At a recent 'Meet the Press' programme in Kolkata Press Club, while answering a query of a journalist, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya (The Chief Minister of West Bengal, India) had said, 'I can't implement socialism. Socialism is impracticable. What I am doing here is just capitalism. I am trying to use capitalism in the interest of workers and common people (Bartaman, April13, 2006)." Much before this, however, Buddhadeb Babu had termed the day of his finalizing a business deal with the Salim group of Indonesia as the 'best day of his life'. It is clear that what he had stated at the 'Meet the Press' programme was not a surprise statement. It is also not to be believed that the C.P.I(M) as a party did not endorse his view. On the contrary, it is very likely that Buddhadeb Babu made this statement consciously as the spokesman of the party and with full knowledge of his party's viewpoint in this regard. Without mincing words, it can be said that this statement is an abject surrender of Marxism to opportunism. It needs to be pointed out that this surrender is not an isolated event. It is just a reflection, in the context of West Bengal, of surrender of Marxism to capitalism throughout the world.
May 2006 Archives
Education plays a pivotal role in making the human personality and shaping the human life. But as of now, the education falls short of people’s high expectation.
Concept of Education: Education, in ordinary sense of the term, means enlightenment. To educate means to enlighten one, i.e., to make one aware of what one did not know or what one is ignorant of. Ever since the inception or rise of intellect in human being, man awoke with certain cardinal questions, seeking the truth about oneself and one's life, truth about one's surroundings, the truth about the world and the truth about the ultimate goal of one's life. The cardinal questions such as who am I; what is this world and what is the goal of one's life etc. have been haunting the man. It is in quest of the truth of life and this world that man invented different branches of knowledge or education. Human being, in course of its journey from ignorance to knowledge, came to know that human life is not only a lump or a corpus of bones and flesh, nor it is only a biological machine, nor it is only a psychic phenomenon, nor it is only a beholder or container of spiritual prowess, rather it is a curious amalgamation and complex composition of body, mind and soul (Atma), a wonderful manifestation of spirituo-psycho-physical phenomenon. Thus human life is tri-farious, i.e., physical, psychic and spiritual. Hence, mere imparting of knowledge of alphabets and books is not education, rather education is systematic and sustained efforts to unfold and develop one's latent physical, psychic and spiritual potentialities in order to unite the psyche with the self. That is why it has been said, "Knowing oneself is the real knowledge". Education should aim at integrated, i.e., tri-farious development of personality.
Henry Kissinger quietly acknowledged to China in 1972 that Washington could accept a communist takeover of South Vietnam if that evolved after a withdrawal of U.S. troops - even as the war to drive back the communists dragged on with mounting deaths.
Full story: United States | Vietnam - Kissinger Papers: U.S. OK With Takeover
"The private companies took over the industry. They were eager to take in five billion dollars to export natural gas as raw material (to the United States and Mexico), but they were incapable of investing 40 million dollars in a gas pipeline to provide the western part of the country with energy supplies."
"Just as your life is extremely dear to you, similarly the lives of others are equally dear to them. A person who thinks thus and shows mercy on other creatures is really a virtuous person. When this idea dawns on one's mind, one realizes, "Why should I kill an innocent creature just for the sake of the gratification of my palate?" Again one may suddenly discover a scriptural injunction - 'Oh yes, you may sacrifice animals in a particular way and the sacrificial animal will attain salvation.' People follow the scriptural injunction helplessly, but in their heart of hearts they realize that the whole thing is irrational. Yet they cannot gather sufficient courage to go against the scripture. This sort of idea which chokes the progress of the mind is called 'dogma.' A dogma is from either a defective philosophy or a scripture. This sort of dogma should be rejected forthwith. Even if a young boy says something logical, it should be accepted, because that will lead to progress. But when a dogma comes, it chokes the progress of humanity. Many scriptures teach wrong things along rational lines. They fail to understand that just as their lives are very dear to them, similarly the lives of animals also are equally dear to them. Then why should I act like a mean, selfish person? And if they say or argue that if the animals are sacrificed in this way they will attain liberation from animal life, then I will counter argue, 'Oh human beings, you are also a creature, why don't you attain liberation by cutting your own throat? Why don't you help your children or your relations to attain liberation from human life by sacrificing them? Why are you so eager to apply this liberation movement, this hatchet or axe, against innocent goats?'"
Mount Merapi, seen from a village near Yogyakarta yesterday, spews ash. Today's quake heightened activity at the deadly volcano. (Photo: AP) - Proutist Universal deplores the loss of lives in Yogyakarta, Indonesia as a result of the earthquake today. Sitting on the geological "Ring of Fire," an area marked by heavy volcanic and tectonic activity, disaster appears unavoidable for nearby human life.
