Marxist Fascism: Taslima Ejected. Shaonli Blocked. Mamata demonised. targeted Gandhigiri. Mahashweta Devi Declared Unwanted. What Next? Ruling Hegemon

Marxist Fascism: Taslima Ejected. Shaonli Blocked. Mamata demonised. targeted Gandhigiri. Mahashweta Devi Declared Unwanted. What Next? Ruling Hegemony United to Rescue White Zionist Hindu Corporate Capitalism! Income Inequality Due to the Meltdown! Ater FII, it is the Turn of FDI to Flee!Powell Endorses Obama. Repo Rate Cut Brings Relief to MFs.Sebi monitoring FIIs' Lending, Borrowing Activity.Financial Crisis and its Upshots to Last for 3 Years

Troubled Galaxy Destroyed Dreams: Chapter 89

Palash Biswas
Mahasweta Devi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mahasweta Devi (Bengali: মহাশ্বেতা দেবী Môhashsheta Debi) (born 1926 in Dacca in what is now Bangladesh) is an Indian social activist and ...
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Mahsweta Devi
Mahasweta Devi was born in 1926 in the city of Dacca in East Bengal (modern ... Born into a literary family, Mahasweta Devi was also influenced by her early ...
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Rediff On The NeT: The Rediff Interview/Mahasweta Devi
An interview with Magsaysay Award-winner, Mahasweta Devi, the Bengali novelist.
www.indiaabroad.com/news/dec/24devi.htm - 15k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this
Hooch And Hamlet in Chharanagar » Mahasweta Devi: Witness ...
At the center of a half-century of tumultuous change, the lifetime of Mahasweta Devi has spanned the British period, Independence, and fifty years of ...
hoochandhamlet.com/mahasweta-devi/ - 15k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

Ruling Hegemony does everything to sustain the global Order of mass Destruction! The campaigns of Senators Barack Obama and John McCain barnstormed into the crucial swing states of Colorado, Florida and Missouri on Monday as the presidential race headed toward its final two weeks ahead of the Nov. 4 election.

The White House was keeping an open mind regarding a second US economic stimulus package but was wary of specific proposals.

After the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) opened the liquidity tap for cash-starved banks, the hapless broking community and other market participants now want the government to take market-friendly steps that may instill some confidence among panic-stricken investors.

Most stock brokers feel that sops such as a reduction in the securities transaction tax (STT), cut in transaction charges and slashing the dividend distribution tax (DDT) could soften the blow on investors.


Banks have so far borrowed Rs 8,550 crore from the special short-term lending window opened by the Reserve Bank for on-lending funds to the mutual funds.

As much as Rs 1,545 crore was picked up by the banks at the special fixed rate repo auction at 8 per cent conducted by RBI with a view to enable banks to meet the liquidity requirements of mutual funds.


The Orissa government on Monday firmly opposed a plea for a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into the rape of a nun in the state's strife-torn Kandhamal district allegedly by some Bajrang Dal activists.
CB Bhave, Chairman of Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), said the regulator is closely monitoring the lending and borrowing activity by foreign institutional investors (FIIs), adding that it was also studying stock lending data submitted by the FIIs.Money Control reports.

The Sebi Chairman disapproved of overseas lending and borrowing by FIIs, and said that all stock lending or borrowing activities should be within Indian jurisdiction. “I do not rule out the possibility of stronger measures against activities (against norms),” Bhave added.



Sebi will review conditions to improve borrowing and lending in India, the Sebi Chairman said, adding that there is a need to elongate stock lending and borrowing tenure in India.



Tata Group chairman Ratan Tata has gifted $50 million to Cornell University, his alma mater, an endowment considered "one of the most gener
ous ever received from an international benefactor by an American university".

The gift announced by Cornell president David Skorton during his State of the University address on Friday will help recruit top Indian students to the campus and to support joint research projects with Indian universities in agriculture and nutrition.

The gift from Tata Trusts, a group of philanthropic organisations run by the head of the business conglomerate Tata Sons, will allow Cornell to establish and expand partnerships with Indian scientists and build on its strength in applied agriculture research.


Mutual funds (MFs) heaved a sigh of relief on Monday after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) announced a repo rate cut of 100 basis points.

Repo rate is the rate at which RBI lends to banks.

“The sentiment will definitely improve,” said Arvind Chari, fund manager-fixed income at Quantum Mutual Fund.

A cut in the repo rate usually signals a fall in interest rates. However, this time, the repo rate cut coupled with the reduction in the cash reserve ratio (CRR) or the amount of money that banks have to keep with RBI, will help stabilise the banking sector, analysts said.

“The RBI move will stabilise the banking sector and reduce the borrowing/lending mismatch, which caused volatility,” said Ashish Nigam, head-fixed income at Religare-Aegon MF.



The march to Lalbazar led by Trinamul Congress leader Mamata Banerjee went off peacefully on Monday.


More than 10,000 policemen were deployed to keep the situation under control should there be any unrest.

The TMC was protesting against the arrest of party MLA Arup Biswas’ brother Swarup.

The Save Nano Committee today took its campaign to the doorstep of the small-car factory’s opponents.


The Nano Banchao Committee demonstrated outside the Singur homes of Save Farm-land Committee convener Becharam Manna and local Trinamul Congress MLA Rabindranath Bhattacharya.

A strong police presence fobbed off a bid to gherao the two houses.

Nearly 2,000 villagers who had given up their land for the project — many of them young men who were trainees at the plant — and members of syndicates that supplied construction materials to the factory marched to Manna’s house around 11am. The police stopped them 20 feet from the door.

So the villagers decided to send their message through slogans — “Becha tumi Singur chhere dur hato (Becharam, go away from Singur) and Dekhe ja Mamata, Singurbashir khamata (Mamata, come and see what the people of Singur are capable of).”

In the afternoon, about 500 villagers descended on Bhattacharya’s house, which the police had cordoned off.

“The villagers of Singur are very angry with Mamata Banerjee, Becharam and the local MLA,” said Saday Kolay, secretary of the Save Nano Committee.

Mamata barb

Mamata today said Ratan Tata was behaving like a politician and should contest elections from Bengal. “The people will give him a befitting reply.”

Fascism turns Red in Marxist ruled West Bengal!

The world knows what happened in Nandigram and Singur. But thirty continuous Marxist rule is not limited within case studies of either Singur or Nandigram!

Marxist fascism is in Full Bloom!

Bangladeshi persecuted humanist writer Taslima Nasreen is ejected out of Bengal!

Mamata Bannerjee is demonised as she leads the Peasantry hated most by the ruling Brahmins!

Shaonli Mitra was stopped to play Animal Farm!

Now CPIM declares noted writer and activist Mahashweta Devi unwanted!

What next?

Mahashweta Devi was invited in Raniganj near Aasnasol as chief guest in an annual function of a cultural Group MANABIK.

But the Local CPIM considers Mahashweta as Constant trouble maker who rites entirely against the Capitalist ways of Marxists ruling in Wset Bengal. She guided Nandigramas well as Singur Insurrections. In Marxist Circles, Mahashweta di has been always considered very very controversial for her pro Naxal stance to issues related to the masses. Local party leaders thus threatened the organiser to withdraw the invitation letter.without Green signal from CPIM headquarters , local CPIM goons would never dare to restrict Mahashweta Devi.

Meanwhile, the country's first Aerotropolis project at Andal may shift either to Purulia or Tagore's Santiniketan as these areas are beyond the coal bearing sector, said a top official of the Bengal Aerotropolis Projects Limited (BAPL) today. The official said that it doesn't have much time to wait for execution of the project as certain foreign aviation companies are having equity participation.

Local Raniganj Andal and people in the coal belt already inflicted with subsidence, unemployment, starvation, insecurity, underground fire, mafia and crimes of every kind, human and civil right violations do resist any attempt of indiscriminate industrialisation and urbanisation resulting in Land acquisition. The Coal belt is considered most volatile in Jharkhand ,Chattish gargh and West Bengal. thus, party gestapo would not allow a person like Mahashweta Devi to interact with masses directly.

But the reaction is havoc. It created sensation in Lucknow as well as in New Delhi. industrial belt social organisation and cultural groups led by eminent writer Jaya Mitra and Moloy Ghatak have launched anti Fascist movement in the Industrial belt. it would be echoed elsewhere, everywhere, i may assure!

I have been in Malda on Sunday. I travelled by Gaur express in general compartment and now suffer from cold. I enjoyed the rural folk life across the great river Ganges! I returned by Malda Intercity express which travels midst Murshidabad , Nadia and Bardmaan districts cutting through our life and livelihood, the black untouchable landscape and human scape. I interacted with people belonging to different spheres of life. The feed back is extra ordinary. i assure you to write it in details very soon.

What haunted me most in Maldah, Birbhoom, Santhal Pargana, Nadia and Murshidabad is about the four hundred years of dark age in Bengal`s history spanning from 7th century to 10th century while charyapadas, the base of north Indian vernacular languages was being created by untouchables. No research work is available. The History of Gaur is unfolded as yet. Why? The serial insurrections across the Ganges are evidences enough that this landscape as well as human scape may never bear with a bastardised Dark age.

I am planning to visit the palaces focusing on the span in November. meanwhile I am waiting for interactions and feed backs from the friends working on People`s history across the globe. Pl write to me or call on 09903717833 as soon as possible. We would lie to continue the digging!

While I was in the medical store to collect some medicines, calls continued to pour in. It was a tsunami of reactions across the country against the latest Marxist Fascism as people have come to know the hard reality of Mahashweta Di being declared unwanted in Bengal.

The move did not surprise me at all. I have got the feedback from the suburban and Rural Bengal that you may not Breathe naturally in Bengal without the endorsement of CPIM Local committees. no FIR is going to be lodged without green signal. You won`t get any jobs! You are never allowed to continue your livelihood. You may lose your position, land, property and life anytime, anywhere! The party Hegemony is Omni present! Omnipotent!

But our friends out of Marxist geopolitics are never disillusioned and quote the Bloody Ideology, in which the Marxists of Moderntimes have no faith. Not at all!

Apart from Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, the CPM seems to have found more "culprits" for the shifting of the Nano plant from West Bengal with the party saying Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi was "not impartial" during the crisis.

In a document adopted by the CPM Central Committee, the party attacked, apart from the Governor, the Congress saying it "played a dubious role" on the issue with its Bengal PCC chief Priyaranjan Dasmunsi "encouraging" disruption of the project.

The 'Report on Political Developments' said the Trinamool Congress, SUCI, Naxalites and others organised an indefinite dharna from August 24 and despite all efforts for negotiations and settlement, the adamant stand adopted by TC chief Mamata Banerjee led to a deadlock.

"When public opinion in the state (West Bengal) was veering around in support of the project going ahead...the role of the Governor who acted as a facilitator between the two sides was also not impartial," the report said noting that Tata Motors shifted out the plant from the state on October 3.

In a bid to end the crisis on Nano plant, Gandhi was acting as a facilitator between the government and Banerjee, who was spearheading the agitation for returning land to farmers, after Tatas threatened to pull out from the state.

The Governor has earlier earned the wrath of the CPM-led government for taking "pro-active" measures and putting the dispensation on the backfoot.

His earlier decision to put off the lights of Raj Bhavan when the state was facing "power shortage" had also been criticised by the CPM saying he was exceeding his brief.


I have been writing that the toilet Media in India is in great danger and i pity the scribes. My Journalist Friends would never beielve that it would be the turn of FDI next after FIIs to flee from India. Now I have got the Feedback from United States of America!

For most of its 137-year history, The Columbus Dispatch has carried
articles and images from The Associated Press. Like most big American
newspapers, it supplements the work of its own staff with dozens of
items daily from The A.P.

That may end soon.

The Dispatch’s finances are severely pinched — the paper on Friday
took the once-unthinkable step of saying it would drop the service.

What had been a minor newspaper rebellion against The A.P. suddenly
grew much more serious last week, when the Tribune Company, one of the
largest newspaper chains, said on Thursday that it would drop out of
the association, followed by The Dispatch’s announcement. A handful of
papers have made the same move over the last few months, but with the
exception of The Star Tribune of Minneapolis, they were relatively
small.

Tribune, in disclosing the plan to sever its ties with The A.P.,
voiced no complaints about the service, saying only that it needed to
cut costs. The move raised the prospect of major Tribune papers like
The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune publishing without the
aid of a wire service that has been an essential part of American
journalism since the cooperative was established more than a century
and a half ago.

Just see how RED is our sky! How risilient we are!

Globalization? Trillion dollar economy? Shining India? Think again. The country is way down on many indices, it is known. Hunger and malnutrition haunts it despite the several revolutions white, blue or green. After a decade and a half of economic reforms, there is near stagnation in poverty rates. The reduction momentum witnessed in the last decade seems to have petered out.

The Global Hunger Index released by the International Food Policy Research Institute ranks India as the world's 24th most malnourished country.

The war-ravaged countries of Serbia and Lithuania are better off. So are people in the cold deserts of Mongolia. Tiny nations such as Surinam and Honduras have got a better handle on it and so have large diverse countries like China and Brazil. India, in comparison, is failing miserably to tackle hunger.

In Asia, it has Bangladesh (18th) and Mali (19th) for company among the top 25 malnourished countries in the world. All others are in Africa. The index captures three dimensions of hunger: insufficient availability of food, shortfalls in the nutritional status of children, and child mortality, which, to a large extent, attributes to undernutrition.

At a time when India is feeling the heat of global financial turmoil, a study by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has predicted a rise in income inequality due to the meltdown. India already ranks ninth among developed and advanced economies where disparity between wage and productivity growth widened in the last 15 years, according to the ILO.

Meanwhile, Blunt the Left’s charge of “breach of privilege” by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the UPA Government will on Monday field External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee to make a statement in Parliament on India’s civilian nuclear cooperation agreements with US and France, official sources told 'The Indian Express' on Sunday.

Sources said Mukherjee’s statement, expected to be made at noon, will be an attempt to set the record straight that the Government has not committed any breach of privilege. Left parties are expected to raise the issue of “breach of privilege” by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, as they have already moved separate privilege motions in both the Houses. Left MPs had already forced an adjournment last Friday.

An official source said the statement, which will be made by the External Affairs Minister in both Houses of the Parliament, will be consistent with the Prime Minister’s commitment on July 22 when he had said that he would come back to the Parliament before “operationalising” the agreement.

The UPA Government, through this detailed statement, will look to dispel concerns that continue to be voiced even after India obtained a clean NSG waiver and signed framework agreements with US and France.

The statement will provide details of the developments on the nuclear front since it won the trust vote on July 22.

Sources said Mukherjee’s statement will refer to President George W Bush’s presidential statement on October 8, as he signed the 123 Agreement into a law. This statement, sources said, is significant since Bush, while signing the agreement into a law, had responded to the two key concerns of the Indian side: the fuel supply assurances and reprocessing rights.

Bush had written that the legislation “does not change the fuel assurance commitments that the US Government has made to the Government of India, as recorded in the 123 Agreement” and the Agreement grants India advance consent to reprocessing which will be brought into effect upon conclusion of arrangements and procedures for a dedicated reprocessing facility under IAEA safeguards.

Besides the Indo-US nuclear cooperation agreement, Mukherjee’s statement will also showcase India’s agreement with France which was signed during Prime Minister’s visit to Paris—the first agreement to be inked after the lifting of international restrictions on civil nuclear cooperation with India by the Nuclear Suppliers Group.

Besides these two agreements, Mukherjee will also refer to the impending nuclear cooperation agreement with Russia, which is expected to be signed during Russian President Dmitri Medvedev’s visit in December. Incidentally, Mukherjee will also be meeting Russian Foreign Minister Sergey V Lavrov on Monday. Lavrov will be here on a day-long visit to discuss civilian nuclear cooperation.


After shoring up the banking system with Rs 145,000 crore funds, the Reserve Bank paved the way for cheaper home, consumer, corporate and personal loan rates by slashing its key short-term lending rate (repo) by 100 basis points.
The cut in repo, the first since 2004, would allow banks to immediately borrow short-term funds from the apex bank at a cheaper eight per cent as against nine per cent till now. Describing RBI's move to cut its key short term rate, Repo, by one percentage point as beneficial for many sections, Finance Minister P Chidambaram expressed the hope that the step would enthuse investors to see through their investment plans.

Finance Minister P Chidambaram told reporters in New Delhi that this move "will enthuse investors to continue to take forward their investment proposals."

"It is a welcome step and clearly shows that the interest rate regime is now on a descent curve," HDFC Bank's Deputy Treasurer, Ashish Parthasarathy, told PTI.

Earlier, RBI cut the mandatory cash deposits that banks must keep with it (CRR) by 250 basis points after five years, along with other measures to inject a total of Rs 145,000 crore into the system.

