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.)

###

$9 million "Goldman Chief's Bonus...Show of Restraint." - NYTimes

Courtesy: The Independent

"Goldman Chief’s Bonus Seen by Some as Show of Restraint." - New York Times story, February 6, 2010.

Visit link at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/06/business/06bonus.html?hp

I almost cried that the GS chief got only $9 million bonus. I'm like: How could you?

(Of course, who am I to say it? New York Times did not interview a single person on the street or any member of the labor community to react on the bonuses. I'm sure, otherwise, they would've showed similar sympathy I did. Maybe, more. Times missed that opportunity. Times also, notably, didn't have a Readers' Comments section on the story.)
____

Excerpt from the Times story:

"The timing, too, seemed deft: hours earlier, JPMorgan Chase had announced that its chief executive, Jamie Dimon, would receive a $16.6 million bonus and $1 million in salary. For once, Goldman, known for its big paydays, had grabbed the high ground by paying its chief executive less money. At the top, John G. Stumpf, chief of Wells Fargo, was paid $18.4 million in cash and stock for 2009 though he runs a less complex company."

Free Idiots and Born Into Brothels: The Lie Saga is On

Free Idiots: An Indian Amir's New Stooges (Also read below reposted insider exposé on Born Into Brothels, the Osca-rated documentary)





(Caution: Don't spend your time, money or patience on it. Believe me. I just did. By default, I'm now a free idiot.)


Is the new-generation India so painfully dumb that it can't understand the difference between truth and make-believe, reality and dream, or even fun and pain? Or, it's way too complicated when it's a new-wave Bollywood version of entertainment-awareness-social-change-cocktail served by Coke messiah Amir Khan?

When truth is layered-in with a fake cake in such a cumbersome way that you don't really know which one to choose: cheap fun or grim reality? You want to be a part, if not protagonist, of the desperately-needed social change, but you know that something's dead wrong in the messaging, and yet, you can't quite figure out where the problem is. But you paid handsomely at the box office to get in, and you don't want to come home not laughing or not crying. However hard you need to force yourself to do it, like a bad gas that simply wouldn't pass. (Sorry, but Khan used the element plenty.)

Three hours of non-stop Hindi Blitzkrieg of dialoguing, monologuing, dancing, donkeying, monkeying, stomping, romping, jumping, kissing, pissing, sciencing, philosophizing, teaching, testing, teasing, cheating, beating, stealing, healing, sobbing, crying, tear-jerking, gate-crashing, driving, dying and birthing...you name it...just to drive on one message...like that bad gas...that it's time the Indian supercolonial academia change...and free itself of learning by rote...and enter an era of free thinking!

Wow!

Unfortunately, every bit of masala Amir Khan and his idiots uses to cook up the story is straight from the dingiest Bollywood kitsch kitchen, where the entire purpose of filming is done around the known theme of profit by making the dumb dumber, and the dumber the dumbest. And when so many idiots are employed, free and licensed to teach free thinking to new-generation India, it's no more a dream. It's a nightmare.

It's a nightmare just to sit through the three endless hours of plotting, subplotting, sub-subplotting, flashbacking and backflashing. It's three hours of a very painful trial. Trial of your civility, social skills and patience. When completely disgusted after an hour and a half into the show, you just want to stand up, scream, kick the back of the front seat in the darkness of the theater, and leave. But you can't. After all, you're not really free to do that. Even an idiot wouldn't do it.

My readers, friends, supporters and especially my critics always want to know what my problem is: why can't I simply get some fun and be happy with fun and happy stuff? Why do I always have to be such a naysayer and badmouther at every Bollywood benchmark? After all, what's so cool about always blasting big media and thereby making myself depressed, even more so than ever before? I did that with notable, famed and prospered big-ticket items such as Born Into Brothels and Slumdog Millionaire; I'm now web-spewing the same, predictable criticism of another big blockbuster that's taking Indian families by storm -- both in India and abroad! Why can't I make some peace with reality, and learn to live with it?

Yeah, that's a serious mental case, indeed.

Now, people are so tired of rave reviews, critiques and eulogies that 3 Idiots (I'm sure you've long figured it out) got, it wouldn't be wise to do a shot-by-shot, sequence-by-sequence post-mortem, although one would be tempted to do it, just for the "fun." I'd rather select a handful only for a hindsight.

