. There are no substantial Pakistani communities in Tunis or Beirut. Economic reliance on the these Gulf states, along with a distorted image of the broader world of Arabic-speakers, undoubtedly promotes chauvinism and apologetics, while playing a part in crushing coordinated activism with Arab protestors in Egypt or Syria. In fact, the Pakistani middle class seems to be on the same page as the country’s political elites on this issue, perceiving interests to lie with the very Arab monarchies under fire.

Finally, the power of fear must be considered. While Islamist “terrorism” dominates global headlines associated with Pakistan, non-Islamist and state terrorism largely pass under the radar. The Asian Legal Resource Center reports that between May 2010 and 2011, over 120 people have been extra-judicially killed by the state, while thousands have been subjected to arbitrary arrest, abduction, torture and disappearance. According to the World Association of Journalists and Newspaper Publishers, Pakistan topped the list for journalists killed in 2010, and is running second only to Iraq in 2011. This year alone, Karachi’s millions have been caught in the crossfire of running street battles between the armed militias and hired thugs of major political parties, including members of the ruling government. More than 1,500 innocent lives have been lost so far. The state has provided no accountability or justice in any of these cases. Not just livelihoods are at stake. Far too many lives have already been taken.

The bottom-line is that middle and working class capitulation of the streets of Pakistan to the country’s politicos, in the rare moment that so many Arabs, Africans, Europeans and Americans are occupying their own, is ultimately explainable in socio-economic terms. That it is so belies the realization among Pakistanis of that which throngs from Cairo to New York have come to appreciate. The problems of the world’s middle and working classes are the rooted in the current global order – one long dominated by the West, but facilitated by its client political elites in the rest of the world. Pakistan is no exception. Yet, whether as a result of nationalism, the economy or psychology, Pakistanis do not appear to recognize themselves in the people occupying streets and blogging furiously against the incumbent order’s global grip.

M. Reza Pirbhai is an Assistant Professor of South Asian History at Louisiana State University. He can be reached at: rpirbhai@lsu.edu

Quite frank … US President Barack Obama and his French counterpart Nicholas Sarkozy. Photo: AP

French President Nicolas Sarkozy called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “liar” in talks with US President Barack Obama, who then complained of having to deal with him daily.

The private conversation, held during the G20 summit in the French city of Cannes last week, was overheard by a number of journalists after it was inadvertently transmitted over a system used for translation, media website Arret sur Images reported.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Photo: AFP

“I can’t stand him any more, he’s a liar,” Mr Sarkozy said in French during the talks.

“You may be sick of him, but me, I have to deal with him every day,” Mr Obama replied in comments that were translated into French.

A number of journalists have confirmed hearing the remarks.

Without providing further quotes, the website said Mr Obama had also chastised Mr Sarkozy for not having informed the United States of France’s plans to vote in favour of Palestinian membership in UN cultural agency UNESCO.

Journalists were able to hear the conversation after they were given translation devices for a press conference but told they would receive headphones later, the website reported.

Plugging their own headphones into the devices, they realised they could hear the French translation of the conversation between the two leaders.

The website quoted a number of journalists saying a group decision was made not to report the conversation as it was considered private and off-the-record.

When asked about the incident, French foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero told journalists that it was “hype”.

“I’ve heard about the hype … I don’t want to talk about it. It’s hype,” MrValero said, telling journalists to ask Mr Sarkozy’s office to confirm the remarks.

“Ask the Elysee to confirm or deny [the reported quotes],” Mr Valero said.

“All this is getting us away from what’s essential. All we want is to keep working so that things move forward because things aren’t moving forward [on the Middle East]“, he said.

French officials have been increasingly critical of Mr Netanyahu’s ongoing Jewish settlement building on occupied Palestinian land, saying such moves prevent the resumption of peace talks.

The story of the remarks was carried on the websites of most major Israeli newspapers.

The Prime Minister’s office had no immediate reaction to the report and the foreign ministry refused to comment.

Israel public radio correspondent Gidon Kutz, who covered the Cannes summit, said journalists who overheard the private conversation had agreed not to report the story due to “correctness and in order not to embarrass the presidential press service”.

