Open Letter To Killary Voters

Dear Killary voters who are now rioting in protest against Trump - may I, a neutral, ask you a few questions?

You aren't happy with Trump taking office. Not only is he a vile, xenophobic, misogynist racist, who wants to throw out Hispanic immigrants and block unregulated Muslim immigration, but you don't want his finger on the nuclear button.

Fine. So do tell me this:

Where were you when Barack Hussein Obama was bombing seven - seven! - Muslim countries? Where were you when he held Kill List meetings every Tuesday and went eenie-meenie-minie-moe on who he'd kill that week? When he chortled that he was "really good at killing folk", where were you?

When Obama's drones blew up weddings and funerals, schools and ambulances, and killed brown skinned people (like this writer- like me) only because of the colour of their skin and their "military age", why were you silent? When he armed and financed the zionist entity in Occupied Palestine as it was blasting Gaza to pieces in 2014 and building illegal settlements and an Apartheid Wall in the West Bank, where was your outrage?

When Obama instigated and arranged a colour revolution in Ukraine, replacing a democratically elected government with a shambolic puppet regime of Ukranazis and oligarchs, what happened to your anger? When these Ukranazis were shelling and bombing towns in Donbass and burning alive protestors in Odessa, may I know where you were?

Where were you when Killary Klingon, as Secretary of State, destroyed Libya and murdered Gaddafi, cackling maniacally "We came, we saw, he died" and posed with al Qaeda on the tarmac in Tripoli? When her jihadis stuffed black Libyans in cages, hacked them with machetes, destroyed their towns and raped and murdered young women who wouldn't wear hijabs, where were you?

What did you say when this same Killary sent arms from Libya to Syria to arm jihadi cannibal headhunters there? What was your response when she - and Obama - plotted to turn Syria into another destroyed wasteland like Libya? Why were your lips sealed when they almost started WWIII with Russia over al Qaeda in that country?

Where did your outrage go when Obama armed, instigated and supported Saudi Barbaria's (failing) war on Yemen , including a starvation blockade that has reduced a generation of Yemeni children to skeletons?

You hate racism, but when Killary stole millions from Haiti, installed a coup regime in Honduras, and Obama deported Mexicans in record numbers, what happened to your anger?

I would love to know what you were doing, too, when Killary devastated Serbia, creating the narcomafia pseudostate of Kosovo, whose handpicked thug-in-chief Hashim Thaçi traded human organs for profit. Did you protest about this at any point?

I'm sure you're all very earnest and very anti racist, so you should have no trouble answering my questions.

Please do let me know.

Yours sincerely

Bill the Butcher

[Image Source]

Your Thing With Vladimir: An Open Letter To Antiputinistas

Dear Antiputinistas,

Before I begin, let me congratulate you: you have finally compelled me to give recognition, despite myself, to your existence.

I tell you, this was not easy. I worked, wrote stories, drew cartoons about terrorism, and in general managed to carry on as though you didn’t exist. But there came a point that you couldn’t even come across the words “Putin” or “Russia”, “Olympics” or “gay” online without you descending in hordes to declaim shrilly about him. Finally, there was no way I could stay oblivious, despite all my efforts.

I suppose that was your goal, to make it impossible for anyone to ignore you.

As I said, congratulations.

But, my Antiputinista friends, though your attempts at garnering publicity for yourselves have worked, what have you actually – in concrete terms – achieved?

Not much, actually. In fact, nothing at all.

Why not?

Because, whatever you may say or think, it has absolutely no effect on Putin himself. Is Putin going to change his views because you call him a despot and demand he be hanged in Red Square? Of course not. Is Putin going to stop his (alleged) persecution of homosexuals because you Photoshop rainbow-coloured Hitler moustaches on his photo? Will the President of Russia give up his policies because George Takei condemns him? Are you kidding me?

In fact, let me tell you a little fact which might surprise you, my Antiputinista friends: your campaign is not just useless, it’s completely self-defeating. Why?

Well, in the first instance, the vast majority of the world doesn’t give a fig for what you think. Sure, you can create a lot of noise online. You can derail otherwise serious discussions. I’ll give you that. But exactly what effect will all that noise have on the real world? None.

