Aligarh academics call for reinstating Durga Nagpal

The Aligarh-based Forum for Muslim Studies and Analysis and Milat Bidari Muhim Committee have passed a resolution demanding immediate reinstatement of suspended Gautam Budh Nagar sub-divisional magistrate Durga Nagpal during a meeting of non-profit organizations of researchers and academicians. In yet another resolution passed in the meeting held in Aligarh on Wednesday, the organizations condemned the Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party state government for deliberately trying to vitiate the inter-communal atmosphere in Uttar Pradesh for political gains. 

Tearing apart the reasons advanced by the state government for issuing suspension orders to Nagpal (viz. her alleged role in the demolition of the wall of an under-construction religious structure in Gautam Budh Nagar), members of both organizations have accused the state government of flexing its muscles to protect the sand mafia. "About 27 incidents of communal or sectarian violence have been reported in the short tenure of the Akhilesh government. Not a single officer was suspended for these incidents. Nagpal was promptly suspended just on basis of anticipated communal tension," Prof. Razaullah Khan, president of MBMC, said. 

During the meeting, the academics said they would remain isolated from the "dirty politics played by SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav". "Mulayam's younger brother, Shivpal, had recently misbehaved with a delegation of Muslims from Firozabad. Minorities are being treated like the personal fiefdom of the Yadav clan," said Prof. Humayun Murad. 

The SP is being accused by the intellectuals of playing the minority card and encouraging illegal mining to fatten its purses ahead of the 2014 general elections. Even a year after having been voted to power, the party has failed to rein in criminal elements or control the poor law and order situation in the state, said fora members. "The political elite in the state is emotionally blackmailing minorities in the name of religion. It's happening at a time when poorer sections of minority communities stay deprived of basic amenities like health and education," MBMC member N Jamaal Ansari said. 

Participants said they are strongly opposed to the religious and communal politics played in UP. "We have planned to hold a dharna at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi on August 21," Jasim Mohammad, another MBMC member, said.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/noida/Aligarh-academics-call-for-reinstating-Durga-Nagpal/articleshow/21720465.cms

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Durga Nagpal's classmate nearly killed for taking on sand mafia // Tamil Nadu bureaucrat transferred for crackdown on illegal sand mining

Solan: A bureaucrat in Himachal Pradesh was nearly killed allegedly by the illegal sand mining mafia in the Solan district, 45 km from state capital of Shimla.

Yunus Khan, the Sub-Divisional Magistrate of Nalagarh, is from the same batch of IAS officers as Durga Shakti Nagpal, whose suspension by the Uttar Pradesh government has generated a national debate on the need to protect honest officers from political interference and vendetta. That point was also made forcefully a few days ago in a letter from Congress President Sonia Gandhi to the Prime Minister. She cited Ms Nagpal's case.

Mr Khan was trying to impound a vehicle on Wednesday with illegally-mined sand on Wednesday with the help of his staff when the driver tried to hit his car, in an attempt to force it over a bridge. Not once, but four times. When the tractor-trolley, piled with illegally excavated sand and gravel toppled over, the driver ran away.  He was later arrested, said the police.

"We heard the mafia was trying to excavate forest land," Mr Khan told NDTV.  He said that the illegal mining in Himachal Pradesh is ordered by stake-holders from Punjab and Haryana. "Our ecology is disturbed by the illegal mining.  My concern is to uphold the law and prevent this," he said. Of his classmate, Ms Nagpal, whose case has generated headlines for weeks, Mr Khan said, "She is a good officer but we don't usually discuss work."

Ms Nagpal, 28, was suspended from her office in Greater Noida, on charges that she endangered communal harmony by ordering the demolition of the wall of a new mosque being built without permission on public land. The UP government headed by Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has denounced allegations that it was her campaign to stop illegal sand mining that resulted in the action against her.
http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/durga-shakti-nagpal-s-classmate-attacked-nearly-killed-for-taking-on-sand-mafia-403170?pfrom=home-otherstories

Tamil Nadu bureaucrat on his transfer over crackdown on illegal sand mining
Ashish Kumar, who was the District Collector of Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu till two days ago, was handed his transfer order on Tuesday evening. Earlier that day, he had conducted raids on mineral quarries owned by local mining barons in two villages in the district. Hundreds of kilometres away from Uttar Pradesh, where a young IAS officer who went after the sand mafia, Durga Shakti Nagpal, was controversially suspended, Mr Kumar told NDTV that illegal sand mining is rampant in Tuticorin.

He alleged that one of the mining companies he raided, VV Minerals, owned by an exporter called V Vaikundarajan, was illegally mining sand on nearly 30 hectares of government land in a village called Vaipar, though their lease allowed mining only on four hectares. Mr Vaikundarajan, say sources, is a businessman with political connections in high places. In Vembar, the other village he raided, the official said, "There was extensive mining but the remaining sand was never returned to its place to replenish, causing environmental damage."  The raids were conducted after several complaints by local fisherman, he said. 

Mr Kumar alleges that the sand mafia across India works in a close nexus with politicians. "Even in Tuticorin, there have been visible instances of such mutual cooperation and understanding." Much like Durga Shakti Nagpal's suspension in UP, Mr Kumar's transfer has caused a storm in Tamil Nadu. Opposition parties slammed the AIADMK government of J Jayalalithaa, condemning the transfer. Leader of Opposition Vijayakanth of the DMDK demanded in a statement that the Centre intervene "so that the Indian Administrative Service officials can perform their functions impartially." 