Speaking to Parliament on Tuesday, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe insisted that France and Mr Sarkozy had a balanced position on the Middle East conflict, but he did not mention the undiplomatic incident in Cannes.

“We have a balanced position,” Mr Juppe said during a discussion of his ministry’s budget for 2012.

“In his speech at the United Nations General Assembly the President said very clearly that if Israel’s security was in question, we would be on Israel’s side,” Mr Juppe said.

“But he also said that after so many decades it was no longer possible to accept that the Palestinian Authority is not little by little being recognised as a state.

France confirmed last week that it would abstain from a Security Council vote on full Palestinian membership of the United Nations, calling instead for Palestine to be given non-member observer status.

The White House sidestepped questions about the matter.

“I don’t have any comment on a reported conversation that apparently took place in a bilateral [meeting],” White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters on Tuesday.

I have come to the conclusion that Big Brother’s subjects in George Orwell’s 1984 are better informed than Americans.

Americans have no idea why they have been at war in the Middle East, Asia and Africa for a decade. They don’t realize that their liberties have been supplanted by a Gestapo Police State. Few understand that hard economic times are here to stay.

On October 27, 2011, the US government announced some routine economic statistics, and the president of the European Council announced a new approach to the Greek sovereign debt crisis. The result of these funny numbers and mere words sent the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index to its largest monthly rally since 1974, erasing its 2011 yearly loss. The euro rose, putting the European currency again 40% above its initial parity with the US dollar when the euro was introduced.

On National Public Radio a half-wit analyst declared, emphatically, that the latest US government statistics proved that the recovery was in place and that there was no danger whatsoever of a double-dip recession. And half-brain economists predicted a better tomorrow.

Europe is happy because the European private banks, the creditors of the European governments, have agreed to eat 50% of Greece’s sovereign debt and to be recapitalized by public money handed to them by the European Financial Stability Facility rescue fund. The President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, thinks that Greece’s debt is the only sovereign debt to be written down and that the debt of Italy, Spain, and Portugal will somehow be bailed out through other means, including a Chinese contribution to the EFSF rescue fund. Obviously, if all EU sovereign debt has to be cut by 50% as well, the rescue fund would not be up to the job.

For our corrupt financial markets, any news that can be spun as good news can send stocks up. But what are the facts?

For facts one has to turn to serious people, not to the presstitute media. Among those who give us real facts is John Williams of shadowstats.com . In his October 27 report, Williams exposes the happy second quarter 2011 economic growth figure of 2.5% as nonsense. Every other economic indicator contradicts the spin.

For example, personal consumption is reported to have increased 1.7%, but this surge in consumption took place despite a 1.7% collapse in consumer disposable income! In other words, if there was an increase in personal consumption, it come from drawing down savings or from incurring higher consumer debt.

A country’s consumers cannot forever draw down savings or go deeper into debt. For an economy to recover, there must be growth in consumer income. That growth is nowhere to be seen in the US. A large percentage of the goods and services sold to Americans by American corporations are now produced abroad by foreign labor. Thus, Americans no longer received incomes from the production of the goods and services that they consume. The American consumer market is on its way out.

The Dow Jones rose 339.51 points on the phony good news, but consumer sentiment is in the basement. John Williams reports that “consumer confidence hit the lowest levels ever recorded in 2008 and 2009″ and that consumer confidence has now “fallen back to that 2008 level.” But the stock market boomed. Somehow a population 23% unemployed with debt up to its eyeballs is going to spark an economic recovery.

Recovery can only happen in the delusional world created for us by the concentrated media. No longer permitted to utter one world of truth, the presstitutes proclaim non-existent recoveries and weapons of mass destruction and demonize Washington’s chosen opponents.

The sovereign debt crisis in Europe has distracted Americans from the much worst crisis in their country. After two decades of exporting US manufacturing and middle class jobs, and after a decade of consumer debt growth that has resulted in millions of foreclosed homeowners and massive credit card and student loan debt that cannot be paid, consumers have no income growth or borrowing capacity with which to fuel an economy based on consumer demand.