"Religious minorities will 'have to wear special insignia, known as zonnar, to indicate their non-Islamic faiths. Jews will be marked out with a yellow strip of cloth sewn in front of their clothes, while Christians will be assigned the colour red. Zoroastrians end up with Persian blue as the colour of their zonnar,' he wrote."
"At dinner that night, AIPAC Executive Director Howard Kohr, as he does each year, read the 'roll call' of dignitaries in attendance. It included a majority of the Senate, a quarter of the House, more than fifty ambassadors, and dozens of administration officials."
"[S]ays one Hill staffer, 'We can count on well over half the House - 250 to 300 members - to do reflexively whatever AIPAC wants."
"Both Rabin and Bill Clinton were opposed to moving the embassy [to Jerusalem]. They knew that such a step, by inflaming the Arab world, could disrupt the peace process. But for AIPAC and its allies, that was precisely the point."
National News Service, Kolkata, 18 May 2006: The Communists are back. West Bengal is the only State where there is no incumbency factor, election after election. It is as if they have worked some kind of miracle and the people of West Bengal live in El Dorado.
In the last 30 years West Bengal has slid in all economic indices. In 2001 the number of unemployed registered with the Employment Exchange was 5,500,000. Today the number is 7,500,000. Is it the unemployed hordes that went out and voted for the left front?
What are the reasons behind the killing of Suryanarayan in Afghanistan. On the 28th of April 2006, an Indian Engineer K. Suryanarayan working in Afghanistan in the installation of Telecommunication tower was kidnapped while going to inspect one of these towers. Just after two days of his kidnapping on the 30th of April 2006 he was murdered. In the province of Kabul in Hasankarage zone the beheaded body of the Engineer was found, by the Afghan Police.
"Under Hugo Chávez, Venezuela is the first major oil producer to use its oil revenue to liberate the poor."
"Chávez is, of course, a threat, especially to the United States. Like the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, who based their revolution on the English cooperative moment, and the moderate Allende in Chile, he offers the threat of an alternative way of developing a decent society: in other words, the threat of a good example in a continent where the majority of humanity has long suffered a Washington-designed peonage."
I have spent the past three weeks filming in the hillside barrios of Caracas, in streets and breeze-block houses that defy gravity and torrential rain and emerge at night like fireflies in the fog. Caracas is said to be one of the world's toughest cities, yet I have known no fear; the poorest have welcomed my colleagues and me with a warmth characteristic of ordinary Venezuelans but also with the unmistakable confidence of a people who know that change is possible and who, in their everyday lives, are reclaiming noble concepts long emptied of their meaning in the west: "reform," "popular democracy," "equity," "social justice," and, yes, "freedom."
Full story: http://www.antiwar.com/orig/pilger.php?articleid=8993
"Sadvipras shall work for the good of all countries, for the all-round emancipation of all humanity."
The inevitable consequence of capitalist exploitation is proletariat revolution. When capitalists, maddened with excessive greed, lose their common sense completely and bid farewell to humanism totally, it is time for proletariat revolution to burst forth. But it will be futile to expect it just because of the ripe time. For this, conditions relating to place and person are also largely responsible.
From the economic standpoint, where there exists two classes - the exploiting capitalists and exploited proletariat - revolution takes place at such a time indeed, but at such a time if there be no intellectuals and fighters, from the mental standpoint, or in other words if people are proletarian economically but not intellectuals or fighters mentally, proletariat revolution is not possible. Those that are mentally proletarians are not capable of bringing about revolution. They are battle-shy. They are the playthings of the capitalists. During the hey-day of the capitalist era, capitalists easily kept in their clutches such proletarian-minded workers. Nay, even the martial-minded or intellectual workers, if they are not spirited enough, get themselves sold to the capitalists. Therefore, eventually, proletariat revolution has to depend on those workers who are sufficiently spirited and who are mentally intellectual or fighters. Without taking into account the mental cast, those who want to bring about the revolution of the proletariat only with the help of the working class, will come a cropper.
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Thousands of German children -- many of them toddlers fleeing the Soviet advance -- died in Danish refugee camps at the end of World War II. A crusading doctor has set out to document their suffering and break long-standing beliefs about post-war Danish humanity.
Full story: http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,355772,00.html
Mount Merapi belched and groaned Monday, sending thick plumes of hot ash racing down its slopes, but an expert warned there remained the risk of more violent eruptions.
Volcanologist Antonius Ratdomopurbo said the biggest threat was from the collapse of the lava dome, which began forming late last month. If such a collapse was accompanied by pyroclastic flows of hot ash, volcanic gas and rocks spewed from the crater, it could devastate the surrounding area.
