The free and peaceful do not apologize

"I'll never apologize for the United States, ever. I don't care what the facts are."

-George H.W. Bush

The former President of United States, now famous as the father of the equally genocidal George W. Bush said these words in 1988. Why did he say so? Did the United States try to "liberate" some country then and failed miserably at it after which the "liberated" country demanded an apology?

On 3rd July, 1988, a US missile shot down civilian aircraft Iran Air Flight 655 killing all 290 passengers and crew abroad. It ranks seventh among the deadliest airliner fatalities. The US Government claimed that it had "mistaken" the plane for an attacking F-14 Tomcat fighter. The Iranian Government claims that the US intentionally shot down the aircraft. Either way, the US is culpable and an apology is the least the US Government could have done. Instead Bush came up with the above statement as is expected of an arrogant imperialist power. Worse, this incident didn't shock public opinion and is more or less forgotten.

Lets reverse the situation a bit. Suppose an Iranian aircraft carrier stationed in the Bay of Pigs had shot down an American Airlines plane as soon as it took off from Miami while it was still in US territory mistaking it for an attacking plane. What would have been the reaction? Unsurprised silence? The US would have launched a "war against terror" against Iran and would have the international comunity on its side. There would be sanctions on Iran, major cities would be bombarded(precision bombing?), civilians would be killed(collateral damage!), the President would be made to apologize and all this while, all countries would support the US and send condolence messages which would be printed in papers until the next anniversary of the bombing. Meanwhile the US would insist on calling itself a peaceful country which values freedom, democray, free speech and other such stuff which it regularly undermines.

All the crimes of a powerful, rich country are ignored while smaller(and oil-rich) ones are given fancy names like "Axis of terror". Saddam Hussein has been given the worst of ephithets, while George Bush, who systematically destroyed Iraq and Afghanistan and killed thousands is prefixed with "stupid". So a genocidal, tyrannical, terrorist is reduced to just stupid.

In a similar vein, Obama, after getting elected said that he would do everything possible to mantain peace with the Arab world but he would "never apologize for the American way of life". Now what does that exactly mean? Does it mean he won't apologize for the fact that America consumes 30% of the world's resources or that they are the second largest emittors of carbon dioxide? Or should we interpret it as his refusal to apologize for the mass destruction in Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, Guatemala, San Salvador, Chile(the list is too large to be enumerated here).

It is time we realize the hypocrisy and double standards of belligerent nations like the US. It has seeped into our language and minds and has so skilfully become a part of public consciousness that the death of one American soldier occupies far more newsprint than the massacre of 30 Iraqi civilians.

By Saad Ahmed

Socialism and Shining India

It is now fashionable to speak highly of 'privatization' and'globalization'. We are told in school textbooks how India was on theverge of a financial crisis and the liberalization of the economy putthe country back on track. How we achieved a high rate of growth. Howmulti-national corporations have swarmed India and brought in a glutof wealth. How a significant middle-class had emerged which shops inmalls and consumes more than their parents did. And now there aretalks of us becoming a superpower. All thanks to the liberalization ofthe economy in 1991.

However, while more and more people have been shopping in malls andearning higher salaries in multinationals, between 1997-2005, 1.5 lakhfarmers committed suicide.1 Tribals, Dalits, villagers are beingdisplaced to accommodate dams, SEZs, industries and other such thingsthat the Government calls 'development projects'. Millions of peoplelose their houses, their livelihood and have to relocate – often toslums in cities. Trains from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh are bulging withpeople who have to leave their home in order to look for employment in the bigger cities. 220 million people live in abject poverty.2

So where exactly have privatization and globalization brought us? Isit helpful in creating more jobs, alleviating poverty, increasingwelfare and providing basic necessities? Here's an extract fromArundhati Roy's essay "Power Politics" which succinctly explains theeffects of privatization of essential commodities and services:3

"What happens when you 'privatize' something as essential to humansurvival as water? What happens when you commodify water and say thatonly those who can come up with the cash to pay the 'market price' canhave it? In 1999, the Government of Bolivia privatized the publicwater supply system in the city of Cochabamba and signed a forty-yearlease with Bechtel, a giant US engineering firm. The first thingBechtel did was to triple the price of water. Hundreds of thousands ofpeople simply couldn't afford it anymore. Citizens took to the streetsin protest. A transport strike brought the entire city to astandstill. Hugo Banzer, the former Bolivian dictator(now thePresident), ordered the police to fire at the crowds. Six people werekilled, 175 were injured and two children blinded. The peoplecontinued because people had no option – what's the option to thirst?In April 2000, Banzer declared Martial Law. The protest continued.Eventually Bechtel was forced to flee its offices. Now its trying toextort a $12 million exit payment from the Bolivian Government.

