Obama and FDR -- Revisiting American History (quickly)

Obama and FDR -- Revisiting American History (quickly)

March 27, 2010



Now, this is a serious historical discussion that should be done by serious historians. I'm not one of them. My little knowledge about American history and society comes from a twenty-five years of first-generation immigrant existence in this country, and that too, an existence of struggle, spending valuable time on unmemorable, mundane events. Still, as a student of political history as well as an unflappable cheerleader of human spirit, I find urge to chronicle history of this land where I spent half of my life, as it's been unfolding my way. Hope is, friends are gracious enough to forgive any possible impudence.

About Barack Obama, the man who made history. However much I want to support him (and I do, still) and however much time and energy I'd put in for an Obama victory, I'm skeptical about the way he's doing business. This is after I threw in all my support for this health care reform bill, irking my three and a half admirers worldwide.

This is a very important discussion, and I hope we continue it. Briefly, I just came back from an annual conference of my college where a paper was read about the Obama vision of "One America." The young, vibrant, erudite historian quoted many Obama speeches to show how he's been able to create a sense of race harmony and futuristic vision for America through his enviable eloquence. Sure, I love the Obama eloquence, but not sure if I'm totally sold on the liberal, centrist theme. If anything, I said during the questionnaire that Obama has said things that new-generation, educated or otherwise privileged Americans want to hear, without ever addressing the issue of class, corporatism or globalized, neo-colonization and economic-cultural enslavement a la Monsanto, Union Carbide, McDonald's, IBM, MTV or Hollywood. That's not the vision of One America that other leaders such as MLK or even FDR or Lincoln had stood for.

[Of course, young America has matured a bit (and their election of Obama over dark-age, divisive forces is greatly reassuring), but has it gotten the difference between a liberal, individualistic concept of glossed-over diversity and one from a grassroots, working America pov? Not sure at all. I'd ask the same question for the country where I spent the other half of my life: India.]

In fact, in this extreme economic downturn caused by corporate America and its crony Republocrats (the JoeLieb ilk), one might take a lesson or two from FDR and his New Deal: how he tried to take on the Wall Street criminals in 1930's and how his administration passed pro-people, pro-labor laws (Wagner, Norris-LaGuardia, WPA...), curtailing the power of corporate America and their massive deregulation and out-of-control profiteering -- shockingly similar chain of events that caused the 1929 stock market crash, mortgage and banking collapse and the subsequent Great Depression.

Obama, surrounded by some sinister characters, has failed to replicate FDR. The crony Republocrats would not let him do it; in fact, the health care reform that finally passed with a razon-thin, heart-stopping margin passed after many concessions and carrots to corporate lobbyists: insurance companies themselves are big beneficiaries. It's a far cry from any serious reform. Still, we have no choice but to take it because the alternative is horrific.

American working people, courtesy big media, do not understand the centrist, elitist, entrenched status-quo politics, other than what they read, hear or watch at their living rooms -- "analysis" thrown at them by self-styled experts and media celebrities. But they do understand history, they do remember FDR, and millions of Americans (some of whom I work with on a daily basis) understand the hypocrisy of the Obama government (not necessarily himself) to bail out with a $1.5 trillion historic reward the same people who should've been put behind bars. These are ordinary, hard-working, family Americans some of whom, with the lack of an honest political analysis -- again courtesy big media and corporations -- now throw their support behind the Tea Party thugs. We can certainly blast them for joining hands with bigots, but we cannot and must not criticize the reasons of their frustration; after all, countless are out of work while blessed bank bullies keep giving themselves big bonuses.

This is a critical time in history, and in a few months come November, we'll know whether health care reform would make or break Obama once and for all. It could be that we're going to see a repeat of the 1994 New Gingrich far right takeover of Congress, given how money keeps pouring in to Republocrats' election coffers.

Instead of perpetuating and falling victims of the so-called left-right divide that distorts history of the American people, we need to find overlaps between the moderate working class -- the so-called left of center and right of center vast majority that share many commonalities -- and build alliance so that we gradually assume power for ourselves and slowly disempower the extremists, and more importantly, the centrist JoeLieb power of status quo.