"It is a pro-growth measure," IDBI Bank's Chairman and Managing Director, Yogesh Agarwal, said.

Between 1990 and 2007, the period that saw India liberalising its economy, productivity growth exceeded wage growth substantially. While growth in productivity was over nearly five per cent during this period, real wages grew by only one per cent, found the study entitled “World of Work Report 2008: Income inequalities in the age of financial globalisation”.

Out of the 32 countries surveyed by the ILO, China's productivity-wage growth ratio was found to be the best while Brazil fared the worst. China offered the best wages to its workers with its productivity-wage growth ratio standing at 9:10 while Brazil’s productivity-wage growth ratio was a dismal 3.5: -3.5. India ranked ninth on the list.

The gap between high- and low-income earners is also widening in India.

“The wage gap between the highest 10 per cent and lowest 10 per cent earners has tended to increase. The highest wage dispersion (variation in wages) occurred in Brazil, China, India and the United States and the lowest in Belgium and the Nordic countries,” the study found.

What is worrying more for India is the ILO’s prediction that the financial slowdown will result in diminishing of employment gains in developing economies and that it will also affect low-income groups disproportionately.

The study underlines that low-income households are likely to be more adversely affected because they spend a large proportion of their income on food products whose prices are rising. “Food price inflation affects those who spend a larger proportion of their income on food, in particular poorer households. For example, the poorest households in urban India experienced an estimated drop in purchasing power of over five per cent while the richest in urban areas in 2007 experienced only a drop of 2.2 per cent,” the study said.

Touching on the labour scenario, the study said informal employment, already common, was becoming even more widespread in India and at the same time the casual workers earn 45 per cent less than regular employees.

“Temporary jobs pay, on average, 20 per cent less than permanent jobs. In Latin America, workers with informal jobs earn, on average, 43 per cent less than workers with formal jobs while in India, casual workers (who form the bulk of informal employment) earn 45 per cent less than regular employees,” the study said.

The convulsions in the financial sector has spread like a "pandemic" and its effects including that on housing market and high street spending will last for next three years, a report said on Monday.

Another 5,00,000 people will lose their jobs in the UK as the economy is in the infant stage of a full-blown recession, the report by Ernst & Young Item Club predicted.

The Item Club, a forecasting house, predicted that consumer expenditure -- on everything from food, clothes, holidays, household bills, home improvements and entertainment -- will fall by 1.2 per cent in 2009. It will increase by only 0.2 per cent in 2010 before growing by 1.9 per cent in 2011.

The report is the most gloomy assessment yet of how the impending recession will affect consumer expenditure, the benchmark of how well or badly people are coping with economic pressures.

Professor Peter Spencer, the report's author, told The Daily telegraph: "The way the virus is spreading is like a pandemic. It's not just spread from New York across the Atlantic. It is also spreading from the City to the real economy.

Iceland will soon announce a six-billion dollar (4.5-billion-euro) economic rescue plan sponsored by the IMF and several central banks, the Financial Times (FT) reported on its website on Monday.

The International Monetary Fund will shell out just over one billion dollars, while central banks from the Nordic region and Japan will chip in the rest for the Icelandic relief package, the FT reported, citing people with knowledge of ongoing talks between Reykjavik and the IMF.

Momentum increased on Monday for a new economic stimulus package to help cash-strapped Americans as President Bush and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke threw their weight behind an idea they earlier opposed.

Press secretary Dana Perino told reporters on Air Force One as the president flew to Louisiana on Monday for an economic event that the White House will have to see what kind of package Congress crafts. Perino says the administration has concerns that what has been put forward so far by Democratic leaders in Congress would not actually stimulate the economy.

Earlier Monday, Bernanke told the House Budget Committee the country's economic weakness could last for a while and it was the right time for Congress to consider a new package. Earlier this year, most individuals and couples received tax rebate checks of $600-$1,200 through the $168 billion stimulus package enacted in February.

s
India's economic growth may decelerate to 7.5 percent in 2008/09, as the country experienced 'ripple effects' of the global financial crisis and liquidity crunch, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Monday.
"The financial crisis is likely to have an indirect impact on the Indian economy," he said in a statement to lawmakers in Parliament. "We must be prepared for a temporary slowdown in the Indian economy."

Singh said the recent steps taken by the Government and central bank would help ease a liquidity shortage.

Two days before the launch of India's first lunar orbiter, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) G. Madhavan Nair said
on Monday that India will plant its flag on the moon to help establish its presence on the earth's only natural satellite.

India will drop its flag on the moon to establish its presence, Nair said in an interview. This will make India the fourth country after the US, Russia, and Japan to have its flag on the moon.

Asked for the geopolitical reason behind the planting of the flag, Nair said: "Today, as per the international charter, the moon belongs to the global community. Nobody can make special claim on the surface. But in due course, we don't know how things will change. But our presence will be established through this mission."

Nair also reiterated in the interview that ISRO planned to put a man in space by 2015. "If certain finer observation are to be made, online decisions have to be made, the presence of man becomes important," he said.

"The man behind the instrument. And also the reaction time for any decision will be a fraction of a second, whereas you know it takes almost eight seconds for the data to come from the moon to the earth and then again sent back and so on, and here also somebody has to analyse....so ultimately if you want to do a perfect experiment, man behind the instrument is a must."
Two days before the launch of India's first lunar orbiter, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) G. Madhavan Nair said
on Monday that India will plant its flag on the moon to help establish its presence on the earth's only natural satellite.

India will drop its flag on the moon to establish its presence, Nair said in an interview. This will make India the fourth country after the US, Russia, and Japan to have its flag on the moon.

Asked for the geopolitical reason behind the planting of the flag, Nair said: "Today, as per the international charter, the moon belongs to the global community. Nobody can make special claim on the surface. But in due course, we don't know how things will change. But our presence will be established through this mission."

Nair also reiterated in the interview that ISRO planned to put a man in space by 2015. "If certain finer observation are to be made, online decisions have to be made, the presence of man becomes important," he said.

"The man behind the instrument. And also the reaction time for any decision will be a fraction of a second, whereas you know it takes almost eight seconds for the data to come from the moon to the earth and then again sent back and so on, and here also somebody has to analyse....so ultimately if you want to do a perfect experiment, man behind the instrument is a must."

US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress on Monday that another wave of government spending may be needed as the economy li
mps through what could be an extended period of subpar growth.

"With the economy likely to be weak for several quarters, and with some risk of a protracted slowdown, consideration of a fiscal package by the Congress at this juncture seems appropriate," Bernanke said in prepared remarks for delivery to a congressional panel. It was the first time the central bank chairman had explicitly endorsed a second stimulus package.

The government sent out about $100 billion in tax rebate checks over the summer to try to jump-start the economy, but consumer spending has struggled since then. Retail sales fell for three consecutive months through September.

US stocks jumped to a session high after Bernanke's comments endorsing another stimulus package, though the Dow Jones industrial average gave up a little ground afterwards. Prices for government debt slipped initially while the dollar edged up.

Bernanke, who is testifying before the US House of Representatives budget committee, said Congress should consider including measures to improve access to credit, but did not specify what form they ought to take. He said there were some encouraging signs that steps taken so far to unfreeze credit markets were helping, although it was too soon to assess their full effects.

"The stabilization of the financial system, though an essential first step, will not quickly eliminate the challenges still faced by the broader economy," he said.

The Federal Reserve has lowered its benchmark interest rate by 3.75 percentage points in the past 13 months as the financial turmoil takes an increasingly heavy toll on the broader economy. Its next policy-setting meeting is scheduled for October 28-29, and economists and investors widely expect another trim from the current rate of 1.50 percent.

With concerns growing of a global recession, oil prices have fallen sharply, taking the edge off of inflation. Bernanke said that if those trends are not reversed, that "should bring inflation down to levels consistent with price stability."
Kingfisher Airlines head Vijay Mallya indicated that if the slump in the market continues, more job cuts and lay-offs may take place in the aviation industry.
"If the slump in the market continues then the number of flights will have to go down.... and when we ground the planes it will have effects," Mallya, a former MP, told reporters outside Parliament. He was responding to a question on whether airlines may lay-off more employees in the near future.

He, however, refused to say whether he had met any minister or Government official over the crisis in the aviation sector. Jet Airways chief Naresh Goyal held a meeting with Finance Minister P Chidambaram.

Former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell endorsed Senator Barack
Obama for president on Sunday morning as a candidate who was reaching
out in a "more diverse and inclusive way across our society" and
offering a "calm, patient, intellectual, steady approach" to the
nation’s problems. The endorsement, on the NBC public affairs program "Meet thePress," was a major blow to Senator John McCain, who has been a good
friend of Mr. Powell for decades. Mr. Powell, a Republican, has
advised Mr. McCain in the past on foreign policy.

Like the Nazis of Hitler’s Germany, the Republican campaign is spreading phobia against Marxism to cover up the Republican and Reaganite coddling of Wall Street capitalism, profiteering and deregulation and for the Bush-Paulsen-McCain bailout of Wall Street. Time to stop politicians plumbing out bail-out money and profits for Wall Street capitalism! Time for real, socialist, Marxist change!

The Republican campaign for McCain and Palin is taking on a Nazi and MacCarthyite fascist tack of phobia for Marxist and socialist change. First, Palin have been ranting that Barak Obama has been “palling around” with the Marxist Bill Ayers even when Obama was only eight years old when Ayers was supposed to have engaged in “terrorism”. In the Republican strategy to hold on to power, McCain is morphing into U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy of the 1950, who tried to build a political career in Washington mongering fear against Marxism.

Second, the Republican campaigners and spokespersons have been raving recently now that Obama is a Marxist out “to spread the wealth” based on Karl Marx’s anticapitalist and pro-labor advocacy in a super-abundant society of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” This, after McCain and Palin started posing as the champion of the working people against Wall Street by blaming “Wall Street greed and corruption” for the global financial crisis and meltdown.

Third, the Republicans have been posing as the capitalist champion of the working middle-class, of “Joe the Plumber” supposedly by lessening taxes.

This is how Hitler and the Nazi party rose to power. They ranted against oligarchs and posed as “pro-labor” even “socialist” but even more against the Marxists, Socialists and Communists. Yet, behind the scenes, they got the financial support of the German version of Wall Street capitalism. . In particular, Fritz Thyssen, who owned the Bank Voor Handel en Scheepvaart N.V Also, J. Henry Schroder & Co., of London which had become partners not just with the Rockefellers but also with the Rothschild-dominated Bank of England. And then there was the Big Three German banks which plowed funds into the Nazi coffers and the I.G. Farben which formed part of the Nazi military-industrial and war business complex: Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank and Dresdner Bank. Hitler became the muscleman for German capitalism.

It is true that both the Republican and Democrat Party and its leading politicians have served as political agents of Wall Street capitalism, the Republican politicians have become the backers of its worst abuses. In particular, the deregulation and globalization policies championed by Ronald Reagan, which led to disasters like Enron and Halliburton under Bush. Alan Greenspan the guru of deregulation and of the financial bubbles was a Republican, taken under the wings of Reagan.

Meanwhile, the ruling left escapes nothing to transform Marxism into Marxist fascism! While Capitalism collapses in Ameriaca and West, american Periphery South Asia opts to do everything to Justify the LPG and inherent Capitalism! Marxist Hegemony adopts the ways of Hitler quite ironically!

The Vatican City is said to have decided to go ahead with the beatification of a controversial World War II pontiff, Pope Pius, despite Jewish opposition.
Father Peter Gumpel, who leads the Vatican's research into Pope Pius XII, said that Pope Benedict XVI could not make a visit to Jerusalem as long as a holocaust museum carried an explicit criticism of the Vatican's record on Nazi policies. Ruling Hegemony in South Asia is united rock Solid to rescue to rescue White Zionist Hindu corporate Capitalism! In India, NDA, UPA and the Left are together once again on Mass destruction Manusmriti Apartheid Agenda!


Shekhar Gupta writes in Indian Express:

Six weeks into the ongoing financial crisis, the markets and the people of India are crying out for decisive political leadership that brings back some of the old confidence, something that cuts this murderously vicious cycle of setbacks and pessimism, where bad news feeds on expectations of worse, and where all rumours are taken to be true, in fact, the worse the rumour, the truer it is taken to be.
It is not as if the policymakers, leaders of the economy, including the Finance Minister and the regulators, have done nothing. Significant steps have been taken over the past two weeks to unfreeze liquidity and to improve confidence in the banking system. But the responses so far have been defensive, reactive, behind the curve. This has to end now. And the onus is on the Prime Minister to do so. This is too big, and too complex a crisis to be left to professionals. Political leadership at the very top has to step out and assure the people that the economy and the financial system is safe, as it should be, given the health of our banks and overall fundamentals.

That doubts remain in spite of these positives, is a fact you can argue with, but not deny. That is why India and the world don’t merely need the Prime Minister’s words of reassurance, they need to see decisive action. Now. Preferably in Parliament today, before he leaves on his foreign visit, that will take the rest of this working week.

He has to make a categorical statement that India is resolute and focussed enough to ensure it will not allow any bank, debt mutual fund or Non-Banking Financial Company (NBFC) to collapse in these days of liquidity crisis. Just a bland “your deposits are safe” won’t work. He has to announce an intention to invest in the capital of all the major banks. Of course, these can be sold off in three years, most likely on a profit. Then he must categorically state that liquidity, a purely self-inflicted disaster in India, will be provided and signal significant rate cuts. The Prime Minister is wise enough to know that the time for the usual Indian incrementalism is gone. The great doctor of economics knows fully well that homoeopathy, delivering the drug in small doses, won’t do.

His British counterpart Gordon Brown has shown how decisive, but big steps taken early enough, can help. He was the first to announce a massive capitalisation of his banks and now not only do G-7 and Europe look for his leadership, even the US took his template. His stock has even gone up at home. In fact, some go so far as to say that with one display of decisive, bold action, he may have turned the tables on the Conservatives. What helped is the fact that he is a former Chancellor of the Exchequer and people think he should know what he is doing. Of course, Dr Singh has been a former finance minister, central bank governor, finance secretary and Planning Commission head, besides being a world class economist. His Finance Minister, his Planning Commission chief, his regulators, including the RBI governor and SEBI chief, are a team so honourable and formidable that had they run an international consultancy today, they would have been flooded with calls for help.

But Dr Singh has to take a leaf out of Brown’s book now. It is tempting to call this Manmohan Singh’s Gordon Brown moment. If he comes out with big, bold action backed by his personal and professional credibility and stature, he will save India a crisis it never deserved in the first place. He may, in the process, change his coalition’s electoral fortunes as well. And finally, he may go down in India’s history as the leader who converted two great economic crises (the other being the near-bankruptcy of 1991) into opportunities that lifted tens of crores out of poverty. So no, let us not be so simplistic as to say this is Manmohan Singh’s Gordon Brown moment. Given his own stellar record of 1991, this is more like Manmohan Singh’s Manmohan moment. It is for him to seize it, and the time is NOW.
http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/Needed-now-Dr-Singhs-Manmohan-moment/375514/

With the country facing ripple effects of the global meltdown, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh assured the Lok Sabha that deposits in PSU and private sector banks are "entirely safe" but said the nation must be prepared for a "temporary slowdown" in the economy.
"Our banks, both in the public sector and in the private sector, are financially sound, well capitalised and well regulated. There should be no fear of a failure of any bank," Singh said in a suo moto statement.

"I wish to assure depositors in our banks that their deposits are entirely safe," he said.

The Prime Minister struck a note of caution against the backdrop of a stock market crash and fears of global crisis hitting the Indian banks.

"The financial storm has shaken confidence in the system and precipitated a steep decline in stock markets. It has produced a sharp slowdown in economic activity, with the prospect of a prolonged recession in industrialized countries," he said.

Exuding confidence over huge capital investment in the pipeline, he said, "nevertheless, we must be prepared for a temporary slowdown in the Indian economy".

He said the precise impact was difficult to estimate at this stage since the depth and duration of the global slowdown remained uncertain.

Singh said the financial crisis and the economic slowdown in the developed countries is likely to have an "indirect impact" on the Indian economy.

Suo motu statement made by the Prime Minister in the Lok Sabha on Golbal Financial Crisis
DEPOSITS IN OUR BANKS ENTIRELY SAFE: PM
A NUMBER OF STEPS TAKEN TO ADDRESS THE PROBLEMS

New Delhi : October 20, 2008

The Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, has assured the depositors that their deposits in our banks is entirely safe. Making a suo motu statement in the Lok Sabha today, he said that the Indian banking system is not directly exposed to the sub-prime mortgage assets. “Their exposure to other problem assets is also minimal. Our banks, both in the public sector and in the private sector, are financially sound, well capitalised and well regulated. There should be no fear of a failure of any bank. In particular, I wish to assure depositors in our banks that their deposits are entirely safe,” the Prime minister added.