The opposition wants Mr Kumar's transfer stopped. But the 2005-batch IAS officer has already handed over charge in Tuticorin and is getting ready to take over as Deputy Secretary in the state's Department of Social Welfare and Nutritious Meal Programme.  He says he views transfers positively but admits that he did not expect to be posted outright now. "As an officer, I have to obey government orders and work well. I hope they will take action on my report," he said. Mr Kumar served as the Collector of Tuticorin
http://www.ndtv.com/article/south/did-not-expect-to-be-posted-outright-now-tamil-nadu-bureaucrat-on-his-transfer-over-crackdown-on-ill-403052?pfrom=home-health

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March on Washington leader John Lewis: 'This is not a post-racial society'

Part of the reason Lewis is revered today is because he was not only one of the "big six" civil rights leaders of the 60s, but a brave activist on the front line of often brutal encounters with segregationist authorities in the deep south. As chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) at the height of the civil rights movement, he was arrested more than 40 times and knew many of those who lost their lives fighting for the cause.

Half a century ago, John Lewis, a 23-year-old student leader, stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and looked out a sea of black and white faces. It was 1963, and the crowd had gathered in Washington for the most significant protest of the civil rights era.

Lewis saw hundreds of thousands of people, stretched into the distance; some had climbed trees for a better view, while others stood knee-deep in the memorial's long rectangular pool. "It was a hot day," Lewis recalls. "I said to myself: 'This is it, I must go forward.' And then I started speaking."

Now a 73-year-old Democratic congressman, Lewis is the only surviving speaker from the March on Washington, the landmark protest that culminated in Martin Luther King's famous "I have a dream" speech. He will return to the steps of the memorial later this month for the 50th anniversary of that march, which was a turning point for for the civil rights movement.

The March on Washington gave the campaign for equal rights an unstoppable momentum, helping to pass the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act – the two legislative pillars to emerge from the civil rights era. But according to Lewis, the 50th anniversary comes at difficult time for race relations in America. In an interview with the Guardian, he said:

The legacy of slavery and segregation dehumanises people. We have not yet escaped the bitterness. And we don't want to talk about it.

Two recent developments have jarred with the image of a country progressive enough to elect a black man to the White House. A recent Supreme Court decision effectively dismantled one of the key enforcement provisions in the Voting Rights Act, allowing southern states like Texas and North Carolina to implement changes to election rulesthan experts say discriminate against minority voters.

The later decision by a jury in Florida to acquit George Zimmerman over the killing of the black teenager Trayvon Martin has been cited by many – including president Barack Obama – as evidence of a legacy of persistent racial prejudice. "This is not a post-racial society," Lewis said. "Racism is still deeply embedded in American society, and you can't cover it up.".. read more:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/07/john-lewis-march-washington-50th-anniversary

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Rashmi Singh - Migrant Workers in the Kashmir Valley

This paper was researched and written by Rashmi Singh as part of AMAN's ongoing research on informal labourers. The paper was presented at the Ninth International Conference of the Association for Indian Labour Historians in Delhi. AMAN has just posted it on its website http://www.amanpanchayat.org/

In 2007, following the brutal rape and murder of a fourteen year old school girl, Tabinda Gani, spontaneous protests erupted in Langate demanding justice. Tabinda's body had grave marks of struggle and the horrifying method with which the crime was committed led to a lot of anger and demand for death sentence for the perpetrators. The case however is still dragging on and has been largely forgotten by the media. Recently in November Syed Ali Shah Geelani reminded the public how the confusion deliberately created by police has kept the judgement pending. The state government however, [with its reputation for delaying speedy trial of rape cases in Kashmir unsoiled], has not missed the opportunity to rename the state award for bravery of children as 'Tabinda Gani State Award of Bravery for Children'

The rape was allegedly committed by two Kashmiri men from Langate, one carpenter from Uttar Pradesh and a fourth, a cobbler from Rajasthan. The immediate consequence of the protest was the involvement of some Kashmiri leaders including Geelani who asked outside workers to leave the state. The Hizbul-Mujahideen also gave a week's time for workers to leave Kashmir. These statements were retracted a day later, when public criticism followed, with organizations giving a clarification that only 'criminal elements' were asked to exit. The consequence of this was that thousands of migrant workers left the valley immediately out of fear. It became a political controversy as Hindutva parties quickly scooped up the issue to show the 'communal' nature of the Kashmiri struggle. The Shiv Sena [which brutally drove away Bihari migrants the next year with MNS in Maharashtra] equated it with the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits in the 1990's. The VHP state unit demanded the persecution of Syed Ali Geelani under the National Security Act [NSA] for asking non-Kashmiris to leave Kashmir. 

BJP member Shahnawaz Hussain turned up in Srinagar to appeal to Kashmiris to not blame all the migrant workers for the crime of some. Ironically, Hussain had to give the example of Americans assuming every Muslim to be a terrorist to drive his point across for the migrant workers. Parties that claim Kashmir to be an 'inalienable' part of India invoked 'kashmiriyat' and the Sufi tolerance of Kashmiris for their call. The migrant workers became an etched presence for the Indian political parties to again claim their territoriality and uninterrupted mobility in Kashmir as a part of continuous Indian territory, as also an occasion to posture higher morality on secularism, a moment that majoritarian-nationalist parties do not miss as per the stakes involved.