The vast, overwhelming majority of the world, you see, doesn’t care about you. The vast majority of the world isn’t even reading your rants, let alone agreeing or being converted. In fact, if the majority of the world would be interested at all, they’d simply be tempted to take Putin’s side, because...

...secondly, you’re tools.  You’re the quite cynically manipulated tools of the Western Imperial propaganda machine, being fed a narrative line that you’re following blindly (if you’re innocent that is). You’re the same kind of tool who demanded the bombing of Syria for Assad’s alleged (and since completely disproven) chemical weapons attack. You’re the same kind of tool who demanded that Saddam Hussein be overthrown for complicity in 11/9. You’re the same kind of tool who...I could go on and on.

Hell, my Antiputinistas, you aren’t just the same kind of tool. In a huge number of instances, you are the exact same tool. Hands up if you believed the Iraq WMDs story. Hands up if you wanted to bomb Syria and still believe that the cannibal headhunters there are heroic freedom fighters. Hands up if you want Edward Snowden jailed or droned as a traitor.

In fact, if Putin had refused Snowden asylum, if Putin had allowed Syria to be bombed and invaded, and if Putin hadn’t tried to reassert Russian influence as a major world power, would we even have heard of his alleged despotism and his hatred for gays? How many of you are aware that barring Iran, just about all the countries in the world which impose death sentences or life in prison for homosexuality are close US allies? How many of you care?

And that leads me to the significant point, the decreasing effect you have on the Russians themselves. What? You forgot about the Russians? They’re, the people who, you know, inconveniently keep voting Putin back to power. Why on earth do they do this?

They do this, Antiputinistas, because they’ve been through the era of Yeltsin, and they’ll do almost anything to avoid the chance of having to live through that kind of societal collapse again. Did I say almost? Forget the qualifier: I meant anything. They’ll do anything. Putin has not only pulled them up from the gutter, he’s given them a modicum of national self-respect.

And this is why all your support for Pussy Riot doesn’t strike the slightest, tiniest, spark of sympathy among the Russians. Most of them don’t give a damn for Pussy Riot. Some of them do give a damn, but only in that they consider Pussy Riot to be Western-paid and controlled agents provocateur, and think they deserve all that happens to them. The more you pour adulation on Pussy Riot, the more certain they grow of this, and the less actual influence Pussy Riot has in Russia.

And let me tell you this – the more you rave and rant, the more the Russians gather behind Putin. Because they feel attacked.

I don’t know how to break this to you, but there’s this little facet of Russian character (Russkaya Dusha, literally "Russian soul") that you may not know about; when attacked or threatened by a foreign invader, they always gather behind leaders, even if those leaders are not popular people otherwise. It’s called patriotism, and is a very different thing from the “my country right or wrong” of nationalistic chauvinism. The more you attack Putin, the more you harden support behind him, for the simple reason that everyone can see that you’re tools, and the tool wielder is using you to attack Russia by attacking Putin.

And, hey, you know what? By comparing Putin to Hitler, you actually managed to get Russian Jews to support Putin. 

Isn't that great going so far?

Now, let me tell you another unpleasant little truth: not only the Russians, but the other nations of the world aren’t going to give up on Putin on your say-so. This is because Russia is a major nation, like it or not, a major rising nation with an increasingly important share of the world’s resources, and nobody wants to be on their bad side. Despite all the raving about gay rights, did you see any country actually boycotting the Sochi Olympics? You didn’t, did you? When it came to it, they all went like good little boys and girls. And after all the tales about hotel rooms and murdered dogs, the world will move right on engaging with Russia.

Oh, while we’re on the subject of gay rights, let me cue you in on a couple of things:

First, Russia is culturally as much as Eastern country as a Western. In the East, posing shirtless showing off your body doesn’t in any way mean you’re gay, any more than holding another man’s hand in the street does. And guess who, in the response columns of articles in which Putin’s shirtless pictures appear, appreciate them? Well, it’s not the men.

Secondly, do you know the actual anti-gay law Putin passed – what it actually bans, and what the penalties are? If not, you can check it here. Make sure to educate yourselves or you risk looking like ignoramuses, people.            

