Blog Title: CHALLENGE

Wars, Deaths and Selfishness in World Politics

This month's New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) carries a free full text of correspondence related to two widely divergent estimates of post-invasion violent deaths in Iraq. The debate in itself is about statistics and stuff but the shocking fact is that the lowest estimate of non-combat violent deaths in the civilian population is 150,000 while the more realistic estimate (still on the conservative side) is 600,000!

Saddam Hussein in his worst avataram, is considered over a tenure of 24 years (1979-2003), to have been responsible for no more than 50,000 deaths per year. Post ouster that rate has climbed to at least double and probably even much more.

Should we not certainly be worried when hundreds of thousands of people die?

One of my major questions is was it worth it? I really don't know how to answer this question. America repeatedly claims that they simply had to get rid of a psychopathic butcher, but then the butchery after his removal seems to have got that much worse!

On another front look at what has been happening in Sudan's Darfur region. The toll there is conservatively estimated to be around a half million with a couple of million who have been turned into refugees and are always on the brink of starving to death or of being massacred in their UN/AU 'protected' refugee camps.

The striking similarity in both these horribly deadly disasters is the oil. Black gold. In both cases we see greed for control of oil revenues spilling over into ethnic-racial conflicts and terrible destruction of human lives. Entire peoples are being wiped out. Oil is not evil in and of itself. What it boils down to is greed. Greed alone is not enough, it is those who have power and who get greedy who then utilise ethnic hatred and use that as a propaganda weapon to justify and inflame their wars on innocents.

Saddam fell into the trap twice, first with Iran and then with Kuwait. In between he took a few swipes at the Kurds. I don't think that there is much doubt that in both wars, Saddam was lured into being the point person for others, who subsequently dropped him like a hot potato when the going got tough. But then that's just par for the course in the world of Realpolitik.

Do we have to search very hard for the reasons for other disaster zones like Zimbabwe or Myanmar? On the surface, NO, yet my overactive suspiciousness always makes me wonder who is duping whom to get what? It always seems that one of those with real power in this world sits and meddles in the background to actively but furtively create a situation out of which will fall windfall profits and increasing power and influence on the world stage.

Greed, power and the death of innocents...

On the Branding of Swadeshi

India's economy is in crisis. Inflation has raised its ugly head, putting our many millions in trouble. The greatest difficulty is that it is the most essential of commodities - food and fuel - which have seen the fastest rising rates.

At the same time, complexity takes hold on our economic, political, religious, and cultural fronts, yet we are being sold a strange brew of oversimplifications. I also sense a deliberate bid to reduce the political fallout by confusing the issues. Great and somewhat relentless forces have actually been unleashed in our nation as well as in the part of the world known loosely as South Asia.

Strategically and with global implications, the restoration of democracy in Pakistan followed by the apparent sidelining of 'Mushy' Musharraf, has led the US, Britain, and the EU to seek much closer ties with India. We see the rise of the West most clearly in the field of defense. More subtle signs include the red carpet welcome to MNCs, as well as a deliberate (but silent) turning away from the independence theme of Swadeshi that formed the economic backbone of Mahatma Gandhi's freedom movement.

It is not just one Indian national party that has changed their tune to welcome the latest trend to global capitalistic hegemony...

On the one hand our politicians try to convince us that our economic needs dictate our ongoing trade with Myanmar. They can sense no necessity to stand up for our principles of democracy and freedom. On the other hand, we are not willing to accept desperately needed gas from Iran. Iran's policy of seeking nuclear self-sufficiency (as we too used to) apparently offends our new highly valued principle of pandering to the Americans, not to mention the quest for dependence in 1-2-3!

Myanmar is of course the politicians' goldmine. The amount of money involved in cheating world sanctions on behalf of big business is not something that any of our politicians is willing to sneeze at (e.g. SEE HERE). No similar 'pots of gold' await any deal with Iran. While our nation may benefit immensely from the low cost of sorely needed Iranian gas, this perhaps pales in comparison to the loss of secret revenues from those neoglobalists who want to call the shots for us.

So, as Mahatma Gandhi knew, when there is no Swadesh there can be no Swaraj. Swadeshi is also prominently missing in agriculture. The obvious result is that while the prices of basic foods skyrocket, the traditional farmer gets poorer and poorer. Those that benefit directly, and immensely, are the stockists and middle 'men' - a misnomer in itself for this niche has now been fully occupied by MNC minions.

The new breed of MNC trading house can hoard (or should we say 'stock') and exercise empty 'value addition' with impunity and then sell at self-created demand peaks without a whimper from our wonderful politicos. The obfuscation is most clearly visible when the government blames 'global' factors including that wonderful commodity, crude oil. The recent global spike in the prices of foodgrains should actually have absolutely no impact on domestic prices when our own agricultural production is more than self sufficient! The same goes for cooking oil where retail prices have risen by more than 50% over just the last six months!

Meanwhile, the farmers starve, fail to pay their debts, and commit suicide. On the sidelines await the ever-eager property speculators who will pick up excellent farmland at distress sale prices and then comfortably wait for the cash-rich agri-corps to come by.