European banks, already ruined by purchases of Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s AAA ratings of junk derivatives, now find themselves threatened by sovereign debt. Greece’s debt crisis, caused with Goldman Sachs’ help in hiding the true debt of the country as was done for Enron, has brought to light that Portugal, Ireland, Italy, and Spain, in addition to Greece, have more debt than the governments can service.

In the EU, unlike the US and UK which have their own central banks that can create new money to bail out the over-indebted governments, the EU central bank is prohibited by treaty from printing money in order to purchase bonds from member states that cannot be redeemed.

Regardless of the treaty prohibition, the EU central bank has been lending Greece the money to pay its bond holders. The imposed austerity that is part of the deal created political instability in Greece.

Now that European Council President Herman Van Rompuy has announced a 50% write-off by private banks of Greek sovereign debt, can the same treatment be denied Portugal, Italy, and Spain?

The European Central Bank is following the lead of the Federal Reserve and creating new money to bail out debt. The cost will be paid in inflation and flight from the euro and the dollar. As an indication of the future, despite the positive spin on the news and the rise in US stocks, on October 27 the Japanese yen rose to a new high against the US dollar.

Paul Craig Roberts is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

NEW DELHI, Oct 29: More than a quarter million Indian farmers committed suicide in the last 16 years, making it the worst-ever recorded wave of suicides of this kind anywhere, The Hindu reported on Saturday.

“It’s official. The country has seen over a quarter of a million farmers’ suicides between 1995 and 2010,” the newspaper said in an article by P. Sainath, an acclaimed scholar on India’s rural distress.

Mr Sainath quoted the National Crime Records Bureau’s latest report on’Accidental Deaths & Suicides in India’ as placing the number for 2010 at 15,964. “That brings the cumulative 16-year total from 1995 – when the NCRB started recording farm suicide data – to 256,913, the worst-ever recorded wave of suicides of this kind in human history.”

The period straddles the peaking of free-market reforms inaugurated by then finance minister Manmohan Singh and his second innings as prime minister, which began in May 2009.

“Maharashtra posts a dismal picture with over 50,000 farmers killing themselves in the country’s richest state in that period,” The paper said.

It also remains the worst state for such deaths for a decade now. Close to two-thirds of all farm suicides have occurred in five states: Maharashtra, Karnataka, A.P., Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.

“The data show clearly that the last eight years were much worse than the preceding eight,” Mr Sainath, author of the Everybody Loves a Good Drought, a widely acknowledged authentic record of India’s rural calamity, wrote.

As many as 135,756 farmers killed themselves in the 2003-10 period, the paper said.

For 1995-2002, the total was 121,157. “On average, this means the number of farmers killing themselves each year between 2003 and 2010 is 1,825 higher than the numbers that took their lives in the earlier period.”

It was alarming since the total number of farmers is declining significantly. “Compared to the 1991 census, the 2001 census saw a drop of over seven million in the population of cultivators (main workers). The corresponding census data for 2011 are yet to come in, but their population has surely dipped further. In other words, farm suicides are rising through the period of India’s agrarian crisis, even as the number of farmers is shrinking.”

While the 2010 numbers show a dip of 1,404 from the 2009 figure of 17,368, there is little to cheer about.

“There was a similar dip in 2008, only to be followed by the worst numbers in six years in 2009,” points out Prof K. Nagaraj, an economist at the Asian College of Journalism, Chennai, who did the largest ever study of the farm suicides covering a decade.

“This one-year decline does not in any way indicate we have turned the corner. This dip happened mostly because of one-off falls in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. In fact, a look at the ‘Big 5′ who drive the numbers shows the fallout of the agrarian crisis to be as grim as ever. They have actually increased their share of the farm suicides.”

Seumas Milne

Anti-Gaddafi fighters gesture to the crowds in front of a Kingdom of Libya flag during celebrations in Benghazi on 23 October. Photograph: Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters

As the most hopeful offshoot of the “Arab spring” so far flowered this week in successful elections in Tunisia, its ugliest underside has been laid bare in Libya. That’s not only, or even mainly, about the YouTube lynching of Gaddafi, courtesy of a Nato attack on his convoy.