I call it my Second Circle model: the large, majority concentric ring of honest, sincere, yet powerless, vulnerable people taken advantage of by the center circle of power, as well as people targeted by an outermost circle of fringe, violent forces. I hope to talk more about this model in the coming days.

Here's a diagram of the model. We'll expand more.







Thanks for the opportunity to share my two cents. Much appreciate comments, and if it's any worth, a circulation.

In solidarity (and hope for a united future),

Partha

Brooklyn, New York

The Real Slumdog Story: India's Ghastly Commonwealth Cleanup

Courtesy: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/all-aboard-delhis-beggar-express-1914922.html

(See more related links at the bottom of this post.)

I'm deeply troubled. Very deeply troubled.

An inconspicuous report in British paper Independent shows how the Delhi administration in India is sweeping up hundreds of thousands of poorest of the poor -- men, women and children -- from the city's streets and jailing them randomly. I heard they are doing it because of the upcoming Commonwealth Games in October when sports personalities, politicians, dignitaries and most importantly, corporate businesses will come to our once-colonized land and spend their royal time and money to celebrate another round of the so-called global fraternity. Oh yes, some of them will run, jump and play ball too.

And Indian middle class will cheer.

So, in order to make the city look clean, the streets beggar-free, and the country wear a First World image, Delhi and India governments have taken on an urgent mission, with a religious zeal, to pick up the countless, hapless, half-naked, starving Indians -- men, women and children -- and are indefinitely putting them in India's dreaded jails before they're shipped out to somewhere across the country. What will happen to these God-forsaken millions and their lives, livelihoods, social connections and dignities? I'm sure they'll let us know when the celebrities and business houses check out after the Games. Normally, in India, middle class don't query on social connections or education of street children.

We've seen such grotesque acts of violence in India many times over the past, particularly since India graduated from its mediocre non-alignment, "socialist" days to a glitzy-globalized "democracy" days. We've seen numerous, bloody communal riots, barbaric genocide of the poor in the name of religion and caste, and international terrorism. We've also seen a massive change of government with transition of power from a so-called right wing dark force to a so-called centrist liberal enlightened. The new leaders of India are not the zealots and bigots, but internationally known economists and academics, United Nations celebrities, and of course, the Gandhi Dynasty -- I'm sure they have certain qualifications too.

In 2002, when a barbaric carnage took place in Gandhi's state of Gujarat when thousands of poor Muslims were slaughtered by a bigoted chief minister and his bigoted administration, there was international uproar: the New York Times, BBC, CNN, PBS, NPR and all other big-name media organizations gave us the ignorant a thorough coverage and insider information on the ghastly violence. In 2008, when a group of Pakistan-based terrorists snuck in to the five-star Taj International in the Indian Wall Street city of Mumbai and killed hundreds of hotel residents, there was another series of media uproar; CNN provided unprecedented, round-the-clock, "ticker-tape" coverage of the terrorism. We were delighted to see the extent of responsibility corporate media displaying to unearth major events happening on the other side of the world.

I'll make it short. This time around, however, when another major act of violence is happening in the capital of West-blessed India, I see no outrage -- barring a few small news blips here and there -- either by the mighty human rights groups and their liberal followers, or by the mighty media that spent so much of their precious time and money to uncover Gujarat or Mumbai. I'm sad and disappointed, but not truly surprised.

The liberal outrage -- either of the international rights and justice groups or of corporate media -- is selective, and media keeps manufacturing peoples' consent for or against a social, political or economic event. If the Gujarat (or the 1992 Babri Mosque) carnage is ghastly (and they are), then the Delhi clean-up of the begging destitute is equally grotesque. In the former, poor people die immediately; in the latter, poor people die a slow but sure death because of police torture, forced displacement, starvation, hunger, poverty and depression. In case of the latter, women and children suffer the most. In both cases, the brutality leaves lifelong, negative impacts on the surviving children who'd spare no time to act back against the repressive system with their own acts of violence.