As Gandhiji remarked so many years ago, "Swadeshi is that spirit in us which requires us to serve our immediate neighbours before others, and to use things produced in our neighbourhood in preference to those more remote. So doing, we serve humanity to the best of our capacity. We cannot serve humanity by neglecting our neighbours" and that Swadeshi is "a call to the consumer to be aware of the violence he is causing by supporting those industries that result in poverty, harm to workers and to humans and other creatures"

Would that Gandhi's maha atma come back to rescue us from our oh so 'Gandhian' politicians. Or, failing that unlikely happening, that our youth would discover the true power of the ballot, voting for persons who are not so bent on first taking care of their own pockets, but who have instead a vision for humanity and for the India that can be built by Indians who do care.

Course in MT designed for College Students

AN exciting new course on medical transcription designed for college students in Coimbatore has been announced at Phoenix & Ahead

I am really excited about the possibilities. I will be handling the Language of Medicine (LOM) and in whatever other ways that I can. The Phoenix center is beautifully designed with a ThinCLient networked Lab and a separate dedicated classroom with all the infrastructure in place.

It looks to be an eight month stretch (by sacrificing all of one's weekends) and any college student should be able to earn a certificate in Medical Transcription.

There are obvious synergies for students as their command of English will automatically get polished and that's a huge plus for getting through any of the competitive entrance exams (GRE, GATE, CAT, CEE or TOEFL ...).

Furthermore, as I myself am a witness, being able to do MT as a transcriptionist or editor is a tremendous boon in any financial tight spot - and we all know that students and young people generally will face plenty of those!

How free is FREE?

I have been mulling over the latest political brouhaha in the US primary race. I think it's symbolic of how shallow the US's purported commitment to freedom really is.

Senators Obama and Clinton are locked in a 'fight to the death' in the democratic primaries. Into the midst of this melee springs a surprise (Obama machine) monkey wrench, the Wright Wrench. Now, suddenly, Obama turns tail and runs for cover, rebuking his overzealous ex-pastor and in the final analysis losing (in my unAmerican opinion) his perceived moral edge over his eagerly expectant rival.

The politics of the situation is rather comic. Whoever wins will be a 'historic' candidate in remarkable ways. So, I am not overly exercised by the potential outcome. Past experience has taught me never to be overly optimistic in these matters, for Americans generally seem more enamoured of the more caddish candidate and have always voted these known bad apples in for a second term and with their eyes wide open too.

What does interest me is the shallowness of the meaning of 'freedom' for Americans. One is welcome to be free, it seems, as long as that freedom does not extend to criticizing anything American. America is always good. America is always right. American foreign policy is always eminently fair... Any dissent is unAmerican. Any dissenter is a traitor. You are free only to believe and espouse one American truth.

One need not agree with a Wright, or for that matter with a Ward Churchill ("little Eichmanns" title link), or even a Farrakhan, or with anyone who refuses to wear a flag lapel pin... But, if one believes in freedom, if one really believes in freedom, one has to respect the dissenter and the dissenter's right to dissent.

At one time it was traitorous and unBritish for the erstwhile colonists to speak out against their God-appointed king. The dissent on which a potentially great democracy was founded was enshrined in the American Constitution's main text and then specifically spelled out in the very justly famous "First Amendment". It is a fundamental human right to be free to disagree!

One would think that being a member of a church where a pastor dares to speak what he sees as the truth, should be a big plus point for a presidential candidate. Here is someone who says that they admire the person and agree with some of what that person stands for and yet recognises that person's fundamental right to hold views that are unpopular.

Ask yourself: Is agreement necessary for acceptance? Does unpopular = unAmerican? I also wonder, does criticism of America mean less love for America, or even less patriotism?

If I were a psychoanalyst, I might even wonder whether such obvious displays of hypersensitivity may not be symptomatic of some under-the-surface feelings of GUILT?

ECLECTIC YOUTH

I find that today's youth has a really eclectic taste in music. Here's a playlist that has some of Saranya's (19) and Rommel's (15) slowly growing/constantly evolving pile of Good Stuff:

ADHD at Ponnvandu, New in the LD Series !

INDEX TO LEARNING DISORDERS POSTS AT PONNVANDU:

ADHD- LD6

India and Tibet

No one in the International community of nations seems to be ready to bell the Chinese cat on Tibet. The policy of silence is loudest in Tibet's closest neighbour India.

It seems a shame that commercial interests combined with India's real fear of confrontation with China on the disputed area of the borders in Arunachal Pradesh state, should be sufficient to cow down such an erstwhile champion of human rights as India. Still, the sad truth is that though the Dalai Lama is our guest in exile, in toto, that too is just for publicity's sake and has little other than symbolic value.

Just for fun, compare the "Free Tibet" facts and figures (click on the title) with the Chinese version of 'the truth' and tell me what you think...

Update Burma - Bloody Stones

Quoting from the Christian Science Monitor : "The government's Myanmar Gem Enterprise – Burma's third largest export company after the state-run oil and timber companies – has said gem sales have increased by 45 percent every year for the past three. The gem auctions, held once or twice a year since 1964, are becoming more frequent. All told, the official trade in Burma's gems, according HRW, was valued at $297 million in fiscal year 2006-2007, but is estimated to actually be much higher when factoring in unofficial sales. " (title links to full 3 page article)

The triumphant announcement of the growing success of the Rangon gem auctions comes after our morally bankrupt "world leaders" called for a boycott on Myanmarese gems.

