Separate Viewpoints

Two viewpoints... but the result is still the same -- violence, displacement, more profits for the big companies, the oppressed continue to be oppressed.

From www.indianexpress.com:

Nandigram on boil again, at least 11 killed in clashes, police firing

Subrata Nagchoudhury

Bengal: Attacked, police fire on political workers; Buddhadeb statement today

NANDIGRAM, MARCH 14: A month after an intelligence official was lynched and a police team attacked by a mob, Nandigram was on the boil again today with at least 11 persons being killed and over 25 injured as political workers, spearheading a campaign to oppose acquisition of farm land for industries, attacked police and were fired upon.

West Bengal DGP A B Vohra said they were told to ‘‘restore the rule of law’’ in Nandigram and had mobilised as many 3,000 policemen early this morning. But the policemen, he said, faced stiff resistance from a 5,000-strong mob — members of the Save Land Committee who were armed with guns, bombs and other weapons.

Vohra said six bodies had been recovered and the death toll could rise as reports were awaited from other areas. A late night PTI report put the toll at 11 killed while partners of the ruling Left Front said it could be between 10 and 13 while the Opposition Trinamool claimed 20 people had been killed.

Though Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee — he will be making a statement in the Assembly tomorrow on the Nandigram violence — had made clear that a special economic zone (SEZ) or a chemicals hub would not be thrust on Nandigram if the people there did not want it, local politics took over.

The Save Land Committee, comprising cadres of Trinamool Congress, Congress, SUCI, BJP, Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind and even the CPI, locked horns with local CPM leaders, led by its MP and strongman Lakshman Seth of Haldia. CPI MLA Mohammad Illyas has been a staunch supporter of the Save Land Committee.

Lakshman Seth and his men had told the locals that their interests would be taken care of if land were to be acquired but not many believed them, resulting in desertions from the party rank and file. “Over the past two months, it was the same crisis of credibility that haunted the Save Land committee members who feared that Lakshman Seth would have the last word in Nandigram and not Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee,” said a CPM member in Chandipur near Nandigram.

In Nandigram, a CPM zonal committee member told The Indian Express that “the battle has assumed political dimensions”.

So when the state administration was told to “restore the rule of law” in Nandigram which since January had been sealed off by the Save Land Committee, the local CPM cadres followed the police to regain lost ground. This led to a pitched battle between the two sides.

In Kolkata, Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress called a 12-hour Bangla Bandh on March 16. Banerjee was on her way to Nandigram in the evening but CPM cadres had blocked the road at several points. Congress leader Subrata Mukhjerjee’s vehicle was attacked near Chandipur crossing and he was not allowed to visit Nandigram.

The vehicle carrying The Indian Express team was also attacked by local CPM cadres but no one was injured.

_______________________________
Article from www.countercurrents.org (by NAPM)

At Least 20 People Killed In
Police Firing In Nandigram

By NAPM

14 March, 2007
Countercurrents.org

It is shocking and shaking news from the people of Nandigram, the state of west Bengal, India has waged a war against them with an intention of occupying their farm land, fish ponds, homes and hearths. In spite of the rhetorical statements by the Chief Minister of WB that he would consult and convince the people, the State government claiming to be leftist by ideology, has resorted to brutal and barbaric way of using police force and party cadres to attack the unarmed, non violent farmers, fish workers, labourers and artisans in the district of East Midnapore for grabbing their land. The people from generations old communities who have a golden history of freedom movement and martyrdom are being not only forced but killed by the "free Indian state" which is shameful for the Indian democracy and its people.

As per the latest information, thousands of Police on entering the area, this morning, started firing, and 20 at least are found killed while hundreds are wounded lying on the street. Police are forcibly taking away the dead bodies. Women are at the forefront and have faced the attack the most. Children and men along with women are on the streets coming out of homes and villages to stop the brutal State and Party forces who are trying to take the territory under siege for SEZ with MNCs. We are also informed that media persons were stopped from witnessing the brutal atrocities while two media persons from TARA
News are said to be missing.

This is obviously a planed action since even last month when 4 meetings attended by over 20000 people was held, there was news that the CPM would launch its attack soon after the school exams were over.