Let me repeat what I said elsewhere a couple of days ago:

I've been thinking of why the Western media establishment (and, after Iraq, I think that we can agree that the Western media is an organic part of the government?) is so anti-Putin... and why media-dependent people, who know nothing about actual conditions in Russia, are so eager to speak against him.

It's not because he's a "despot"; even if he were. If that were so, the Western media would be filled with daily excoriations of Saudi Arabia, say, or Paul Kagame of Rwanda, or the Bahrain royal family. But where are the diatribes against them?

It's not because he's allegedly anti-gay; if that were so, we'd hear something about US allies Saudi Arabia or Uganda, where homosexuality carries a death sentence.

It's not about Putin exerting control over other neighbouring nations. If that were so, where's the white hot fury deserved by Turkey, or Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda, or Burundi or Uganda? All of them are busily interfering in the affairs of other nations...with US blessings.

It's not about him cracking down on the media. Were it so, we'd have raving and ranting about Erdogan in Turkey, or closer to the Western home, Cameron in Britain.

So what's left? One thing only: Putin is being singled out because he stands in the way of Western hegemonism. Without Putin, right now, the oil of Chechnya would be flowing abroad to Western markets; Syria would have been bombed and occupied; Iran would likely long since have been attacked, and Russia would've been reduced to vassal status. Instead, he's built up the country back to a major position in world affairs, and a pole around which opposition to the US is coalescing.

That is why Putin comes in for all the abuse. Nothing more or less. 

Thank you for your attention. 

What do I personally think of Putin? Does it matter what I think? It does not. But, just for kicks, let me tell you.

Putin is a politician. Like all politicians, his primary goal is power. He will do whatever he has to to hold on to that power, like any other politician. If you think politics is a clean business, you shouldn’t be allowed out alone. And Putin’s brand of politics is succeeding where he needs it to – among the people who actually vote for him.   

And that is all that matters.

No, I am not going to watch the Sochi Olympics, but not because I'm boycotting it. I have no fondness for sports, and in a snowless country, winter sports like skiing and ice skating mean nothing to anybody.

Your well wisher (because I think it’s time you stopped making absolute fools of yourselves on the internet)

                                                                                              

                                                                                              Bill the Butcher.

 

And I posted this picture to mess with your heads. So there.

Why India Must Build Battleships

To

The Defence Minister of India

New Delhi. 

Dear Defence Minister,

This is a confession.

I think I’ve been slightly harsh on the Indian defence industry. No, that’s too mild. I have been extremely harsh on the Indian defence industry.

I’ve slandered the lobbyists demanding a military-industrial complex, and I’ve been guilty of underestimating the immense boost that a defence industry would bring to the nation.

Let me, therefore, attempt a corrective. Better late than never, as they say.

Of course, it’s difficult to ignore the fact that the Indian defence industry isn’t actually geared up to producing top-of-the-line equipment yet; but, at the same time, one agrees that it needs to create something powerful and prestigious, pronto; something that will force the world to sit up and take notice, and revive the Indian peoples’ pride in their armed forces. At the same time, the government of the day – which means your government, Mr Defence Minister – should be able to take just pride in its accomplishment, so as to garner electoral gains. I mean, that’s only fair, isn’t it?

Now, what can a nation that hasn’t managed to manufacture a working fighter plane, intermediate jet trainer, aircraft carrier or tank after more than three decades of effort do that will make the world sit up and take notice? Let’s see...yes! I’ve got it!

India should build a battleship.

You know battleships: those immense mountains of floating steel, mounting turrets studded with gigantic artillery pieces, which can send huge capsules of metal and explosive soaring over tens of kilometres of ocean? You’ve heard of, say, the Bismarck or the Yamato, the Prince of Wales or the Missouri? You have? Yes, those are the kind of battleships I mean.

Yamato

Now let’s look at all the benefits building a battleship will bring.

First, of course, and most eye-catching of all, is the sexiness of battleships. I mean, just think of the name: battleship. As in, a ship meant for battle, and battle only. Who could ever accuse a battleship of pacifism? And who could ever call a government which launched a battleship of being weak-kneed on defence? If anyone dared say any such thing, the government would only have to point to the floating citadel with its turrets bristling with guns, and say, STFU. Possibly you are unfamiliar with that acronym, so let me translate, sir. It means Shut The Fuck Up. As in, shut your trap, traitor.