1. The opening sequence of idiot Farhan's faked illness on a just-took-off Air India plane. (Please don't try it. You'll be quickly arrested, beat up and jailed, maybe, even on terrorism charges). The once-wildlife-photographer-aspirant, father-forced engineering student, who's now suddenly an accomplished photographer with a number of books out, gets a call from one Rancho, his face turns green, as if scared to death. But Rancho, they later tell us, is only his pal, his soul brother he met ten years ago -- calling from some unknown place for some unknown reason. But to answer him, Farhan decides to feign a heart attack on board, and forces the pilots to turn around for an emergency landing. He then walks out of his wheelchair with a simple comic gesture, and dissolves into the street crowd.

(My critic: "But didn't you get the fun, you wet blanket? Oh, it was so funny! Loved it.")

2. Rancho straps himself with idiot Raju's critically ill, paralyzed father on a scooter, and drives him to hospital for a save, thereby meeting his doctor girlfriend Pia who was also, as it turns out, daughter of the Hitler-ish college director. (Please don't try this method to save a patient. You'll kill them; and law will quickly get back to you. Unless you're an Indian Amir or a member of his now-famous idiot club). In my time I've seen quite a few Bollywood insanities, and this one would definitely make a short list. And it's so inhumane to the point of cruelty, only to match with Raju's poor mother scratching his bed-ridden husband's eczema with a roller pin and then using it to make rotis for her son and his invited friends.

(Critic: "Ha ha, was it funny! Laugh laugh laugh...giggle giggle giggle...")

3. A climax-subclimax drama of idiot Rancho and his idiot Indian engineering gang delivering Pia's sister Mona's baby at the college, taking online-video instructions from Pia. (Please don't try it, period). Other than the totally ludicrous and nonsense drama of the pingpong-tabletop-childbirthing under Rancho's stewardship and collective laboring, the corniness is simply absurd and truly unbearable. I've never seen so many otherwise healthy-looking men crying so much, so pathetically.

(Critic: "You just don't get it. It was a metaphor, a symbol, a dream scenario. Like, this is how it should be. It's an Amir utopia. He's making the young generation think. Love it.")

I have another metaphor in my mind. In ten years the movie spans, no one idiot grows up. Telling, the globalized Indian generation considered. We might say, not ten, it's twenty.

I have a feeling had one looked carefully, they could even find those idiots wearing the same stars-and-stripes underpants they wore ten years ago. The ones they flashed globally. That was "balatkar" indeed.

Ah..."All Izz Well."


###

Born Into Brothels Kids Sue Filmmakers!!??

(But it doesn't matter: once a lie is always a lie)

News source at http://www.anandabazar.com/archive/1080807/7cal4.htm

(in Bengali; gist below)

On August 7, 2008, Ananda Bazar Patrika (ABP), a major daily newspaper in Calcutta, India (the location of the documentary) broke news that some children portrayed in the film brought a breach of promise lawsuit against the filmmakers. They did it on the ground that those including the much-publicized children who were promised that they'd share in some of the huge profit the film made did not receive any money after all.

I have a feeling the lawsuit may also have included the fact that the children's names were publicized across the globe, while the filmmakers had promised that their identities would be safeguarded. One of the featured kids also alleged that he didn't even know he was being filmed and interviewed for the purpose of making a documentary. In fact, that was an allegation frequently made by the sex workers themselves, and corroborated by the sex workers' union Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC) -- I've personally met with some of the leaders of the organization.

In my original letter to Hollywood AMPAS, I'd questioned whether the sex worker mothers' permissions had ever been obtained by the filmmakers when they'd intruded deeply into their personal lives. I subsequently found out by talking to these women that indeed, no such permission had ever been secured; as I mentioned above, DMSC told me that they were never informed that the filmmakers were filming them for this purpose.

(Additionally, Born Into Brothels directors copiously used Satyajit Ray's Apu Trilogy music, when the copyright holders for Ray films had specifically asked them not to do it. It's plain plagiarism.)

I translated about one hundred tapes full of such gross violation of privacy and intrusion into sex workers' personal lives and professions; and I did not get to translate many more. I know what was on the tapes I'd translated -- the large majority of which was never used in the documentary; I also know what came out as the final, edited product. In my opinion, it's scandalous, full of egregious lies, and purposefully biased against Calcutta (now called Kolkata), India and some of its less-fortunate people.