Most of the mines are government owned, with large shares going to individual memebers of the military Junta. The mines supply a world hungry for jade, rubies, diamonds, cat's- eyes, emeralds, topaz, pearls, sapphires, coral, and yellow garnet. Remember that about 80% of the world's gem quality rubies come from Burma/Myanmar!

A further horror is that in typical fashion, all the mines have been confiscated from local communities these same communities are now 'employed' there as forced labor - mostly women and children.

Interestingly, gem exploitation ranks only third in Burma's export earnings. Oil and TIMBER take the lead (no boycott has been called against Burmese timber or oil!). Incidentally, while India earns quite a bit from Burmese gems, the main interest is in black gold (oil)...

In all three spheres, China studiously ignores all calls for international boycotts and is closely followed (though much more obliquely) by India.

While some of the world’s gem trading MNC giants have officially supported the ban, many are also busy exploiting ‘the letter of the law’ and hiding the origins of their gemstones by rerouting the raw Burmese gems to other countries such as India and Sri Lanka in order to muddy the original source. In India, gem traders gleefully line their pockets with the bloody spoils of value addition as they polish and facet the gems to be exported as India’s own (it’s an 800 billion rupee industry with India processing between 75% and 80% of the all of the world’s gem stones).
What a shame that the world’s largest democracy and supposed champion of human rights would quietly allow their traders to deal with a monster state that makes its money while bleeding a fellow democracy to death.

The New Voting American

One of the most fascinating aspects of the battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama has been the surprisingly variable response from women voters.

Hillary was the feminist dream come true, or so we all thought, but a shockingly high proportion of the women voters have plumbed for Barack.


Immediately, some famous feminists have called foul. They feel that women who support the "young, handsome" male in this epochal battle are abandoning the faith. These 'heretics', they claim, have played true to sexist form in rejecting the more experienced and more iconic woman in place of the untried though charismatic male upstart.

Many have expressed a surprisingly negative sentiment about the future with statements made like "this is the only real chance of my lifetime to see a woman become president". The fact that Hillary is not a self-made candidate has perhaps been blocked out by emotion, or even campaign rhetoric?.

What I see though is that if for a moment one listens to these 'traitorous' voters, neither sex not rock star charm have anything to do with their choice. Many are in fact staunch feminists. The issues for them are the issues. The Clintons are a known quantity and many women do not like what they stand for. These voters are in fact thrilled to have a choice, and of a one who stands equally tall on issues of equality.

In the final analysis, for the young new American voter the choice has nothing to do with either gender or race and nothing could be more thrilling or actually more amazing. The iconic issues of the past have been foregone for a new, mature, approach to selecting the best PERSON for the job.

May the best person win...


click the title link to go to Samantha Power's Scotsman interview...she's an excellent example of a very broad phenomenon.

Kenya - Meddle and Muddle

Under British colonialism, the world learned how to divide and conquer. Now, with the American hegemony at hand, that has been replaced by a 'policy' of meddling and muddling. The resulting confusion is very destructive to nations and economies. Kicking off the 21st century, Iraq stands as the sentinel example . Pakistan, with Mushy (the U.S. backed dictator) now creating an unholy antidemocratic mess, is another case in point.

Kenya is an unlikely place to suspect an American hand but the signs have been there for quite some time now. Mwai Kibaki, the previous president, is a typical example of one who seems well intentioned, urbane, well educated, soft spoken, and yet is firmly in the U.S.'s back pocket. The secret is money, though that's hardly a great secret, is it?

Bush, in the face of an obviously rigged election, wants power to be shared in Kenya. Shared? Did he offer to share his presidency when John Kerry won the popular vote in his own questionable 'win' in his own 'democratic' country? In other words, by whatever means, Mwai should retain the semblance of power, for Raila Odinga is an unknown quantity and looks (from what we can tell of his public persona) to be much less likely to slip quietly into the CIA's silky hands.

Kofi Annan's attempts to help sort things out in Kenya must have really alarmed the Bush administration. Kofi has been a quiet but powerful force in opposition to the American attempts at hegemony. That fight almost destroyed the U.N. itself as the U.S. used its money power to choke the U.N. into submission. Rice is now sent to butt herself in to the delicate situation in Kenya to see to it that Mwai doesn't cave in. The fact that then thousands more may die in the face of a ham-handed attempt to subvert real live democracy, is immaterial.

For the land of my birth, right now though, I am much reminded of the title of a book by a South African writer, Alan Paton:

Haunting Echoes of 'Health' Insurance

Way back in June of 2006, I had done a post ("Money or Medicine" - click the title link) on the shenanigans of health insurers and particularly a group called United Health (at that time hiding behind a quiet buyout of Oxford) who had earned a rather rich write-up in the NY Times. I was therefore less than surprised to see this heading at NPR today on my Google Homepage: "N.Y. Attorney General Accuses Insurers of Fraud".

Part of the answer must be that it's a bit like life insurance - you don't really know much about what you've actually got for your investment till it is (far) too late to make any changes. Folks that get really sick and then get shafted are already in such bad shape both financially and personally that their feeble voices are well below our threshold.