Dr. Singh further said that as a result of a number of steps taken to address the problems in India, the liquidity position in the financial system has improved considerably. He added that the Government has arranged to provide, in advance, a sum of Rs.25,000 crore to the Banking System under the Debt Waiver and Debt Relief Scheme. The limit of investment by Foreign Institutional Investors in corporate bonds was increased from US$3 billion to US$6 billion. The Prime Minister also informed the House that suitable advisories have been issued by the RBI and the Ministry of Finance to the banks to ensure that borrowers are provided adequate credit, including export credit and working capital. “Banks must also provide adequate funds in the form of investment or credit to mutual funds and NBFCs who, in turn, lend to industry, trade and business”, he added.

Following is the text of the suo motu statement made by the Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh in the Lok Sabha on the ongoing global financial crisis and its impact on India”

“I wish to make a statement on the ongoing global financial crisis and its impact on India . Honourable Members are aware that this crisis had its origins in the United States and spread quickly to Europe. While the crisis began in the housing mortgage market, it soon extended to the money market and the credit market. As a result, several financial institutions were pushed to the brink of insolvency. The US and some other developed countries have bailed out a number of financial institutions and banks. They have also taken a number of unconventional steps to infuse liquidity, recapitalize the banks and unfreeze the credit market.

The financial storm has shaken confidence in the system and precipitated a steep decline in stock markets.

It has produced a sharp slowdown in economic activity, with the prospect of a prolonged recession in industrialised countries. Many observers have described this as the worst crisis since the Great Depression of 1930s.

India, like other developing countries, is experiencing the ripple effects of the financial crisis. However, we have taken a number of steps to minimise the impact.

Our first concern was to ensure the stability of our banking system. I am happy to inform the House that the Indian banking system is not directly exposed to the sub-prime mortgage assets. Their exposure to other problem assets is also minimal. Our banks, both in the public sector and in the private sector, are financially sound, well capitalised and well regulated. There should be no fear of a failure of any bank. In particular, I wish to assure depositors in our banks that their deposits are entirely safe.

Although our banks are safe, and they are also providing credit in line with anticipated credit targets, the global turmoil has led to a contraction in other forms of commercial credit. External commercial borrowings, which are used by the corporate sector have dried up, as have international suppliers credits. This has led to a reduction in overall credit availability in the economy even though credit from commercial banks has expanded satisfactorily. This contraction produced a liquidity crisis in the system.

We have taken a number of steps to address this problem. Between July 6, 2008 to October 15, 2008, the RBI cut the Cash Reserve Ratio by a total of 250 basis points. The SLR requirements were relaxed initially by 1 percentage point and subsequently an additional window of 0.5 percentage points was introduced specifically to enable banks to draw funds to provide liquidity to mutual funds.

As a result of these steps, the liquidity position in the financial system has improved considerably. The call money rate today is around 6.8 per cent.

Government also arranged to provide, in advance, a sum of Rs.25,000 crore to the banking system under the Debt Waiver and Debt Relief Scheme. The limit of investment by Foreign Institutional Investors in corporate bonds was increased from US$3 billion to US$6 billion.

Earlier today, the RBI announced a 100 basis points cut in the repo rate which is the rate at which banks can borrow against surplus SLR securities. Government welcomes this decision. It will have a beneficial effect on the interest rate structure and, in combination with the other steps to increase liquidity, will help to support economic activity and investment. It is broadly consistent with our objective to control inflation which has already begun to moderate.

I am happy to inform Honourable Members that the Wholesale Price Index has declined in the last three weeks and, although the current rate is still high, the movement in the level of prices shows a clear deceleration in the current momentum of inflation. We expect a further reduction in the Wholesale Price Index in the next two months.

The Government is conscious of the fact that it is not enough to infuse liquidity. The liquidity must translate into expanded flow of credit to industry, trade and business. Suitable advisories have been issued by the RBI and the Ministry of Finance to the banks to ensure that borrowers are provided adequate credit, including export credit and working capital. Banks must also provide adequate funds in the form of investment or credit to mutual funds and NBFCs who, in turn, lend to industry, trade and business. These institutions are an important part of the larger financial system and banks are being encouraged to provide liquidity to ensure that there is no disruption in economic activity.

Both RBI and Government are carefully monitoring the flow of credit and will ensure that the additional liquidity infused into the system translates into actual credit. We will not hesitate to do more if needed. While the capital adequacy ratios of all our banks are well above the Basel norm and above the RBI stipulated norm, Government has promised that it will help banks, which have lower ratios, to access funds to increase their Capital Risk Weighted Asset Ratio to 12 per cent.

The financial crisis and the economic slowdown in the developed countries is likely to have an indirect impact on the Indian economy. Fortunately, this effect will be on an underlying strong performance. GDP growth in the first quarter of 2008-09 was 7.9%. During April-August, 2008, exports increased, in dollar terms by 35.1 per cent. Foreign Direct Investment, during this period was US$14.8 billion. Gross tax revenues are on target.

The CMIE database shows that a huge amount of money towards capital expenditure is in the pipeline.

Nevertheless, we must be prepared for a temporary slowdown in the Indian economy. The precise impact is difficult to estimate at this point since the depth and duration of the global slowdown remain uncertain. Some estimates project GDP growth to decelerate to 7.5 per cent in the current year. The most pessimistic estimates place it at no less than 7 per cent. Our effort will be to minimise the negative effect of the financial crisis and, once the global situation stabilises, to return to the growth trajectory of 9 per cent. I would urge Honourable Members and the people of India to continue to repose faith in the fundamentals of the Indian economy.

Honourable Members will recall that, in anticipation of a slowdown, we had stepped up public expenditure in the Budget presented on February 29, 2008. Our expenditure proposals were criticised at the time in some quarters, but I am happy to note that it is now widely acknowledged that increased public expenditure is an important part of the solution. Our expenditure on education, health, NREGP, NRHM, AIBP, JNNURM and other programmes will, I believe, stand us in good stead in these difficult times. Besides, the debt waiver and debt relief amounting to Rs.65,000 crore to 3,60,00,000 farmers will also greatly benefit our farmers and enthuse them to increase production.

India has faced challenges in the past and has overcome them. We have the strength to overcome the current challenges too. In fact, it is when India is challenged that the Indian people rise to the occasion and convert the challenge into an opportunity. There is no place for fear. This is the time for unity of purpose and resolute action.

I seek the support of all sections of this House to the measures taken by Government and the authorities.”

* * * * *

RCJ/AD/SH/SKS /:/....spandey/kol....(RelSet1_20Oct)

Powell Endorses Obama
http://www.truthout.org/article/101908Y
Former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell endorsed Senator Barack
Obama for president on Sunday morning as a candidate who was reaching
out in a "more diverse and inclusive way across our society" and
offering a "calm, patient, intellectual, steady approach" to the
nation’s problems.

The endorsement, on the NBC public affairs program "Meet the
Press," was a major blow to Senator John McCain, who has been a good
friend of Mr. Powell for decades. Mr. Powell, a Republican, has
advised Mr. McCain in the past on foreign policy.

Mr. Powell told reporters after the taping of "Meet the Press"
that he had been disturbed in recent weeks by the negative tone of Mr.
McCain’s campaign, particularly its focus on Mr. Obama’s passing
relationship with William Ayers, a 1960s radical and founder of the
Weather Underground. The McCain campaign has sought to promote the
idea that Mr. Obama is "palling around with terrorists," in the words
of Mr. McCain’s running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, because of Mr. Obama’s
weak links to Mr. Ayers.

"I thought that was over the top," Mr. Powell told reporters. "It
was beyond just good political fighting back and forth."


Mr. Powell did offer Mr. McCain a small dose of solace by calling
him a different kind of Republican, although one who would support the
party’s standard positions.

"As gifted as he is, he is essentially going to execute the
Republican agenda, the orthodoxy of the Republican agenda, with a new
face and a maverick approach to it, and he’d be quite good at it," Mr.
Powell said. "But I think we need a generational change."

In offering his endorsement, Mr. Powell becomes the highest
profile Republican to add his support to the Democratic ticket. Aides
said it was not yet known whether the two men would campaign together
– or what Mr. Powell would do alone – in the final two weeks of the
presidential campaign.

Those talks, aides said, were underway on Sunday.

Mr. Powell’s endorsement exposed a fundamental policy rift in the
fractious Republican party foreign policy establishment between the so-
called pragmatists, a number of whom have come to view the Iraq war or
its execution as a mistake, and a competing camp, the
neoconservatives, whose thinking dominated President Bush's first term
and played a pivotal role in building the case for war.

Mr. Powell, who is of the pragmatist camp and has been critical of
the Bush administration’s conduct of the war, was said by friends in
recent months to be disturbed by some of the neoconservatives who have
surrounded Mr. McCain as foreign policy advisers in his presidential
campaign. The McCain campaign’s top foreign policy aide is Randy
Scheunemann, who was a foreign policy adviser to former Senators Trent
Lott and Bob Dole and who has longtime ties to neoconservatives. In
2002, Mr. Scheunemann was a founder of the hawkish Committee for the
Liberation of Iraq and was an enthusiastic supporter of the Iraqi
exile and Pentagon favorite, Ahmad Chalabi, who was viewed with
suspicion and distaste at the State Department when Mr. Powell was
secretary of state.

Mr. Powell met with both Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama in June in
preparation to make a possible endorsement. He has said repeatedly in
recent months that he wanted to wait until after the political
conventions and the presidential debates before making a decision.

Mr. Powell’s support of Mr. Obama was not a surprise to people who
know him well and within Washington’s foreign policy establishment,
but the Obama campaign welcomed it as a powerful reassurance to voters
about Mr. Obama’s national security credentials. Other voters,
however, could discount it as an action of a disgruntled member of the
Bush administration or as simply the support of one African American
for another.

Mr. Powell also told reporters on Sunday that he was troubled that
a number of Americans believe that Mr. Obama is a Muslim, although he
did not directly link that supposition to the McCain campaign. At a
recent town-hall style meeting, Mr. McCain told an audience member who
said she thought that Mr. Obama was an "Arab," "no, ma'am, he’s a
decent family man."

"These are the kinds of images going out on Al Jazeera that are
killing us around the world," Mr. Powell said. "And we have got to say
to the world it doesn’t make any difference who you are and what you
are. If you’re an American you’re an American."

Mr. McCain was asked about Mr. Powell's endorsement during an
interview on Fox News Sunday.

"I have always admired and respected General Powell," Mr. McCain
said. "We have a respectful disagreement."

---------

US Papers in Financial Trouble Are Leaving the A.P. to Cut Costs
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
Published: October 19, 2008

For most of its 137-year history, The Columbus Dispatch has carried
articles and images from The Associated Press. Like most big American
newspapers, it supplements the work of its own staff with dozens of
items daily from The A.P.

That may end soon.

The Dispatch’s finances are severely pinched — the paper on Friday
took the once-unthinkable step of saying it would drop the service.

What had been a minor newspaper rebellion against The A.P. suddenly
grew much more serious last week, when the Tribune Company, one of the
largest newspaper chains, said on Thursday that it would drop out of
the association, followed by The Dispatch’s announcement. A handful of
papers have made the same move over the last few months, but with the
exception of The Star Tribune of Minneapolis, they were relatively
small.

Tribune, in disclosing the plan to sever its ties with The A.P.,
voiced no complaints about the service, saying only that it needed to
cut costs. The move raised the prospect of major Tribune papers like
The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune publishing without the
aid of a wire service that has been an essential part of American
journalism since the cooperative was established more than a century
and a half ago.

But editors and publishers at some other papers have become vocal
critics of the way The A.P. operates, saying that it charges more than
they can afford, delivers too little of what they need and —
particularly galling to them — is sometimes acting as their competitor
on the Internet.

“They seem to have forgotten that they are there to serve us,” said
Benjamin J. Marrison, editor of The Dispatch.
That anger spilled into public view in April at a meeting in
Washington when the president and chief executive of The A.P., Tom
Curley, discussed his plans to cut prices and add new services — and
then watched as editor after editor stood to scold him.

The A.P. says it is trying to save money for its more than 1,400
member newspapers, and all the changes under way will benefit them.
Kathleen Carroll, executive editor of The A.P., said the protests came
from a small number of papers and stem from “some element of
misunderstanding about what A.P. is trying to do” and frustration over
the papers’ finances.


“I don’t think any of us can ignore the economic circumstances
newspapers are in now,” Ms. Carroll said. “Being the editor of a
newspaper in the United States right now is really hard.”

Contractually, newspapers must give two years’ notice to drop the
service, so those that recently opted out have until 2010 to change
their minds. A.P. executives say they suspect that some papers are
using that notice as leverage to bargain for lower rates.

In addition to the papers that said they would leave the wire, others
are considering it, and still others have set up regional cooperatives
meant to supplant part of their relationship with The A.P. — a trial
run for life after the wire service.

Newspapers are going through their most wrenching time since the
Depression, with advertising revenue falling about 25 percent over the
last two years. But the balance sheet of The A.P., a nonprofit
company, is healthy; last year its profit rose 81 percent, to $24
million, on revenue of $710 million, according to a financial
statement issued to its members.

It remains to be seen whether defections become a major problem for
The A.P., the world’s largest news-gathering organization with more
than 3,000 journalists in about 100 countries. Without the rich diet
of articles, photographs, audio and video it feeds its clients, most
American newspapers would be much slimmer and their coverage less
expansive.

Newspapers banded together 162 years ago to create The Associated
Press. Only daily papers in the United States can be members, giving
them ownership and a vote in elections for the board. The company has
more than 5,000 other domestic clients — broadcasters, Web sites,
weekly papers and magazines — and roughly 8,500 abroad.

In addition to the news that A.P. reporters produce, the wire also
takes breaking news articles from its members and distributes them to
other clients.

For many members, The A.P. is one of their biggest expenses.

“We pay in excess of $1 million a year to The A.P., which is equal to
10 to 12 reporters in the newsroom,” said Nancy Barnes, editor of The
Star Tribune.

Several editors interviewed for this article said they could find
other sources for written material — wire services like Reuters or
Bloomberg News, or the news services sold by major newspaper
companies. But other A.P. products, especially photography, would be
harder to replace, they said.

Related

Advertising: Newspapers’ Web Revenue Is Stalling (October 13, 2008)

“We thought, ‘We have two years to try and figure this out,’ ” Ms.
Barnes said. Her paper is one of the industry’s most troubled; it
recently stopped making payments on its debt.

This summer, dissatisfied with the way The A.P. handles local news,
eight papers in Ohio formed a cooperative to share articles, and some
of those papers say they might drop the wire service. Newspapers in
Pennsylvania are exploring a similar arrangement.

“We’re facing terrible economic challenges, so naturally we’re looking
at one of our biggest costs,” said David Shribman, executive editor of
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

The editors in Ohio, in particular, say The A.P. has retreated from
one of its traditional roles: producing a lot of routine, breaking-
news articles.

The A.P. wants to make its work more engaging, with more enterprise
journalism like features, investigations and analyses — but that is
also the direction many papers are going.

Mr. Marrison of The Columbus Dispatch said that course had forced
newspapers to devote more resources to small stories that used to be
covered by The A.P. “Then The A.P. rewrites our story and sends it
out,” he said. “So we’re sacrificing our enterprise so that A.P. can
do its enterprise? No, no, no. We’re the owners.”
Ms. Carroll of The A.P. said it had only “trimmed back on things that
weren’t getting much use.”

“We’re not trying to absolve ourselves from nuts-and-bolts news, but
we cannot survive if we are spending our day doing the mark-up of some
legislative measure that is of interest to one part of the state but
not another,” she said.
The A.P. does not release details about what clients pay, but
newspapers’ fees vary based on their circulation and the services they
receive. For the last three years, the company has held those fees
flat. The A.P. says the fees are partly subsidized by the higher
prices it charges to nonmember clients, which account for about three-
quarters of its revenue.

The A.P. says that a new price structure, set to go into effect in
January, will give papers a 10 percent price cut on average. But even
that plan caused complaints, leading to multiple revisions since it
was first announced last year.

Papers object to a requirement that they allow The A.P. to apply its
electronic tags to the articles they publish in order for the papers
to qualify for the discounted fees.

The tags are bits of computer code, invisible to readers, that are
intended to make Web pages rank high in Internet searches. While The
A.P. says that most member papers have signed up for the tagging
program, the largest newspapers, including The New York Times, have
developed their own tagging systems and so far have not switched to
The A.P.’s.