While the reaction of right-wing parties in India was predictable, a flurry of opinion followed in Kashmiri media, most it decrying the call to oust workers as hurried and unnecessary. Some of the opinion expressed was however xenophobic. Some write-ups in local newspapers termed the migrants as 'snake[s] that wait the warmth to bite us.'The workers have been blamed in several instances as unhygienic scum who indulge in 'immorality, waywardness and drinking of liquor', besides peddling drugs and acting as army informers. Though no one from Bihar was involved in the crime, many columns blamed the immorality on the slow permeance of 'bihari culture' in Kashmir. Most of these opinions dubbed this disturbance as unfortunate in a society guided otherwise by religious and moral principles. The immorality of the migrant workers has been in some instances stretched and conflated easily with the ills that beget modernity and more seriously as a conspiracy to introduce Indian population in Kashmir. 

Qazi Sajad Delnavi, writing in Greater Kashmir questioned the logic of some of these statements, asking how the presence of a few lakh labourers could threaten Kashmiri culture at large. He also pointed out how the news - otherwise relegated to the inner pages of local newspapers, jumped to headlines as soon as non-local workers were implicated, while the two local workers involved were largely unscathed in the barrage of comments that followed. Arguing within the columns of the same newspaper, Inayat Choudhry argued that despite most of the migrant workforce being poor Muslim workers, it has been dubbed as an intrigue of Hindus out to destroy Kashmir‟s economy.

Post 2007 migrant workers are back in Kashmirin larger numbers. Migrant workers have been a close part of Kashmiri workforce for over two decades now. Though there are no statistics on total numbers, current estimates presume that about 5 lakh outside workers come to work in the Valley seasonally every year. They have been working in paddy fields, construction, brick kilns, as domestic help and in various other quarters including petty trade and sales. Most of them are from U.P., Bihar, Bengal and other north Indian states and work seasonally through the summer returning to their native places once the winter sets in. According to some sources they have been in Kashmir since late 70‟s. This research has been conducted with the help of numerous interviews during last autumn with migrant workers working in construction industry, brick kilns and as hawkers in and around Srinagar, in places such as Hawal Chowk, Hyderpora etc. 

It can be said that more than half of Srinagar's workforce now consists of migrant workers from other states. Kashmir has been called in some instances, a 'second Gulf' for its high wages, good climatic conditions and work opportunities. Actual wages in construction industry for instance are much higher than those notified by the state government; masons in Kashmir earn around Rs. 400 per day, which is almost double of what they earn in other cities like Delhi. In the last decade, the big demand for construction workers from Bihar has also changed the nature of construction itself in the Valley, with now concrete and POP being used more than earlier forms of wood and stone construction, changing the architectural landscape completely. Locals prefer migrant workers since they are seen as more pliant, more productive and skilled than Kashmiri workers. Interviews with migrant workers reveal a different picture than expressed in the newspaper comments mentioned above. Most workers have been coming for many years and feel comfortable owing to friendliness of employers and Kashmiri people. They feel more trusted, they are provided with better accommodation and have had almost no reported outwardly tension with the Kashmiri neighbourhoods. All the interviewees reported no communal tension either. They are also not 'Indian-ised' by the local people as easily as by some commentators, though most of them are quick to claim the nationality themselves...

Download the article at: http://www.sacw.net/article5155.html

or at: http://www.amanpanchayat.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=98:paper-on-migrant-workers-in-kashmir&catid=14&Itemid=115

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Books Reviewed: TWO NEW BOOKS ABOUT “BORGES”

Few artists have built grand structures on such uncertain foundations as Jorge Luis Borges. Doubt was the sacred principle of his work, its animating force and, frequently, its message. To read his stories is to experience the dissolution of all certainty, all assumption about the reliability of your experience of the world. Of the major literary figures of the twentieth century, Borges seems to have been the least convinced by himself—by the imposing public illusion of his own fame. The thing Borges was most skeptical about was the idea of a writer, a man, named Borges.

In his memorable prose piece “Borges and I,” he addresses a deeply felt distinction between himself and “the other one, the one called Borges.” “I like hourglasses,” he writes, “maps, eighteenth-century typography, the taste of coffee, and the prose of Stevenson; he shares these preferences, but in a vain way that turns them into the attributes of an actor.” He recognizes almost nothing of himself in the eminent literary personage with whom he shares a name, a face, and certain other superficial qualities. “I do not know which of us has written this page,” he concludes.

This haunting, teasing fragment is reproduced in its entirety in “Borges at Eighty: Conversations,” a collection of interviews from his 1980 trip to the U.S., which has been published in a new edition by New Directions. It’s an instructively ironic context for the piece to turn up in—a transcript of a public event at Indiana University in which a number of Borges’s poems and prose pieces were read aloud in English, followed by a short extemporaneous commentary by the author. When he addresses the audience, he seems to be speaking for the “I,” but it is surely “Borges” who is doing the talking:

photographed, for having interviews, for politics, for opinions—all opinions are despicable I should say. He also stands for those two nonentities, those two impostors failure and success […] He deals in those things. While I, let us say, since the name of the paper is “Borges and I”, I stands not for the public man but for the private self, for reality, since these other things are unreal to me.

For someone who hated being interviewed, Borges was a prolific and garrulous interviewee (although it was perhaps “Borges” who handled that side of things). And yet, to point this out is to risk missing the substance of what he is saying here, which is not simply that he feels himself at odds with his own public persona but that he feels himself profoundly at odds with how little he is at odds with it. (Such paradoxes are an occupational hazard in any encounter with Borges.) One of the collection’s most interesting aspects is the interaction of these incompatible elements: the obvious pleasure Borges takes in the opportunity to present himself for public consumption, and his reflexive skepticism about the necessary fraudulence of the writer as personality.