Cochabamba has a population of half a million. Think of what wouldhappen in an Indian city. Even a small one."

The premise for privatization in Cochabamba was that it would makewater supply more efficient and more water would reach more residents.However the only thing Bechtel was efficient in was tripling the priceof water.

In the aftermath of the Mumbai floods, Reliance Power failed torestore electricity in time. The suburbs of Mumbai, from Kurla toViroli in the eastern side and from Bandra to Bhyander in the westernside were not supplied with electric power for nine days. ReliancePower started its job only after they received a notice from the stategovernment on the tenth day. It was a public-sector enterprise, theMaharashtra State Electricity Board that provided human and otherresources which helped Reliance Power to restore power supply.

Power privatization in Delhi has also been a debacle. None of thepromises made while privatizing power were fulfilled by the privatecompanies. Power supply is still as intermittent as it was before. Theaverage tariff increase after three years of privatization is 44%. Inorder to keep the tariff affordable and ensure that the companies makea profit, the exchequer has given a subsidy of Rs. 3452 crores in thefour years after privatization6. The arguments in favour of powerprivatization is that electricity theft will decrease, supply will beuninterrupted, companies will be more efficient and make a profit andso on. All over the country, such measures have failed to bring anyresult. I have not mentioned these instances to show that public sector enterprises are necessarily better than privately-owned ones, but to prove that the private sector isn’t the exemplar of efficiency and responsibility that it is touted to be.

One of the arguments advanced in favour of privatization is that sincepublic-sector units are inefficient and incur losses, they should besold off. Suppose you have a splinter in your finger. What do you do?Remove the splinter or cut off the whole finger. The Government'sactions veer towards the latter. Instead of trying to remedy what iswrong with the public sector, instead of trying to minimize losses ormake bureaucrats more responsible, the Government actually gloats overhow they are ill-managed and must be gotten rid of. But why is thepublic sector inefficient? Again I would like to quote from ArundhatiRoy's essay Power Politics:

For many years, India has been more or less self-sufficient in powerequipment. The Indian public sector company, Bharat HeavyElectricals(BHEL), manufactured and even exported world-class powerequipment. All that's changed now. Over the years, our own governmenthas starved it of orders, cut off funds for research and developmentand more or less edged it out of a dignified existence. Today BHEL isno more than a sweatshop. It is being forced into 'joint ventures'(onewith GE and one with Siemens) in which its role is to provide cheaplabour while they provide the equipment and the technology.3

Thus, the responsibility for the “inefficiency” of the public sector lies with a Government keen on privatizing them. This could also be taken as an argument in favour of private corporations, but what it more important for the masses: maximum profit or high employment and welfare albeit at lower efficiency? Although private corporations often make more profit(often by violating labour standards and engaging in malpractices), is this the purpose of all industrialization – making profit? Profit is now considered both, the meansand end.

It would be myopic to say that globalization and liberalization hasnot helped India in any way. Some people are indeed better off. But domore industries and more billionaires equal a better life for allIndians? For the majority of Indians who live in villages? The currenteconomic model has failed to improve the life of the average villager.What we need is a different, more sustainable system which doesn'tenrich only a particular section but the whole country.

Socialism is now considered outdated and inferior to the capitalistmodel. It's believed that all socialist countries, realizing itsdefects have discarded it and are now moving towards the free-market.But the Scandinavian countries – Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Iceland –are Socialist welfare states with high taxes, government subsidies,state interventions and are other things which are now considered animpediment to development. These socialist countries feature in top 20of all the indices of development like the Humans Development Index,Global Competitiveness Index, etc.4 They have an excellent health-caresystem, pensions and benefits.

Cuba is another example. Despite facing economic blockades and prolongedsanctions, Cuba ranks 51 in the Human Development Index. It isclassified under the HDI's "High Human Development" group4. It spends4% of what the US spends(per capita expenditure) on the health sector,but achieves better results in most of the parameters of that sector.It scores higher in HDI than Mexico, Russia, India China and Brazil –all considered emerging economic powers4.

