I have found it difficult to find adequate information in the U.S. regarding the  conflict in Sri Lanka.  Curiously, it has been difficult to find such information not only in the mainstream news, but also from sources on the left here.  This is not a conflict that has gotten the same attention as Israel vs. Palestine (although sometimes the parallels are very close, especially when hospitals get bombed). 

I have noticed, however, that the World Socialist Web Site has had consistently good coverage of this subject for a while, and I wanted to mention their latest article, on the Human Rights Watch report that came out Friday:

A report released last Friday by the US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) has provided a glimpse into the criminal character of the Sri Lankan government’s war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Entitled “End ‘War’ on Civilians,” it calls on the government to “immediately cease its indiscriminate artillery attacks on civilians in the northern Wanni region and its policy of detaining displaced persons in internment camps”.

The HRW is no friend of the LTTE. The report criticises the LTTE’s failure to allow civilians to leave its small remaining territory and its shooting at those who try. It also calls on the LTTE to stop placing its fighters near population centres. “With each battlefield defeat, the Tamil Tigers appear to be treating Tamil civilians with increased brutality,” James Ross, HRW legal and policy director, said in a press release.

These allegations are routinely made by the Sri Lankan government to justify its war and repeatedly echoed in the local and international media. What the HRW report does, however, is to undermine the government’s own lies, which are rarely challenged in the press…

I also recommend their prior article, Human tragedy continues in northern Sri Lanka.

Yes, from Yahoo “Odd News“:

A jobless Taiwan man released from prison two years ago asked police to send him back so he could eat, police and local media said Tuesday, a grim sign of hard economic times on the island.

When police found the 45-year-old convicted arsonist lying on a street in a popular Taipei shopping district, he requested a return to life behind bars, nostalgic for the 10 years he had already served, the China Post newspaper reported.

Wang had also contacted police separately with his request, a spokesman said. Officers who found him bought him a boxed lunch but declined to send him back to prison, the police spokesman said.

“We advised him to keep looking for work,” he said. “I don’t know why he can’t find a job. Maybe employers think he’s not suitable or that he’s too old.”

Especially from my perspective, I have to say that’s a ha-ha laugh riot.  Wait a minute, is this Taiwan or the U.S.? 

The whole world sinks (and stinks) under capitalism.

From Tomsdispatch via Alternet:

The Financial Crisis Is Driving Hordes of Americans to Suicide

The body count is still rising. For months on end, marked by bankruptcies, foreclosures, evictions, and layoffs, the economic meltdown has taken a heavy toll on Americans. In response, a range of extreme acts including suicide, self-inflicted injury, murder, and arson have hit the local news. By October 2008, an analysis of press reports nationwide indicated that an epidemic of tragedies spurred by the financial crisis had already spread from Pasadena, California, to Taunton, Massachusetts, from Roseville, Minnesota, to Ocala, Florida…

…But we damn well should!  Instead of supporting trillions of dollars of bailout money for the rich (and tax reductions or giveaways for the rich)… Think about this passage, from Martin Luther King’s speech Where Do We Go from Here? (to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Atlanta, Georgia, August 16, 1967):

We must develop a program that will drive the nation to a guaranteed annual income. Now, early in this century this proposal would have been greeted with ridicule and denunciation, as destructive of initiative and responsibility. At that time economic status was considered the measure of the individual’s ability and talents. And, in the thinking of that day, the absence of worldly goods indicated a want of industrious habits and moral fiber. We’ve come a long way in our understanding of human motivation and of the blind operation of our economic system. Now we realize that dislocations in the market operations of our economy and the prevalence of discrimination thrust people into idleness and bind them in constant or frequent unemployment against their will. Today the poor are less often dismissed, I hope, from our consciences by being branded as inferior or incompetent. We also know that no matter how dynamically the economy develops and expands, it does not eliminate all poverty.

The problem indicates that our emphasis must be twofold. We must create full employment or we must create incomes. People must be made consumers by one method or the other. Once they are placed in this position we need to be concerned that the potential of the individual is not wasted. New forms of work that enhance the social good will have to be devised for those for whom traditional jobs are not available. In I879 Henry George anticipated this state of affairs when he wrote in Progress and Poverty:

The fact is that the work which improves the condition of mankind, the work which extends knowledge and increases power and enriches literature and elevates thought, is not done to secure a living. It is not the work of slaves driven to their tasks either by the task, by the taskmaster, or by anirnal (sic) necessity. It is the work of men who somehow find a form of work that brings a security for its own sake and a state of society where want is abolished.