We will insist on believing the slick sales talk, and continue to be awed by the shiny brochures and the oh-so-well-designed websites that we forget that all that cosmetic costs real money and its coming out of the premium that so quietly gets deducted from your paycheck every month. Effective cosmetic cover is only really needed when there is no intrinsic beauty to reveal. Individual horror stories are a dime a dozen, but few seem to be aware that their fates are a result of careful planning and cleverly hidden execution. The return on investment for the shareholders is the permanent goal. Shafting and systematically cheating a few thousand here or there is the acceptable collateral damage along the path to that ROI.

Granted that the present U.S. government is more concerned about protecting the turf of such big businesses than overly worried about the healthcare that the general populace does or does not get. Still, I wonder how such corporations can continue to convince people to pay the dues that keep them raking in the money even when their primary aim is to take folks for a cheap but royal sounding ride?

We are so proud to be among 'the protected' and we will continue to be proud until it's too late and we are too far gone to be able to do anything about it but cry.

Thanks to Peter Kuper for the wonderfully apt illustration.

Out of Sight but right at our feet

What will Be?

You who are on the road Must have a code that you can live by
And so become yourself
Because the past is just a good bye.

Teach your children well,
Their father's hell did slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picked, the one you'll know by.

Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.

The song "Teach Your Children" can be heard in my current Christmas Playlist and that can be launched from the previous post. I also have "Que Serra Serra" on there too (What will be, will be).

MERRY CHRISTMAS 2007

Enjoy this playlist from PROJECT PLAYLIST, a new song sharing site that's in its beta release:

How Do the RIGHT and LEFT Differ?

ON
Greg Mankiw's Blog: How do the right and left differ?

I really enjoyed this clear and accurate summary of where 'right' and 'left' are currently facing off.

With the right and especially the libertarian right I would agree that big government is bad. But then who guarantees civil rights and justice? can it all be left to locally constituted bodies and to voluntarism?

A completely free (unregulated) market has its attractions and it also has its dangers. Especially, who protects the little fish from the bigger ones, or should we just let what happens happen and may the fittest survive?

Within academia it is felt that the left leaners outnumber (and also look down on) the more rightwardly oriented scholars. What do you think of this, and does it accurately reflect your own perception of our institutions of higher learning?

Lots to ponder indeed!

Thanks to Michael Kruse for posting this up on his own excellent blog: Kruse Kronicle and that’s also a link to his excellent new series on “Living Simply in Abundance”.

On how to be a Better Lemming

'Tis the season to be jolly... would be quite frivolous if it were not at the same time also so profoundly real.The Christmas season in the West is a time especially set aside for spending, purchasing, buying, gifting, and generally being very, very, jolly.
In the U.S. the spending season kicks off with a bang at Thanksgiving, but all over the world, common sense will lead us to suspect that the jolliest of traditional seasons will begin soon after the annual harvest. Give a couple weeks or a month for all that excess to start getting distributed, and then them holidays, and that spending will ensue - it makes good sense.
In India we have that grand 'festival of lights', Diwali, that is strategically placed after the first harvest in October or November and then, in the South of India, there is a second celebration (Pongal) that comes right after the second monsoon season in mid-January and that forms the very exciting and satisfying climax to our times of splurging.
Economies and spending cycles that keep them vibrant have to be based on the presence of excess, and most times that excess is only available for a short while right after the harvest. Holidays are also timed to help to distribute all that 'excess' and just as efficiently as possible! Any great delay between when the excess arrives and the application of peak marketing pressure to get people to spend may result in that excess getting channeled into savings accounts - economists don't like that at all. When we have plenty, and so much that we can even think in terms of excess, the purse strings will be at their loosest. Marketing has to strike while the iron is hottest but that is not the end of the story. We too help out by apparently just temporarily choosing to collectively forget that the upcoming year may hard and long.
Marketing the world over, is geared to maximise its hype just at these times. Spend - buy - purchase - CHARGE IT - or the ubiquitous EMI with 0% interest!
This year, the absolutely essential gadget is...
Everybody simply HAS to have this!
The teaser SAAALE! drags you out, 'pushes' you over that last little hump of caution, and then...
Insidiously, we also might not notice that we will really have to shell-out just a bit more this year than we did last year to get that 'absolutely essential' something. Economic cycles rely on the feeding frenzy to slip into the inflation mode too, for this is the one time of year that folks will be blithely unaware that the essentials just got a bit dearer. The small incremental adjustments will slip quietly into place in the corners of our subconscious even before we have time to register them, for there is so much else of an exciting nature to capture and hold our collective consciousness in thrall.
Value addition is one culprit, but the yen for bigger profits is certainly another. For the corporates, turnover should increase, and so too should the return on investment, the profit margin. Balance sheets will be anxiously prepared as the financial year draws to a close. At stake is the size of the share price pie for that depends on 'the figures'.
To the economist, inflation is a godsend. Deflation, when prices actually drop, (do you see red in the diagram above?) is an absolute disaster and must come straight out of hell. Modern economies rely on inflation to create the space in which value addition creates levels of work both in manufacturing/marketing and in services/marketing. More jobs, more earning, more spending, more money - MORE
Those little entries on corporate balance sheets called profit (net after taxes) quietly also rely on inflation. The trend is paradoxically opposed by innovation and new technologies! The whole complex process works together to keep standards of living on a slow rise that is slightly worse than what the actual inflation level would lead us to expect.
At some point people do question whether this all adds up. Of course it doesn't, not nearly, but it sure looks good while it's flowing along. Pension plans will be the most obvious harbingers of the bad news that eventually inflation catches up with you. Other painful reminders include the cost of health-care, health insurance, and medicines. Long term savings plans and incremental investments will yield something but much less than they should when compared to the damage that inflation has quietly been inflicting.
Money and easy credit are the end of a very long road that has separated our spending from the realities of our actual contributions to life. Think about it, as it is you're just the last stop between the ATM and the corporation that owns the store that you're heading to with the plastique in hand!
What would happen if inflation were to stop? What would happen if our governments printed just enough notes to maintain a fixed amount of money in circulation? What would happen if value addition were to be replaced by true value? What would happen if the purchasing power of a dollar or of a rupee were to become rock steady?
Have you thought about it this year-before you start (or at least finish) spending that bonus?
What will this Christmas/Pongal bring I wonder? Is it perhaps even possible to have fun and fellowship with friends and without money? Will anyone believe that you love them anyway even though you didn't push your plastic a few thousand more over its already strained limit?
GOLD > Coins > Bills of exchange > CREDIT Þ Transactions