There’s something fascinatingly Borgesian about the way in which the self-awareness of the performance is itself highly performative. This preoccupation with the divided self veers close to a sort of ontological double act, a one-man odd-couple routine. “Everyone sitting in this audience wants to know Jorge Luis Borges,” begins the interviewer, in the first of this book’s conversations. Borges replies, “I wish I did. I am sick and tired of him.” For a writer, he was not greatly exercised by the topic of himself. He was interested in his interests and not the contingent fact that it was he, Borges, who was interested in them. Being himself was never much more than drudgery. “When I wake up,” he tells one of his interviewees, “I always feel I’m being let down. Because, well, here I am. Here’s the same old stupid game going on. I have to be somebody. I have to be exactly that somebody. I have certain commitments. One of the commitments is to live through the whole day.”

Borges never wrote a work of fiction longer than fourteen pages. “It is a laborious madness and an impoverishing one,” he wrote in 1941, “the madness of composing vast books—setting out in five hundred pages an idea that can be perfectly related orally in five minutes.”.. 

read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/07/two-new-books-about-borges.html

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Ishrat Jahan case: P P Pandey's bail plea rejected

A special CBI court here today rejected the anticipatory bail application of ADGP P P Pandey, paving the way for his arrest in the 2004 fake encounter case of Ishrat Jahan and three others.

Special CBI judge Gita Gopi rejected the anticipatory bail application of Pandey, who had gone underground for a few months after his name surfaced in the encounter case. The court had declared him proclaimed absconder then. The special court was hearing his application afresh on the directions of the Gujarat High Court which had restrained CBI from arresting the senior IPS officer till August 6.

The 1982-batch IPS officer was Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime), Ahmedabad, when Mumbai-based Ishrat, her friend Javed Shaikh, alias Pranesh Pillai, and their associates Amjad Ali Rana and Zeeshan Johar were gunned down by Crime Branch sleuths on June 15, 2004 on the city outskirts. The CBI had named seven Gujarat police officers including Pandey in the charge sheet filed last month in the case. The charge sheet had termed the encounter to be fake and had also held that it was a joint operation between Gujarat Police and Intelligence Bureau.

Earlier, Pandey's lawyer Nirupam Nanavati had argued that CBI has been chasing Pandey and wanted to send him behind the bars by hook or by crook.

CBI's branding of his client as a proclaimed absconder (in the charge-sheet of Ishrat case) was totally illegal as Pandey appeared before the concerned court as per the orders of the Supreme Court, Nanavati had said. "It is not an error or mistake. It is a deliberate design so as to deprive Pandey of any discretionary order from seeking justice," he said. "CBI does not want to humiliate only my client (alone) but they want to humiliate the entire police brass of Gujarat", he added.

Contending that there was no material against Pandey, Nanavati said he was acting on IB inputs and if IB inputs were to be questioned, there may be a serious law and order problem in the  country. 

However, CBI counsel Ejaz Khan had refuted the charges by saying that the investigation agency had taken over the Ishrat case only on the directions of the Gujarat High Court. "It is mischievous to term this as (result of) political rivalry. We have not come here as a political rival to any one. We are investigating the case on the directions of the Gujarat High Court," Khan argued. Khan said the act committed by some of the accused police officials was "beyond the imagination of a fiction writer". Rubbishing the claim that the probe against Pandey had some ulterior motive, Khan said, "He chose a wrong way which does not befit a senior police officer.

He approached all forums for quashing FIR, staying his arrest, among other prayers. He should have come before a judicial officer and marked his presence." City Crime Branch had in 2004 claimed that the four were terrorists, on a mission to kill Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/ishrat-jahan-case-p-p-pandeys-bail-plea-rejected/1151790/0

See also:

Ishrat Jahan link (that never was): Untold story of a J-K encounter

Sajjan Kumar's trial for murder in the 1984 riots to continue

IB’s campaign to vilify Ishrat Jahan

Ex-DGP writes to Pranab Mukherjee over 'IB men's intervention' in Ishrat case

Ishrat Jahan case: IB can seek immunity if they want, says CBI

Ishrat Jehan's mother appeals for justice // CBI Probe Nails IB Officer’s Role // Important interview with Shamima Kauser's lawyer Vrinda Grover

Public Appeal by R.B. SREEKUMAR, FORMER DGP, GUJARAT

Did Narendra Modi, Amit Shah know of the Ishrat Jahan encounter in advance?

Police records show Gujarat riots weren’t a sudden backlash

Mohan Guruswamy - Who lit the Godhra fire? (July 2002)

Sadiq Jamal Case: CBI Files Affidavit, Says Probe In Progress

Gujarat Police killed Sadiq Jamal despite Intelligence Bureau's clean chit

How Varun Gandhi silenced the system - Tehelka expose

1984 carnage - 5 convicted, main accused Sajjan Kumar acquitted

Probe larger conspiracy says Zakia Jafri's counsel, reminds SIT of SC order regarding 2002 riots

Poornima Joshi: Sangh Singh Song

A Hard Rain Falling (private armies and political violence in India) (EPW)

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Shameless abuse of power by UP government - Writer arrested for support of IAS officer Durga Shakti Nagpal

Even though it has been slammed nationwide for suspending IAS officer Durga Shakti Nagpal, the Uttar Pradesh government seems to be in no mood to relent. Now, Kanwal Bharti, a writer, has been arrested from Rampur for an online editorial criticizing UP minister Azam Khan for his remarks against Ms Nagpal, who was suspended from the post of Sub Divisional Magistrate of Gautam Budh Nagar.

The writer has been booked for promoting disharmony between two religious groups and defiling a place of worship. A case was registered against Mr Bharti based on the complaint of Azam Khan's personal assistant Shanu Khan. "The police took away my computer too. This will happen in the future too. I believe that no government should use names of any particular religion or caste... it gives a bad name," Mr Bharti told NDTV.