Talking about those guns I mentioned, just look at them. They’re so utterly phallic that they are an instant balm to the average Indian male mind, which is, let’s say, insecure about its masculinity and kind of obsessed over size. One good look at them and the collective masculinity of the nation will receive, um, a boost. All you have to do is arrange plenty of photos of those guns in the media. I’m sure they’d be happy to oblige.

I mean, just look at them

Then, and we should remember this well, there is the uniqueness of battleships. Other countries have tanks. Other countries have fighter planes and aircraft carriers. Even Pakistan has submarines. But nobody – nobody, sir – has battleships anymore. With your battleship roaming the seaways, you can proclaim that India is the only possessor of this technology in the world. Why, not even the Americans have it. If that doesn’t bring forth gasps of admiration from the public, your pet media aren’t doing their jobs.

Can you imagine the photo ops a battleship offers? Someone – it may be you, sir – standing on the bridge of the craft, beside an admiral or two, gazing sternly out at the ocean as those titanic guns blast out a broadside? Which political enemy dare mess with you then? And which admiral dare claim the navy’s being neglected? Why, you could even shell a coastal forest or two, and claim that you were bombarding Maoists, like those who abducted those Italian tourists recently. Who would do anything but praise you for your toughness and ruthlessness? 

Death to everyone

Nobody.

And there are all the subsidiary benefits. Constructing a battleship will provide so many jobs, directly and indirectly – the dockyard workers and fitters to build it, the steel mills to supply the steel, the two or three thousand sailors the behemoth will require to maintain and operate it; can you imagine those grateful votes flooding your way? And there are the other benefits, too; with all the forty or fifty thousand tons of high-grade steel each battleship will require, you can justify strip-mining the forests for iron ore and for coal to smelt it; you can justify unleashing the army on the forest villagers, and lock up the environmentalists and human rights activists; and you can do it all in the name of national security.

Doesn’t that make you go weak in the knees with anticipation, Mr Defence Minister?

So, here’s anticipating the launch of the first ship, and please make sure it doesn’t sink on the spot.

That might be a little bit embarrassing.

Yours helpfully

Bill the Butcher.

A Rebuttal to Bharat Verma of the Indian Defence Review

The newspaper I take these days, the Seven Sisters Post, has seen fit to republish this article by Bharat Verma, editor of the Indian Defence Review, titled Why India Needs A Survival Strategy. It's an article that could not be allowed to go unchallenged.


Here's the rebuttal I wrote and sent to the paper:

I find it surprising and disappointing that a new, upcoming and forward-looking newspaper like the Seven Sisters Post saw fit to publish a misleading, militarist and mendacious article like Bharat Verma’s Why India Needs A Survival Strategy (26^th March edition). The writer may be the editor of the Indian Defence Review, but surely that does not give him the licence to make statements that not only have no basis in fact but are actually highly dangerous.

The author starts off with exposing his Islamophobia in no uncertain terms, condemning the struggle of the Afghan and Pakistani people against the murderous American-led occupation as a step in the formation of an Islamic Emirate. Does the author have even a basic understanding of the dynamics of the Afghan insurgency, the Pashtun-centric nature of the Taliban, and the fact that the Pakistani people have been simultaneously opposing Islamic fundamentalism and Western imperialism? He condemns the Arab Spring, but does not offer any kind of solution for the Arab people struggling under Western-backed venal emirs and dictators. He says “delinking religion from the state is an essential prerequisite for democracy to succeed”; yet, his own prescriptions are completely in tune with a Hindu-revanchist worldview, and his claims coincide with right-wing Hindu myth-making about modern history.

The author further exposes his true colours when he calls America “a nation that embodies hope, freedom and liberty to all segments of society”. I do not know in which parallel universe Mr Bharat Verma resides, but to people across the globe, including the huge numbers of Americans who have come out into the streets to participate in the Occupy Wall Street movement, the US embodies no such thing, and has not at least from the moment the first shot was fired in the invasion of Iraq. However, the author makes this claim as a quite deliberate part of his argument, which is, as he goes on to demand, that India shifts to “imperial conduct”. He takes great care not to explain what he means by this “imperial conduct”, but throws in some provable lies about how the “despotic” Maoists took power in Kathmandu with China’s help. Any Nepali who reads this will have a right to justifiable anger, because it completely and deliberately fails to mention that the King of Nepal was overthrown in a completely peaceful peoples’ revolution, and that the Maoists subsequently took power in a democratic election.