The loss of the BJP in overall Indian elections is a clear reflection that the people of India do not support religious extremism and racism. The fact that the communists have won in two large states only speaks to the reaction of the common people at being ignored by the central neoliberal, corporation-led government. Their basic human needs are ignored. But, communism has a brutal place in history. In no country did it solve the problems of the people. Rather it led to their greater impoverization. Russia and China are examples. Both models - the neoliberal and the communist - have failed the people in all countries of the world. PROUT is a new model based on economic democracy, economic decentralization, in which neither a party dictatorship nor ruthless corporate greed gets any scope to dominate. Shrii Sarkar has said, that capitalism turns men into beggars and communism turns beggars into beasts. Both lack a moral base. The stark attribute of capitalism is that it encourages individual human greed and selfishness. Communism contains no moral base to guide the people or the leaders. And in fact, as the article points out, even the so-called communists in Kerala are in an unholy aliance with the corporations and are pushing neo-liberalism, which only further destroys the lives of the common people. Societies must have cardinal human principles that serve as guide in the manner in which policies are carried out. Without these fundamental values of morality, no economic model can succeed. PROUT puts maximum emphasis on these values as a prerequisite for the success of its economic model.
A Muslim couple from Orissa, forcibly separated by the community after local clerics issued a fatwa that they were divorced even as they wanted to live together, today told the Supreme Court that the police had not provided them protection, despite the court's orders.
On the occasion of the birth anniversary of Shrii Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, founder of the new economic model called PROUT, we would like to dedicate this day to the victims of economic, political and environmental terrorism everywhere, and simultaneously make the commitment to work ceaselessly for the economic, political and cultural liberation of all peoples. A new dawn is rising. It is time to start political parties and socio-economic movements in every nation, to fight corporate hegemonies and usher in a new golden era for humanity.
"Neocons" believe that the United States should not be ashamed to use its unrivaled power - forcefully if necessary - to promote its values around the world. Some even speak of the need to cultivate a US empire. Neoconservatives believe modern threats facing the US can no longer be reliably contained and therefore must be prevented, sometimes through preemptive military action.
"As the mission of the rose lies in the unfoldment of the petals which implies distinctness; so the rose of humanity is perfect only when the diverse races and the nations have evolved their perfect distinct characteristics, but all attached in the stem of humanity by the bond of love."
Human beings, all life forms, cannot sustain themselves without water. On our planet 97.4 percent of the water is salt water, while a mere 2.5 percent is fresh water. Of the 2.5 percent fresh water, 70 percent has been locked up in ice sheets and glaciers in the Antarctic, Greenland and in mountain ranges in various countries. Less than 30 percent is stored as groundwater in aquifers. A fraction of the freshwater sources are available in rivers and lakes, with other storage sources being the soil, plants and atmosphere. Shrii Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar predicted that water scarcity would be the biggest problem facing the earth’s population in the very near future..........Read more
Mexican politicians continuously demand more visas for their citizens, an expanded guest-worker program, and "regularization" of illegal aliens living north of the Rio Grande [the river dividing most of Mexico and the U.S. - eds.]. While neglecting to mention that the United States admits nearly one million legal newcomers each year, they also fail to publicize: (1) the extremely high salaries they receive, often-in the case of federal and state legislators-more than their counterparts in developed nations that have substantially longer annual sessions, (2) the generous stipends that they grant themselves, including year-end aguinaldos and end-of-term bonuses of tens of thousands of dollars known as bonos de marcha, and (3) the generous sums that party leaders in legislative bodies have to spend with few or any strings attached.
The humans of today are possessed of spirited intellect and accomplished wisdom. They are keen to advance with rapid step shattering the shackles of dogmas. They will no longer be entrapped by the illusion of opportunism. The rays of the crimson dawn of a new humanity on the eastern horizon have started weaving textures of colours on their eyelids and in the subtle recesses of their minds. As for those who have been dreaming of keeping humanity imprisoned by dogmas, their days are numbered; their blissful dreams are being shattered to pieces. I call upon all enlightened people and say: "Go ahead with courage. The humanity has been awaiting you. Establish it in the excellence and grandeur of glory."
As you know, physical pabulum is limited, so the mind continually runs from one thing to another. This process goes on in a never-ending order. But in the realm of intuition the goal is infinite. When aspirants come into this realm, their desires, their longings, are fully satisfied. Thus the controlling point is the spiritual order. Because the spiritual order is infinite, human beings have no control over it, but as the physical realm is finite, human beings can increase their sphere of activity in this realm. The attempt to do this is a never-ending process, and there are infinite permutations and combinations in this endeavor, but the latent hunger in human beings will never be satisfied in this realm. The quest to satisfy this hunger can at best only lead to the threshold point of spirituality. As human beings progress towards the realm of spirituality, they are helped on the one hand by Prout, which guarantees minimum requirements and maximum amenities, and on the other hand by neo-humanistic outlook, which removes disparities. These two approaches help human beings in their progress and elevation. Finally the existential faculty merges in the Supreme.