The Uttar Pradesh government had suspended Ms Nagpal for allegedly ordering the removal of a wall of a new mosque being built at a village in Noida and thereby endangering communal harmony. Her supporters say she has been suspended for taking on the powerful sand mining mafia in the area.

http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/now-dalit-man-who-wrote-in-support-of-ias-officer-durga-shakti-nagpal-arrested-402129?pfrom=home-lateststories

Kamal Bharti arrested for Facebook post on Durga Shakti Nagpal's suspension
Eminent Dalit scholar, Kamal Bharti, was arrested here today on a complaint by Uttar Pradesh Minister Azam Khan's aide for his alleged Facebook post on suspended IAS officer Durga Shakti Nagpal. Bharti, author of various books dealing with problems faced by Dalits, in his post said that the Gautam Budh Nagar SDM was suspended for alleged demolition of wall of a mosque. He went on to say that in Rampur a madarsa was recently demolished and its manager was placed behind the bars but no action was taken against the officials who were deputed to demolish the institution. The madarsa was demolished because it was allegedly constructed on the land of a graveyard, sources said. In his post, Bharti said it is the 'will and wish' of the Urban Development minister Azam Khan which prevails and not the law of the land. In the complaint, Azam Khan's PRO Fasahat Ali Khan alleged that Bharti had made a derogatory remark against the UP minister. On the complaint, a case was registered against Bharti at Civil Lines police station and he was arrested, police said. Bharti was produced before the court of Chief Judicial Magistrate V K Pandey, which granted him bail.

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/dalit-scholar-kamal-bharti-arrested-for-facebook-post-on-durga-shakti-nagpals-suspension/1151891/

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Remembering Hiroshima & Nagasaki, August 1945 - Exhibition tells story of the bombing which changed the world

The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has polarised opinion for nearly 70 years. For some it is an unforgivable stain on human history, the moment when the world fell to scientific horror. For others it was a necessary evil to bring an end to the Second World War - a conflict which had brought countries around the globe to their knees. What is without doubt is the world was inextricably changed when the Allies decided to drop nuclear weapons on Japanese cities.

On August 6, 1945, the Americans dropped the first atomic bomb - known as ‘Little Boy’ - on Hiroshima. It flattened a five mile area with a mushroom cloud rising thousands of feet into the air. Official estimates put the death toll at 140,000 people from the blast and resulting radiation poisoning. Three days later, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki leaving a further 74,000 people dead. A week passed, and the Japanese surrendered to the Allied forces.

Now an exhibition of the event and its repercussions is on display at Edinburgh’s Central Library. Hiroshima-Nagasaki atomic bombings has been brought to the city after a partnership between Edinburgh City Libraries and Nuclear Free Local Authorities (NFLA). “A nuclear weapon attack without any shadow of a doubt is the most unimaginable thing that could happen,” said Sean Morris, the secretary of the NFLA. “When you see the relics, the artifacts and some of the terrible destruction that was caused in these cities we start to realise we could never have a war like that. “There would not be much of a world left. By going to Hiroshima, you see the need for a world free of nuclear weapons.”

The NFLA (Nuclear Free Local Authorities) group lobbies for a ban on nuclear weapons and the restriction of the use of nuclear power as an energy source. Edinburgh and Glasgow are amongst 50 councils across the UK which works with the body. The Hiroshima-Nagasaki exhibition has toured schools and libraries across the UK since 2010, with this stop in Edinburgh the first time it has been in the Scottish capital. The presentation features 48 panels on the background of the bombings, photographs of damage to the cities, the human cost and the ongoing challenges both cities face in the aftermath of the disaster.

It also goes into the political aftermath of the incident, from the Cold War to how nuclear weapons are still a prominent issue today. The mushroom cloud about one hour after detonation at Hiroshima, taken from an altitude of approximately five miles and a distance of approximately 50 miles from the hypocenter... The exhibition at the Central Library was opened last week by Edinburgh’s Lord Provost Donald Wilson and the Japanese Consul General, Masataka Tarahara. Mr Tarahara has been the Japanese Consul to Scotland for the past three years. Originally from Osaka, the 59-year-old believes the exhibition is a timely reminder of the issue of nuclear weapons. He said: “For all Japanese people,and the government, we are the only country who has ever suffered from an atomic bombing in human history. We never want the tragedy to ever happen again. “Every visitor to Hiroshima and Nagasaki is shocked with the photos. “War itself is a tragedy for human kind. Conflict should be resolved by peaceful means and through diplomacy. “We should abolish weapons of mass destruction, especially nuclear weapons. The exhibition is very important and timely. It is meaningful to think about nuclear weapons as recently North Korea made a further nuclear test. “The reality is the number of countries who have nuclear weapons has increased and that is regrettable.”

Mr Wilson added: “The atomic bombings in 1945 devastated the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and their affects are still being felt today. “It’s vitally important we continue to raise awareness not just the short term destruction but the lasting implications for the people and the planet as a whole. “It is only through a full knowledge of the consequences that we can assure that such a tragic event never happens again.”