Women and men who continued to keep watch day and night were most worried expecting the armed attack and asked whether their non violent approach would work. Since yesterday, there was a fear and a threat of an action using thousands of Police and CPM Cadres, armed and prepared to forcibly occupy their land and the territory. The public statement to this effect was made by none else but Shri P.R.Roy Secretary, Home Affairs and Raj Kanojia IG- Law and Order, state of West Bengal. The opposition in WB, during assembly session, had demanded a dialogue to start immediately and not to resort to State violence.

The news is that the firing and violence is still on and the people also have not given up. The intellectuals in west Bengal have come out in support of the struggling farmers and others and there is a need that the same happens in all the states. Imposition of industrialization, with or without SEZ, as also real estate development is to kill farm land and farming as a way of life. But Nandigram and Singur show that the corporotised stae does not mind even mind killing people to make way for the Multi National Corporations.

This brutal attack must be immediately condemned and CPM must be compelled to stop murdering farmers immediately. Such state fascism and corporate war against people can't and must not be tolerated.

What happens in Nandigram and West Bengal is to decide the fate of lakhs of farmers, fish workers, labourers, artisans who voted for left front but now are in unprecedented battle for survival.

· We demand that the Union of India and UPA through the PM, Sonia Gandhi and others must immediately intervene and use various restraining measures in their hands to compel the CPM government to stop the murderous attack.

· Legal action must be taken against all responsible for the killings including the CM, West Bengal

· We expect that the National Human Rights Commission will send a team for urgent enquiry and take action. We assert that SEZ Act should be repealed and projects with conflict between the state and

the people should be put on immediate hold across the country. An enactment on Development Planning, based on the draft submitted to the National Advisory Council under the Chairmanship of Smt. Sonia Gandhi should be taken for consultation with people's movements and approved.

· WE appeal to the eminent and concerned citizens and people's organizations to condemn and protest against the inhuman imposition of projects in the name of development.

For National Alliance Of People's Movements

Medha Patkar- 9869446684, Rajendra Ravi- 9868200316, Mukta Srivastava, Sukhendu Bhattacharya, Pranav Bannerje, Murad Hussain

good article.

Democratizing Blame

By Somnath Mukherji

13 March, 2007
Countercurrents.org

The release of a summary of findings by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in early February has created flutter around the world – it is as if the findings somehow actualised and legitimised the phenomenon of global climate change. Concerned personalities and organisations have filled newspaper columns in the western media expressing their concerns and distributing the blame across the entire humanity.

The panel reports a huge increase in carbon-dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane – collectively known as the greenhouse gases (GHG), in the atmosphere. Air bubbles trapped in ice cores dating back 650,000 years have been systematically analysed. Concentration of GHGs in the atmosphere, for the last 10,000 years, has been represented graphically that exhibits an exponential rise from the year 1750. It also documents the rising global temperature; the falling snow cover and the consequent rising sea levels, for the last one and half centuries. It observes “changes in Arctic temperatures and ice, widespread changes in precipitation amounts, ocean salinity, wind patterns and aspects of extreme weather including droughts, heavy precipitation, heat waves and the intensity of tropical cyclones”.

The report attributes the increase in carbon dioxide mainly to burning of fossil fuels and the increase in nitrous oxide and methane to agriculture (this includes cattle rearing) both of which are lumped under anthropogenic or human activities. The logic of ascribing the cause to “human activities”, sweeping all of humanity under a single head remains unclear when the majority of the humanity did not participate in the suicidal desecration. Why this democratisation of blame when the fruits have been monopolised? While 5% of the world’s population residing in the US emits 23% of carbon-dioxide, 17% of the world’s population in India is responsible for 4% of the emissions [International Energy Agency data for 2003]. In other words, a person residing in the US emits 20 times carbon dioxide and a person in the UK 10 times than that of a person in India.

Not only is this disparity true for the present but has been maintained historically since the Industrial Revolution. According to the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, in 1899, the UK emitted 37 times more than India and 4000 times more than China. It was the logic of colonization that ensured the starkly unequal access to the atmosphere. In the post-colonial world, it was the paradigm of development that unleashed the homogenizing forces and ushered the former-colonies into catch-up mode.