Evo Morales' election in Bolivia [Dec. 2005 - eds.], with an unprecedented (for that country) 54 percent of the vote, is seen and analyzed here mostly in political terms. He is a former head of the coca growers union and opposes the U.S.-sponsored attempts to eradicate the production of coca. He has talked about nationalizing the natural gas resources now owned by foreign corporations. "We're not just anti-neoliberal, we're anti-imperialist in our blood," he proclaimed at a recent campaign rally. These things will be more than enough to ensure that he does not get a fair hearing here in the United States.
"During the last two centuries, capitalism and communism have caused much suffering in human society. Communism has already died a premature death while still in the stage of youthful vigour, but when capitalism dies it will die a mature death. What caused the death of communism? It died due to the reaction of the accumulated pain, suffering and tortures inflicted on innocent people by the communist system which forced people to live unnatural lives. Communism had to face a black death while dancing in the ecstasy of terror and massacre.
Capitalism and communism have polluted the air, water and environment in this peace-loving world. By nature human beings are peace-loving, not war-loving. It is capitalism and communism that have caused two world wars and so many other sanguinary battles in the world in the recent past."
If your country has a possibility bombing the atomic one in the future, just think it over..... 500,000 of our lovely grandparents died in the flash with Radioactive Heat ..... Thousands of bodies were evaporated ..... Other survivors, after 50 years, are still suffering from the effects......
For the past century, human beings had the agricultural capacity, the technology and the organizational skills to feed every last person on the planet. Yet, marching along into the 21st century, 80 percent of the world's population lives in absolute poverty - economically defined as missing one or more of the five fundamental necessities of life, i.e., food, clothing, shelter, health care and education. Millions of people have died of neglect, disease, malnutrition and starvation. In large part they have died because precious funds went instead to feed the war machine, also called euphemistically as "military expenditures" or "milex." More recently these costs are referred to not even as military expenditures but as "defense expenditures." This change was wrought in 1947 when the extant Department of War was renamed to Department of Defense. George Orwell referred to these nefarious terminological twists as "doublethink" and "doublespeak."
The driving force behind the Cold War, which was continued by Ronald Reagan through the 1980s and continued to the extreme with 9/11, was fear. If a government can manage to instill high levels of fear into the populace, that government can do anything it wants, in the name of alleviating that fear. Hence the American people always said 'yes' to wars.
In Peru's national elections on April 9, Ollanta Humala of the nationalist Union for Peru (UP) party is currently leading in national polls (with 31 percent) against the center-right candidate Lourdes Flores Nano of the National Unity (UN) party (26 percent) and former president Alan Garcia of the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA) party (23 percent).1 Regardless of whether Humala wins a majority, or the election goes to a second round in May, the former Army officer's rapid rise in the polls is another example of the political shift toward populist, nationalist, and regionalist politics and economic policy in Latin America.
- Scale of communal strikes has dropped since 2002, but periodic attacks continue
- Terror campaign aimed at causing at large-scale migration of Hindus
- Attacks will also provoke communal massacres that will lead to Muslim exodus
Dr. Wang Wenyi, a physician and journalist, burst out with her impassioned pleas for justice at the White House reception for President Hu Jintao of the Chinese communist regime. President Bush and Hu Jintao, as well as the world, heard the pleading cries of one who is intimately aware of the barbaric crimes against humanity in communist China.
"President Bush, stop him from killing! President Bush, stop them from persecuting Falun Gong!" Wenyi cried out.
Besides agricultural or farmer's cooperatives, Prout advocates the formation of other types of cooperatives, including producer's and consumer's cooperatives. Producer's cooperatives include agro-industries, agrico-industries and non-agricultural industries. The total profit of such cooperatives should be distributed among the workers and members of the cooperative according to their individual capital investment in the cooperative and the service they render to the production and management of the cooperative. Similarly, like-minded persons who will share the profits of the cooperative according to their individual labor and capital investment should form consumer's cooperatives. Those who are engaged in the management of such cooperatives will also be entitled to draw salaries on the basis of the services they render to the cooperative. Consumer's cooperatives will distribute consumer goods to members of society at reasonable rates.
The left-wing leaders of Bolivia, Cuba and Venezuela have signed a three-way trade agreement aimed at countering US influence in Latin America.
The pact was signed in Cuba by Bolivian President Evo Morales, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, and their host Fidel Castro.
The initiative, the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, was drawn up by Cuba and Venezuela.