Work of this sort could be enormously increased, and we are likely to find that the problems of housing and education, instead of preceding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished. The poor transformed into purchasers will do a great deal on their own to alter housing decay. Negroes who have a double disability will have a greater effect on discrimination when they have the additional weapon of cash to use in their struggle.

Beyond these advantages, a host of positive psychological changes inevitably will result from widespread economic security. The dignity of the individual will flourish when the decisions concerning his life are in his own hands, when he has the means to seek self-improvement. Personal conflicts among husbands, wives and children will diminish when the unjust measurement of human worth on the scale of dollars is eliminated.

Now our country can do this. John Kenneth Galbraith said that a guaranteed annual income could be done for about twenty billion dollars a year. And I say to you today, that if our nation can spend thirty-five billion dollars a year to fight an unjust, evil war in Vietnam, and twenty billion dollars to put a man on the moon, it can spend billions of dollars to put God’s children on their own two feet right here on earth.

As surrealists we were on the streets from the start, along with thousands of others, in revolt and solidarity; for surrealism was born with the breath of the street, and does not intend to ever abandon it.  After the mass resistance before the State murderers, the breath of the street has become even warmer, even more hospitable and creative than before.  It is not in our competence to propose a general line to this movement.  Yet we do assume our responsibility in the common struggle, as it is a struggle for freedom.  Without having to agree with all aspects of such a mass phenomenon, without being partisans of blind hatred and of violence for its own sake, we accept that this phenomenon exists for a reason.

Let’s not allow this flaming breath of poetry to loosen or die out.

(A sweet communique found at Next Left Notes.)

Once in a while, something happens that offers a vague glimmer of hope. So, let me add my voice to the chorus of praise for this interesting event…

Congratulations to those 250 laid off workers in Chicago, who actually occupied a factory, had a sit-in strike, and won!   Not that their demands were very extensive or radical, but I have to applaud this bold collective action that they took, as well as the fact that they even accomplished something.  

Now I’m going to offer a cop-out, but I’ve had neither time nor energy to adequately follow and chronicle this tiny silver lining amidst the endless dark clouds.  (As you can see, my writing talents in this area are so depleted of energy right now, that I’m even resorting to cliches.  I’ve had my own hardships as a result of this new depression; I hope that’s a good enough excuse.)  So, at this point, I’m going to offer a quote from one of serveral articles I’ve seen that more than competently described this workers’ victory.   I like these words  by one Lee Sustar in Dissident Voice:

The settlement was a resounding victory for union members who were told a little more than a week earlier that the factory would be closed in less than three day’s time–and that, contrary to federal law, they would get no severance pay.

So to pressure the company to make good on what it owed them, the workers voted to stay put after the plant ceased production on December 5.

By deciding to occupy their factory–a tactic used by labor in the 1930s, but virtually unknown in this country since–the Republic workers sparked a solidarity movement that forced one of the biggest banks in the U.S. to pay two months of wages and health care, even though the bank had no legal obligation to do so.

What began as a resolute act of some 250 workers quickly became a national symbol of working-class resistance in a crisis-bound economy.

I’m not going to jump to any conclusions like some eager leftists out there, but it would be nice to think that this might be the beginning of a bigger trend.

———————-

P.S  Just noticed, Sustar’s article us at CounterPunch too.

There’s a protest against the bailout happening at 12 Noon on Wall Street on Thursday. It’s connected to the Ralph Nader campaign, who are correctly pointing out that the major political candidates did not even hesitate to support this bailout, although John McCain did make some pretense of resisting certain aspects early on. 

I am mentioning the rally for those who can make it.  I probably can’t, because, the rare times I get work these days, it’s usually on the midnight shift, so my schedule is way off.  Maybe that’s a copout, but I doubt I will go.  If it happened later in the afternoon or the evening or even first thing in the morning, I’d be more certain about going.  Still, I support it, and I hope there are many more like it.

Protest the Bailout on Wall Street
Thursday, October 16th, 12 Noon
Federal Hall, next to the NYSE
26 Wall Street, New York City

Join us in New York City next to the New York Stock Exchange to let the crooks on Wall Street and their politician lackeys know that the American people are not happy with their crooked deals.

Ralph will appear with Matt Gonzalez, CWA ocal Union 1180 President Arthur Cheliotis, and Rev. Jarrett Maupin from Arizona — among others — before a diverse crowd objecting to the bailout. This is going to be an afternoon to remember! Come early and take in special appearances by the 30-piece Italian brass band Titubanda, plus political satire by members of the group “Billionaires for the Bailout.”