A report titled “Livestock’s Long Shadow” released by the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), holds the 1.5 billion cattle, in the world, most of which goes to feed the rich, to be responsible for 18% of the GHG emissions. It is also responsible for a widespread loss in biodiversity and requires vast amounts of water. A total of 33% of the earth’s arable land is dedicated to raising feedcrops for these cattle. In India, only 8% and in sub-Saharan Africa only 7% of daily calories/per-capita comes from animal products when the numbers for North America and Western Europe are 22% and 31% respectively. This is on top of the fact that the average calorie intake in Asia and Africa is significantly lower than those of the developed nations. Given its significantly smaller footprint, the global south should not have to shoulder the blame for global warming equally with the minority responsible for it.

“Eleven of the last twelve years are the warmest recorded global surface temperature”, observes the IPCC report. The accelerating melting of snow and glaciers all over the world would affect millions living by, and depending on rivers and other fresh water bodies. Rising sea levels will affect the coastal population, displacing millions from heavily populated areas. The school of oceanographic studies in Jadavpur University has recorded the submergence of 4 islands of the Sunderbans in the last two decades, rendering thousands of families homeless – and the water level is rising steadily. The Tsunami and hurricane Katrina in the US has given a macabre preview of the fury of a destabilizing nature along with the vulnerabilities of the population on the margins of society. Thousands if not millions will be paying with their lives and livelihoods because some people far away are engaged in a pursuit of happiness that depends on ever increasing acquisition of material wealth.

The majority of the solutions put forth by the “developed” countries have been technological in nature, based on shifting of costs from one realm to the other. None of the solutions touch the fundamental problem of over-consumption, equating well-being to material gratification and making economics the organizing principle of societies.

The much touted solution of carbon-sequestration seeks to shift the carbon-dioxide pollution from the atmosphere and store it in land and water bodies when the oceans are already turning acidic from absorbing increased carbon-dioxide from the atmosphere and affecting marine life adversely. The Clean Development Mechanisms (CDM) under the Kyoto Protocol will allow richer nations to put out emissions by planting enough trees in the tropical countries whose already marginalized population will face displacement, loss of livelihoods and control over natural resources. Further, the sort of monoculture that is advocated can never provide the ecological base of a natural forest. In effect, these technocratic solutions amount to commodifying the ecology and putting it at the disposal of the economically powerful.

Merely substituting the sources of energy without stemming the ever growing dependence on it, can go only so far in undoing the disastrous effects that the energy-addicted have wrought on this planet. The side effects of substitutes cannot be ignored when they proliferate in scale. A study in the Journal of Geophysical Research established the warming and drying effect of a large-scale wind farm and likened it to “local atmospheric changes that occur with large scale deforestation”.

Global warming is a consequence of a fragmented worldview that has put disproportionate emphasis on the material aspects of human life. The economics that took birth from such a worldview has sought to hide the actual costs. Slavery, colonialism and now “development” have been increasingly refined ways of exploiting vast populations and their natural resources. Ironically it is the same hegemonising and homogenising philosophy that is being peddled by coercive means and half-truths, as the only path forward. The resource base of the planet is being stretched to its extreme not so much by the increasing population but by the increasing needs (or greed) of a small section of the population.

Scientific rationality has been narrowed down into technological rationality where technology becomes the sole legitimate tool for attaining the truth: weather comes to a person through computers and TVs, communication comes to be dominated by electronic channels, education trains the masses to serve technology and above all, technology becomes the yardstick in dividing populations into “forward” and “backward”. Hence the only solutions coming out of the industrialised world are technological in nature. Searching for a solution to the multi-dimensional problem of global warming solely in the technological space is nothing more than a futile exercise.

While epistemological impoverishment obscures the basic reasons for the predicament, convenient collectivism provides justifications to distribute the blame amongst the entire humanity. There are solutions and alternatives available in the world, but not in the hyper-industrialised parts of it. There still are many societies in Asia, Africa and Latin America living closer to nature with capacities to evaluate the costs in their entirety; societies that have defined progress and pursue happiness in more benign and sustainable ways. Instead of pushing them to the margins, the “developed” world should be learning from them.

Kids Create Car That Run on Soybean Fuel

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/02/17/eveningnews/main1329941.shtml

This was in my email box from CharityFocus's Daily Good. Check it out.