See full original here: local.stv.tv/edinburgh/magazine/214514-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-exhibition-held-in-edinburgh/

Fact File on Hiroshima & Nagasaki - BBC

On the morning of 6 August 1945 an American B-29 bomber, the 'Enola Gay', dropped the first atomic bomb used in warfare on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The bomb was dropped by parachute and exploded 580m (1,900ft) above the ground. Between 60,000 and 80,000 people were killed instantly. The heat from the bomb was so intense that some people simply vanished in the explosion. Many more died of the long-term effects of radiation sickness. The final death toll was calculated at 135,000. As well as residents of Hiroshima, the victims included Koreans who had been forced to come to Japan as labourers, and American prisoners-of-war who were imprisoned in Hiroshima. The blast destroyed more than ten square kilometres (six square miles) of the city. And the intense heat of the explosion then created many fires, which consumed Hiroshima and lasted for three days, trapping and killing many of the survivors of the initial blast. Thousands of people were made homeless and fled the devastated city. Hiroshima was chosen because it had not been targeted during the US Air Force's conventional bombing raids on Japan, and was therefore regarded as being a suitable place to test the effects of an atomic bomb. It was also an important military base. The Allies feared that any conventional attempt to invade the Japanese home islands would result in enormous casualties, and the bomb was seen as a way of bringing the war against Japan to a swift conclusion. In addition, it may also have been a way of demonstrating American military superiority over the Soviet Union. On the morning of 9 August, the Americans dropped a second, bigger atomic bomb. The original target was Kokura, but this was obscured by cloud so the bomb was dropped on nearby Nagasaki, an important port. About 40,000 people were killed instantly and a third of the city was destroyed. The final death toll was calculated as at least 50,000.

The Russell-Einstein Manifesto of 1955

"In view of the fact that in any future world war nuclear weapons will certainly be employed, and that such weapons threaten the continued existence of mankind, we urge the governments of the world to realize, and to acknowledge publicly, that their purpose cannot be furthered by a world war, and we urge them, consequently, to find peaceful means for the settlement of all matters of dispute between them."

Max Born

Percy W. Bridgman

Albert Einstein

Leopold Infeld

Frederic Joliot-Curie

Herman J. Muller

Linus Pauling

Cecil F. Powell

Joseph Rotblat

Bertrand Russell

Hideki Yukawa

A Final Warning by George Orwell

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Jacob Silverman - Why is the world's biggest landfill in the Pacific Ocean? // Film on the massive plastic pollution of the oceans

In t­he broad expanse of the northern Pacific Ocean, there exists the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, a slowly moving, clockwise spiral of currents created by a high-pressure system of air currents. The area is an oceanic desert, filled with tiny phytoplankton but few big fish or mammals. Due to its lack of large fish and gentle breezes, fishermen and­ 

s­ailors rarely travel through the gyre. But the area is filled with something besides plankton: trash, millions of pounds of it, most of it plastic. It's the largest landfill in the world, and it floats in the middle of the ocean.

The gyre has actually given birth to two large masses of ever-accumulating trash, known as the Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches, sometimes collectively called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The Eastern Garbage Patch floats between Hawaii and California; scientists estimate its size as two times bigger than Texas [source:LA Times]. The Western Garbage Patch forms east of Japan and west of Hawaii. Each swirling mass of refuse is massive and collects trash from all over the world. The patches are connected by a thin 6,000-mile long current called the Subtropical Convergence Zone. Research flights showed that significant amounts of trash also accumulate in the Convergence Zone.

The garbage patches present numerous hazards to marine life, fishing and tourism. But before we discuss those, it's important to look at the role of plastic. Plastic constitutes 90 percent of all trash floating in the world's oceans [source: LA Times]. The United Nations Environment Program estimated in 2006 that every square mile of ocean hosts 46,000 pieces of floating plastic [source: UN Environment Program]. In some areas, the amount of plastic outweighs the amount of plankton by a ratio of six to one. Of the more than 200 billion pounds of plastic the world produces each year, about 10 percent ends up in the ocean [source:Greenpeace]. Seventy percent of that eventually sinks, damaging life on the ocean floor [source:Greenpeace]. The rest floats; much of it ends up in gyres and the massive garbage patches that form there, with some plastic eventually washing up on a distant shore.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/oceanography/great-pacific-garbage-patch.htm

See film: Great Pacific Garbage Patch 

http://www.midwayfilm.com/

In 1997, while returning to southern California after finishing the Los Angeles-to-Hawaii Transpac sailing race, he and his crew caught sight of trash floating in the North Pacific Gyre, one of the most remote regions of the ocean. He wrote articles about the extent of this garbage, and the effects on sea life, which attracted significant attention in the media.  “As I gazed from the deck at the surface of what ought to have been a pristine ocean,” Moore later wrote in an essay for Natural History, “I was confronted, as far as the eye could see, with the sight of plastic. It seemed unbelievable, but I never found a clear spot. In the week it took to cross the subtropical high, no matter what time of day I looked, plastic debris was floating everywhere: bottles, bottle caps, wrappers, fragments.” An oceanographic colleague of Moore’s dubbed this floating junk yard “the Great Pacific Garbage Patch” 

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12 hours a day, 6 days a week - the woman who nearly died making your iPad

At around 8am on 17 March 2010, Tian Yu threw herself from the fourth floor of her factory dormitory in Shenzhen, southern China. For the past month, the teenager had worked on an assembly line churning out parts for Apple iPhones and iPads. At Foxconn's Longhua facility, that is what the 400,000 employees do: produce the smartphones and tablets that are sold by Samsung or Sony or Dell and end up in British and American homes.

But most famously of all, China's biggest factory makes gadgets for Apple. Without its No 1 supplier, the Cupertino giant's current riches would be unimaginable: in 2010, Longhua employees made 137,000 iPhones a day, or around 90 a minute.

That same year, 18 workers – none older than 25 – attempted suicide at Foxconn facilities. Fourteen died. Tian Yu was one of the lucky ones: emerging from a 12-day coma, she was left with fractures to her spine and hips and paralysed from the waist down. She was 17.