Originally published by Sam at http://bartramia.wordpress.com

Invincible! Immortal? Soldiering (dys) Functionally

Not so long ago we had taken a peek at stuff like PTSD and the psychological costs of sending our young people to war. John Doyle, over at Ktismatics has actually been working with Veterans and their unique problems for quite some time despite the VA's refusal to allow outside psychologists in.

Now, new research indicates that there is also a very significant amount of actual brain damage being found in returning soldiers and recent Vets. The figures indicate that this happens FIVE TIMES more frequently than the army has been willing to admit to.

Listen to the NPRs interview (title link) with USA Today reporter Gregg Zoroya on his findings on the presence of brain trauma in soldiers returning from Afghanistan and Iraq. The army had reported only 4,000 so affected, but this study indicates that the numbers are 20,000 (so far), and that the vast majority of war returnees have not even been screened yet!

Another startling 'statistic' on veterans indicates that 1/3 of all the homeless in the U.S. A. are veterans. A rough estimate puts that at nearly a million vets (estimates range from 780,000 to 970,000 depending on who-take a look at some typical stats here, here and on Oldtimer.). A rough conservative calculation indicates that there are over 30 million Americans who could be classified as poor and of all of these about 1 in 10 is homeless. Another horrifying fact is that another one third of the homeless are children! One can expect that these stats will only get worse as the Iraq war returnees have experienced much longer tours of duty (than their Vietnam Vet friends) and will probably reach the crash out points that much faster. Add to that the spate of failed mortgages and the effects on families of losing their homes and their savings and you have a recipe for disaster.

I am not surprised that war veterans have suffered injuries that are both physically debilitating and mentally incapacitating. The chances of these sacrificial lambs successfully making it back into 'normal' life is always slim. What is surprising, very surprising, is that the army loudly touts it's ability to "take care of its own", but very obviously does not.

Soldiering has thus become just one more functionality in postmodern America. The lack of ideology is not as horrifying as the show of absolute callousness. It is quite impossible to believe that our armed forces do not know, did not anticipate, the sort of damage that our kids would be facing. Certainly, over four years into the war, they cannot only now be 'discovering' brain damage in returned vets. One naturally wonders how many of those in-service now are already suffering from such brain damage and either do not know it or are afraid to have it found out? The scenario is likely very similar to what is still the case for PTSD - denial.

Typically, the Neocon response has been to laugh it all off, with the Democrats not far behind, for this is a scandal of betrayal on a massive scale and it has been perpetrated in a singularly nonpartisan manner.

People, we are not talking about spin!

This is something much more like an information black hole - And with an election coming up too!

FARMING CONCRETE - India at 50/50

We, the people of India, always seem to be at the crossroads.

For a country that is thought to be developing fast, a lot of the time we are quite uncertain as to our direction, and even more confused about our ultimate destination. Instead we are very busy doing what Yogi Berra once advised : "When you come to a fork in the road, take it."



Everyone seems to silently assume that our goal in 'development' is to become a clone of 'developed' economies as much like the U.S. or Britain, or Japan, and to transform into this heavenly vision just as soon as possible.

Having traditionally been socialist in spirit but officially non-aligned, India has largely come out of 'the socialist trap', and now appears to be leaning towards a capitalist, 'free market' economy, somewhat to the delight of those who like possessing, and using, Capital. Or, so goes the assumption at present, but do we really wish to become 'more developed' in this limited and warped sense?

What are we turning ourselves into? What are we to become? We have indeed emerged, but to what? At present we Indians seems to me to be in the grip of a particularly thick fog. We are incapable of seeing our own noses, let alone tackling any bigger questions. And one of the biggest questions revolves around what we are going to do with agriculture.

Here is today's biggest fork in the Indian Road: 50% (yes, one half) of India's 1.1 billion population is now urban. The growing urbanisation of rural populations is driven by the death of small farming as a viable way to make a living. As making a livelihood out of farming becomes less attractive to families and (by design) much more attractive to corporates, the trend will be that smaller farms will be abandoned to be consolidated by larger, capital rich, corporates who will then complete the mechanisation of agriculture (in the name of efficiency) and try to completely eliminate rural labour.