The A.P. recently introduced an ad-supported mobile Internet service,
fed by its own work and that of newspapers in the tagging program. To
some newspaper executives, the mobile service looks like a bid by The
A.P. to make money from their work — and to compete with the papers’
own mobile services.

“If you want our content, you should have to come to us for it,” said
Ms. Barnes of The Star Tribune.
Similarly, some editors and publishers dislike The A.P.’s practice of
selling a news service to aggregators like Google and Yahoo; they want
their own articles on those sites instead.

Jim Kennedy, an A.P. vice president and its director for strategic
planning, said that papers should not see The A.P. as a competitor. He
said the mobile network would share ad revenue with participating
papers — many of which do not have the resources to develop such
services — and drive Internet traffic to those papers.

“We’re trying to be the portal, linking back to the contributors,” he
said. “We know there are members who would rather we didn’t license
our content to Google,” he said, “but the money The A.P. gets from
that helps defray the costs that members don’t pay.”

Indian slum hit by New York woes
By Zubair Ahmed
BBC News, Mumbai



Name it and they have it, from high quality shoes to vanity boxes.
It is a small air-conditioned store, where leather jackets, belts and high quality leather bags are on display.

Stores like this are an inescapable feature of Dharavi, Asia's largest slum quarters.
The store spills over with leather goods.
But it's quiet. There are no buyers. The phone has stopped ringing.

The showroom owner, Abul Lais Sheikh, is wondering where the next order will come from. "No new orders. It's zero. We are sitting here, in the hope that perhaps we might get some orders in the New Year," he says.

Sophisticated items
Mr Sheikh was referring to the orders he used to receive from the West before the global financial crisis set in. When the West catches a cold, Dharavi sneezes. It lies in the middle of Mumbai. It is crowded, in fact over-crowded, bustling with activity.

Its narrow lanes and side streets hide away more than 15,000 single-room factories, which churn out remarkably sophisticated goods that end up in shopping malls and branded showrooms in the US and Europe.
Timberland, Woodland, you can see them rest here before reaching the branded stores
So, if you go to Macy's or Marks and Spencer and buy a leather jacket the chances are that it might have been manufactured here in this one room factory in Dharavi.

It exports leather items, jewellery, accessories and textile largely to the US, Europe and the Middle East. But the current credit crunch crisis has nearly crippled the $1bn (£577.8m) industry.
One exporter, called "Danish", says the American financial meltdown has hit them hard. He adds ''We are getting half the orders from America and European countries since the economic turmoil began.''

Festive sales?
Sayeed Bhai is a god of small things - a leading maker and supplier of buckles, used in belts, shoes and bags. In his tiny, dingy, dimly-lit factory, work is going on in full swing to meet the orders from the US. But these orders were received before the financial crisis hit the Western world.

All type of outlets have seen demand slow
''Since the crisis began, we haven't received a single order" he says.
But exporters of leather related goods are not the only ones to have been affected badly by the global financial meltdown.
Dharavi manufactures embroidered garments, artificial gem and jewellery and textile meant for exports to the western world.

In these industries too, the gloss is wearing off. The repercussions have been devastating. Thousands of skilled labourers have been laid off.
"We have laid off loads of our workers, our salaried employees have not been paid for some time," says Mr Sheikh.

"This is a festive season, which is usually an important time for exports, but we are compelled to send our workers home.'' Many factories here are working at less than full capacity. The production has slowed. The average income in Dharavi has fallen.

Other options
The exporters now face an unpredictable future. Mr Shiekh says: "We are sitting here in the hope that perhaps we might get some orders in the New Year." For factory workers and businessmen in Dharavi, working in abysmal conditions is a part of their daily lives. But they fear that this time around the losses will be hard to bear.

That's why they are exploring other markets, as Danish explains, "I'm searching for buyers around the globe. The orders from Europe have been on the decline and I'm searching for new countries". Others are thinking of spreading their businesses in the domestic markets. The machines in Dharavi are still purring. But for how long? No one seems to have an answer.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7676337.stm

The Panic of 2008 and Financial Socialization
by Michael S. Rozeff

The Panic of 2008 parallels the Panic of 1873 in important ways. It differs in others. The comparison is instructive.
Considering the resemblance of 2008 to 1873, we may experience a serious depression of 3–5 years. The most important difference is the response of government. President Grant vetoed a Congressional bill calling for a large issue of greenbacks (non-interest bearing government notes), whereas the Panic of 2008 involves the socialization of American finance. This is occurring now via the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. Secretary Paulson has already made 9 major banks sign on the dotted line. The Federal Reserve is emerging from this episode in weakened condition as an appendage of the Treasury.

Let's look at the Panics of 1873 and 2008. Preceding the Panic of 1873 was a boom in railroad building. Preceding the Panic of 2008 was a boom in housing. The Federal government had subsidized construction of such major railroads as the Union Pacific, Central Pacific, and Northern Pacific through land grants and low-interest loans, starting in 1862 and ending in 1869. In the recent housing boom, banks were urged to use their ample reserves to finance home purchases by subpar borrowers.

In both these cases, the government established a framework, regulatory and monetary, for intensive expansion in an industry. Private industry then rose to the occasion and responded vigorously.

The buildout of the rail system through related lines caused a boom in iron, labor rates, and transport, among other industries. The price level rose steeply for many items. In the housing boom, home prices rose steeply. So did many prices throughout the economy.

There was not enough domestic capital to support the railroad boom. Bonds needed to be sold. They were sold here and abroad to banks with ample reserves. In the 2000s, securitized bonds were placed in the hands of many financial institutions. This included many foreign banks who were flush with cash due to loose money policies of many central banks.

The rail financiers included investment banker Jay Cooke who had for years built a reputation on marketing government bonds. In our time, brand name investment banks and bankers distributed the mortgage securities far and wide. Reputations are important in placing credits on a wide scale, but it helped that Cooke’s bonds carried a promised rate of 8.5 percent. People ignore risks of default when returns are attractive and the seller has a sound reputation. In the recent case, bonds were sliced and diced into tranches to produce attractive promised returns. Rating agencies lent their reputations to these securities. New methods were invented to insure credits. Investors ignored the fact that promised returns are not always the same as realized returns. They ignored downside risks. This was made easy by a trend of rising house prices that had been going on for decades. But housing prices can fall, ratings can be revised downwards, and credit insurers can fail.

In a boom, all the main businesses involved in the boom are making handsome profits. Homebuilders, home suppliers, mortgage bankers, banks, and investment bankers, among others, all did well in the housing boom. Many investors along for the ride got above-average returns. They were anxious to supply even more capital.

The boom by definition is a period of above-average business activity enabled by financial credits. Production and finance are both stimulated. Both receive the abnormal stimulation of government regulatory and monetary policies. The boom of 1869–1873 involved a banking system that created money backed by government bonds. The Fed does the same today. In both cases, it also involved Congressional stimulus. In the 1860s, it was railroad subsidies. In this century, it was a variety of measures to stimulate house construction and to absorb the mortgage credits via government-sponsored institutions like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Government leads the boom, business follows. Government prepares the boom. Wall Street commits it. The government’s tracks are hidden. Wall Street’s are not. Few blame government for the inevitable bust. Many blame Wall Street. Government investigates Wall Street and makes sure of that.

Invariably, some firms go at it with a vengeance. By being first or most adept or best-situated at exploiting the opportunities, they grow the fastest, make the most money, and become the largest and best-known. The reputations of these firms for making good decisions and money grow. This attracts capital, and they grow even larger. Thus we get investment bankers like Jay Cooke, Bear Stearns, and Lehman. In Great Britain, we got Northern Rock. In Germany we got several German Landesbanken using short-term financing to buy American mortgages. Likewise, in 1870 German and Austrian governments supported banks in their lending activities, causing a building boom.

In growing, some firms win the most business because they take the biggest chances. This they do on both sides of their balance sheets: assets and liabilities. They load up on risky assets and extend too many risky loans. This raises their business or operational risk. The problem with this is that if those assets fail to produce the expected cash flows, the firm doesn’t have enough cash to pay its bills or service its debts. These firms also borrow the most to expand. This raises their financial risk. Since they are making money, they tend to ignore the possibility of downside risks and losses.

An especially risky procedure is when firms borrow using short-term loans (such as three-month or even shorter loans) while buying risky long-term assets. The inducement to do this is that short-term interest rates are usually lower than long-term interest rates. The problem is that the borrower has to re-finance the loan frequently. If that financing is not available or its costs suddenly rise, the borrower faces bankruptcy.

The Northern Rock failed in Great Britain on September 13, 2007. The Treasury report is available on what happened. It is clear that this lender expanded very greatly while employing lots of borrowed capital including short-term borrowings. Countrywide was similar. These institutions had undertaken some measures to obtain back-up funding in case of tight money. They were not simply foolhardy. However, they did not conceive that all of their backups might fail to back them up. They did not conceive that the markets for their risky assets could become so illiquid that they were incapable of being sold to get funds. They did not conceive that when these assets became illiquid, short-term lenders would no longer provide funds to finance holding them. In short, they did not understand the risks they were taking. Their business and financing strategies were flawed.

The entire production and financing structure in a boom is predicated on (a) prices being realized that provide the high returns to service the debts, and (b) credits being available to finance the assets. When prices start falling and/or when credits start drying up (or tightening), the boom falters and fails. Prices fall when the cash flows of the assets become insufficient to service the required cash flows of the financing. This happens when investment in assets has run too far into questionable areas such as rail tracks that do not carry enough freight and sub-prime mortgage loans to borrowers that probably cannot afford them. These marginal investments do not live up to expectations. The tendency as the boom progresses is to under-estimate the real risks of cash flow shortfalls, or to apply too low a discount rate to the cash flows of long-lived assets. Optimism prevails because optimism is what has been paying off. Risk premiums become too low, which is another way of saying that marginal investments are accepted and thought to be profitable.

Credit tightens for several reasons. When short-term lenders notice that asset prices are falling, they no longer renew the credits. When lower quality asset investment outruns the pool of financing, higher rates are charged. When central banks and major banks begin to believe that they may be called upon to fill backup lines of credit, they slow down the growth rate of their credit.

This leads into recession and often into a panic. A panic is a period of sharp price declines of stocks and other long-term assets accompanied by great difficulty in obtaining credit. Failures of major financial firms occur. Business is often already in decline before the panic. After a panic, business goes into further decline, or it starts declining if it is not already in decline. Prices of raw materials, commodities, and commodity-type goods and services drop sharply.

Europe had a panic in May of 1873. This held up financing in the U.S. and affected bond underwriters like Jay Cooke. They relied on short-term financing. They had to use their own credit when European sources dried up. This strained their enterprises. Money rates began to rise. Things looked sound, despite the high prices for goods that had been incurred in building the roads and the high costs of capital. But there was too much borrowing short and investing long, a duration mismatch. If the long investments did not produce cash flow, there would be a big problem rolling over the short-term debts. When commercial paper went to 7–12 percent, the failures started. In September Jay Cooke failed. Then a slew of banking houses failed. Stocks dropped as banks called in loans and margin accounts were forced to liquidate. The banks were seeking money funds so that they could avoid failure. This induced runs on banks. The Clearing-House Association issued certificates. Hoarding of money took place as in other panics. The banks could not find and keep currency. Good short-term paper got up to 30%. Trade and industry became severely depressed for lack of currency. The panic lasted from Sept. 18 to Oct. 13, at which point with call money at 7% and commercial paper at 15–18%, the banks were able to operate. Those rates brought in funds from investors.

The depression in business that followed lasted from 1873 to 1877 or 1878. This was the aftermath of the prior boom and the panic that ended the boom. This may be our fate in 2008.

During the crisis, President Grant and the Treasury were asked to issue greenbacks held in reserve. They refused to support the money market. They did buy bonds with greenbacks ($18,000,000 worth). The Congress then passed a measure to issue half a billion or so of greenbacks (which was a very large amount). Grant vetoed it.

This time around we have Paulson and Bernanke instead of Grant. There is no veto. Far from it. There is a great deal of money-pumping. This will cause stagflation. The Fed is the cause of stagflation by slowing, then pumping, then slowing, then pumping in succession. The slowings produce the stagnation. The pumpings produce the inflation. The alternation produces uncertainty and confusion. Prices of consumer goods move with lags, and the money effects have lags. This makes direct connections to Fed actions hard to see. The uncertainty means that not everyone views the processes in the same way. Some people think inflation and some think deflation.

Other things are different in 2008. People are hoarding again, but in T-bills, not cash. Rates have risen on commercial paper and LIBOR, but they are not high in absolute terms. They are not 7% or 12–15%. Why not?

Instead of a modest amount of clearing house certificates being issued, we have a huge amount of Fed activity. Why has this not relieved the Panic of 2008? Why has it made it worse?

The relief of the Panic of 2008 has not happened in 1 month as in 1873. Instead it has lengthened out from early 2007 to now. Why?

Why does the modern panic follow such a different course than the panic of old?

The answer is that we have one or two more rungs on the institutional ladder. The central banks are a new rung. They prolong the agony. They have been prolonging the agony overseas and here for months now by lending to failed institutions.

These measures do not and cannot restore credit because they are based on a misconception of credit. The Fed acts as if credit can be injected into a market. It refers to it as liquidity. It acts as if it is passing liquid refreshment to a parched athlete. It and many others think of the Fed as the lender of last resort.

What this means can only be grasped by comparison to a free market system. There can be and is no such animal as a lender of last resort in a free market system.

There are many lenders and potential lenders in a free market. Evaluating creditworthiness is at the heart of lending. This obviously cannot be done efficiently by any one lender, given the large numbers of different kinds of borrowers with different assets and credibility spread over wide regions. In a free market, borrowers obtain the bank notes of individual banks issued against their productive potential and assets. These notes can become currency and money. Borrowers are able to pass them to others only if the public has a readiness to accept them based on actual experience and their worth. The public calls the tune by establishing the value of these bank notes. If the public believes in the assets behind those notes, which may include gold, collateral, and bank loans that finance various business ventures, then the notes sell at par. If they fall below par, competing banks have an incentive to present them to the issuing bank and demand specie (gold). It is an arbitrage profit opportunity to buy a note for $0.95 and receive $1 worth of gold for it. The public markets thus check any bank that overissues its notes or that makes bad loans. The lender of first and last resort in a free market is the individual issuing bank, which, to add one complication, may have a relationship with correspondent banks.

Compare central banking. The Fed makes loans in conjunction with an associated banking system that evaluates borrowers. The latter operations mimic the free market since banks compete in making loans. However, the root of this arrangement is not a free market. All the banks use a single note series, which is the Fed’s notes (the currency we use daily). Furthermore, the public has no mechanism to redeem these notes and obtain specie when they fall in value. There is thus no check on bank lending via note redemption.

In its open market operations that supply reserves, the Fed does not evaluate the loans of the individual banks. It supplies reserves to all of them. The Fed is not a lender in the sense of evaluating loans. No matter how many bad loans the member banks make, the Fed can supply them with more notes to provide to borrowers. This undermines the banks’ incentive to evaluate the creditworthiness of those who are borrowing. Why should they when they can turn to the Fed for more reserves? In terms of economic function, the Fed is not a lender of last resort. The Fed is set up as "printer of last resort."

It appears that the Fed’s presence in the market is holding down short-term money rates. Without the Fed, we might see call money at 7 percent and commercial paper rates at 12–15 percent as in 1873. Rates like these would draw money out of the woodwork and hasten the end of the panic.

With the power to restore the reserves of failed banks, the Fed supplies a new financial institution that confronts the panic. It is a formidable sea wall against hurricane driven surf. But at some point during some panic, there will be a run on the Fed and it will go bankrupt. Not being able to redeem from the Fed, people will attempt to redeem currency for goods en masse, driving their prices up and the value of the currency down. That will be the panic that ends the current system.

The Panic of 2008 is drawing us closer to the possibility of Fed bankruptcy than ever before. Each new action of the Fed undermines its balance sheet further. The strings are tightening around the Fed's neck. The Fed is rapidly becoming nothing more than an arm of the Treasury.

Treasury is the topmost rung on the ladder. The Treasury is attempting to control the banks directly and prevent business from falling into deep recession. The Fed has been demoted. It's a bookkeeper and a printing press. Someone in the basement of Fifteenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue can operate a printing press just as easily as someone on Constitution Avenue and Twenty-First Street.

The Treasury has singled out its favorite 9 banks already. The debt market for Treasuries will be maintained by these banks and the 19 primary dealers that the Fed is already heavily supporting. The Fed is a useful façade for Treasury to have around. But the Treasury now owns these banks. The direction of the future is clear – all power to the Treasury.