When news broke of the suicide spree, reporters battled to piece together what was wrong in Apple's supply chain. Photos were printed of safety nets strung by the company under dorm windows; interviews with workers revealed just how bad conditions were. Some quibbled over how unusual the Foxconn deaths were, arguing that they were in line with China's high rate of self-killing. However conscience-soothing that claim was in both Shenzhen and California, it overlooked how those who take their own lives are often elderly or women in villages, rather than youngsters who have just moved to cities to seek their fortunes.

For the three years since, that's the spot where the debate has been paused. In all the talk of corporate social responsibility and activists' counter-claims that the producers of iPads and iPhones are still sweating in "labour camp" conditions, you hardly ever hear those who actually work at Foxconn speak at length and in their own terms. People such as Tian Yu.

Yu was interviewed over three years by Jenny Chan and Sacom, a Hong Kong-based group of rights campaigners. From her hospital recuperation in Shenzhen to her return to her family's village, Chan and her colleagues kept in touch throughout and have published the interviews in the latest issue of an academic journal called New Technology, Work and Employment. The result is a rare and revealing insight into how big electronics companies now rely on what is effectively a human battery-farming system: employing young, poor migrants from the Chinese countryside, cramming them into vast workhouses and crowded dorms, then spitting out the ones who struggle to keep up.

Yu fits the profile to a T. In February 2010, she left her village in central China in order to earn money to support an impoverished family. As a leaving gift, her father scraped together about ¥500 (just over £50) and a secondhand mobile so she could call home. After a journey of nearly 700 miles, she was taken on at Foxconn. The employee handbook urged: "Hurry towards your finest dreams, pursue a magnificent life."

But Yu doesn't remember her daily routine as particularly magnificent. Managers would begin shifts by asking workers: "How are you?" Staff were forced to reply: "Good! Very good! Very, very good!" After that, silence was enforced.

She worked more than 12 hours each day, six days a week. She was compelled to attend early work meetings for no pay, and to skip meals to do overtime. Toilet breaks were restricted; mistakes earned you a shouting-at. And yet there was no training. In her first month, Yu had to work two seven-day weeks back to back. Foreign reporters who visit Longhua campus are shown its Olympic-sized swimming pools and shops, but she was too exhausted to do anything but sleep. She was swapped between day and night shifts and kept in an eight-person dormitory where she barely knew the names of her fellow sleepers.

Stranded in a city far from her family, unable to make friends or even get a decent night's sleep, Yu finally broke when bosses didn't pay her for the month's labour because of some administrative foul-up. In desperation, she hurled herself out of a window. She was owed £140 in basic pay and overtime, or around a quarter of a new iPhone 5.

Yu's experience flies in the face of Foxconn's own codes, let alone Apple's. Yet it is surely the inevitable fallout of a system in which Foxconn makes a wafer-thin margin on the goods it produces for Apple, and so is forced to squeeze workers ever harder.

The suicide spate prompted Apple CEO Tim Cook to call on Foxconn to improve working conditions. But there is no record of him providing any money to do so, or even relaxing the draconian contractual conditions imposed on Foxconn. Asked about it yesterday, Apple's press office said it did not discuss such matters and directed me to the company's latest Supplier Responsibility report. A glossy thing, it opens with "what we do to empower workers" and describes how staff can study for degrees.

After her suicide attempt, Yu received a one-off "humanitarian payment" of ¥180,000 (£18,000) to help her go home. According to her father: "It was as if they were buying and selling a thing." Last year, Tim Cook received wages of $4m – it was a big drop on the package he took in 2011.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/05/woman-nearly-died-making-ipad

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MR Venkatesh - Indian economy comes to a fullstop

A fairly large South-Indian group with varied business interests had invited me to a strategy session to turn it around. It was the first meeting and was to be preceded by breakfast. As we waited to be served, I perused their latest balance sheet. Noticing that it was a profitable, tax and dividend paying company, where was the question of turnaround I wondered? Nevertheless, I instantly zeroed in on the balance sheet. I observed that the company had invested approximately Rs 700 crore on its subsidiaries and lent another Rs 300 crore — in the aggregate Rs 1,000 crore. Flipping across the accounts, I asked a simple question – what is the return from this investment of Rs 1,000 crore? (Amounts changed for obvious reasons.) The CFO was silent. The executive director hummed and hawed. The body language of the rest was a dead giveaway of their uneasiness to discuss this matter further.

The junior-most amongst them blurted out, perhaps unwittingly, that it was virtually nil. His answer got a cold stare from his superiors. “Nil!” I exclaimed to the horror of my hosts. “You must be paying approximately Rs 150 crore as interest annually on this sum.” I commented, probably rubbing salt into their wounds. I went on to probe further, “Why, what happened to this money?” This time my question was followed by thundering silence. Even the junior one was quiet this time around. May be he had already got the message. As I helped myself to the breakfast I noticed radio silence at the table. Was I at a funeral?

Between mouthfuls, I attempted to be at my persuasive best. Probably my training as a chartered accountant helped me. Unable to bear my repeated questioning, the CFO finally broke down. “Sir, as you are aware we are in infrastructure. That requires tremendous pay-offs to politicians and bureaucrats. We have used approximately 150 subsidiaries, some of which are foreign ones, to route these payments.”

I was stunned. My jaw dropped. “Sir, we expected you to know all these practicalities of our business. The turnaround strategy needs to factor these ground realities.” Obviously, this time around I was at the receiving end. The breakfast meeting concluded abruptly. 