What are we going to do to employ the up-coming flood of ex-farmers? The number of farmer suicides is growing (though we seem to hardly notice) by leaps and bounds every year. Do we just let them quietly continue to commit suicide? What a convenient solution...

The problem of course, is more general than just agriculture. In a comment on a previous post, Mahil had alluded to the increasing drive for specialisation in our developing world. As the machine, aided by intelligent computerised control, takes over both production and process, where will human-performed jobs come from? From a different angle, another tough question to answer now is : How will our nation's wealth eventually be distributed? Do justice, and fairness, and honesty, and openness have a say in our direction into the future?

Admittedly, our problems in India are not small ones. With a population of well over a billion people, somewhat scarce natural resources, limitations on arable land, and weather that always seems intent on either starving us with drought or starving us with deluges, it's perhaps not surprising that we seem fixated on wondering mostly about the when and the where of the next meal.

The pundits tell us that now, security is the name of the game. Do you own a house? Have you financially planned for your children's educations, and more worryingly, their marriages? have you got a couple of credit cards? Are you keeping up with the Krishnans?

The idea of planning, beyond the matter of the family's survival, is not something that includes our neighbors, our rural cousins and our nation at large.

Being shortsighted produces a situation that is rife for those who do have longer term agendas to quietly set their plans in train. Our politicians seem sometimes to be hand-in-glove and sometimes (rarely) simply dupes. Eventually, when the truth of massive sell offs does emerge, all will perhaps claim to have been too easily fooled! This is not in any sense a 'conspiracy theory'. I refuse to believe that folks that are so good at ingeniously lining their own pockets are as dumb as they wish us to believe on the questions of development and overall direction.

In theory, we have something called a 'planning commission'. The only problem is that this too is a 'socialist' leftover and as such this commission now does little of substance. The current head is someone who explicitly believes in deregulating everything. The resultant "Five Year Plans" have become manifestos of what to dismantle first, and of how fast the markets can be 'liberated'.

Our politicians are just as intent on survival (in the narrowest sense) as anyone else, but they are far-sighted enough to ensure that their monetary genealogies will survive for at least a few generations of their own profligate progenies.

In other words, motive and opportunity are known to be present in all developing economies. These are the ingredients of economic murder. Our economic c(r)ooks are particularly intent on making them coincident TODAY in India.

So, what are we going to do about it? Are we prepared to continue to be myopically concerned with our own little selves? Are you prepared to let your child's nation's future be quietly sold off to the highest
bidder?


Thanks to http://www.jillandjohn.net.nz for the lovely pics from Tibet

The Value of Adding Value

As mechanisation has been a staple reality world over for the last couple of centuries, it has shaped our societies and cultures.

In honour of the industrial revolution, engineering became one of the most sought after professions that only the most brilliant could aspire to. Courses in civil and mechanical engineering initially held pride of place, but then gave way to electronics and electrical engineering, and now even these have become less popular than communications and software 'engineering' - courses that are now even found in the ubiquitous 'Arts College'. The professions have tried to keep pace with cultural developments.

The agricultural revolution and rapid advances in medicine have also combined to make the world's huge population explosion just barely manageable. Of course, out of 6.6 billion people only 1 billion live well. Of the rest, around 25% are in abject poverty and in danger of starving (that's about 1.65 billion people). In absolute terms compared to a century ago, the percentage of poor has declined by half but the absolute number of the very very poor has gone up by about 40 million!

It is argued quite successfully (on paper) that the way to deal with poverty is not to give handouts but to give a hand-up. In other words, bring the poor of the world into the mainstream of production, and poverty will be licked. Is this realistic? Is it even possible? What jobs can we envision creating for the billions of poor?

In 2006, it was calculated that if a real U.S. dollar value were to be placed on the per person share of the entire world's economy (per capita on the world's GDP), it would work out to about $6,600 each. Such figures are heavily disputed by economists, mostly depending on where the economist hails from and what turf they are seeking to protect, so I take this as merely illustrative. The plain fact is that this is well below what an American or a European would consider the barest minimum subsistence level. In other words, if one were to pay an American $6,600 a year, they would starve to death. The poverty level cutoff in the U.S. last year was over $13,000 per annum. On the other hand, in India or China or in Africa six and a half thousand dollars would support a whole family of four at a 'middle class' level for a whole year.

Another little illustration that might illustrate the difference is that a good Medical Transcriptionist (MT) in the U.S. would earn about 65 cents a line. An average MT may pull in about 45 cents a line. The same work, when outsourced to the Philippines or India will earn the MT there, anywhere from 2 cents to 3 cents a line. In both types of economies this would constitute a middle class occupation.



The difference lies in the ways in which "value" has been added to products and services in these developed economies. People eat, they wear clothes, pay rent, they go to and from work, their kids get educated... all over the world. But in the 'developed economies', it costs a heck of a lot more to live even in this basic-needs sort of way.

Marketing and management have become the most honoured professions. The highest paid of all professionals in the world are the managers of large corporations. Now knowledge is the key to money and power. The knowledge that is most valued is the alchemical secret of value addition. It has to be done insidiously and so effectively that the consumer will consume both the product and the mythical value and feel pleased. Now, that's MAGIC !

Is it all worth it? The corporations think so and to tell the truth the answer is that without the layers upon layers of value addition, these developed economies would collapse.