There will be no economic collapse yet. The only collapse is that the Fed and banking are being collapsed into the Treasury or government. We are only at the beginning of that process. This process ends with the collapse of capital markets as we know them, since the investment bankers are gone and since the SEC regulates the capital markets. The bailout act includes a Financial Stability Oversight Board. Paulson previously was on record for wanting a financial commissar or czar. Great Britain is going the same way. The Treasury report there calls for a "Deputy Governor and Head of Financial Stability," their name for a czar.

The notion that the government can create financial stability is unbelievable to anyone who has the least experience with financial markets. It can be dismissed out of hand. One of the main tasks of a stock market is price discovery. That involves impounding information and re-valuing securities constantly. Financial stability is neither desirable nor possible for government to create except by destroying free capital markets. The government’s financial leaders are either out of touch with reality, or else they are intent on cementing in a state capitalism or state socialism with controlled capital markets. Either way, the result is the same – a noticeable shift away from free capital and money markets.

Finance is being socialized before our eyes. We are embarking on a New Financial Deal that revamps and updates the New Deal. How far we go and how soon it transpires is guesswork. This socialization moves us toward lower social welfare. Economic stagnation becomes more likely. Collapse is not quite upon us, but it’s closer. See Nazi Germany between 1932 and 1940 for parallels. A command economy with favored sectors is the result. Various controls crop up to paper over problems. The real standard of living declines. Shortages crop up. Many good ideas fall by the wayside and do not get financed. The government absorbs the savings, such as they are, or extracts them by one means or another. Business joins more strongly to government. Government lets the shells of business and banking remain standing. Expect a new fascist rhetoric to emerge to paper over the existence of a dictatorship, American style. Expect more such terms as Homeland and Financial Stability Oversight Board, which is a devious and roundabout way of saying Financial Dictatorship.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rozeff/rozeff231.html

Barack Obama’s War on Black America

Polls show most African-American voters will be casting their ballots
for Barack Obama on November 4. The first opportunity to elect a black
person as president is tempting. But black Americans will be paying a
price, and Obama’s record gives a clear indication of what that price
will be. Obama and his cronies have a long record of profiting from
funds intended to aid black people. The intended beneficiaries have
nothing to show for it other than Obama’s political ascent.

The Boston Globe on June 27 exposed the thousands of so-called
affordable housing units built cheaply in Chicago by developers backed
by Illinois and federal tax subsidies championed by Barack Obama.
Sewage flows through many units; others are burned out with roofs
caving in. Due to neglect by owners tied to the Obama campaign, many
have been slated for demolition.

Dual U.S.-Syrian citizen Tony Rezko — an early-money fundraiser who
bundled as much as $200,000 for Obama’s campaigns — rehabbed hundreds
of “affordable” housing units in and around Obama’s State Senate
district and then refused to manage them. Rezko is now facing
sentencing on several federal felony counts of soliciting bribes,
fraud, and money laundering. His units now face demolition.

Valerie Jarrett is a senior adviser to Obama’s presidential campaign
and a member of his finance committee. Jarrett is also CEO of Habitat
Co. — managers of two large Chicago affordable housing developments,
including 504 units at Grove Parc in Obama’s district. Both properties
have been seized by the federal government and are so run-down that
they may face demolition. The Globe identifies four other developers
tied to the Obama campaign who profited from state and federal
subsidies and then allowed the rehabbed buildings to rapidly decay
leaving residents to fend off mice and wade through sewage.

According to the Globe:

Some of the residents of Grove Parc say they are angry that Obama did
not notice their plight. . . . Many of the tenants have been his
constituents for more than a decade. “No one should have to live like
this, and no one did anything about it,” said Cynthia Ashley, who has
lived at Grove Parc since 1994. . . .

As a state senator, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee
coauthored an Illinois law creating a new pool of tax credits for
developers. As a U.S. senator, he pressed for increased federal
subsidies. And as a presidential candidate, he has campaigned on a
promise to create an Affordable Housing Trust Fund that could give
developers an estimated $500 million a year.

The six developers personally contributed over $175,000 to Obama’s
various campaigns and bundled much more.

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/barack-obama%e2%80%99s-war-on-black-america/

From: Travis
Subject: A Futile Bailout as Darkness Falls on America
Date: Friday, October 17, 2008,





October 6, 2008

A Futile Bailout as Darkness Falls on America
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

A merica has become a pretty discouraging place. Americans, for the most part, will never know what happened to them, because they no longer have a free and responsible press. They have Big Brother's press. For example, on September 28, 2008, a New York Times editorial blamed the current financial crisis on "antiregulation disciples of the Reagan Revolution."

What utter nonsense. Every example of deregulation that the New York Times editorial provides is located in the Clinton Administration and the George W. Bush administration. I was a member of the Reagan administration. We most certainly did not deregulate the financial system.

The repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial from investment banking, was the achievement of the Democratic Clinton Administration. It happened in 1999, over a decade after Reagan left office.

It was in 2000 that derivatives and credit default swaps were excluded from regulation.

The greatest mistake was made in 2004, the year that Reagan died. That year the current Secretary of the Treasury, Henry M. Paulson Jr, was head of the investment bank Goldman Sachs. In the spring of 2004, the investment banks, led by Paulson, met with the Securities and Exchange Commission. At this meeting with the New Deal regulatory agency tasked with regulating the US financial system, Paulson convinced the SEC Commissioners to exempt the investment banks from maintaining reserves to cover losses on investments. The exemption granted by the SEC allowed the investment banks to leverage financial instruments beyond any bounds of prudence.

In place of time-proven standards of prudence, computer models engineered by hot shots determined acceptable risk. As one result Bear Stearns, for example, pushed its leverage ratio to 33 to 1. For every one dollar in equity, the investment bank had $33 of debt!

It was computer models that led to the failure of Long-Term Capital Management in 1998, the first systemic threat to the financial system. Why the SEC went along with Paulson and set aside capital requirements after the scare of Long-Term Capital Management is inexplicable.

The blame is headed toward SEC chairman Christopher Cox. This is more of Big Brother's disinformation. Cox, like so many others, was a victim of a free market ideology, itself a reaction to over-regulation, that was boosted by academic economic opinion, rewarded with Nobel prizes, that the market "always knows best."

The 20th century proves that the market is likely to know better than a central planning bureau. It was Soviet Communism that collapsed, not American capitalism. However, the market has to be protected from greed. It was greed, not the market, that was unleashed by deregulation during the Clinton and George W. Bush regimes.

I remember when the deregulation of the financial sector began. One of the first inroads was the legislation, written by bankers, to permit national branch banking. George Champion, former chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank, testified against it. In columns I argued that national branch banking would focus banks away from local business needs.

The deregulation of the financial sector was achieved by the Democratic Clinton Administration and by the current Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson, with the acquiescence of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Paulson bailout saves his firm, Goldman Sachs. The Paulson bailout transfers the troubled financial instruments that the financial sector created from the books of the financial sector to the books of the taxpayers at the US Treasury.

This is all the bailout does. It rescues the guilty.

The Paulson bailout does not address the problem, which is the defaulting home mortgages.

The defaults will continue, because the economy is sinking into recession. Homeowners are losing their jobs, and homeowners are being hit with rising mortgage payments resulting from adjustable rate mortgages and escalator interest rate clauses in their mortgages that make homeowners unable to service their debt.

Shifting the troubled assets from the financial sectors' books to the taxpayers' books absolves the people who caused the problem from responsibility. As the economy declines and mortgage default rates rise, the US Treasury and the American taxpayers could end up with a $700 billion loss.

Initially, the House, but not the Senate, resisted the bailout of the financial institutions, whose executives had received millions of dollars in bonuses for wrecking the US financial system. However, the people's representatives could not withstand the specter of martial law and Great Depression with which Paulson and the Bush administration threatened them. The people's representatives succumbed as they did during the New Deal.

The impotence of Congress traces to the Great Depression. As Theodore Lowi in his classic book, The End of Liberalism, makes clear, the New Deal stripped Congress of its law-making power and gave it to the executive agencies. Prior to the New Deal, Congress wrote the laws. After the New Deal a bill is merely an authorization for executive agencies to create the law through regulations. The Paulson bailout has further diminished the legislative branch's power.

Since Paulson's bailout of his firm and his financial friends does nothing to lessen the default rate on mortgages, how will the bailout play out?

If the $700 billion bailout is based on an estimate of the current amount of bad mortgages, as the recession deepens and Americans lose their jobs, the default rate will rise. The $700 billion might not suffice. The Treasury will have to go hat in hand to its foreign creditors for more loans.

As the US Treasury has not got $7, much less $700 billion, it must borrow the bailout money from foreign creditors, already overloaded with US paper. At what point do America's foreign bankers decide that the additions to US debt exceed what can be repaid?

This question was ignored by the bailout. There were no hearings. No one consulted China, America's principal banker, or the Japanese, or the OPEC sovereign wealth funds, or Europe.

Does the world have a blank check for America's mistakes?

This is the same world that is faced with American demands that countries support with money and lives America's quest for world hegemony. Europeans are dying in Afghanistan for American hegemony. Do Europeans want their banks, which hold US dollars as their reserves, to fail so that Paulson can bail out his company and his friends?

The US dollar is the world's reserve currency. It comprises the reserves of foreign central banks. Bush's wars and economic policies are destroying the basis of the US dollar as reserve currency. The day the dollar loses its reserve currency role, the US government cannot pay its bills in its own currency. The result will be a dramatic reduction in US living standards.

Currently Treasuries are boosted by the habitual "flight to quality," but as Treasury debt deepens, will investors still see quality? At what point do America's foreign creditors cease to lend? That is the point at which American power ends. It might be close at hand.

The Paulson bailout is predicated on cleaning up financial institutions' balance sheets and restoring the flow of credit. The assumption is that once lending resumes, the economy will pick up.

This assumption is problematic. The expansion of consumer debt, which kept the economy going in the 21st century, has reached its limit. There are no more credit cards to max out, and no more home equity to refinance and spend. The Paulson bailout might restore trust among financial institutions and enable them to lend to one another, but it doesn't provide a jolt to consumer demand.

Moreover, there may be more shoes to drop. Credit card debt could be the next to threaten balance sheets of financial institutions. Apparently, credit card debt has been securitized and sold as well, and not all of the debt is good. In addition, the leasing programs of the car manufacturers have turned sour. As a result of high gasoline prices and absence of growth in take-home pay, the residual values of big trucks and SUVs are less than the leasing programs estimated them to be, thus creating more financial problems. Car manufacturers are canceling their leasing programs, and this will further cut into sales.

According to statistician John Williams [ http://www.shadowst ats.com/section/ commentaries ] who measures inflation, unemployment, and GDP according to the methodology used prior to the Clinton regime's corruption of these measures, the US unemployment rate is currently at 14.7 per cent and the inflation rate is 13.2 per cent. Consequently, real US GDP growth in the 21st century has been negative.

This is not a picture of an economy that a bailout of financial institution balance sheets will revive. As the Paulson bailout does not address the mortgage problem per se, defaults and foreclosures are likely to rise, thus undermining the Treasury's estimate that 90 per cent of the mortgages backing the troubled instruments are good.

Moreover, one consequence of the ongoing financial crisis is financial concentration. It is not inconceivable that the US will end up with four giant banks: J.P. Morgan Chase, Citicorp, Bank of America, and Wachovia Wells Fargo. If defaulting credit card debt then assaults these banks' balance sheets, who is there to take them over? Would the Treasury be able to borrow the money for another Paulson bailout?

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Home Owners' Loan Corporation refinanced one million home mortgages in order to prevent foreclosures. The refinancing apparently succeeded, and HOLC returned a profit. The problem then, as now, was not "deadbeats" who wouldn't pay their mortgages, and the HOLC refinancing did not discourage others from paying their mortgages. Market purists who claim the only solution is for housing prices to fall to prior levels overlook that rising inventories can push prices below prior levels, thus causing more distress. They also overlook the role of interest rates. If a worsening credit crisis dries up mortgage lending and pushes mortgage interest rates higher, the rise in interest rates could offset the fall in home prices, and mortgages would remain unaffordable even in a falling housing market.
Some commentators are blaming the current mortgage problem on the pressure that the US government put on banks to lend to unqualified borrowers. However, whatever breaches of prudence there may have been only affected the earnings of individual institutions. They did not threaten the financial system. The current crisis required more than bad loans. It required securitization and its leverage. It required Fed chairman Alan Greenspan's inappropriate low interest rates, which created a real estate boom. Rapidly rising real estate prices quickly created home equity to justify 100 percent mortgages. Wall Street analysts pushed financial companies to improve their bottom lines, which they did by extreme leveraging.

An alternative to refinancing troubled mortgages would be to attempt to separate the bad mortgages from the good ones and revalue the mortgage-backed securities accordingly. If there are no further defaults, this approach would not require massive write-offs that threaten the solvency of financial institutions. However, if defaults continue, write-downs would be an ongoing enterprise.

Clearly, all Secretary Paulson thought about was getting troubled assets off the books of financial institutions.

The same reckless leadership that gave us expensive wars based on false premises has now concocted an expensive bailout that does not address the problem, which will fester and become worse.


Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@ yahoo.com

America's National Strategy of Global Intervention

By William Pfaff

October 18, 2008 "Information Clearinghouse" -- Paris, October 15, 2008 – Last June the U.S. Department of Defense unexpectedly issued a new version of its National Defense Strategy. It was unexpected because there will be a new administration in Washington in January which might be expected to issue a statement of its own ideas about military strategy.

Some in Washington speculated that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, only recently named to that office, a man who gets along with Democrats as well as Republications, might be bidding to keep his job under a new administration.

The new statement lacks the Bush administration’s unilateralism and triumphalism (as if there were anything left to be triumphal about), but it foresees a “Long War” of “promoting freedom, justice and human dignity by working to end tyranny, promote effective democracies and extend prosperity; and confronting the challenges of our time by leading a growing community of democracies.”

All that is straight Bush doctrine, drawn from his second inaugural address and Condoleezza Rice’s policy statement last summer predicting decades of a “new American realism” of “nation-building” to conquer “extremism.” By now the “Long War,” realistic or not, will have become orthodoxy for most of the Washington defense and strategic studies community.

The noteworthy thing about this National Defense Strategy statement is that it says nothing directly about American national defense. It is a strategy for intervening in other countries, and preventing others from blocking or resisting American interventions.

It states the responsibilities of America’s armed forces (summarizing the document’s introduction) as follows:

§ Conduct a global struggle against a violent extremist ideology that seeks to overturn the international system.

§ Deal with the threats of rogue-nation quests for nuclear weapons.

§ Confront the rising military power of other states.

These duties “[will require] the orchestration of national and international power over years or decades to come” to accomplish the following:

§ Long-term innovative approaches to counter al-Qaeda’s rejection of state sovereignty, violation of borders, and attempts to deny self-determination and human dignity.

§ Deal “with the inability of many states to police themselves effectively or work with their neighbors to ensure regional security.” Armed sub-national groups must be dealt with, “including but not limited to those inspired by violent extremism” which if left unchecked will threaten the stability and legitimacy of key states, and allow instability to spread “and threaten regions of interest to the United States, its allies and friends.”

§ Form local partnerships and creative approaches to deny extremists the opportunity to gain footholds in “ungoverned, under-governed, misgoverned, and contested areas” affecting local stability and regional stability.

§ Counter Iran’s pursuit of nuclear technology and enrichment capabilities, and deal with the ability of rogue states such as Iran and North Korea to threaten international order, sponsor terrorism, and disrupt fledgling democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

§ Meet possible challenges from (a) “more powerful states [that] might actively seek to counter the United States in some or all domains of traditional warfare or to gain an advantage in developing capabilities that offset our own,” as well as (b) nations that might “choose niche areas of military capability and competition in which they believe they can develop a strategic or operational advantage [even though] some of these potential competitors [may also be partners of the U.S. in] diplomatic, commercial or security efforts...”

§ For the foreseeable future, “hedge against China’s growing military modernization and the impact of its strategic choices on international security....The objective of this effort is to mitigate near-term challenges while preserving and enhancing U.S. national advantages over time.”

§ Recognize that Russia’s [pre-Georgian crisis] “retreat from openness and democracy,” “bullying of its neighbors,” and “more active military stance... and signaled increase in reliance on nuclear weapons as a foundation for its security ...[are warnings of] a Russia exploring renewed influence” and a greater international role.

§ Prevent prospective adversaries, especially non-state actors and their state sponsors, from adopting “anti-access technology and weaponry [that can] restrict our future freedom of action,” and also from “making adversary use of traditional means of influence” such as by “manipulating global opinion using mass communications venues and exploiting international commitments and legal avenues.”