The author’s aim, in any case, is to distort history, so he continues with his mendacious claims about how China had no borders with India until it “occupied” Tibet. One would think that even a minimally historically literate person who chooses to comment on this matter will know all about the complex history of Sino-Tibetan relations, and the fact that the 1914 Simla Accord (which set British India’s Imperial borders with Tibet) had three signatories – one of whom was Chinese, because Tibet acknowledged Chinese suzerainty (that this signature was further repudiated by China’s Nationalist government of the time is another matter entirely; no Chinese government of recent times has ever considered Tibet anything but a part of China). He also repeats the hoary old myth that “forty per cent of Indian territory” is under Maoist control – a figure presumably arrived at by peering at a map and deciding that any part of the nation where a Maoist guerrilla has trod immediately falls under their control.

Ultimately, then, the author arrives at his primary purpose – that India shifts its resources to massive militarisation. He derides as “pacifists” those who point to the fact that India has one of the poorest Human Development Indices in the world, and those of us who think it a disgrace that the majority of Indian children in the 21^st Century are underfed and illiterate, and that some seventy percent of the population still live in conditions of poverty. He would rather invest in a military-industrial complex, which – according to him – will “create millions of new jobs”. I don’t know if Mr Verma’s Alternate Universe is a place where a military-industrial complex can exist without conditions of perpetual war to consume its products, but in the universe the rest of us inhabit, it does not, and the condition of the United States at the moment shows clearly the pitfalls that await any nation that gives itself over to war as policy.

Quite apart from other things, Mr Verma seems to have forgotten the simple fact that the two nations he repeatedly excoriates in the course of his article, China and Pakistan, are nuclear powers, and that their possession of a nuclear deterrence makes it de facto impossible to conduct any major war against them in the foreseeable future. Is Mr Verma willing to take responsibility for the conversion of Delhi or Mumbai into radioactive slag if the nation acts on his prescriptions? I don’t think so!

All in all, I believe that the Seven Sisters Post needs to publish a rebuttal to this misleading and highly dangerous article. Militarism has never solved any problems, and still less than ever can it do so now.


Update (28^th March): Today's issue carried my rebuttal in full along with a personal response from the editor, in which he makes some not very flattering remarks about Mr Bharat Verma. Click here and zoom on the bottom of Page Eight for the rebuttal and response.

Letter To The Editor

Dear Editor

 

(Or, rather, your sub-editor or whoever it is who reads your mail, because I am sure your exalted status relieves you from the onerous task of handling correspondence from mere readers.)

Before I go further, please note that the contents of this letter will be posted online on my blog and elsewhere, with full mention of The Shillong Times, because it has been my experience that there is some kind of unofficial “ban” in place on publishing my criticism of your articles and your alleged opinions (more often than not regurgitated wholesale from so-called “national” newspapers). Therefore, even if you choose to maintain your unspoken “ban” (which has endured by my reckoning for about four years now), you will have been named and shamed online. Be warned.

 

One of these alleged “editorial opinions” of yours is titled “Tactical Retreat” and was published on your paper of the 9^th December. In it, you make some sweeping statements, which deserve examination in detail.

 

First, you (or, as is more likely, whoever you lifted your “opinions” from) claim Manmohan Singh had the “last laugh” in the end on the Nuclear Deal. I don’t know whether you are unaware of the nuclear reactor meltdown at Fukushima in Japan earlier this year, and the strong anti-nuclear-power agitations now ongoing in several parts of the country, or whether you merely chose to ignore it. From your newspaper’s flagrantly exposed ignorance of basic geographic and scientific facts in the past, the first is a real possibility. If not, you will note that not one of these nuclear reactors that were supposed to have solved our power problems (the USP of the Nuclear Deal) has come into service yet, and that the last four years of Congress party misrule has so devastated the nation that even such cravenly pro-Congress media outlets as yours cannot have escaped noticing the people’s disenchantment with the party. How is that the "last laugh”?