I have to admit, I have not been that involved in the Ralph Nader campaign and I’m not 100 percent sure that I will vote for Ralph for president. If I vote for anyone, it will be Ralph. But I’m conveniently unregistered to vote right now, and I’m not sure if I want to register. Should I even bother? Obama is surely going to win New York State in an election that is kind of a farce (as most of them are in this country). I’m interested in finding out what people are doing outside of the elections, since the presidential elections don’t really matter. I suppose there are practical reasons why it would better for Obama to get elected, but those reasons are beginning to seem fewer and thinner as time goes on. If I want to bother to register, I will vote for Ralph Nader. But maybe it would be better to cast my “vote” with those who don’t think it’s worth going to the polls.

Anyway, I wanted to mention also that I like these comments by Chris Floyd in an article in CounterPunch:

This is one of the main facts that ordinary citizens around the world should take away from this crisis: the money to maintain, secure and improve the lives of their families and communities was always there — but their governments, and their political parties, made a deliberate, unforced choice not to use it for the common good. Instead, they subjugated the well-being of the world to the dictates of an extremist cult. A cult of greed and privilege, that preached iron discipline to the poor and the middle-class, but released the rich and powerful from all restrictions, and all responsibility for their actions.

This should be a constant — and galvanizing — thought in the minds of the public in the months and years to come. Remember what you could have had, and how it was denied you by the lies and delusions of a powerful elite and their bought-off factotums in government. Remember the trillions of dollars that suddenly appeared when the wheeler-dealers needed money to cover their own greed and stupidity.

Let these thoughts guide you as you weigh the promises and actions of politicians and candidates, and as you assess the “expert analysis” on economic and domestic policy offered by the corporate media and the corporate-bankrolled think tanks and academics. . . .

So remember well the lessons of this new October crash: The money to make a better life, to serve the common good, has always been there. But it has been kept from you by deceit, by dogma, by greed, and by the ambition of those who have sold their souls, and betrayed their brothers and sisters, their fellow human creatures, for the sake of privilege and power.

I’m happy to report that Richard W. Franke and Barbara H. Chasin have some relatively new papers up on the social developments in Kerala, including one that came out in 2008.  In general, their Papers on Kerala provide a lot of fascinating information on the remarkably successfull experiments in decentralized democratic socialism that have helped to define Kerala in many people’s minds as a unique ”model for development.”   

Kerala is located at the southwestern edge of India, but it has social indicators very different from what we see in other parts of India, with nearly full literacy, relatively low infant mortality, high life expectancy, etc.  Its social indicators also rank among the highest of all “developing” nations or regions – and have been that way for decades, since long before the high economic growth recently experienced by India in general.  Moreover, its distribution of wealth and resources have been remarkably egalitarian (a feature not common to the rest of India, especially during the recent growth period), and Kerala has featured democratic workers’ coops that surpassed the famous achievements in workers’ democracy of the Mondragon coops in Spain.

Remarkable compared to many other Third World nations/states/regions, Kerala experienced increases in socialism while it achieved decentralization, and while expanding, rather than suppressing, democratic participation.  In fact, as the work by Franke and Chasin points out, this emphasis on widespread democratic participation has been one of the keys to Kerala’s social successes.  Also, as reported in Franke and Chasin’s work, Kerala has made great strides toward gender equality, partly as a result of certain features of their social-economic development plans.

Sometime in the near future, I will post a more extensive article on Kerala’s social experiments and economic development, with appropriate quotes from Franke and Chasin and other sources.  However, it will take time to do this work justice in a blog post.  And I have promised a few people for a while that I would post something here on the subject, so maybe this mention will suffice for now.

I also wanted to mention something positive, since I do dwell so much on other, troubled and deteriorating parts of the world.  Kerala has had some setbacks, in part because of a brief rightward swing in government at the beginning of the 2000s and in part because of the pressures of neoliberal globalization, but as Franke and Chasin also report, it seems to be returning to where it left off (although it never completely left off…).

Not to say that this is a perfect place on Earth…  I am aware that this state has had its experience with communal violence and some bad history related to the caste system (as was made awfully clear in a novel written by the woman whom I quote in this blog’s header, Ms. Arundhati Roy).  But it does offer inspiration too.

