On May 15, 2011, young people occupied the squares of the cities in Spain. They called themselves the “Indignados” — the indignant.
I met them in Madrid where I was attending the meeting of the scientific committee that advises the Spanish Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.
Their declaration states: “Who are we? We are the people; we have come here freely as volunteers. Why are we here? We are here because we want a new society that gives more priority to life than to economic interest.”
In the US the ongoing “Occupy movement” is also called “We are the 99 per cent.” This people’s protest, inspired by the Arab Spring, is directed against unequal distribution of wealth; the “99 per cent” here refers to “the difference in wealth between the top one per cent and all the remaining citizens”.
The fact that they were supported by action around the world when they were to be evicted from the Wall Street on October 14 shows that everywhere people are fed up with the current system. They are fed up with the power of corporations.
They are fed up with the destruction of democracy and peoples’ right. They refuse to give their consent to the bailouts of banks by squeezing people of their lives and livelihoods. The contest, as “the 99 per cent” describe it, is between life and economic interests, between people and corporations, between democracy and economic dictatorship.
The organising style of the people’s movements worldwide is based on the deepest and the most direct democracy. This is self-organisation. This is how life and democracy work. This is what Mahatma Gandhi called swaraj.
Those from the dominant system, used to hierarchy and domination do not understand the horizontal organising and call these movements “leaderless”.
Gandhi had said: “Life will not be a pyramid with the apex sustained by the bottom. But it will be an oceanic circle whose centre will be the individual always ready to perish for the village, the latter ready to perish for the circle of villages till at last the whole becomes one life composed of individuals, never aggressive in their arrogance, but ever humble, sharing the majesty of the oceanic circle of which they are integral units. Therefore, the outermost circumference will not wield power to crush the inner circle, but will give strength to all within and will derive its own strength from it.”
The general assemblies in cities around the world are living examples of these “ever expanding, never ascending” oceanic circles. When everyone has to be included in decision-making, consensus is the only way. This is how indigenous cultures have practised democracy throughout history.
Future generations are reconnecting to this ancient tradition of shaping real freedom because corporate rule has displaced democracy, and people’s representatives have mutated into corporate representatives.
Today, worldwide, representative democracy has reached its democratic limits. From being “by the people, for the people, of the people”, it has become “by the corporations, of the corporations, for the corporations”.
Money drives elections, and money runs government. Gandhi identified “modern civilisation” as the real cause for loss of freedom: “Let us first consider what state of things is described by the word ‘civilisation’. Its true test lies in the fact that people living in it make bodily welfare the object of life... Civilisation seeks to increase bodily comforts and it fails miserably even in doing so... This civilisation is such that one has only to be patient and it will be self-destroyed.”
This I believe is at the heart of Gandhi’s foresight. The ecological crisis which is a result of the intense resource appetite and pollution caused by industrialisation is the most important aspect of the self-destruction of civilisation. Industrialisation is based on fossil fuels, and fossil fuel civilisation has given us climate chaos and is threatening us with climate catastrophe.
It has also given us unemployment. Gandhi also refers to the fact that the sole objective of “civilisation” is bodily welfare and it fails miserably even in this objective and it fails in its own measure.
The new movements of the future generations are movements of the excluded who have been deprived of every right — political, economic and social. They have nothing to lose but their disposability and dispensability. In spite of being the victims of brutal injustice and exclusion, non-violence is a deep commitment of these new movements.
“Occupy” is in fact a reclaiming of the commons. The park is the physical commons in every town. Today the parks are places for announcing to Wall Street, to banks, to governments, that the 99 per cent is withdrawing its consent from the present disorder which has pushed millions to homelessness, joblessness and hunger.
Freedom in our times has been sold as “free market democracy”. “Free markets” mean freedom for corporations to exploit whomsoever they want, and how they want. It means the end of freedom for people and nature everywhere. “Free market democracy” is in fact an oxymoron which has deluded us into believing that deregulation of corporations means freedom for us.
Just as the illusion of growth and the fiction of finance has made the economy volatile and unpredictable, the fiction of the corporation as a legal person has replaced citizens and made society unstable and non-sustainable.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Har Har(each one a )Mahadev: A Confident Open Mindedness as Key to Success
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Sunday, October 30, 2011
Our Conversations and Cooperative Endeavors Must Continue
I must congratulate you on your dogged expositions.You are very articulate and you expand our consciousness.And this conversation must continue.The fairly well off, people like us,have been reduced to leading completely individualized lives,each minute of the day.We don't know each other,and we are essentially alone.
And, I would submit, this suits the ruling elites very well. Their empire will crumble when we start joining each other in Solidarity and working cooperatively for the common good of mankind.Because this Earth is our common home and,however we may irritate each other at times,how do we escape our common home.All alone, we are actually nothing,gullible playthings at the hands of the ruling elites!