 

Then, you claim that you hope that Singh “will prevail again on the FDI in retail issue” because the “advantages are many”. Said advantages – according to you – are as follows:

 

1.     India needs organized (sic) retail. Does it? Can you justify this statement? A look around shows that India is doing well enough with competing small-scale shops selling just about everything one needs. The huge and bustling markets of the cities may not be pretty, but they provide just about everything, at a reasonable price, and employ an uncountable number of people. Can you honestly state that organised retail outlets will be able to provide the same services? Who will absorb the millions thrown out of work? Will you, or those who you lifted your opinions from, provide these people with alternative employment? If not, how do you justify your claim?

 

2.     Foreign investment in retail will bring in capital, expertise and competition. Capital to achieve what, precisely? Is there a shortage of capital in this country? If there is, why are we still talking about our alleged “booming” economy? If there is not, why should we bring in foreign capital, since said foreign capital can be as quickly withdrawn? If there is a threat of sudden withdrawal of this capital – for example, due to pro-worker labour laws – and a consequent fall in the stock market, will the government of the day stand by and allow this withdrawal, or will it bend over backwards to change laws and entice the capital to stay? What has been our experience so far on this point? And do you really have to be reminded that the East India Company first came as traders, got “concessions”, and used the excuse of “defence of trade rights and concessions” to colonise India?

 

As for expertise, is there a shortage of expertise in this nation? If so, why do we have Indian Institutes of Management?

 

As for competition, a look around any of the markets I just mentioned will show you how much competition there is already, quite happily coexisting. Do we need more competition? If we do, does that competition have to come from foreign-owned retail chains?

 

Assume, for the sake of argument, that FDI will bring in increased “competition”. Basically, what this will mean is that the huge international retail chains like Wal-Mart (which have tremendously deep pockets) will undercut and push out the original retail outlets from business. A look around the USA, where the traditional stores have vanished after the advent of these mega-stores, shows that this is not unlikely by any means. And once that happens, exactly what is to stop these retail chains – who then have a monopoly – from charging whatever they want? Nothing.

 

While on the subject, the ethics, not to say legality, of these retail chains are deeply suspect. As we all know, the same neoliberal “economists” who push FDI are also strongly in support of weak labour laws and “hire and fire” policies. This basically means that nobody is secure in his or her job, and can be replaced at any time by someone asking for even lower wages – no matter how much work he or she has put into the job or is willing to. This sounds very nice to those people sitting on a huge cushion of money, but I wonder if you – the editor of a minor, fifth-rated newspaper – or your minions would like to live in a situation where you could be dismissed without notice because someone else is willing to work for a thousand rupees less a month. Would you? No? Then by what right are you wishing this fate on others?

 

3.     The produce of farmers will fetch higher prices. How, exactly, is this miracle supposed to happen? FDI will result in the big retail chains looking for the cheapest sources in order to maximise profits. If they paid higher prices, it would go directly against the idea of competition reducing prices, which was your earlier point. Therefore, it will directly result in farmers undercutting each other in order to sell to them – and even there they will be undercut by organised factory-farming – the kind of factory-farming the West is now trying desperately to abandon in favour of more sustainable, not to mention healthy, practices. As for technology, that can be imported without the necessity of handing over ownership of the economy to foreign concerns. Your argument veers dangerously close to the idea that colonialism was good because the colonised countries wouldn’t have got trains and telegraphs otherwise, something once again being claimed by neo-imperialists these days.

 

4.     The supply chain will be shorter and more efficient. How? By the retail chain owners going direct to the farmers in the fields and buying from them? In that case, what is to prevent them from beating down the farmers’ prices since only those who sell at the cheapest rates will get the sales orders? If the government has to step in to ensure a fair price to the farmers, what’s the difference from the current system?

 

 

5.     (T)he consumer will be benefited, price-wise and in getting easier access to essential goods. How will the consumer get easier access to “essential” goods? If we define “essential goods” as food, clothing, and medicine, they are available in most markets already, in every city and village. And about prices, if the FDI is allowed, according to what we’ve seen worldwide, the consequences will be that the prices of medicines, especially, will rise sky-high in the name of protecting intellectual property rights.