Big business absolutely relies on the inflationary effects of exploitable, value addition, in order to pump profit margins up to a level where there remains little connection between what a goods or service costs to perform/produce and what the end user ends up paying for it. The value addition is self justifying also because it is the primary means of distributing "wealth" or more accurately earnings in the strictly trickle down economy.

Now, these economies want the developing world also to faithfully follow the same route. Everyone should buy-in to the concept of breaking the connection between the real value and what we collectively end up paying for anything after value addition.

Is Mass Production Ethical ?

Successful and well developed economies in today's world are mostly of the 'free market' design. These are economies where a modicum of free enterprise is only slightly limited by government regulation (except in agriculture, but we are not taking that topic up today). The alternative of top down control and no private ownership (communism) has died a natural death.

Both systems were outgrowths of the industrial revolution of the 19C. When looked at from an individual standpoint, by relieving the individual or family unit of the need to accomplish all basic tasks pretty much for themselves, and by introducing the incredible efficiencies of mechanisation, the individual is freed up to do other things, and these things necessarily, will now involve specialisation if one is to fit in to the overall framework. The economy mass produces stuff by mechanised processes that are increasingly automated with as few people as possible controlling as much process as possible.

Work, for an individual, is defined as the specialised, narrow, thing that that individual has been trained to do. The individual has to fit into whatever slots are available in the economy of the day.

So, the training of the individual, education also has to become specialised. Now, in India, there is no more point in getting an 'arts degree'. There is no utility in it. Job requirements do not include something as impractical and unspecialised as an 'arts degree'. Furthermore, if one wants to change lines of work, say after five or ten years of experience, one finds that one is starting the new job at the bottom of the ladder- the earnings ladder! The only thing that counts is a proven ability to perform and that comes only with experience.

We know all of these things and they don't overly disturb us for we are fairly confident that the whole thing hangs together and works pretty durn well. After all, what we need is a job, and some job security, and for prices to remain affordable, and for there to be opportunities and time for recreation and the family. What else does one want from a healthy, sound economy?

I would suggest that we have blinded ourselves to who and what we really are. We do this and allow ourselves to be duped because it is the easiest thing to do. We are comfortable enough, our families are pretty much taken care of, so what could really be wrong?

What we have gained is security.
What we have lost is our SELVES.

What happens to human beings that become redundant? What happens to machines that become redundant? The human has become nothing more than a machine, filling a slot in the endless cycle of mass production.

Mass production is good. Mass production runs the economy. Without mass production there would be no economy and there would be no prosperity.

We have gained the whole world-
But, we have lost ourSELVES.

War Games - Musharraf goes the "Cheney me to a Rice Bush" Route

India has been toying with doing things in 'The New American Way' for some time now. Our present almost misadventures with the 1-2-3 Nuclear Power Treaty have clearly indicated our own Junta's leanings. We too seem to be actively seeking ways to democratically subvert our democracy, but thankfully have so far failed.

Still the Dickied Rice Bush has had some measure of success with our neighbour Pakistan.

America kept insisting that this Mushy stuff was the closest that the Pakistani people could get to democracy. Instead, what was all along a dictatorship in democratic guise has now reverted to form and proved that it was indeed a full blown military dictatorship all along.

Musharraf is a suave, smooth, polite, educated, and eminently reasonable dictator, but a dictator and a ruthless and brutal one nonetheless. He is photogenic and charismatic (wonder where I've heard that before) and an ideal stooge for the U.S. State Department's deeper Neocononial designs in this part of the world.
The last time Musharraf needed to consolidate his power he engineered a war (the '99 Kargil War) with India. The then democratically elected Pak. leader (Nawaz Sharrif) had to flee for his life.

This time Mushy has been concentrating on his Afghany front, and let's hope that he stays focussed there. The chances are that as long as the current U.S. administration is wooing India, Mushy will have to bite his tongue and wait, but nothing is certain in todays global village.

Who knows, perhaps in international parlance this is just one more way of delivering a hidden ultimatum? An openly militaristic Pakistan should certainly fuel the the local arms race and that itself would have made Dickey & Co. very happy. Every cloud should have a silver and gold lining, as should every pocket...

It's too much to hope that India would have learned anything substantial from this, except that there're always ways to make a quick buck. The depth of the pocket is actually what drives politics in India anyway.

Statesmanship is a thing of the rather distant past - a blurry, fading, black and white memory of what was always something of a hazy backlit dream.

"Do, you know that the U.S. tried ever so strongly to dissuade Mushy from such a drastic step?" At least that's the current spin, being disseminated through the hidden alleyways of a 'leaky' State Department.

Everyone does know that Musharraf would never have dared unless he was offered tacit U.S. support.

• We have blown it on Myanmar. We are supporting a brutal military junta.
• We have blown it with Tibet. We have shamed the Dalai Lama.

AUTISM, the latest in the LD series at PONNVANDU

The latest article in the series on Learning Disabilities is up at Ponnvandu. Click on this link:

LD-4 Autism,

Earlier posts in the series are :

DYSLEXIA
DYSGRAPHIA
DYSPRAXIA
NUTRITION FOR KIDS WITH LD
DEVELOPMENTALLY CHALLENGED KIDS - TIPS FOR PARENTS

Freedom dies, dying, dead.