(Zana Briski told me a number of times that she hated Kolkata and would never want to go back: great gesture considering what she got out of exploiting its people and how the poor sex workers had protected her from any harms!)

I must tell you that even though as a media and human rights activist, I'm totally aware of big media's lies and craving for sensationalism (I frequently write about it -- read my blogs), in this case, the ABP journalist who broke this important story did a great job. I spoke with her on this too.

The fact is, the filmmakers' attempt to show off in the U.S. one of the featured kids named Avijit as the poster boy of their "successful mission" is outrageous. This now-pompous teenager also phoned me in New York and forced a long, rough argument with me. (How he got my phone number is anybody's guess.)

The fact that a happy and jovial girl like Puja (who was greatly exploited by the filmmakers) is now a disclosed-identity sex worker at this very young age, and the other children featured on the film are hopeless and lost (not to mention the sex worker mothers who now feel cheated and violated) is enough reason for bringing any breach of promise lawsuit against the filmmakers.

Nobody has approached me on this lawsuit and I don't know what the real motive is behind it, but if anyone asks me to testify to narrate my insight and experience, I'd be more than happy to do it.

I have no sympathy for self-aggrandizement and Hollywood-blessed lies, and that too, at the expense of poor peoples' privacy and misery. I believe that AMPAS revisit the issue, and revoke the Oscars it awarded to Born Into Brothels, on plagiarism and violation of ethics charges.

Thanks for your attention and action.

-Partha

Ted Kennedy's Last Wishes

Ted Kennedy was one of the precious few in Washington who opposed the immoral, brutal Iraq war. He was truly special to us for his lifelong stand on peace, rights and justice.

In 2004 and 2005, when the immigration reform movement reached its peak and stormed America, some of us activists working on the ground traveled to Washington, D.C. to meet Sen. Edward Kennedy. At that time, several Congressional measures including a bipartisan bill authored by Sen. Kennedy on the Democratic side and Sen. John McCain on the Republican side were gathering steam. Important constituencies such as organized labor, the Church and grassroots rights and justice groups came out to support the Kennedy-McCain legislation.

Later, however, Sen. McCain withdrew his critical support from the bill to cajole the right wing into re-inflating his then-faltering presidential campaign. And by doing so, he took away the sail from a most urgent, humane reform movements that would save lives and dignity of millions of poor, undocumented immigrant workers, families and children, and bring them out to light. Conservative John McCain's politically expedient flip-flop sent the "illegal" immigrants back to the dark days of forced-labor, detention, deportation, hopelessness and misery.

But Sen. Kennedy, in spite of his failing health, did not give up on his crusade to pass the comprehensive reform act. Although, in 2007 and 2008, in the face of the fiercest campaign of anti-immigrant forces in Congress and on corporate media -- powers looking for opportunities to exploit on the "they steal our jobs" propaganda against Barack Obama's candidacy -- Kennedy shifted his focus on another watershed effort: the health care reform. One of the greatest and astute statesmen in modern American history, even called so by his staunchest critics, Sen. Kennedy threw his weight as the lead liberal icon and family prestige behind the health care initiatives, thereby garnering new momentum for a first-time and black Illinois senator aspiring to become the next U.S. president. And did his game plan work!

Looking back, without the pivotal, early, enthusiastic support from Sen. Kennedy, President Barack Obama would still be called Sen. Obama, notwithstanding his millions of miracle workers -- both on the ground and online -- sweating out passionately all across the country. Without that precipitous moment when Sen. Kennedy came out strongly to endorse the Obama candidacy, in all likelihood, liberal-brand media and other big Democratic sponsors would rally around Sen. Hillary Clinton, who even less than two years ago was all but certain to clinch the Democratic nomination. Even die-hard believers like us hesitated to believe then that a black man could be the next U.S. president. Miracles happen, only with the best possible mentors found at the best possible time.

When Sen. Kennedy announced a couple of years ago that he would step down from Congressional Judiciary Committee and give up his gavel as chairman of the immigration subcommittee, he said: “I remain deeply committed to civil rights, equal opportunities and immigration reform, and I will always be involved in those important debates and discussions.”