 

6.     New investment will pour into manufacturing and more jobs will be created in the sector. Is this “jobs” in the sense of “slave-labour style sweatshops”? Because that’s the kind of “jobs” that have been created by the advent of FDI as seen worldwide. FDI will only “create jobs” where profit can be maximised – meaning where the least wages have to be paid and the maximum work extracted for the minimum side benefits. And if the economy of the nations the produce is to be marketed in suffers, and the market collapses, the factories will close and the slave labour workforce thrown out of even the pittance they are earning. I trust even you are aware of the parlous state of the European and American economies at the moment?

 

7.     Giving in to the opposition and dropping the proposal would seem unwise and pusillanimous on the part of the UPA government. This is called the democratic system. It’s why an Opposition exists and this is not a monarchy under the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. The Opposition is meant to pressure the government into abandoning unwise or unpopular policies. If your paper does not like the system, it should openly state that and suggest what kind of system it wants.

 

I would love to read your replies to these questions, if you are capable of answering them. After all, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be. Since you either wrote this editorial or allowed its contents to be published in your paper, you obviously subscribe to its contents. You are a national prize-winning columnist with the entire resources of your editorial staff to call on. I’m only a private citizen with no education in economics. You should find it easy to blow me away.

 

If, however, you are unable or choose not to respond, it means you have no business publishing opinions you are unable to defend. I would go further and state that you have no business being the editor of a newspaper at all.

 

I look forward with keen interest to your response. If any.

 

                                                                        B Purkayastha

                                                                              Shillong

Mr "Prime Minister": you are a disgrace

Dear Mr “Prime Minister”

In a few hours from now, early tomorrow morning, you will stand on the ramparts of the Red Fort in Delhi and speak to the nation, telling us all about our independence and the problems your government intends to solve until you come up to the same spot again next year (if you still occupy the post then), and tell us again how your government is going to solve the same problems – just as you did last year, and the year before that, and the year before.

Well, Mr “Prime Minister”, I’d like to say a few words to you.

Who am I? Nobody special. Nobody famous. I’m just one of the faceless millions. One of those who need to exist just so the rich and famous and influential can revel in how rich and famous and influential they are. After all, how will the Great Chiefs know that they are Great Chiefs, unless they can look down and see all the ordinary Native Americans?

From my position at the bottom of the same totem pole of which you inhabit a place close to the top, Mr “Prime Minister”, my voice will not reach you. Therefore, please feel free to ignore me – but I will have my say anyway. On this day of all days, the eve of the anniversary of our so-called independence, I will have my say.

So, before I go any further, Mr “Prime Minister”, let me tell you right out – you are a disgrace.

You are a disgrace, first, because you hold a position to which you were never elected. You are as aware as I am that you are not an elected leader – that you have never won even a municipal level election, and that you violated the law when you first were “selected” to the Upper House seat you now occupy.

You are a disgrace, as well, because you do not exert authority over the ministers among whom you are allegedly the “prime”. You are aware – who in this nation is not aware? – that you lead the worst, most corrupt government we have ever known, a government which is so awful that it makes the previous Hindunazi government look good, a government so awful that even the long-suffering people of India have had enough. You are as well aware as I am that it’s only by police raids, slander, petty harassment, legal sleight-of-hand, and reneging on promises that you have so far stopped the situation from blowing up in your face.

You are a disgrace, thirdly, because you don’t take responsibility for the actions of your colleagues. So far, you have moved against the corrupt only with extreme reluctance, when you have had no other option, and you have done as little as possible while only stating that you are tied by the “compulsions of coalition politics”. While I am not one of the people who voted for your party (not for you – nobody voted for you, because you do not dare stand for election, of course) I do know that those who did vote for it don’t think this is a reasonable excuse. Being the prime minister (or, in your case, the “prime minister”) means that you are supposed to take responsibility for the actions of all – that means all – your colleagues. It’s not good enough to say you didn’t know or that your hands are tied by political factors. If you can’t fill the role, stand down.