Importantly, I understood that India’s outbound investment policy was not a liberalisation process, but a facilitation one – one that ensured smooth pay-offs! Importantly in this mess, businessmen, politicians, professionals, bureaucracy, judiciary and even the media are involved. No one can blame the other.

The economics of kickbacks and payoffs

Instantly my thoughts raced to the Nira Radia tapes. Fifteen per cent was the kickbacks payable to the Minister concerned for approving every road contract. Add another fifteen to the bureaucracy and local politicians. Add another five to seven to bankers, lawyers, consultants and agents to procure funds. What we have is a staggering 35-40 per cent additional cost to every infrastructure project.

That implies a road project costing Rs 100 crore would in effect be a Rs 140-150 crores project. Naturally, the toll for the stretch would not be Rs 100 but Rs 150. This has profound implications for the Indian economy. This extra Rs 50 in toll levy for every 100 km has a cumulative effect on the manufacturing cost. The net result – imports from most of our neighbors of several items [despite cost of transportation and customs duty] are competitive than manufacturing the same in India. Forget competing abroad, Indian manufacturing has become uncompetitive in India!

There is another dimension to this issue. Somewhere down the line these “costs” were funded, mostly by our banks. Corporates altered their top-line as well as bottom-line to keep their banks in good humor. The Banks in turn suspended their sense of disbelief. As chartered accountants we too played ball in creating a mini-Satyam in most of India’s corporates.

The impact of gold plating

But this gold platting of balance sheets cannot be done beyond a point. Everything has a breaking point isn’t it, especially as the economy tanked? These developments were brilliantly captured by a Report by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) “As the topline growth continued to slow down, the manufacturing sector as well as the non-financial services sector saw profits fall in the March 2013 quarter compared to the year-ago levels. Operating profits of the manufacturing sector excluding the petroleum sector fell by close to four per cent while the net profit fell by a sharp 23.2 per cent.”

The report goes on add “The non-financial services sector managed to improve its sales growth from 3.2 per cent in the March 2012 quarter to 6.5 per cent in the March 2013 quarter on account of sectors like transport services and software. However, at the net level the sector saw a sharp 28.3 per cent decline in profits.”

Well, both the manufacturing and services sector are going bust.

Simultaneously the CMIE points out that the “Commissioning of projects dropped sharply to Rs 337 billion during the quarter ended June 2013 from Rs 827 billion in the June 2012 quarter. This was lowest since quarter ended December 2006.” Macro-economic data too corroborate these numbers. From a growth rate of 7.5 per cent in the first quarter of 2011-12 growth rate has witnessed a steady fall in the next seven quarters to less than 4.8 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2012-13.

If data released by the Finance Ministry for the first two months of this fiscal is any indication, manufacturing has recorded a negative – yes negative growth of two percent, mining a negative of 5.7 per cent, capital goods a negative of 2.7 per cent, consumer goods a negative of 4 per cent and consumer durables a negative of 10 per cent. In short, when it comes to manufacturing, forget growth, we are in negative zone.

The net result – twenty per cent of lending by Indian Banks is stressed. Obviously, when banks end up funding pay-offs and kickbacks, this is the end result. And that is a whopping Rs 11 lakh crores – approximately $200 billion – a sum that even the banks in USA cannot afford. Added to this is the stress on account of our external accounts. The foreign debt has risen to $390 billion. This was a mere $225 billion in 2008. What is galling is that the foreign exchange reserve has remained at a constant $300 billion during this period. Needless to emphasise, the ratio of foreign exchange reserves to foreign debt has deteriorated from 138 per cent then to less than 75 per cent now.

What is adding to the consternation is that in the short term – by March 2014 – we need to pay approximately $172 of our foreign debts. This works out to approximately 44 per cent of the external debt and a staggering 60 per cent of the total foreign exchange reserves of the country. The short-term external borrowings are surely the villain of the piece. Remember in 1991 the short-term external debt was a mere 10 percent of the total external debt. Now it is one-fourth.

Another important parameter – India’s net international investment position [the net claims of non-residents against external claims of residents] stood at a negative $225 billion as at 30th June 2012. This deteriorated to a negative of $307 billion by March 31, 2013. That implies an addition of $82 billion in a matter of mere nine months.

Simply put, Indian manufacturing by and large is uncompetitive at current exchange rates. And if Rupee is devalued, prices of imports, especially crude oil, would increase leading to an inflationary spiral. Either way, that means increased unemployment. The services sector too as pointed out above is spluttering. And remember agriculture has been historically recording sub-three percent growth in the best of times. As we witness large-scale unemployment, purchasing power in the hands of the people is rapidly decreasing. That implies demand compression which in turns puts the economy once again on the downward spiral. Add to this the absolute lack of governance, indecision and Governmental apathy – you would know what it means to do business in India. Whatever be the reason – political or otherwise — bureaucracy in Delhi has simply refused to function. Likewise every assessment with our revenue departments ends up as extortion.

Unfortunately the Government’s response has been pathetic. Surely, increasing FDI limits is not reforms. On this the UPA Government is completely off-target. What makes the set of reforms scandalous is that the Government is indirectly bribing foreigners to invest in India. The Jet-Etihad deal is a case in point.

Put pithily, we are witnessing a repeat of the 1991 crisis. This time around, it is threatening to make the previous one look like a walk in the park. Well what makes the crisis different this time around? Contrary to the popular belief this is not an economic crisis, this is a crisis of national character. Forget fiscal, revenue and current account deficits – let us first talk about morality deficits.

MR Venkatesh is a Chennai based chartered accountant

http://www.niticentral.com/2013/07/22/indian-economy-spirals-to-a-fullstop-107779.html

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