§ The global “commons [space, international waters, aerospace and cyberspace] must be secured and with them access to world markets and resources,” using military capabilities and alliances and coalitions, participating in international security and economic institutions, and employing “diplomacy and soft power to shape the behavior of individual states and the international system, using force when necessary.”

The principal preoccupation of the document is to protect American forces operating in foreign countries: to block measures by foreign states to “deny” American efforts to intervene in their countries, or to develop measures and technology to resist American intervention (or to send Americans to international criminal courts).

As for the United States itself, the document quotes the constitutional obligation of the government “to provide for the common defense,” but says that today, after more than 230 years, the U.S. “shoulders additional responsibilities on behalf of the world,...a beacon of light for those in dark places.” Yet the fear of those dark places that permeates the document compels the recommendation that American troops remain at home, where they will be safe from enemies and untrustworthy allies, and defend their own country.

William Pfaff is the author of eight books on American foreign policy, international relations, and contemporary history, including books on utopian thought, romanticism and violence, nationalism, and the impact of the West on the non-Western world. His newspaper column, featured in The International Herald Tribune for more than a quarter-century, and his globally syndicated articles, have given him the widest international influence of any American commentator.

© Copyright 2008 by Tribune Media Services International. All Rights Reserved

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21048.htm

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Alex james writes:

The Privatization of the Pentagon: 21st Century Mercenaries inc

It seems that the power elite are reverting back to the ancient days of private feudal armies at their service. They already have control of their private banking dynasties, their private news media propaganda, i.e. nothing left for the people but to serve the elite.

MPRI and BLACKWATER are two of the several dozens of private for-profit secret army corporations that the Pentagon uses, especially for its covert and unapproved operations.

“American taxpayers already pay $300 billion a year to fund the world's most powerful military. Why should they have to pay a second time in order to privatize our operations? Are we outsourcing in order to avoid public scrutiny, controversy or embarrassment? Is it to hide body bags from the media and thus shield them from public opinion?” -- US Rep Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat

1. America's For-Profit Secret Army - UN Security Council - Global ...
One of the best known, MPRI, boasts of having "more generals per square foot than .... The Pentagon has even hired MPRI to help it write military doctrine ...
www.globalpolicy.org/security/peacekpg/training/mercenaries.htm - 31k - Cached - Similar pages
2. Corporate Mercenaries - Alfred Mendes
The most influential of these American mercenary groups is the Military Professional Resources Inc. (MPRI) which, to quote its website homepage “is a ...
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3. America's For-Profit Secret Army
"We don't want to risk getting contracts by being called mercenaries," said Doug ... The Pentagon has even hired MPRI to help it write military doctrine ...
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4. WINDS - Military Professional Resources Inc., Mercenaries For Hire
Mercenaries like Military Professional Resources, Inc. fills the bill that has ... MPRI dispatched a team to Croatia headed by a number of retired generals. ...
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5. The Really Bad Dogs of War
The most important among them has been MPRI. The firm has claimed “more generals per square foot than in the Pentagon,” including Gen. ...
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6. Mercenaries IN KOSOVO: The U.S. connection to the KLA - includes ...
MPRI is one of a handful of Pentagon contractors known as private military companies providing support to the KLA, according to retired Army Colonel David ...
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7. America's For-Profit Secret Army - New York Times
One of the best known, MPRI, boasts of having ''more generals per square foot than in the Pentagon.'' During the Persian Gulf war in 1991, one of every 50 ...
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8. Private Military Corporations - SourceWatch
The modern private military company has evolved from a hybrid of the wild ... MPRI and Titan were bought by L-3 Communications which is traded on the NYSE. ...
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9. Discussion INFOWAR
To David Isenberg, a company like MPRI stands at the pinnacle of the new hierarchy of private sector military firms: There's intense interest, ...
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10.   After Fallujah: The Truth About the Blackwater Mercenaries --RW/OR ...
MPRI's parent company, L-3 Communications, had more than a dozen lobbyists ... In other words, using mercenaries means the Pentagon can downplay the size of ...
revcom.us/a/1236/blackwater.htm - 12k - Cached - Similar pages
1. In the Black(water)
For his part, Joseph Schmitz--the former Pentagon Inspector General turned general ... Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, ...
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Bush's Shadow Army
Rumsfeld called for a wholesale shift in the running of the Pentagon, ... seat through these deliberations is the shadowy mercenary company Blackwater USA. ...
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3. Blackwater USA - SourceWatch
Blackwater—and private military contractors in general—came under increased ..... Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army (book) by ...
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4. After Fallujah: The Truth About the Blackwater Mercenaries --RW/OR ...
Increasingly, however, the main work of Blackwater has been deploying its own mercenary army-- recruited from elite U.S. military forces (especially from ...
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5. Pentagon Gives Blackwater Mercenaries New Contract | War on Iraq ...
4 Oct 2007 ... See more stories tagged with: mercenaries, blackwater, iraq ... Just another company making millions from the American taxpayer - profiting ...
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6. Democracy Now! | Our Mercenaries in Iraq: Blackwater Inc and ...
JEREMY SCAHILL: Blackwater is a company that began in 1996 as a private military .... Joseph Schmitz, who was the former Pentagon Inspector General, ...
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7. Jeremy Scahill questions the wisdom of the 48000 US -backed ...
Blackwater is far from being the biggest mercenary firm operating in Iraq, ... Joseph Schmitz, former Pentagon inspector general; and an impressive array of ...
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8. The Pentagon's Cubicle Mercenaries | The New America Foundation
16 Sep 2008 ... Beyond Blackwater: The Pentagon's Cubicle Mercenaries ... Welch noted at the time that General David Petraeus -- then responsible for more ...
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9. Tomgram: Frida Berrigan, The Pentagon Legacy of the MBA President
14 Sep 2008 ... The United States first heard the phrase "military industrial complex" during .... Beyond Blackwater: The Pentagon's Cubicle Mercenaries ...
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10. From Whitewater to Blackwater: Ken Starr, the Mercenaries' New Lawyer
27 Oct 2006 ... Blackwater USA, the private military contractor in the Bush .... is the former Pentagon Inspector General once responsible for overseeing ...
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America's For-Profit Secret Army
By Leslie Wayne
New York Times
October 13, 2002
With the war on terror already a year old and the possibility of war against Iraq growing by the day, a modern version of an ancient practice — one as old as warfare itself — is reasserting itself at the Pentagon. Mercenaries, as they were once known, are thriving — only this time they are called private military contractors, and some are even subsidiaries of Fortune 500 companies.
The Pentagon cannot go to war without them.
Often run by retired military officers, including three- and four-star generals, private military contractors are the new business face of war. Blurring the line between military and civilian, they provide stand-ins for active soldiers in everything from logistical support to battlefield training and military advice at home and abroad.
Some are helping to conduct training exercises using live ammunition for American troops in Kuwait, under the code name Desert Spring. One has just been hired to guard President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, the target of a recent assassination attempt. Another is helping to write the book on airport security. Others have employees who don their old uniforms to work under contract as military recruiters and instructors in R.O.T.C. classes, selecting and training the next generation of soldiers.
In the darker recesses of the world, private contractors go where the Pentagon would prefer not to be seen, carrying out military exercises for the American government, far from Washington's view. In the last few years, they have sent their employees to Bosnia, Nigeria, Macedonia, Colombia and other global hot spots.
Motivated as much by profits as politics, these companies — about 35 all told in the United States — need the government's permission to be in business. A few are somewhat familiar names, like Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of the Halliburton Company that operates for the government in Cuba and Central Asia. Others have more cryptic names, like DynCorp; Vinnell, a subsidiary of TRW; SAIC; ICI of Oregon; and Logicon, a unit of Northrop Grumman. One of the best known, MPRI, boasts of having "more generals per square foot than in the Pentagon."
During the Persian Gulf war in 1991, one of every 50 people on the battlefield was an American civilian under contract; by the time of the peacekeeping effort in Bosnia in 1996, the figure was one in 10. No one knows for sure how big this secretive industry is, but some military experts estimate the global market at $100 billion. As for the public companies that own private military contractors, they say little if anything about them to shareholders.
"Contractors are indispensible," said John J. Hamre, deputy secretary of defense in the Clinton administration. "Will there be more in the future? Yes, and they are not just running the soup kitchens."
That means even more business, and profits, for contractors who perform tasks as mundane as maintaining barracks for overseas troops, as sophisticated as operating weapon systems or as secretive as intelligence-gathering in Africa. Many function near, or even at, the front lines, causing concern among military strategists about their safety and commitment if bullets start to fly.
The use of military contractors raises other troubling questions as well. In peace, they can act as a secret army outside of public view. In war, while providing functions crucial to the combat effort, they are not soldiers. Private contractors are not obligated to take orders or to follow military codes of conduct. Their legal obligation is solely to an employment contract, not to their country.
Private military contractors are flushing out drug traffickers in Colombia and turning the rag-tag militias of African nations into fighting machines. When a United Nations arms embargo restricted the American military in the Balkans, private military contractors were sent instead to train the local forces.
At times, the results have been disastrous.
In Bosnia, employees of DynCorp were found to be operating a sex-slave ring of young women who were held for prostitution after their passports were confiscated. In Croatia, local forces, trained by MPRI, used what they learned to conduct one of the worst episodes of "ethnic cleansing," an event that left more than 100,000 homeless and hundreds dead and resulted in war-crimes indictments. No employee of either firm has ever been charged in these incidents.
In Peru last year, a plane carrying an American missionary and her infant was accidentally shot down when a private military contractor misidentified it as on a drug smuggling flight.
MPRI, formerly known as Military Professionals Resources Inc., may provide the best example of how skilled retired soldiers cash in on their military training. Its roster includes Gen. Carl E. Vuono, the former Army chief of staff who led the gulf war and the Panama invasion; Gen. Crosbie E. Saint, the former commander of the United States Army in Europe; and Gen. Ron Griffith, the former Army vice chief of staff. There are also dozens of retired top-ranked generals, an admiral and more than 10,000 former military personnel, including elite special forces, on call and ready for assignment. "We can have 20 qualified people on the Serbian border within 24 hours," said Lt. Gen. Harry E. Soyster, the company's spokesman and a former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. "The Army can't do that. But contractors can."
For that, MPRI is paid well. Its revenue exceeds $100 million a year, mainly from Pentagon and State Department contracts. Retired military personnel working for MPRI receive two to three times their Pentagon salaries, in addition to their retirement benefits and corporate benefits like stock options and 401(k) plans. MPRI's founders became millionaires in July 2000, when they and about 35 equity holders sold the company for $40 million in cash to L-3 Communications, a military contractor traded on the New York Stock Exchange.
Within the military, the use of contractors is Defense Department policy for filling the gaps as the number of troops falls. At the time of the gulf war, there were 780,000 Army troops; today there are 480,000. Over the same period, overall military forces have fallen by 500,000.
Pentagon officials did not respond to many telephone calls and e-mail messages requesting interviews, but they have maintained that contractors are a cost-effective way of extending the military's reach when Congress and the American public are reluctant to pay for more soldiers.
"The main reason for using a contractor is that it saves you from having to use troops, so troops can focus on war fighting," said Col. Thomas W. Sweeney, a professor of strategic logistics at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa. "It's cheaper because you only pay for contractors when you use them." But one person's cost-saving device can be another's "guns for hire," as David Hackworth, a former Army colonel and frequent critic of the military, called them.
"These new mercenaries work for the Defense and State Department and Congress looks the other way," Colonel Hackworth, a highly decorated Vietnam veteran, said. "It's a very dangerous situation. It allows us to get into fights where we would be reluctant to send the Defense Department or the C.I.A. The American taxpayer is paying for our own mercenary army, which violates what our founding fathers said."
They are not mercenaries in the classic sense. Most, but not all, private military contractors are unarmed, even when they oversee others with guns. They have even formed a trade group, the International Peace Operations Association, to promote industry standards.
"We don't want to risk getting contracts by being called mercenaries," said Doug Brooks, president of the association. "But we can do things on short notice and keep our mouths shut."
That, some critics say, is part of the problem. By using for-profit soldiers, the government, especially the executive branch, can evade Congressional limits on troop strength. For instance, in Bosnia, where a cap of 20,000 troops was imposed by Congress, the addition of 2,000 contractors helped skirt that restriction.
Contractors also allow the administration to carry out foreign policy goals in low-level skirmishes around the globe — often fueled by ethnic hatreds and a surplus of cold war weapons — without having to fear the media attention that comes if American soldiers are sent home in body bags.
At least five DynCorp employees have been killed in Latin America, with no public outcry. Denial is easier for the government when those working overseas do not wear uniforms — they often wear fatigues or military-looking clothes but not official uniforms.
"If you sent in troops, someone will know; if contractors, they may not," said Deborah Avant, an associate professor of political science at George Washington University and author of many studies on the subject. Only a few members of Congress have expressed concern about the phenomenon. "There are inherent difficulties with the increasing use of contactors to carry out U.S. foreign policy," said Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and the chairman of the foreign operations subcommittee. "This is especially true when it involves `private' soldiers who are not as accountable as U.S. military personnel. Accountability is a serious issue when it comes to carrying guns or flying helicopters in pursuit of U.S. foreign policy goals."
In the House, Representative Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat, led the battle against a Bush administration effort to remove the cap that limits the number of American troops in Colombia to 500 and private contractors to 300.
"American taxpayers already pay $300 billion a year to fund the world's most powerful military," Ms. Schakowsky said. "Why should they have to pay a second time in order to privatize our operations? Are we outsourcing in order to avoid public scrutiny, controversy or embarrassment? Is it to hide body bags from the media and thus shield them from public opinion?"
SUCH concerns are hardly slowing the pace across the Potomac, at MPRI in Alexandria, Va. The company may look like hundreds of other white-collar concerns that fill small office buildings in northern Virginia, but there are telltale signs to the contrary: the sword that serves as the corporate logo and conference rooms named the Infantry Room, the Cavalry Room and the Artillery Room. Its art consists of paintings of celebrated battles, largely from the Civil War.
It's hard to tell where the United States military ends and MPRI begins. For the last four years, MPRI has run R.O.T.C. training programs at more than 200 universities, under a contract that has allowed retired military to put their uniforms back on. It recently lost the contract to a lower bidder, but MPRI offset the loss with one to provide former soldiers to run recruitment offices.
The company, which has 900 full-time employees, helps run the United States Army Force Management School at Fort Belvoir. It also provides instructors for advanced training classes at Fort Leavenworth, teaches the Civil Air Patrol and designs courses at Fort Sill, Fort Knox, Fort Lee and other military centers.
The Pentagon has even hired MPRI to help it write military doctrine — including the field manual called "Contractors Support on the Battlefield" that sets rules for how the Army should interact with private contractors, like itself.
Overseas, MPRI is, if anything, more active. Under a program it calls "democracy transition," the company has offered countries like Nigeria, Bosnia, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Ukraine, Croatia and Macedonia training in American-style warfare, including war games, military instruction and weapons training.
In Croatia, MPRI was brought in to provide border monitors in the early 1990's. Then, in 1994, as the United States grew concerned about the poor quality of the Croatian forces and their ability to maintain regional stability, it turned to MPRI. A United Nations arms embargo in 1991, approved by the United States, prohibited the sale of weapons or the providing of training to any warring party in the Balkans. But the Pentagon referred MPRI to Croatia's defense minister, who hired the company to train its forces.
In 1995, MPRI started doing so, teaching the fledgling army military tactics that MPRI executives had developed while on active duty commanding the gulf war invasion. Several months later, armed with this new training, the Croatian army began Operation Storm, one of the bloodiest episodes of "ethnic cleansing" in the Balkans, an event that also reshaped the military balance in the region.
The operation drove more than 100,000 Serbs from their homes in a four-day assault. Investigators for the international war crimes tribunal in the Hague found that the Croatian army carried out summary executions and indiscriminately shelled civilians. "In a widespread and systematic matter, Croatian troops committed murder and other inhumane acts," investigators said in their report. Several Croatian generals in charge of the operation have been indicted for war crimes and are being sought for trial.
"No MPRI employee played a role in planning, monitoring or assisting in Operation Storm," said Lieutenant General Soyster, the MPRI spokesman. He did say that a few Croatian graduates of MPRI's training course participated in the operation.
Yet what happened in Croatia gave MPRI international brand recognition and more business in that region. When Bosnian Muslims balked in 1995 at signing the Dayton peace accords out of fear that their army was ill-equipped to provide sufficient protection, MPRI was called in.
"The Bosnians said they would not sign unless they had help building their army," said Peter Singer, a foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution who is writing a book on contractors. "And they said they wanted the same guys who helped the Croatians."
That is who they got. Under a plan worked out by American negotiators, the Bosnian Muslims hired MPRI using money that was provided by a group of Islamic nations, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Brunei, the United Arab Emirates and Malaysia. These nations deposited money in the United States Treasury, which MPRI drew against.
"It was a brilliant move in that the U.S. government got someone else to pay for what we wanted from a policy standpoint," Mr. Singer said. At the moment, MPRI is advertising for special forces for antiterrorist operations, is bulking up to train American forces in Kuwait and is looking for people with special skills like basic-training instruction and counterintelligence. Recently, however, it lost a $4.3 million contract to provide training to the army in Colombia when officials there complained about what they called the poor quality of MPRI's services.
In Africa, MPRI has conducted training programs on security issues for about 120 African leaders and more than 5,500 African troops. Most recently, it went toe to toe with the State Department, and won, gaining permission to do business in Equatorial Guinea, a country with a deplorable human rights record where the United States does not have an embassy.
After two years of lobbying at the State Department, and after being turned down twice on human rights grounds, MPRI was finally given approval last year to work with President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, whom the State Department describes as holding power through torture, fraud and a 98 percent election mandate. MPRI advised President Obiang on building a coast guard to protect the oil-rich waters being explored by Exxon Mobil off the coast.
More recently, when MPRI and President Obiang proposed that MPRI also help the country build its police and military forces, the State Department objected and the project is now dormant.
"We thought helping the coast guard would be pretty innocuous in terms of human rights," Lieutenant General Soyster of MPRI said. But Ms. Avant of George Washington University disagreed, saying any alliance with United States military contractors would strengthen President Obiang's power. MPRI is not the only company to have run into problems overseas. DynCorp, a privately held company in Reston, Va., with nearly $2 billion in annual sales, has been tapped to provide protection for Mr. Karzai in Afghanistan. DynCorp also provides worldwide protective services for State Department employees.
In late September, DynCorp settled charges — for an undisclosed sum — brought by a whistle-blower the company had fired after he complained of a sex ring run by DynCorp employees in Bosnia. In August, a British court, meanwhile, ruled in favor of another former DynCorp employee in a separate whistle-blower case. DynCorp is appealing.
The two employees made similar accusations: that while working in Bosnia, where DynCorp was providing military equipment maintenance services, DynCorp employees kept underaged women as sex slaves, even videotaping a rape. Among the charges was that while the DynCorp employees trafficked in women — including buying one for $1,000 — the company turned a blind eye. Since the DynCorp employees involved were not soldiers, their actions were not subject to military discipline. Nor did they face local justice; they were simply fired and sent home.
In both cases, after complaining, the two employees who blew the whistle were fired. Ben Johnston, one of them, said last April in Congressional testimony: "DynCorp employees were living off post and owning these children and these women and girls as slaves. Well, that makes all Americans look bad. I believe DynCorp is the worst diplomat our country could ever want overseas." A DynCorp spokesman, Chuck Taylor, said the company "felt horrible" and held its own internal investigation before firing the employees who operated the ring.
DynCorp also handles aerial anti-narcotics efforts for the United States government in the skies over Colombia and nearby countries — where several employees have been killed. Because of Congressional caps on the use of private military contractors, DynCorp has hired local citizens; two were recently killed.
Still, in its recruiting material, the company plays up the excitement of this type of work: "Being the best is never easy and when your office is the cockpit of a twin-engine plane swooping low over the Colombian jungle, the challenges can often be enormous."
Incidents like these — sex rings, deals with dictators, misused military training and tragic accidents — raise questions about the use of contractors. To whom are they accountable: the United States government or their contract? When such incidents occur, who bears the responsibility?
Moreover, while the general mantra about military privatization is that it saves money, there are few studies to prove the case — and in fact, reports exist to the contrary.
For instance, Kellogg Brown & Root, which was paid $2.2 billion to provide logistics support to American troops in the Balkans, was the subject of a General Accounting Office report entitled, "Army Should Do More to Control Contract Costs in the Balkans." The office found that the Army was not exercising enough oversight on Kellogg Brown & Root as contract costs rose, to the benefit of the company. Still, the company continues to pick up new business.
Questions about security and control are even more basic. In the battlefield, a commander cannot give orders to a contractor as he can a soldier. Contractors are not compelled by an oath of office, as soldiers are, but instead by an employment contract that provides little flexibility. Nor are contractors subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Contractors cannot arm themselves — they risk losing their status as noncombatants if they do and, in the extreme, could be declared mercenaries and subject to execution if captured. Yet in the gulf war, contractors were in the thick of battle, providing maintenance to tanks and biological and chemical vehicles as well as flying air support.
Should there be a war in Iraq, the line could be even blurrier. "There are no rear areas anymore," Colonel Sweeney of the Army War College said. With chemical and biological weapons, "no place is safe," he said. "You can't draw a map and say `no contractors forward of this line,' " he added. "The American concept of combat is to take the battle to the rear areas and be as disruptive as possible. The other guy is thinking the same thing."
One tenet of warfare is that soldiers handling support functions can grab a gun and hit the front lines if needed. While this is often dismissed as a quaint World War II concept, it happened in Somalia in 1993 when Army rangers were in trouble and military supply clerks came to their rescue. When the support staff is filled with contractors, would they do the same? Or would commanders in the field become responsible for the safety of the growing number of contractor employees at the expense of advancing the battle? The issue is just beginning to generate some attention in military circles. "We sort of blur the lines," Col. Steven J. Zamparelli of the Air Force said in an interview. In an article in 1999 for the Air Force Journal of Logistics, Colonel Zamaparelli said: "The Department of Defense is gambling future military victory on contractors' performing operational functions in the battlefield."
Others in the military are more blunt about the effect on soldiers. "Are we ultimately trading their blood to save a relatively insignificant amount in the national budget?" said Lt. Col. Lourdes A. Castillo of the Air Force, a logistics expert, in a 2000 article in Aerospace Power Journal. "If this grand experiment undertaken by our national leadership fails during wartime, the results will be unthinkable."