Which brings me to the next reason you are a disgrace. As we all know, you are not your own man. You were put in your position as a chair warmer, until the Heir Apparent of the political dynasty which treats your party as its personal property was ready to take over. You’ve said as much on more than one occasion. It’s looking unlikely that the Heir Apparent will ever formally take over your position, though – he, and his family, would rather rule through you and let you take the flak while they (or, more specifically, he) take the credit. I am as aware as you that on more than one occasion you’ve announced a policy only to have it overturned by pronouncements from the dynasty. If you had any integrity, you would have resigned rather than be vetoed by someone who has no constitutional role in the government. But I’m pretty certain that you don’t have the authority to make your own decisions about quitting. You’ll go when you are permitted to – not before.

You are, Mr “Prime Minister”, as we’ve been told ad nauseam, a “great economist”. I don’t, as I freely admit, know much about economics. But I assume even an average economist will know that endlessly repeating a mantra about “growth” wears thin after a while when prices zoom skywards, year after year after year, and your government – which is primarily responsible for the policies that cause those prices to rise – claims that it does not know why it is happening, and has nothing to say except “assurances” that those prices will come down eventually. Nor are the people impressed by your claim that you aren’t taking steps against corruption because you don’t want to impose the costs of another election on the nation – even a non-economist can do the arithmetic and inform you that the costs of another election are infinitesimal compared to the loot your government is perpetrating on the nation every day it clings to power. Forgive me if I do not understand how any economist ignores these factors.

Again, I’m as well aware as anyone else of your reputation for personal honesty. I won’t impugn it because I can’t prove that you have ever taken a bribe yourself, and I don’t wish to indulge in libel. While I’d like to point out that you would be extraordinarily stupid to take bribes personally rather than have a bagman from your party collect them for you, let me assume that you’re clean as far as illegal gratuities are concerned. But while remaining personally clean, Mr “Prime Minister”, you preside over a government which has systematically sabotaged probes against the corrupt and which is rotten with corruption all the way down to the basement. If I might offer an analogy, Mr “Prime Minister”, would you absolve a security guard at a warehouse who watched silently while the said warehouse was robbed bare, even if he didn’t personally benefit by a penny from it? No? Then how do you absolve yourself?

Then, lest I forget, Mr “Prime Minister”, may I remind you of your government’s extreme affinity for Big Business? Isn’t it true that you have systematically removed people who are not business oriented – people who actually still maintain shreds of loyalty to your party’s socialistic past – from positions of power, and replaced them with nonentities and corporate rubber stamps? Have you not very recently replaced the only effective environment minister in a long time, someone who had taken a few steps against the corporate loot of national resources, against the destruction of what remains of the environment, with a nonentity who can be relied on to do precisely as she is told? Am I out of line if I wonder how many millions in funding will flow into your party’s war chest from grateful industrialists and mining concerns in the next two years, as you prepare to face the next election?

And, yes, Mr “Prime Minister”, how can I forget that you have abandoned all pretence of a foreign policy in exchange for an American policy? How can I forget that you are the person who hugged the egregious war criminal George W Bush and assured him that the people of India (whom you do not dare face in an election) “love” him? Do you want me to ignore the fact that you have gone out of your way to ruin our relations with our old friend, Iran, and sabotaged the pipeline that would have supplied us with natural gas and reduced our energy bills, entirely on the US’ orders? Should I forget that your government has sucked up to the Americans for all it’s worth in order to be granted a nuclear supplies waiver – while the rest of the world is stepping back from nuclear energy, and Fukushima has demonstrated just how dangerous meltdowns can be? I’m sorry, but I cannot, and will not, ignore any of that.

Lastly, and most unforgivably, Mr “Prime Minister”, this is why you are a disgrace: you have presented us with a situation where the only alternative to your ultra-corrupt kleptocracy government are the Hindunazis, who are even more viciously right-wing, Islamophobic, and intolerant; whom the people of India rejected in 2004 and again in 2009, but whom they will vote back next time round because they have no other choice. And now that you have blazed a trail, will the Hindunazis – no slouch in the corruption game, themselves – not take the opportunity to match your government bribe for bribe? Just how much long-term damage have you done to the nation, Mr “Prime Minister”?

As I said, you are free to ignore me, Mr “Prime Minister”, because I am far too low on the totem pole for you to bother. And ignore me you undoubtedly will, because I am under your radar, and will remain under your radar.

However, you, Mr “Prime Minister”, will remain a disgrace.

(Un)happy Dependence Day.

                                                                                  Yours uncordially

 

                                                                                    Bill the Butcher