The grisly killing of the Libyan despot after his captors had sodomised him with a knife, was certainly a war crime. But many inside and outside Libya doubtless also felt it was an understandable act of revenge after years of regime violence. Perhaps that was Hillary Clinton’s reaction, when she joked about it on camera, until global revulsion pushed the US to call for an investigation.

As the reality of what western media have hailed as Libya’s “liberation” becomes clearer, however, the butchering of Gaddafi has been revealed as only a reflection of a much bigger picture. On Tuesday, Human Rights Watch reported the discovery of 53 bodies, military and civilian, in Gaddafi’s last stronghold of Sirte, apparently executed – with their hands tied – by former rebel militia.

Its investigator in Libya, Peter Bouckaert, told me yesterday that more bodies are continuing to be discovered in Sirte, where evidence suggests about 500 people, civilians and fighters, have been killed in the last 10 days alone by shooting, shelling and Nato bombing.

That has followed a two month-long siege and indiscriminate bombardment of a city of 100,000 which has been reduced to a Grozny-like state of destruction by newly triumphant rebel troops with Nato air and special-forces support.

And these massacre sites are only the latest of many such discoveries. Amnesty International has now produced compendious evidence of mass abduction and detention, beating and routine torture, killings and atrocities by the rebel militias Britain, France and the US have backed for the last eight months – supposedly to stop exactly those kind of crimes being committed by the Gaddafi regime.

Throughout that time African migrants and black Libyans have been subject to a relentless racist campaign of mass detention, lynchings and atrocities on the usually unfounded basis that they have been loyalist mercenaries. Such attacks continue, says Bouckaert, who witnessed militias from Misrata this week burning homes in Tawerga so that the town’s predominantly black population – accused of backing Gaddafi – will be unable to return.

All the while, Nato leaders and cheerleading media have turned a blind eye to such horrors as they boast of a triumph of freedom and murmur about the need for restraint. But it is now absolutely clear that, if the purpose of western intervention in Libya’s civil war was to “protect civilians” and save lives, it has been a catastrophic failure.

David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy won the authorisation to use “all necessary means” from the UN security council in March on the basis that Gaddafi’s forces were about to commit a Srebrenica-style massacre in Benghazi. Naturally we can never know what would have happened without Nato’s intervention. But there is in fact no evidence – including from other rebel-held towns Gaddafi re-captured – to suggest he had either the capability or even the intention to carry out such an atrocity against an armed city of 700,000.

What is now known, however, is that while the death toll in Libya when Nato intervened was perhaps around 1,000-2,000 (judging by UN estimates), eight months later it is probably more than ten times that figure. Estimates of the numbers of dead over the last eight months – as Nato leaders vetoed ceasefires and negotiations – range from 10,000 up to 50,000. The National Transitional Council puts the losses at 30,000 dead and 50,000 wounded.

Of those, uncounted thousands will be civilians, including those killed by Nato bombing and Nato-backed forces on the ground. These figures dwarf the death tolls in this year’s other most bloody Arab uprisings, in Syria and Yemen. Nato has not protected civilians in Libya – it has multiplied the number of their deaths, while losing not a single soldier of its own.

For the western powers, of course, the Libyan war has allowed them to regain ground lost in Tunisia and Egypt, put themselves at the heart of the upheaval sweeping the most strategically sensitive region in the world, and secure valuable new commercial advantages in an oil-rich state whose previous leadership was at best unreliable. No wonder the new British defence secretary is telling businessmen to “pack their bags” for Libya, and the US ambassador in Tripoli insists American companies are needed on a “big scale”.

But for Libyans, it has meant a loss of ownership of their own future and the effective imposition of a western-picked administration of Gaddafi defectors and US and British intelligence assets. Probably the greatest challenge to that takeover will now come from Islamist military leaders on the ground, such as the Tripoli commander Abdel Hakim Belhaj – kidnapped by MI6 to be tortured in Libya in 2004 – who have already made clear they will not be taking orders from the NTC.

No wonder the council’s leaders are now asking Nato to stay on, and Nato officials have let it be known they will “take action” if Libyan factions end up fighting among themselves.