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Geonkhali project: All depends on 182 acres

Biswabrata Goswami
TAMLUK, Oct. 19: The fate of the Apeejay and Bharti groups joint venture shipyard project at Geonkhali in East Midnapore rests with the villagers who have so far remained silent on the issue of land acquisition. These villagers, who own about 182 acres of land in the total project area of 491.98 acres, have neither objected nor given consent to the project.
The East Midnapore district administration has already heard the petitioners who object to parting with their lands under section 5(A) of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 and the report has already been sent to the government.
Mr Srikumar Taraphdar, additional district magistrate (Haldia) said: “We heard all the petitioners recently under section 5(A) of Land Acquisition Act. A report has already been sent to the state government. We will now initiate draft notification and then assessment of the land valuation on the basis of the current market rate under section 6(1) of Land Acquisition Act."
He said: “After hearings in three phases, we have found that 494 villagers who own about 255 acres of land are willing to hand over their land to the government. While 143 petitioners who have nearly 55 acres of land have objected to part with their land. In Badur mouza, people who own about 49 acres have objected while owners having 1.36, 2.26 and 1.86 acres of land in Babupur, Deulpota and Bhangagora mouzas, have objected to land acquisition.”
But, the district administration has no clue about the rest 182 acres. The Trinamul Congress has claimed that if the government tries to acquire land without taking the consent of these still silent land owners, there would be a Singur re-run. “We are hopeful about the project as majority of the villagers are willing to give their land, but it will become clearer on 27 October when the district magistrate Ms CD Lama holds a meeting with the unwilling farmers,” Mr Taraphdar added.
http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=6&theme=&usrsess=1&id=227791

Maoist bandh in three districts

MIDNAPORE, Oct. 19: Maoists have called a 12-hour bandh in Midnapore West, Bankura and Purulia districts on 23 October over the proposed steel plant at Salboni in Midnapore West by the Jindal group of industries.
The foundation of the plant will be laid by the chief minister, Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee on 2 November. Union minister for steel and fertilizers, Mr Ram Vilash Paswan and a few other Union ministers are likely to be present on the occasion. Posters in support of the bandh have already been put up by the Midnapore West-Bankura-Puruila zonal committee of the CPI (Maoist) at Thakuranipahari, Muchkandna and several other places under Simulpal gram panchayat in Belpahari. 
The posters read ~ "No land should be acquired without giving adequate compensation to the farmers" and "Police-CPI-M terrorism will be fought out". In view of the Maoists’ call for bandh and the assembly of state and Central ministers on 2 November, the district administration and police officials along with representatives of Jindal Steel discussed the security arrangement at Midnapore Circuit House. The Rs 35,000-crore mega steel plant will come up on 4,500 acres, of which around 4,000 acres are government land while the rest 500 acres are owned by the farmers. However, the private land was acquired by the Jindals after holding dialogues directly with the farmers.
Meanwhile, Belpahari police intercepted a mini bus from Simulpal to Silda at Sahari point with a bandh poster stuck on its body. n SNS
Shift possible for Aerotropolis project

Kanchan Siddiqui
DURGAPUR, Oct. 19: The country's first Aerotropolis project at Andal may shift either to Purulia or Tagore's Santiniketan as these areas are beyond the coal bearing sector, said a top official of the Bengal Aerotropolis Projects Limited (BAPL) today. The official said that it doesn't have much time to wait for execution of the project as certain foreign aviation companies are having equity participation.
The Rs 10,000 crore project had received a setback last month after Coal India Limited expressed concern fearing a huge revenue loss as the project was being developed over a rich coal bearing zone.
Dr Partha S Bhattacharyya, chairman, CIL in his official communication to the state commerce & industry minister, Mr Nirupam Sen on 1 September said: “It is proposed that the matter of building an aero complex over coal bearing areas at Andal may be re-looked so that the valuable coal reserves may not be blocked for development of the country. An alternate site in the non-coal-bearing area having metamorphic rock formation may be identified for development of such permanent structures.”
The CIL's objection came as a setback for the state commerce & industry department. The West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC) that is assigned to help acquire 3,500 acres of land for the project, meanwhile initiated primary work by asking the Central Mine Planning & Design Institute Limited (CMPDI), a CIL subsidiary with an intention to convince the BAPL that the CIL chairman's warning had no impact on the state bid for the project.
WBIDC managing director, Dr Subrata Gupta in his official communication to the regional director, CMPDI, Asansol on 30 September had some quarries about the site at Andal that included: The quality and quantity of coal available and depth at which these reserves occur; the plan for working these coal reserves over the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years; which of these reserves would be worked through open cast mining and which by underground mining?; In case of open cast mining, what would be the affected surface area for each coal block and for underground mining what would be the minimum land requirement at surface? and finally, If underground or open cast mining is resorted to, what would be the procedure adopted for reclamation of the mining area?
Dr Gupta told The Statesman: “We are waiting for the report of a joint survey that was conducted by the CPPDI and Asansol Durgapur Development Authority (ADDA) last month.” Mr Partha Ghosh, MD, BAPL said: “We don't have enough time to wait for the project at Andal. Some foreign companies have equity participation at the proposed Aerotropolis there.”
A top official of the company said: “We shall wait for some more time, or else we would have to shift it to a non-coal-bearing zone like Santiniketan or Purulia. Primary talks in this regard are also on.”

Jharia burns in anger
SHASHANK SHEKHAR
 
Dhanbad, Oct. 15: The public investment bureau (PIB) has shown the green light to a Rs 6,997-crore Jharia rehabilitation package and it is just a matter of time before the Union Cabinet puts its stamp of approval. But the million dollar question is who will convince some 400,000 residents to evacuate the danger zone, where an underground fire has been raging for more than 90 years?

The people of Jharia are fully aware that the area — a hotbed of illegal mining activities — is no longer safe for them. Land subsidence and gas poisoning have already claimed victims in Dharmanagar, Chuthakuli, Ghanudih, Indira Nagar and Rajput Bustee, but still not one among the 68,000-odd families is willing to leave what they claim to be their ancestral land.

According to a recent Bharat Coking Coal Limited (BCCL) report, at least 7,100 families are living in the “highly vulnerable zone” and need immediate rehabilitation. But the BCCL’s attempts to shift them have been thwarted every time by residents who dub the move mere eyewash.

They believe the coal major would act in a partisan way once they leave Jharia. “The officials will only compensate their own workers. What will happen to us?” a resident voiced his fears.

BCCL sources said the Jharia Action Plan okayed by the PIB would be implemented in three phases — dousing underground fire, rehabilitating residents and relocating highways and railway tracks that pass over the Jharia coalfields. While about Rs 4,000 crore will be spent on rehabilitation and relocation, Rs 2,000 crore will be used to douse the fire, raging since 1916, and save billions of tonnes of quality coal that may fetch the Coal India Limited (CIL) big money. The rest of the money under the Jharia Action Plan has been sanctioned for the Raniganj coal belt in Bengal.

At a recent news meet, BCCL’s technical director P.K. Lahiri had announced that more than 70 small townships on 595 acres of land would be built to rehabilitate those displaced from Jharia. Already, 2,352 dwelling units have been constructed at Belgaria. Lahiri said the townships would come up at Bhuli-II and its adjoining areas. They would be connected with proper roads and also boast rail links, besides basic amenities.

Talking to The Telegraph, chairman-cum-managing director of BCCL A.K. Paul said the company had also promised to look into the welfare of residents in the new townships. “We have repeatedly told them how dangerous it is to live in Jharia. Several pockets have been identified as highly vulnerable. Though efforts are being made to douse the fire, some places are so sensitive that we have no choice but to evacuate. Land subsidence — small and big — has become a routine affair. We cannot risk a disaster,” he said.

The senior BCCL official, however, admitted that there were not many takers for the idea. Despite assurances from the BCCL and the district administration, the residents of Jharia are not ready to risk their home and hearth for what they see as “empty promises”. It is also a question of livelihood that is bothering a section of the people who do not work in mines.

“The deal is not impressive. It’s just a big carrot the BCCL is dangling in front of our nose. It has no intention of helping us move to safer places, but is just conspiring to save tonnes of coal by evicting us,” said septuagenarian Rameshwar Singh, who runs a transport business and had shifted here from Balia, Uttar Pradesh, 50 years ago. Singh said the package did not mention what they would do after losing their present source of income.

The Jharia Coalfield Bachao Samiti (JCBS), a frontal organisation protesting against the proposed evacuation, too, has accused the BCCL and district administration of being undemocratic and anti-people.

JCBS secretary M.L. Khanna said he had asked deputy commissioner, Dhanbad, Ajay Kumar to give two cottahs of land and Rs 2 lakh as compensation to those living on non-riyati land. He also warned the administration of brewing resentment among Jharia residents that might snowball into violence in days to come.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1081016/jsp/jharkhand/story_9975368.jsp

The Bank Panic of 2008 and the Death of NATO
The Pravda

NATO, an organization not only out dated but without official purpose has not only out lived its enemy, the Warsaw Pact, not only out lived its purpose in defending Western Europe from the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact but like a ravenous blob, has, instead of dieing a dignified death, gone on an eating spree swallowing up one nation after another in it's "pact of peace and defense" while launching three wars of aggression.

NATO was originally designed to keep Germany down, America in Europe and the Soviets out. With no Soviet Union, NATO's purpose, like that of all good bureaucracies, has mutated. It has reneged on its promises to Russia not to expand eastward and has expanded eastward into some rather questionable regimes, particularly in the Baltics. All the same, as it was declaring Russia a useful partner, though a minor one not worthy of ever inviting in, it sought out a new purpose.

The purpose was found on first the battle fields of Bosnia and than later in the air over Serbian cities, where civilians were massacred to the back pats of "job well done" from NATO. Of course, this was all done with major arm twisting by the Americans of a reluctant European NATO. It would seem that defending and militarily supporting Islamic jihadists was something that Dhimmi Washington was much more apt for than the Europeans. However, the USD won hands down and Europe went along, just like it went along to Afghanistan.

Afghanistan was and is the first real NATO fighting war. No longer is this primarily NATO bombers dropping bombs, often on civilians targets, from 3,500 meters, no this is a fighting war with a jihadist guerrilla force, trained by the very same NATO experts. Afghanistan as a whole has already shown NATO to be an empty shell. Many of the members have opted out of contributing anything to the conflict and quite a few that have sent soldiers have sent them with such strict rules of engagement (ROE)s that they are all but useless.

To the Anglo-American Neocons, this of course was a disaster. Their grip on power over Europe and thus the EU in general, was cracking. Add to this the economic knots tied by Russia to several key members, using the very real ropes of energy and business investments, and NATO was opting to be nothing more than a sewing circle.

The Anglo-American Neocons had to take bold action, something that would cause the member states of NATO to recoil back under the Neocon umbrella and unify against a common enemy. But whom? The Muslims showed little ability to project military power into Europe, they do much better with immigrants. The Chinese were out of the question a general rule, way to much elite money at risk for that kind of nonsense. Thus there was only one clear choice: Russia. But how to resurrect the Soviet Union, or at least it's shadow?