I admit that I am a bit biased for the culture of Kerala also.  I get into that a little in a post on my other blog, Fascination with Kerala.  (For one thing, it scores some big points in my mind just for being the birthplace of the dancer-actress named Padmini and her two sisters, collectively known as the famous Travancore Sisters, and their niece, the currently famous dancer-actress named Shobana.  But we won’t go into that too much here.)  However, my interest in Kerala – as apart from the rest of India (which I have always liked quite a bit at least for the food and music, to start) - really began about 11 or 12 years ago, when I read one of Franke and Chasin’s papers.

And as I said, for a more detailed discussion of this matter, stay tuned.     

I once again have to commend the World Socialist Web Site for its well written and informative reporting of news that we’re not likely to hear so much in the mainstream press or even much of the “left” press.  In yesterday’s edition, for instance, the WSWS shed some light on the success of the recent prison break in Afghanistan – not, as mainstream (and some left) news reports might portray, simply a result of the evil Taliban and the supposedly evil people who sympathize with them…  Because, as the WSWS points out, this prison break was partly the result of the inhuman cruelties inflicted by the Afghan government, which are in many ways an extension of the behavior of the U.S. military and “intelligence” in the “war on terror.”  As the WSWS relates in the article, Afghanistan: Mass prison break underscores crisis of US-backed regime:

While government and NATO officials reported that some high- and middle-level Taliban commanders were among the escapees, the Afghanistan Human Rights Organization (AHRO) said that many held there were merely caught up in security sweeps.

Several hundred prisoners had been on hunger strike, and approximately 40 had sewn their lips shut in protest over being held without charges, in some cases for two years or more, undergoing systematic torture.

AHRO representatives said that they had warned the Afghan regime that the anger and desperation of both the prisoners and their families in the surrounding area was creating a major security threat.

“Many of the prisoners who have now escaped from Sarposa suffered unimaginable torture and have severe mental problems as a result of the abuse,” said AHRO chairman, Lal Gul, an attorney.  “Prisoners had complained of sexual abuse using trained dogs, and physical torture resulting in the loss of limbs or body parts. People in the region were understandably outraged by these abuses, and they felt increasingly desperate since most of the people being held there had nothing to do with the Taliban.”

The human rights representative said that the Taliban was gaining support in the area both because of these abuses and because of the stepped-up US bombing campaign that has claimed the lives of civilians, including women and children.

The Afghan regime has adopted the standards used by the Bush administration in the so-called “war on terror,” denying detainees labeled as Taliban supporters any rights either as criminal suspects or prisoners of war.  The inevitable result has been their torture both in US and in Afghan custody.

Nearly seven years after Washington launched its “Operation Enduring Freedom” with air strikes and a ground intervention in Afghanistan, and with nearly 70,000 US and other NATO troops occupying the country, the insurgency is gaining strength.  Popular hostility toward the foreign occupation and the Karzai regime has been fed by the killing of civilians in US air strikes, the government’s repression and corruption, and pervasive poverty and hunger.

We should emphasize the phrase “popular hostility toward the foreign occupation and the Karzai regime.”  Beause, occupiers who talk about defending freedom aren’t going to make such a convincing argument when their own campaign exhibits complete denial of freedoms to such a great extent.  Moreover, U.S. troops might find their efforts to be counterproductive as they become more violent, with their bumbling and bullying incursions across the border into Pakistan.  When last I saw, even in the tribal regions, the Taliban and other fundamentalists (including the mysteriously hidden leaders of Al Qaeda) did not have majority support.  They may have a frighteningly strong minority behind them (in some areas, I think I read, 40 percent), but many people still hate these groups.  However, it often seems that the fundamentalists couldn’t have a better recruiting tool than the activities of U.S. and other western occupiers.  This applies just as much in the supposedly “good war” in Afghanistan as it does in the “bad war” in Iraq.  (Both wars were begun without legitimate reasons, of course.  The invasion of Afghanistan was much more about the desire to secure control of a strategic region near important natural resources – pipelines, etc. – than about pursuing the criminals behind 9-11. )    

And if the activities of troops and jailers are brutal enough and blatantly un-democratic enough to increase sentiment for the Taliban, then how will increasing the level of violence by the occupiers solve this problem?  Maybe it would help if those who claimed to be defending freedom somehow behaved in a way that would better support that claim.

——————-

P.S.  Also in this edition of the WSWS, you can find an amusing article on the career of Tim Russert and the contribution that he made to the decay of the American media, as well as an article that continues the WSWS’ excellent coverage of the human rights abuses committed by the military and government of Sri Lanka.    