I hope ordinary people both in India and the West (and perhaps some conscientious media people) pick up on this new fascism of the India government, and force them to stop this state-sponsored violence and brutality.

Again, I'm deeply troubled -- to see the inaction and lack of outrage, especially of the elite liberal that screamed their lungs off before. You can't have a double standard to denounce hate.

Thank you for reading my quickly drafted note.

Partha Banerjee
Brooklyn, New York
March 14, 2010


###

Post Script.

Prof. Noam Chomsky wrote back today: "Very ugly story. I saw it on a smaller scale in New Delhi in 70's, when I was there as a Nehru lecturer. At that time, in downtown Delhi (I think Connaught Square) there were about 50,000 people in tents or no protection at all. We drove by every day on the way to talks. One day, it was empty. I asked the driver what had happened, and he said, casually, that the city had to be cleaned up for some Asian fair. I asked what happened to the people. He said they were loaded into trucks and dumped somewhere in the countryside. All very casual. No one seemed to care. I saw the same in Barcelona before the Olympics, though there it was not on the same horrendous scale.

Noam

###

Follow-up articles:

Commonwealth clean up targets Delhi’s beggars

Ratnabai Kale was picked up at the start of the drive in September, along with her daughter Aarti, 16, and her sister Shobha, 30. "They said, 'You're not going on that bus. Get on to this one.' I asked why; they said because we were beggars. I said, 'First of all, we're not beggars, we're honest labourers', But the police didn't listen,” she said. “They told us we'd be given a four-year sentence in jail if we didn't go along."

http://www.soschildrensvillages.org.uk/charity-news/commonwealth-clean-up-targets-delhi2019s-beggars

Have A Budget For Beggars

Delhi’s notoriously rough and inefficient mobile anti-begging squads are already in battle formation. (It is well known that to keep their jobs the squads habitually pick up anyone in rags, even though s/he may not be begging). In recent months these units have rounded up 224 alleged beggars, and locked up 124 of them in one of 12 homes for the destitute — all of which are bursting at their seams. A 13th home is being planned for transgenders and eunuchs. By April the beautifiers also expect to have a 24-hour toll-free Beggar Hotline in place — for the city that a survey last week pronounced as the country’s most livable.

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main44.asp?filename=Bu200310have_a.asp

Delhi to banish beggars ahead of Commonwealth Games

"Before the 2010 Commonwealth Games, we want to finish the problem of beggary from Delhi."

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/delhi-to-banish-beggars-ahead-of-commonwealth-games/100424-3.html

Govt to ask for NGO help in rehabilitating city's beggars

"With space for only 2,100 beggars in its homes, no rehabilitation plan in place"

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/Govt-to-ask-for-NGO-help-in-rehabilitating-citys-beggars/articleshow/5677900.cms


Related articles:

Delhi NGOs, Cops Lock Horns over Beggars

NGO representatives at the workshop said beggars were a distressed lot, compelled to migrate to this city from other states in search of a living. Said Sanjay Gupta, an activist with Childhood Enhancement through Training and Action (Chetna): "Begging is one of the responses of acute poverty. People are not born beggars and do not become so by taking alms, but are victims of lack of employment opportunities in rural and urban areas. "They are often incapable of working because of old age and physical handicap. Before beginning to solve this problem with strict anti-poverty laws, the government should modify its policies and schemes."

http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/176/32007.html

Please beggar off

(An Indian middle class response to the problem)

"Slumdog Millionaire was embarrassing enough for many people. But their discomfort on finding beggars tugging on foreigners’ sleeves, pleading non-Indians in beggar-English for money during the 15 days when the land that has an economy more powerful than Mother Teresa’s love plays host to an international sporting event will be acute. It’s one thing to cope with a harmless bed-wetting 30-year-old cousin and quite another if he comes out in his underwear while you’re hosting a party in your living room."

http://www.hindustantimes.com/Please-beggar-off/H1-Article1-515993.aspx


###

India's IMF Budget

Note: I acknowledge a few sections used from online articles and blogs.


opinion
The Khaas Aadmi Budget
It’s time people got—or took—direct charge of budget-making

Partha Banerjee

http://www.outlookindia.com/printarticle.aspx?264559

In a euphoric moment, when the country was celebrating Sachin Tendulkar’s double century in ODIs, Pranab Mukherjee, finance minister and International Monetary Fund’s governor-designate for India, presented his budget. And we might say, “It’s not cricket!”