Our world has lost the desire for justice. We are now losing our desire for freedom. Our politicians have become slaves of power and thus slaves of money, for they believe that without money there is no power.

Let me illustrate with two different examples:

The NHS, (National Health Service) and indeed the very practice of English Medicine itself, is being steadily dismantled (read 'redefined' or 'efficientised') in the "Formerly Great" Britain.

• All medical super-specialties are being segregated to a very limited number of treatment facilities that also happen to be as far apart as possible.
  

• The FRCS is soon to follow the MRCP to becoming just an empty qualification. It already requires a Training Completion certificate to get the proud owner any respect at all!
  

• Most hospitals will be turned into Primary Health Centers where only routine medical procedures will be performed by doctors who have no additional qualifications - in other words "doctor" = "glorified technician".
  

Guns N Roses

It used to be that the worst we could do was to kill off a few of our own species by instigating nasty but localised disasters,


think: Chernobyl, Hiroshima, the Holocaust, Cambodia's Killing Fields, Bhopal, WW1, Iraq...

And with a little minor collateral damage thrown in such as loss of habitats and some consequent reduction in biodiversity.

Global evils are a relatively new creation of mankind.

The reality is that somewhere in the 1950s we created enough nuclear firepower to completely destroy all life on earth.

Now, that's global!

Of course, TODAY the United States of America can be proud of having the ABILITY, and all on their lonesome, to destroy a hundred earths.

Russia may have more, or less and China? Then there's Israel, India, South Africa, Great Britain, France, Germany, maybe and now Brazil too and maybe Iran.

So let's say, for the sake of argument, that's another few hundred worlds worth...

I wonder whether that is why there are so many astronomers looking for habitable earthlike planets?

Well, when they do get started, (on using all of that lovely firepower) let's just hope that they start as far away from this earth as possible!

Now we are also being told, that without ever having intended any such harm, nonetheless, we are well on our way to warming our own little globe so much that it may destroy all of life - at least life as we now know it.

The exciting part of that is that it gives evolution a fresh start and maybe, just maybe, something as purely self (and other) destructive as humankind will not be the result the next time round, but then, it is nature, "red in tooth and claw"(1) that we are talking about! It could even be worse. maybe, we're not so bad after all?

So, this is not ultimately about survival. It looks like sooner (odds on), or later (less and less likely), we will most certainly cease to exist.


But, it certainly is about what we are doing in the meantime.

I think it would be nice if we could go out in a blaze of glory. I really do think that this is something that we can perhaps manage. It's just a small matter of trying not to do any harm to others for the next few years.

Now, is that such a big deal?

Think of posterity.

Think of what some species in the year 3,000 is going to find as they sift through the archaeological dust. Era after era of nastiness, wars, destruction, one upmanship, weapons of destruction and then weapons of mass destruction and then wars based on spin about WMD that never existed, and then... peace.

Peace,

did I hear someone say

PEACE????

And the Ngobel Prize in History for the year 3,001 goes to - #$(*&%)@@*!!!, for the discovoverery of "Peace"...

"The History of Peace"

A richly and horrifyingly illustrated guide to the heroic end of what can only be termed as the most unimaginably uncivilized species to have ever gained intelligence.

It all began in the year 2007, when the species Humanus selfdestructivus realised that they were soon to no longer exist.

#$(*&%)@@*!!! finally succeeded in translating the digital data after almost 300 years of deciphering in base 2, and the result is the publication of a truly remarkable document that has been miraculously preserved. The story recounts how, when this realisation of imminent and irrevocable demise suddenly spread on the WWW, the entire Humanus selfdestructivus decided, mysteriously, and courageously, to spend their last years alive on the planet Ge, in PEACE...

(read more...)

Good for you, Jimmy Carter!

Something about this article on Jimmy Carter taking on a hostile bunch of cops in the Sudan [title link] reminded me powerfully of my dad (H.A. Carr). When he got the bit between his teeth he was going to get wherever he had determined to go, and no one, nothing, was going to stop him.

Where questions of human rights, and more basically human lives, are concerned it's about time we stopped letting the democracies, juntas, and dictatorships give us the royal runaround.

We all need a bit of the Jimmy Carter spirit to start getting things done.

Myanmar, Darfur, Egypt, Palestine, Uzbekistan, DR Congo, Iraq, Zimbabwe, Guantanamo, Kosovo, North Korea, Saudi Arabia (and much of the M.E.) , and then the almost complete blind spots like Indonesia's Papua and Borneo...

Places like DR Congo, Myanmar, and the Indonesian islands, are kept under wraps quite actively by the MNCs that quietly operate there. We have posted about the timber mafias before and this recent TIME article shows how the MNCs, backed solidly by their hypocritical countries of origin, have gone so far as to subvert critically important international aid organizations like the Wold Bank to help them to quietly do their dirty work.

The World Bank is actually governed by government representatives, so without the involvement of the various governments...

It isn't just a matter of quietly making money with a bit of biosphere rape thrown in. The MNCs-govt. nexus always results in human rights abuses. The countries involved will also end up being permanently crippled by the corruption and unequal distribution of wealth and power that the MNCs have encouraged.

Such then is the hidden nexus in today's world, where supposedly democratic and freedom-oriented, nations are actually actively subverting the world's poor (and raping their hapless environments) through their corporations and just for a bit of quick 'filthy lucre'!