And by the way, I know the WSWS is run by Trotskyists, and I don’t always agree with them, especially when they write “historical” articles about Kronstadt or the Spanish Revolution.  (I could be more assertive in saying that I disagree with them, but I don’t even understand some of those articles; they just seem convoluted to me.)  And since I don’t like their “historical” articles as much, I don’t promote them.  I also have heard about some scandals within the history of the WSWS, reported by a rival leftist group (though when leftist rivals start maligning one another, it’s difficult to know how much to truly believe).  But few leftist sites that I know of contain such well-written and well-informed news reporting, with so much information that fill in the gaps left by the mainstream news.  That is what is important to me about the WSWS, especially in the present context, and that is what I  will praise them for.

[This is slightly edited a "reprint" of a post I wrote on another blog in May of 2004.  Four years later, the issue has come to light a little more, and we might be moving a little closer to what I requested here.  But not close enough...]

Healthcare is the kind of expense that can wipe out any extra savings or any modest increase in income, even when the smallest problems arise. So, lots of people who might manage to get ahead a little, to lift themselves out of poverty through hard work and savings (and a little luck), will find that their efforts are futile as soon as they get ill.  This is especially true considering that more and more jobs fail to provide health insurance, or else offer it at extra rates (shared premiums) that many workers simply can’t afford.

There’s no way that people can fight this kind of problem individually.  We can all take better care of ourselves (DIY preventive healthcare, etc.), but we do need skilled treatment when the proverbial shit hits the fan. Moreover, the healthcare industry is presided over in a deliberately specialized way, so that you cannot hope to get competent treatment without going through a system that overcharges for everything, starting with medical students’ high-debt-incurring educations leading up to those highly protected degrees. Costs notwithstanding, this really isn’t an excuse for people not to get health coverage.  If our government takes care of anything, if it does anything with the taxes that it collects and actually serves the people at all (though we all know that idea’s kind of a joke), this should be the top priority, rather than its last.

I sometimes wonder why there isn’t more public outrage over the lack of health coverage in this country. There is concern, but there is no collective outcry, and I don’t see people taking to the streets.  It could be because the majority still have some form of health coverage, even though it is gradually costing them more and more. It could be that too many people have been brainwashed into thinking that national, “single-payer” healthcare would simply cost too much money – though more and more evidence comes out that the strategy of government working through HMOs costs even more (and let’s not get into the vast amounts wasted on other corporate welfare and war).

Sometimes I think part of the problem is that most really active activists are simply too young.  A few times, at least, I’ve seen agendas written up by mostly young activists that address every social problem from war to police brutality to racism, sexism, and homophobia to unfair drug laws and even, once in a good while, the lack of affordable housing, but which make no mention about the lack of universal healthcare. I think this is because most young activists haven’t yet developed problems that force them to think about healthcare.  If most of the activists who take to the streets and make a lot of noise about things were 20 years older (and maybe a little poorer, too), universal healthcare would probably be much higher on their agendas.

Although, to be fair, it’s not as though activists never address the issue of affordable healthcare…  There have been good actions in the face of dramatic cutbacks, like the closing of a public hospital.  (Some of our friends over in Washington, DC have been impressively active on that front.)  And some young people have been very vocal and active during the past couple of decades in the fight for better AIDS-related research, treatment, and access to drugs. I’ve heard mixed views about ACT UP in recent years (though I don’t quite remember the source of the squabbles), but during the past 15 years or so, they have been pretty hard-hitting, unified and militant, and they still seem damn active to me.

What if the vocal activism and militancy of ACT UP and similar groups were extended to other healthcare concerns? A lot of people are dying unnecessarily from cancer and heart disease because they can’t get access to competent treatment or delay getting checkups for many years on end because they simply can’t afford doctors.  These are problems that we should all be fighting mad about.

Older people should be fighting more too.  Yes, it’s true, when you get older you can become sick and tired, which would, ironically, prevent people from becoming too active about this issue.  But when I think about people I’ve known who remained as active as anyone while they were sick, weak and dying from AIDS, I realize older people don’t have that big of an excuse.  (Besides which, I have heard about more than a few people in their 60s through 80s doing civil disobedience and direct action for peace causes, getting themselves arrested for actions at missile sites, etc.)

It would be great if we could have some national days of action, with sit-ins, blockades, occupations of offices, and other acts of civil disobedience and direct action to pressure the people in government to do something real for the cause of universal healthcare.  Things could get really interesting if a lot of older people were actually to get more involved. “Law enforcement” might get into some public relations problems if they start pepper spraying late-middle aged people and senior citizens waging a die-in to demand access to doctors and medicine.  This is an issue that would certainly get me back out into the streets, no matter how crappy I happen to be feeling on any given day.