In a non-election, no-risk year, he announced the following important news for his fellow countrymen. (1) Rich Indians will get Rs 26,000 crore of tax break in 2010-11; (2) food subsidy for the poor will be decreased by Rs 424 crore; (3) fertiliser subsidy for low-income farmers will be pared by Rs 3,000 crore; and (4) real estate magnates and hotel owners will get huge tax concessions. Then, he announced even more important news. In an already high-inflation situation, petrol and diesel prices will be increased. Everyone knows what that would do to the urban/rural poor and lower middle class.

Major corporate media, following a new-found, ‘successful’ US model, praised the budget. They said that following the announcements, India’s stockmarkets jumped. “The market lapped it up and the Bombay Stock Exchange benchmark Sensex boomed,” a Financial Times article said. Big NRI businessmen too made positive statements.

But wait a minute. I’m an NRI too, living in the US for 25 years. I teach blue-collar American labourers coming back to get a college education. I see how corporations here are laying off these workers in thousands and yet getting themselves millions of dollars in bonuses using the Obama government’s bailout money. I see how American media is completely bypassing the suffering poor workers. And now I see how a section of Indian media houses is following the footsteps of their American mentors, and suppressing the real stories around this major, extremely skewed budget. I find it unbelievable that nobody is questioning and challenging the so-called democratic government of Pranab babu, Manmohan Singh and the Gandhi dynasty on how the 80 per cent poor—rural and urban—would now be able to find food or kerosene for their families, pay rent, or get healthcare for ageing parents. Does anybody really care?

Let’s look at the history of Indian budgets since the so-called post-Soviet, post-non-alignment, liberalisation days. Since then, the series of policy measures launched by the Indian government are part of the so-called structural adjustment programmes (SAP). Indian governments have since taken up the following IMF-World Bank-dictated measures to implement SAP: (a) Massive devaluation of rupee; (b) new industrial policy allowing more foreign investments, thereby destroying traditional Indian businesses; (c) rampant disinvestment of government equity in profitable public sector enterprises; (d) ‘reforms’ of the financial sector by allowing in private banks; (e) cuts in social spending to reduce fiscal deficit; (f) market-friendly approach and less government intervention; and (g) liberalisation of the banking system.

Twenty years ago, the World Bank secretly submitted the above SAP elements to the government; we now know that the group of senior officials in the finance ministry—all ex-World Bank/IMF employees—who were involved with this memorandum did not disclose it to the then PM, Chandra Shekhar. Have we heard about this from Pranab babu or his predecessors P. Chidambaram or Manmohan Singh?

Clearly, the focus of the new budget is to provide more help to the corporate sector and the rich, with an illusion that the new growth would percolate down to the downtrodden—what is called “trickle-down economics” in the US. It has now crashed the US economy, and it’s going to crash India and its vast middle class in the coming days.

If Indian leaders were not so indebted to Western institutions, they’d have come up with a people’s budget following the successful model of Brazil’s Lula De Silva: a transparent economic blueprint where ordinary people have open access to create and modify it based on their own national, regional or local needs.

In a truly democratic, transparent, people’s budget that India should have developed over the recurrent, five-year plans, we’d see serious investment in small-scale industry, agriculture, education, healthcare, land/water reform, training for unskilled workers, incentive for poor women’s entrepreneurial efforts and ‘Grameen’-type banking, development of a sustainable environment and sports for young Indians with tangible goals. On that list, we’d now definitely add disaster preparedness and evacuation strategies, given what we’ve just seen in Haiti and Chile. I shudder even to think of the extent of possible destruction in the event of a large earthquake in Calcutta, Delhi, Mumbai or Bangalore.

Pranab babu’s IMF budget has no clue on any of the above. Who can answer correctly? Soniaji, or maybe, the next media-predicted prime minister—Rahul Gandhi?