The Libyan precedent is a threat to hopes of genuine change and independence across the Arab world – and beyond. In Syria, where months of bloody repression risk tipping into fullscale civil war, elements of the opposition have started to call for a “no-fly zone” to protect civilians. And in Africa, where Barack Obama has just sent troops to Uganda and France is giving military support to Kenyan intervention in Somalia, the opportunities for dressing up a new scramble for resources as humanitarian intervention are limitless.

The once savagely repressed progressive Islamist party An-Nahda won the Tunisian elections this week on a platform of pluralist democracy, social justice and national independence. Tunisia has faced nothing like the backlash the uprisings in other Arab countries have received, but that spirit is the driving force of the movement for change across a region long manipulated and dominated by foreign powers.

What the Libyan tragedy has brutally hammered home is that foreign intervention doesn’t only strangle national freedom and self-determination – it doesn’t protect lives either.

by Enver Masud

“Libyans awake from a ludicrous nightmare: Gaddafi achieved nothing in his 42-year rule,” wrote David Gardner yesterday in the Financial Times. Others have expressed similar sentiments. Here are the facts:

Gaddafi Seized Power in Bloodless Coup: Muammar Gaddafi, aka Col. Gaddafi, seized power in 1969 in a bloodless coup by overthrowing King Idris of Libya — Idris achieved power with British backing in 1949.

Libya Ranks #1 on the Human Development Index: According to the United Nations Development Programme, Libya ranked first in Africa (53 globally) on the Human Development Index — ahead of Saudi Arabia at 55, Iran at 70, South Africa at 73, Jordan at 82, Egypt at 101, Indonesia at 108, India at 119, Afghanistan at 155.

It is reported that Libyans receive free housing, education, health care, substantial cash when they marry, and overseas education if they qualify.

Largest Oil Reserves in Africa: According to the U.S. Energy Information, “Libya has the largest proven oil reserves in Africa”.

Program to Privatize Oil: On February 21, 2011, five days after the Arab Spring broke out in Libya, Qaddafi launched a new program to privatize all Libyan oil to every citizen of Libya, initially providing $21,000 to every Libyan from a total of $32,000,000,000 in the Year 2011, so that the health, education, transport, and some other ministries could be abolished and individual Libyans could use the profits of their own investments, including from oil ownership, to obtain the relevant services.

This, Gaddafi said, is the best way to eliminate corruption, including the theft of Libyan oil by foreign oil companies, and to decentralize governmental power.

Great Man-Made River Project: The Great Man-Made River Project, begun in 1984 by Col. Gaddafi, has been called the 8th Wonder of the World. It supplies fresh water to the cities of Tripoli, Benghazi, Sirte and elsewhere.

The U.S. threatened to bomb this “C-W Factory”; foreign companies covet the fresh water.

Rate your news media on a scale of 1 to 10. Assign 2 points for each of the five points above that you previously knew (1 point for partial knowledge). The resulting total is an indication of how well your news media covered the US/NATO backed civil war in Libya.

Are Libyans awakening from a “ludicrous nightmare”, or does the death of Gaddafi mark the beginning of a new era of imperial exploitation? We’ll know in a few years time.

(Dr. Paul Craig Roberts served as President Reagan’s Asst. Secretary of the U.S. Treasury)

From the Foreign Policy Journal

Now that the CIA’s proxy army has murdered Gadhafi, what next for Libya?

If Washington’s plans succeed, Libya will become another American puppet state. Most of the cities, towns, and infrastructure have been destroyed by air strikes by the air forces of the US and Washington’s NATO puppets. US and European firms will now get juicy contracts, financed by US taxpayers, to rebuild Libya. The new real estate will be carefully allocated to lubricate a new ruling class picked by Washington. This will put Libya firmly under Washington’s thumb.

With Libya conquered, AFRICOM will start on the other African countries where China has energy and mineral investments. Obama has already sent US troops to Central Africa under the guise of defeating the Lord’s Resistance Army, a small insurgency against the ruling dictator-for-life. The Republican Speaker of the House, John Boehner, welcomed the prospect of yet another war by declaring that sending US troops into Central Africa “furthers US national security interests and foreign policy.” Republican Senator James Inhofe added a gallon of moral verbiage about saving “Ugandan children,” a concern the senator did not have for Libya’s children or Palestine’s, Iraq’s, Afghanistan’s and Pakistan’s.