Enter stage right, a small time Georgian dictator and one not to bright but very egotistical. The perfect dupe: Saakashvili.

Apparently convincing Saakashvili that exterminating an autonomous province full of a minority that was at once not only protected by Russians but who were 90% Russian citizens, was not a difficult concept, even though he must have known that there was a very large chance that things would turn out just how they turned out. How much and what kind of aid was promised to the Georgian leadership will always be a mystery. What is known, from this writer's first hand knowledge, is that the Georgians have been expecting America to fight a war with Russia for them, since 2001, from the times of Shevardnadze.

Of course, the over stretched US and UK had no plans to ever start a war for Georgia but Georgia was central to their plans to start a war for them. Start a war it did, however not only did the Russians react but they reacted with lightening speed, destroying the Georgian war machine in 2 days and absolutely routing the Georgian forces into a full retreat. In small nations there is precious little space to retreat to.

The Angl0-American Neocons won the over all PR war, making their sociopathic puppet look the part of the victim. However, past rhetoric, the desired reaction did not happen. Germany, France and Italy did not move to the side of the Anglo-American military industrial complex. Instead they negotiated a settlement, the last thing the Neocons planned on or wanted. Furthermore, rifts appeared in various other NATO countries, even Estonia, where groups of MPs decided enough was enough and they were not going to suffer for the Georgian stupidity by loosing business with Russia. Even Brussels said "No" and all flatly said no MAPs (Membership Action Plans) for Ukraine and Georgia.

These were all severe blows to the Anglo-American Trotskyites, no less severe as not coming themselves to the defense of their puppet. This was equally a powerful message. The failure in Afghanistan only adding insult to injury.

Still, all this in itself, may not be enough to finally finish off NATO and end the 100 years of Ideological Warfare, for yes, dear reader, we have yet to leave that period. Russia is no longer the Soviet Union, no longer the Stalinist Marxists, but Economic Trotskyite Marxism (fascism) is alive and well, having infected the West flowing from the decayed corpse of Military Trotskyite Marxism (Nazism). NATO is the final guard against the return of the traditional world, where nations sought economic advantage for themselves not in the name of some mutant form of Internationalism. It is the final guard against nationalistic states that sought the betterment of their people first and foremost and not that of some hypothetical global village or for the internationalistic elite.

The Bank Panic of 2008 may be, however the final stone to knock down this aged and staggering Goliath. The Anglo-American Trotskyites who created this mess are in short, bankrupt. Their ability to project power grows weaker every day with a new DOW low. At the same time, nations such as Iceland, once one of their key military posts, are seeking aid not from their so called allies but from Russia itself. Bound together by economic or cultural or religious or historical ties, or all of the above, nations such as Iceland, Germany, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Czech, Slovakia and others will naturally pull away from the now bankrupt alliance. Historical ties that were supposed to have died along with history, as proclaimed by one of the fathers of Trotskyite Neoconism: Fukuyama, will now return the globe to an equilibrium long not seen and one that promises more stability than the Internationalist regimes of the past 100 years.

Stanislav Mishin

http://english.neftegaz.ru/english/info/press/press_rev.php?id=5319

Is Ratan Tata a Marxist?







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Strangely, while the Tatas are being made out to be hyper-political animals, they failed to cosy up to a possible deal with the opponents of the Singur plant, which is what most other Indian business houses would have done just to keep options open for the future.
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“Is the way to go forward through agitation, rallies and strikes?”
Ranabir Ray Choudhury

That the poverty of responsible politics — the responsibility extending to the future of West Bengal and not just to the momentary requirements of politicians and political parties — has been the bane of the State has once again been emphasised by the response the ‘open letter’ from Ratan Tata has drawn from some State politicians.
As has been argued before, in the years ahead, the Nano plant in Singur would have been a feather in the cap of the State, irrespective of which political party or parties ruled the roost at Writers’ Buildings. It, therefore, follows that the shifting of the plant from West Bengal has seriously harmed the State’s long-term interests.
This point is doubly reinforced by the fact that, till now, no politician has attempted the impossible so to speak, namely, to argue that the Tata plant would have affected the interests of the State adversely. Those against the inclusion of the disputed 400 acres never did say that they were against the setting up of the plant.
The only point they tried to make — and in the wrong way — was that the land would have to be returned to those farmers unwilling to sell their land to the State, the plant being given an equivalent area in some other neighbouring location (across the Durgapur Expressway).
Most people disappointed

The objective of labouring this point is to drive home the fact that, irrespective of what some politicians have been saying in public, most people have been disappointed with the Tata decision to move the car plant out of West Bengal.
The tragedy is that — and this is where the ‘open letter’ from Ratan Tata figures and where the poverty of politics in the State lies — some of these ‘leaders’ have been trying to make political capital out of a lose-lose situation for the State’s economy, in the process dragging into the controversy the house of the Tatas, which has done the country proud over the past century.
Indeed, in the normal course, no industrialist sticks his head out and criticises specific politicians and political parties because there is no way of knowing who will be in power in the years ahead, when business opportunities will continue to crop up and one will have to run from pillar to post for licences, etc. But this is precisely what the Tatas have done vis-À-vis the failure of the Singur plant to come up in West Bengal which, according to one view, can only measure their strong conviction that what is happening in West Bengal today is just not right in the economic interests of the people of the State.
‘Secret understanding’ in return for what?

One politician has discovered a ‘secret understanding’ between Bombay House and the Left Front Government in terms of which the Tatas are helping out the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee Government in return for . . . .what? Industrialists are known to extract their pound of flesh only through hefty profits.
Quite clearly, this politician and others of his ilk will have to eat their words over the next two years if the Tatas do not succeed in their hidden design. Strangely, while the Tatas are being made out to be hyper-political animals, they failed to cosy up to a possible deal with the opponents of the Singur plant, which is what most other Indian business houses would have done just to keep options open for the future.
The only rational explanation for this unusual business behaviour on the part of Ratan Tata is that he is a deeply ideological animal, his support for the Marxists being cemented by his strong penchant for the colour Red.
But this, of course, is sheer nonsense because neither the Tatas nor the Birlas nor the Ambanis or whoever in India’s industrial firmament is known to be a staunch ideological Left supporter beyond the normal preoccupation with social and labour welfare issues.
Admittedly, in his October 17 ‘open letter’ — which was issued in response to the suggestion that the company’s Singur decision was ‘hasty and politically motivated’ — Mr Tata was transparently supportive of the Left Front Government’s industrial policies, stating unequivocally that “all through the two years that we have been constructing the plant at Singur, (the) feeling of faith and confidence in the vision and objectives of the State Government has been reinforced,” all interactions with the Chief Minister and his men having been ‘exemplary.’
He also asked the people of the State, specially the ‘younger citizens’, whether “they would like to support the present Government of Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to build a prosperous State with the rule of law, modern infrastructure and industrial growth, supporting a harmonious investment in the agricultural sector to give the people in the State a better life?” or whether they would prefer to see West Bengal “consumed by a destructive political environment of confrontation, agitation, violence and lawlessness?”
No two views

There can be no two views on the point that, over the past couple of years, the Chief Minister, whatever his drawbacks on other counts, has been doing the right thing for the State’s future as far as industrialisation is concerned.
There will also be complete unanimity on the point that opposition for the sake of opposition is usually a code of conduct for societies where the standard of political behaviour has hit rock-bottom.
On the other hand, what one can say with confidence is that Ratan Tata did not say anything new in his ‘open letter’ which was not included in the statement he issued to the media on October 3 when the withdrawal from Singur was announced.
His appreciation of the Left Front Government was very much there as also his exasperation with the Opposition’s political campaign against the plant. Then also he had asked whether the “future generation of West Bengal (would) have the opportunity unless there is . . . industrial investment?” As he said, “one needs to ponder: Is the way to go forward through agitation, rallies and strikes?”
If Opposition politicians in West Bengal think it fit to make an issue of this very basic stand, this adequately explains why they have not been able to provide effective leadership to those in the State who have been wanting a change of Government.
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2008/10/20/stories/2008102050880800.htm
ata Nano will roll out of Pantnagar by June, say vendors
The auto maker’s original plan was to manufacture 250,000 cars a year and ramp it up to 500,000 units from Singur in West Bengal
http://www.livemint.com/2008/10/17233337/Tata-Nano-will-roll-out-of-Pan.html
Mumbai: Tata Motors Ltd will roll out the first batch of its low-cost Tata Nano car from the company’s Pantnagar plant in Uttarakhand in the first half of 2009, said three suppliers present at the company’s national vendors conference where they said the plans were announced.
Tata Motors may initially make 50,000 units in Pantnagar, where it will initially only assemble the car. The engines are likely to be manufactured at its Pune facility, the vendors said.
The auto maker’s original plan was to manufacture 250,000 cars a year and ramp it up to 500,000 units from Singur in West Bengal.
All the vendors quoted in the story asked not to be identified because of a confidentiality clause in their contracts with Tata Motors.
The company had earlier planned to launch the Nano by the end of the year, before it pulled out from Singur due to protests over land acquisition and decided to relocate the plant to Sanand in Gujarat.
The vendors, who were among 300-odd invitees at the conference in Mumbai on 16 October, said the company informed them of its launch programme and other plans.
Debasis Ray, head of corporate communications at Tata Motors, declined to comment on the launch or divulge other details. He only said, “It was a general discussion on company’s long-term strategy. The meets between the company and its vendors happenevery year.”
The vendors mentioned earlier said Tata Motors had to trim its initial production volume as the factory in Sanand may take a year or more to be ready for production. The process for allotting 1,100 acres of land in Sanand will be completed by the end of this month, they said.
Tata Motors currently makes its mini-truck Ace and its variants in Pantnagar.
On a compensation package for vendors who had invested in Singur, Ray said, “Yes, we did arrive at a conclusion but it’s internal to the company and can’t be disclosed.”
It’s is not clear whether the losses by parts suppliers would be compensated by Tata Motors or the West Bengal government.
“Tata Motors has asked us to give an account of the investments made in Singur, post which it will play an instrumental role in ensuring that we are adequately compensated,” said another vendor who attended the conference.
“The company is likely to firm up guidelines for claiming compensation from (the) West Bengal government once it has consolidated account of all the expenditure,” said another supplier.
The subject of revision of price targets was also brought up in the conference. “They said (they) will try and resolve the related concerns,” said a vendor who maintained the company was likely to adhere to its Rs1 lakh price tag.
The day-long gathering was addressed by Ravi Kant, managing director of the company, and other senior officials, the vendors said.
Industry CPM’s poll plank
- Soft on Tata to pin Mamata
OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
Calcutta, Oct. 14: The CPM central committee today backed Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s government and the Bengal party unit on Singur and asked them to focus on post-Nano industrialisation to make it their poll plank.
“We endorsed the steps taken by the state leadership on Singur. The party will go to the people against the destructive politics of the Opposition,” general secretary Prakash Karat said after the three-day deliberations ended this afternoon.
“We are confident that the people of Bengal will defend the mandate of the Assembly elections so the Left Front government can fulfil its goals of industrial and all-round development,” he added.
The Bengal leaders had told the committee yesterday that the party hoped to make electoral gains by cashing in on the anti-Mamata Banerjee mood after the Tata pullout.
Karat denied that the government had failed to contain the situation that led to the pullout. “There’s no question.... Certain leaders and parties are uncontrollable.”
The party has asked the government to take the initiative to bring alternative industrial projects to Singur and implement projects elsewhere.
“(The) withdrawal of (the) Tatas does not mean full stop to the goal of industrialisation. It’s for the government and party to decide what to do with (the) land given for (the) Tata Motors project and whether they should look for alternative options,’’ Karat said.
State CPM secretary Biman Bose said talks were “on at different levels and (on) proposals to set up other industries” at the Tata site. “But nothing concrete has taken shape. I can’t say whether an alternative project will come up before the (Lok Sabha) polls.”
He refused comment on the transport minister’s claim that a deal for another car plant in Singur had been finalised.
Bose rejected Mamata’s renewed demand to return land to the unwilling Singur farmers and maintained that a new project would come up there.
Karat held Mamata responsible for the Tata Motors pullout and declined to criticise the company, though some leaders had found its decision “unreasonable” and “hasty”. “The blame squarely lies with the Opposition and Ratan Tata has made it clear,” Karat said.
Some central committee members said the party had decided not criticise the Tatas as it would blunt the campaign against Mamata. It will also alienate Ratan Tata, whose offensive against Mamata would pay dividends in the polls, they said.
Karat defended acquisition of land in Bengal for industry and found no dichotomy in Kerala’s decision not to do so. “(The) nature of industry is different in Bengal and Kerala, so are their land requirements. Land is scarce in Kerala and most proposals for SEZs and other projects came from IT and biotech industries, requiring 10-50 acres, or 150 acres at the maximum. The situation is different here.”

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1081015/jsp/bengal/story_9969885.jsp


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Promoted Inferno:Fire guts Kolkata markets, spreads to multi ...
Contact: Palash C Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, ... West Bengal Governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi also reached the spot while Kolkata ...
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Topic with Posts Category: Current Affairs (31 Posts) Topic ...
- 13 Sep
Palash Biswas http://troubledgalaxydetroyeddreams.blogspot.com/ ... Gopalkrishna Gandhi to find a solution to the 28-month dispute over the land ...
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Palash Speaks » 2008 » May
Gopalkrishna Gandhi will observe a two-hour voluntary power cut daily at . ... Plash Biswas I spit on thee, US Imperialism!I stand with you US Freedom ...
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Palash Speaks » Blog Archive » Kolkata Unbound
May 17th, 2007 | by Palash Biswa. Kolkata Unbound Palash Biswas ..... which met Governor Mr Gopal Krishna Gandhi, reprotedly told him the number of ...
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More results from blogs.ibibo.com »
Fascist ynamics in South Asia Heightened as Ruling Bengali ...
6 Sep 2008 ... Palash Biswas http://troubledgalaxydetroyeddreams.blogspot.com/ ..... presided over by West Bengal Governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi, said that ...
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Resistance
Palash Biswas Both feminism and nationalism in India emerged from the social .... Also, West Bengal Governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi has hardly ever courted ...
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Pant Nagar Story is different from Singur, Nandigram as Government ...
Palash biswas द्वारा 6 सितंबर, 2008 12:10:00 AM IST पर ... West Bengal Governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi has deferred the much awaited talks on ...
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subhash-chakraborty--supports-buddha - Palash Speaks
Contact: Palash C Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, .... called on Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi and discussed the Nandigram developments. ...
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Archives at Zinester: [India Thinkers Net ] Mumbai blasts ,Bangla ...
From: palash biswas Date: Thu Jul 13, 2006 .... Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi, the AIFB alleged that the government ...
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Marxist Minister played cultural Trump card in Tri - Palash Speaks ...
Contact: Palash C Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. .... (Weekly Organ of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) ...
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Palash Speaks » Blog Archive » Discrimination and Persecution Marxist
Discrimination and Persecution Marxist. Palash Biswas. (ContAct: Palash Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. ...
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Category listing Art & Culture(228) Books(106) Business(395 ...
India Shines! Palash Biswas (Contact: Palash C Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, ... " how the marxists are working out his own plan"in a state of democratic India. ...
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Brute! Killer regemented Hegemony Ruling West Bengal | Palash ...
Contact: Palash C Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, .... The ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) is holding a rally in Kolkata. ...
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Blogs
Black Flags For Capitalist Marxist Buddha Palash Biswas Contact: Palash C Biswas , C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. ...
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marxist hallucination
Marxist Hallucination. Palash Biswas. Published 14 January, 2007 ... He was the president of all India Bengali Refugee committe. He was mishandled and was ...
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Palash biswas :: articles
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Palash biswas द्वारा 19 जून, 2008 6:45 PM पर पोस्टेड # ... Once again, the mother Marxist Party in India, the CPI tagged itself with ...
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nandigramunited: efforts in popularizing and propagating rare and ...
buddhesh mani. Posted by Palash Biswas at 10:43 AM. Labels: Marxist literature and documents ..... Child malnutrition is an old stain on a new India . ...
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Singur Siege: Brand India, Internal corporate Imperialism and the ...
Singur Siege: Brand India, Internal corporate Imperialism and the Ways of Leftist Fascism! Troubled Galaxy Destroyed Dreams: Chapter 55 Palash Biswas ...
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Now Nuclear Parks for the Hindu Super Power - Atheism | Google Groups
2 posts - 2 authors - Last post: 1 Sep
Palash Biswas. INFLATION AND MORALS ... Ideological Hypocrisy of Brahmin Marxists in India as they wanted the ...
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