(Partha Banerjee is a New York-based human rights activist.)

The New Jingo Bells

The New Jingo Bells

By Partha Banerjee

Published in Outlook India, March 1, 2010.

http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?264313

A brutal war and killing spree just resurged in Afghanistan—a sudden and rapid escalation of violence. The ostensibly objective and liberal New York Times announced: “Thousands of American, Afghan and British troops attacked the watery Taliban fortress of Marjah early Saturday...to destroy the insurgency’s largest haven and begin a campaign to reassert the dominance of the Afghan government across a large arc of southern Afghanistan.” Gallant, indeed.

The huge surge of military assault, as well as the NYT’s reporting, were eerie reminders of what we experienced when, in 2003, George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld began the “shock and awe” offensive in Iraq. We remember how Judith Miller of the NYT had at that time written non-stop columns on how Saddam Hussein had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction—stories supported by a single, dubious Iraqi insider source named Ahmed Chalabi—stories that had later proved to be fake. Politically conscious Indians laughed.

Seven years went by. A new Obama administration took office, after winning a historic, landslide election on a much-touted peace platform. In fact, the singular factor that separated Barack Obama from his formidable rival for presidency, Hillary Clinton, was his anti-war position. How times have changed! Even people like us, who worked like crazy for an Obama victory, are stunned by the way his administration is mirroring the war years of Bush and Clinton. But why this sudden escalation in Afghanistan? And, how huge is it?

The National Public Radio, also considered objective and liberal, echoed the NYT: “The long-awaited assault on Marjah is the biggest offensive since the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan and is a major test of a new NATO strategy focused on protecting civilians.”

Protecting civilians? The last time we checked, even long after the initial blanket-bombing of Kabul and Kandahar that killed thousands of innocents—of which pictures were self-censored by the US media—missiles from drones killed hundreds of Afghans at wedding celebrations and family gatherings. A new NATO strategy? Since when?

What’s the guarantee that this so-called new strategy would work now, and civilians would not be slaughtered? There are reports that innocent Afghans have been massacred on Valentine’s Day, of which an NYT report said, “a rocket went astray during operations..., killing 12 civilians”. Valentine’s love gods did not particularly have a field day in Marjah; the new bloodshed in Pune rejected them too.

We’re very disturbed. We did not work for another four years of Bush genocide under a different name.

But that’s only one half of the problem. The other half is: Why now, and where’s the urgency?

Here’s why. The Obama government’s credibility is in serious jeopardy. With the catastrophic economic crisis of historic proportions, the American public is raging. Labour unions and the far-right Sarah Palin Tea Party gang are bringing on unprecedented mass resistance to Washington. Obama’s bad-choice insiders are getting exposed daily.

The 2010 congressional elections are not far away. These people at the elite centre of power need a serious diversion, and a desperate “victory”—maybe, a “big prize” —to stay on top. The anti-Iran rhetoric didn’t go very far; after all, even the geography-inadequate American main street now knows the similarity between Iraq and Iran, and the US politics around them. No, the election thing didn’t go very far in Iran, sadly.

The new Afghan drumbeat, blown up by media mouthpieces, is a last-straw effort by war industry profiteers and Wall Street puppeteers alike to divert attention from the simple facts—that Obama’s healthcare reform efforts are now all but dead; that, in most states, unemployment is at a Great Depression-level high; big banks and their bigger CEOs are still getting themselves millions of dollars in bonuses; and overall, the American people are not in a Valentine’s Day mood. Therefore, the new escalation in, on and around poor Afghanistan. Therefore, the new jingo bells.

Ironically, the NYT story got some not-so-rave reviews from its own readers. Here’s one: “You invade one of the poorest, most battle-scarred corners of the planet and spin it as some sort of lofty stand against the greatest threat to the security of mankind since the Third Reich.” Another reader quoted from George Orwell’s 1984: “The war isn’t meant to be won; it’s meant to be continuous.”

A continuous treachery against humankind, that is. That’s the real name of the game.

(The writer is a rights activist based in New York.)

###