Washington has revived the Great Power Game and is vying with China. Whereas China brings Africa investment and gifts of infrastructure, Washington sends troops, bombs and military bases. Sooner or later Washington’s aggressiveness toward China and Russia is going to explode in our faces.

Where is the money going to come from to finance Washington’s African Empire? Not from Libya’s oil. Big chunks of that have been promised to the French and British for providing cover for Washington’s latest war of naked aggression. Not from tax revenues from a collapsing US economy where unemployment, if measured correctly, is 23 percent.

With Washington’s annual budget deficit as huge as it is, the money can only come from the printing press.

Washington has already run the printing press enough to raise the consumer price index for all urban consumers (CPI-U) to 3.9% for the year (as of the end of September), the consumer price index for urban wage earners and clerical workers (CPI-W) to 4.4% for the year, and the producer price index (PPI) to 6.9% for the year.

As statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) has shown, the official inflation measures are rigged in order to hold down cost of living adjustments to Social Security recipients, thus saving money for Washington’s wars. When measured correctly, the current rate of inflation in the US is 11.5%.

What interest rate can savers get without taking massive risks on Greek bonds? US banks pay less than one-half of one percent on FDIC insured savings deposits. Short-term US government bond funds pay essentially zero.

Thus, according to official US government statistics, American savers are losing between 3.9% and 4.4% of their capital yearly. According to John Williams’ estimate of the real rate of inflation, US savers are losing 11.5% of their accumulated savings.

As retired Americans receive no interest on their savings, they are having to spend down their capital. The ability of even the most prudent retirees to survive the negative rate of interest they are receiving and the erosion by inflation of any pensions that they receive will come to an end once their accumulated assets are exhausted.

Except for Washington’s favored mega-rich, the one percent that has captured all of the income gains of recent years, the rest of America has been assigned to the trash can. Nothing whatsoever has been done for them since the financial crisis hit in December 2007. Bush and Obama, Republican and Democrat, have focused on saving the 1 percent while giving the finger to the 99 percent.

Finally, some Americans, though not enough, have caught on to the flag-waving rah-rah “patriotism” that has consigned them to the trash bin of history. They are not going down without a fight and are in the streets. Occupy Wall Street has spread. What will be the fate of this movement?

Will the snow and ice of cold weather end the protests, or send them into public buildings? How long will the local authorities, subservient to Washington as they are, tolerate the obvious signal that the population lacks any confidence whatsoever in the government?

If the protests last, especially if they grow and don’t decline, the authorities will infiltrate the protestors with police provocateurs who will fire on the police. This will be the excuse to shoot down the protestors and to arrest the survivors as “terrorists” or “domestic extremists” and to send them to the $385 million dollar camps built under US government contract by Cheney’s Halliburton.

The Amerikan Police State will have taken its next step into the Amerikan Concentration Camp State.

Meanwhile, lost in their oblivion, conservatives will continue to bemoan the ruination of the country by homosexual marriage, abortion, and “the liberal media.” Liberal organizations committed to civil liberty, such as the ACLU, will continue to rank a woman’s right to an abortion with defense of the US Constitution. Amnesty International will assist Washington in demonizing its next target for military attack while turning a blind eye to the war crimes of President Obama.

When we consider what Israel has got away with, being as it is under Washington’s bought protection-the war crimes, the murders of children, the eviction in total disregard of international law of Palestinians from their ancestral homes, the bulldozing of their houses and uprooting of their olive groves in order to move in fanatical “settlers,” the murderous invasions of Lebanon and Gaza, the wholesale slaughter of civilians-we can only conclude that Washington, Israel’s enabler, can get away with far more.

In the few opening years of the 21st century, Washington has destroyed the US Constitution, the separation of powers, international law, the accountability of government, and has sacrificed every moral principle to achieving hegemony over the world. This ambitious agenda is being attempted while simultaneously Washington removed all regulation over Wall Street, the home of massive greed, permitting Wall Street’s short-term horizon to wreck the US economy, thus destroying the economic basis for Washington’s assault on the world.