Kennedy-bashing conservatives knew it. Anti-immigrant, anti-healthcare-reform, anti-Obama forces grudgingly admitted the towering influence Sen. Kennedy had on American politics for decades. Said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, “Kennedy for forty years has been the engine driving immigration legislation in Congress.”

New-immigrant citizens working to pass a comprehensive reform, we felt his commitment and passion for the cause at our Washington meetings.

We also saw the same intensity of dedication to the cause when he re-energized his long, hard campaign for a comprehensive health care reform. Time magazine wrote, "No one in Congress, after all, has put more into the cause of health reform than committee chairman Ted Kennedy, who introduced his first national health-insurance bill all the way back in 1970. But Kennedy...has been away from Washington for most of this year — and it shows in the chaos that surrounds the panel as it begins to try to turn his long-held dream of universal health coverage into reality."

Sen. Kennedy's ability to get things done even on business-as-usual Capitol Hill was magical. Sen. Tom Harkin, another progressive icon of American politics, once said, "As we always say around here, if you want to get a bill through, give it to Kennedy. He just knows how to get the deals and get everybody working together."

I have no doubt in my mind that with a few more active months in hand, Sen. Kennedy would be there, wave his magic wand, and get that health care reform bill through. At this time of purposefully-propagated confusion, chaos and exclusion of facts, President Obama would sorely miss his support. We the activists on the ground would miss him dearly.

Sen. Edward Kennedy had three last wishes, one of which has come true. Can we bring the other two to reality? America's poor immigrants and America's sick citizens look up to that fulfillment of their dreams.

###

Minutes: Obama's Health Care Strategy Meeting, August 20, 2009

I took some quick, draft, unedited "minutes" of today's health care web town hall where Obama spoke. Here they are in case someone is interested. I have my comments interspersed too (in parentheses).
_______

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Obama's Health Care Strategy Meeting, August 20, 2009


10 minutes into speech: talks about misinformation...(good.)

16 min: mentions drug companies' profit, better medicare coverage, deficit hawks' flawed logic...

18 min: mentions FDR, Kennedy, Johnson and socialism screams we had those days.

(Did not bring in any new ideas or strategies. Re-emphasized existing workplan.)

21 min: Q&A: status quo is unsustainable.

25 min: Private-public option...with govt help

pre-existing conditions can't be denied. (didn't mention enforcement as to how people can go after insurance companies if they're denied.)

27 min: Q from OFA volunteer: are we winning support from Congress members? Great q. (Obama bypasses the question.)

29 min: Obama mentions media's selling "bad" town halls with fights and screams.

30 min: mentions insurance companies' outrageous profits and Medicare Advantage controlled by insurances.

33 min: Q. where do lies come from?

36 min: news reporting slanted: mentions death panel, abortion, "illegal" immigrants, govt takeover -- all misinformation; (undocumented immigrants lucked out.)

38 min: talks about Clinton, 1993-94, house takeover plan by right wing (glad he has it on his radar screen).

41 min: Charles Grassley of Iowa, Mike Enzi of Wyoming and Olympia Snow of Maine -- 3 Republicans -- working on it.

42 min: how pay for hc?

43 min: (Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL) doesn't know how much we're spending on Iraq!!) Glad Obama mentioned Iraq costs: $6-8 billion per month.

45 min: prevention, wellness, saving $ -- $1 trillion over 10 years. 1/3rd will be really needed.

47 min: small employers can switch to public option and don't need to pay for employees' hc if they can't afford it. No tax burden on middle class.

50 min: Q. public option only option. (brave q from an OFA volunteer in NC.)

(No controversial, hard questions yet: $80 billion "support" from drug companies, etc. OFA pre-screened received qs.)

58 min: lifestyle, fitness, president's family, wellness question. Medicare could've saved trillion dollars with right lifestyle choice, if had been emphasized and implemented.

62 min: Outlets for kids, obesity, school lunch programs...

65 min: farmer-school-distribution-health connection.

68 min: young adults not covered by parents. extension to 25 or 26 years for young adults.

70 min: young adults must have minimum health ins; we don't want their sudden or serious illness subsidized by rest of us.

Ends with positive note.

(Nobody mentioned the word "single-payer.")

###