Monday, June 27, 2011

1OO DAYS OF WAR!


Today marks the 100th day of NATO bombing of Tripoli with little to show that the millions if not billions of dollars spent by the Western Alliance has brought any gains. 

The war in Libya raises some questions. The UN authorised NATO to “take all measures to protect civilians in Libya.” And the means that the Western Alliance found to do that was to bombard Tripoli – killing in turn civilians (NATO has acknowledged its bombs killed civilians) and destroying Libya’s infrastructure.

Protecting civilians is no longer the objective. It is to oust the Libyan leader Qaddafi. And the bombings are targeting him and his family. But he continues to stay in Tripoli, defying Western efforts to oust him or kill him.

The bombing has not succeeded in either objective – in 100 days!

So, what is the aim of the bombardment? In 100 days, with hundreds of sorties each day, the Western military warehouses must have been emptied of a lot of bombs and other military hardware. I guess these have to be replaced. The arm merchants must be wringing their hands in glee! I don’t see any other reason for the bombing.  You think, the Western Alliance, with all its might could not get their man if they wanted. Or, destroyed his army? They might get him one day. But before that they will make sure a whole lot of bombs will be dropped, and Libyan infrastructure will be destroyed – to be rebuilt by Western companies, as it happened in Iraq.

By the way, the UN came into existence on the slogan “ War No More!” With the number of wars it has been authorising, albeit such authorisations wrung out by western arm-twisting, that slogan lies in shambles! It’s mockery of the founding objectives of the UN.

Back to Libya.  With the bombings not making much of a dint, today the Western Alliance got another weapon in its war against Qaddafi. The ICC has declared him a War Criminal and an international arrest warrant has been issued today. How come the Western nations who are terrorising other nations, killing innocents, arming rebels and provoking dissent and uprisings as the USA is acknowledged to have done and continues to do in the Middle East, not declared war criminals and arrest warrants issued against their leaders?

There is reason to seek new ways to get Qaddafi.

One hundred days into the campaign of air strikes, Britain and its NATO allies no longer believe bombing alone will end the conflict in Libya, reports the Guardian newspaper from London.

"No one is envisaging a military victory," said one senior official who echoed earlier warnings by Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope, head of the navy, that the bombing cannot continue much beyond the summer.

I guess the statement is confession that enough space has been created in military warehouses for the time being, to replenish the arsenal! 

Saturday, June 11, 2011

FASTING SWAMIS, FARMER SUICIDE THREATS, AND DYING CHILDREN


One man threatened to fast, and the media was seduced to give him front page covering day after day and the government bent backwards to appease him until they learned he was pulling a fast one on them.

In the midst of all this, I read the following yesterday: "Agitating farmers threaten mass suicide" (HT, June 10, p.1). Small font headline, of course! These farmers in UP villages are threatening mass suicide if their land is acquired by the government. 

We know the government policy: take over ancestral property from the poor, promise them a pittance in compensation (even which never really reaches them!)  and sell the land to the rich corporations and developers - and make a fast buck in the process too.

"We started our agitation on April 15 and there is no response from the administration. So, we have decided to commit mass suicide after June 30 by hanging ourselves here," a farmer leader said. I wonder how much of media interest and governmental attention this threat will garner!

These farmers are agitating against a government land acquisition policy that touches them dearly; which deprives them of ancestral land and their livelihood. The one-man fast is against the hydraheaded leviathan that is "corruption" - a reality that does not really touch the faster, but is a fast-track strategy to garner media publicity and increase in personal popularity and filling financial coffers.  I have so far not heard of anyone dying of fasting!! They all stop it before they do!! So, fasting today is really a gimmick (Gandhi excepted; his was a different kind of fast) And the government's response was lightning quick! 

But suicide? That is real! 

I wonder how much media coverage these farmers will get and if some minister will rush in there to appease them (Fat chance really! There was no response to their agitation for two months!). But who knows? The media might see something to grab eyeballs in a suicide threat. There is something darkly fascinating about death! Even threat of death.

One man's fast or a whole group of farmers' suicide threat? Which gets government's and media attention? Not difficult to answer, right?

Will we see photographs  of a line of farmers hanging dead from trees on the front pages  of our head-over-heels "socially conscious!"  newspapers, as much we as have been seeing that of a saffron clad and bearded swami - the last one of five doctors hovering over him? He was taken to hospital by force, I understand.

I have not seen on front pages of our newspapers photographs of doctors hovering over children dying of hunger - a phenomenon not so rare in a country that is projected to be an economic giant within a few years! Nor of these children taken by force (or no force) to the hospital and given treatment by a concerned administration. But so much fuss over a fasting swami! I guess he is in a league apart. But why!!