Capitalism has indeed worked for countries like USA, UK, France, etc.But most of these countries have developed at the expense of others –they colonized and exploited resource-rich countries to attain theircurrent level of industrialization. However that era is over. Theresources are limited and markets are saturated. Besides, it isenvironmentally unsustainable. Capital-intensive methods will fail towork in a country with a population as large as India. The capitalistmodel now can only lead to unimaginable wealth for a few and povertyand deprivation for most along with large scale environmental damage. This doesn't mean that all industries should be nationalized. Private enterprise should be allowed, but essential infrastructure like water, electricity, etc. must be controlled by the state. Instead of treating the free market as sacrosanct, the economic system must be such that it takes into consideration the needs of all people.

It has been continuously drilled into us that socialism and stateintervention is bad for 'growth' and 'development'. Everywhere –school textbooks, non-fiction, newspapers, news channels and'bestsellers' like The World is Flat tell us that a globalized freemarket is the only way to progress. Economic growth, growth in GDP/percapita income does not necessarily translate into a better life forall people. If we think that India is developing despite dropping torank 128 in the HDI4 because it rose from rank 8 in 2006 to rank 4 in2008 in the Forbes list of billionaires5, we need to think again.

References:
1)www.indiatogether.org/2007/nov/psa-mids1.htm
2)http://www.economywatch.com/indianeconomy/poverty-in-india.html
3)Roy, Arundhati, Power Politics, The Algebra of Infinite Justice. Penguin Publishers
4)http://hdr.undp.org/statistics
5)http://www.forbes.com
6)http://www.eefi.org/0905/090510.htm

By Saad Ahmed

Winning over history

Who do you think was the most brutal tyrant? Most people would say Hitler, though most (non-Russian) historians would concur on Stalin. Reasons: “Hitler caused the Holocaust and the Second World War” or “Stalin killed 20 million of his own people”. But there might be a reason for why most people think this way : Propaganda and bias which is meant to show them as tyrants.

“History is written by the victors”, once said Winston Churchill, and Leon Trotsky, right after the Bolsheviks had took power, told the Mensheviks, the losers, to rot in “the garbage-heap of history”. So according to these experienced people, history, ideas and information is dominated and controlled by those in power!

But let us experiment this hypothesis on ourselves: of course we know about the Holocaust and the Purges, but how much of the victor’s atrocities do we remember? How well known are allied area-bombings, conducted not for tactical bombardment, but to intentionally target the civilians. Populous cities like Dresden, Darmstadt, Pforzheim, Schweinfurt, etc. were targeted multiple times, the bombing of Tokyo with incendiaries and napalm claimed more lives than the Little Boy, which reminds me weren’t the Atomic bombs, or any of the above tools of “wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity” and thus the people in charge should have been prosecuted under the Charter of International Military Tribunal under the Nuremberg Trials?

Eric Blair, more widely known as George Orwell, wrote an essay conveying his ire on the British propaganda toward the Soviet regime at the time of the Second World War. He stated that at the time, Stalin, who was then known as ‘Uncle Joe’, was portrayed as a good leader, people in Britain were aloof of the details of the Purges, and the details of the killing of thousands of innocent Polish officers by the Soviets in the Katyn Forest were massively covered up. The British sent a batch of Cossacks to the Russians in full knowledge that they were to die in the hands of the Soviets. Events like these and the hushing up of the Russian conduct in the Warsaw Uprising, where they could have prevented numerous Polish and Jewish casualties is definitely an act against the Geneva Conventions. Still they are justified and most of us know nothing about these acts.

Selective information has so skewed our way of thinking that Japan, once it became an ally of the United States was sympathized with and horrors such as the Rape of Nanking are seldom remembered. The Second World War was just one example of how much information can be controlled and could further be used to control us, it is just one domain of knowledge in which information received by us is be filtrated and biased and it could also true for other areas of knowledge.

Even now, how credible is the media? How impartial is the information we receive? For how long can we allow ourselves to get enmeshed in the knowledge imparted by influential entities, which for “sundry weighty reasons” might influence us away from the truth? The only solution I find is in skepticism, to be impervious to any source of information till it can be and has been cross-referenced by a source of a different perspective. Ironically, doubt seems to be the gateway to truth and belief to be the trap into indoctrination.

By Ashish Kumar, 1st Physics