Regarding the issue itself,I would submit that our Brain is a grand Receiver of various frequencies which it picks up from this Ocean of consciousness which is our common home.All our thoughts arise from this Ocean. Now what frequencies the brain picks up depends on what frequency it is itself vibrating at.We actually use only about 10-20% of the brain, corresponding to the intellectual brain,which is sufficient for our survival,sexuality and power plays.The higher frequencies of love,joy and genius pass us by because our brain is not sufficiently trained to receive these higher frequencies.The Ruling Elites will keep us so stressed so as to destroy our abilities to think creatively.And unless we are in peace,joy and harmony, how do we pick up these higher frequencies of genius?
I agree completely with what you say.My only submission is that we have to develop our brains to gain more from this Ocean that we inhabit.The brain is the grandest supercomputer ever invented.And there is no temple of God ever built that can match our Brain in brilliance.But, so far, we have only skimmed the surface of its Grandeur.
And, this is the unfinished task that we should bow down before in utmost reverence because only Knowledge can save humankind from a Militarist Elite bent on destroying this Earth with its attitude Racism, Inequality and a mindless Consumerism which can only give them so much satisfaction and no more.
And, I would submit, this suits the ruling elites very well. Their empire will crumble when we start joining each other in Solidarity and working cooperatively for the common good of mankind.Because this Earth is our common home and,however we may irritate each other at times,how do we escape our common home.All alone, we are actually nothing,gullible playthings at the hands of the ruling elites!
Regarding the issue itself,I would submit that our Brain is a grand Receiver of various frequencies which it picks up from this Ocean of consciousness which is our common home.All our thoughts arise from this Ocean. Now what frequencies the brain picks up depends on what frequency it is itself vibrating at.We actually use only about 10-20% of the brain, corresponding to the intellectual brain,which is sufficient for our survival,sexuality and power plays.The higher frequencies of love,joy and genius pass us by because our brain is not sufficiently trained to receive these higher frequencies.The Ruling Elites will keep us so stressed so as to destroy our abilities to think creatively.And unless we are in peace,joy and harmony, how do we pick up these higher frequencies of genius?
I agree completely with what you say.My only submission is that we have to develop our brains to gain more from this Ocean that we inhabit.The brain is the grandest supercomputer ever invented.And there is no temple of God ever built that can match our Brain in brilliance.But, so far, we have only skimmed the surface of its Grandeur.
And, this is the unfinished task that we should bow down before in utmost reverence because only Knowledge can save humankind from a Militarist Elite bent on destroying this Earth with its attitude Racism, Inequality and a mindless Consumerism which can only give them so much satisfaction and no more.
The Elites Actually Exercise Control through a Military State called the USA
Dear Friends,
This caption will come as a rude shock to many of us long fed on the myth of the American Dream.But I urge that you listen to the five links of Professor Vijay Prashad at the Occupy Wall Street in the You Tube to understand how the things are the way they are.
Either we learn to work together for the common good or we perish.There is no other alternative.
Professor Prashad has rightly pointed out that the crisis in the U.S is not about greed of the 1%.It's about economics and politics and power exercised by the 1% not only over 99% of the Americans but over much of the world.
Therefore its not about 99% versus the 1%.The whole system has collapsed.And we have to start demanding the impossible.The American State is actually a Military State where social spending has been capped at 14.5% of the GDP.Military Spending is the tool whereby the elites exercise power and control over the entire world, not just 99% of the Americans.
Social Solidarity is what the elites do not want. The Americans have been driven to an utterly privatized existence.Because once the public at large start exchanging notes, they'd immediately understand the rottenness of the system.
Therefore this is the first flush Victory of the Occupy Wall Street movement. It has brought people together. Even newspapers from the Vatican, Financial Times and New York Times are forced to concede that Inequality in America is Obscene.
There will be more victories in this ongoing struggle.It will take time.But I am hopeful that the first nail in dismantling the Military State that America represents has been struck by the brave protesters of Occupy Wall Street.
This caption will come as a rude shock to many of us long fed on the myth of the American Dream.But I urge that you listen to the five links of Professor Vijay Prashad at the Occupy Wall Street in the You Tube to understand how the things are the way they are.
Either we learn to work together for the common good or we perish.There is no other alternative.
Professor Prashad has rightly pointed out that the crisis in the U.S is not about greed of the 1%.It's about economics and politics and power exercised by the 1% not only over 99% of the Americans but over much of the world.
Therefore its not about 99% versus the 1%.The whole system has collapsed.And we have to start demanding the impossible.The American State is actually a Military State where social spending has been capped at 14.5% of the GDP.Military Spending is the tool whereby the elites exercise power and control over the entire world, not just 99% of the Americans.
Social Solidarity is what the elites do not want. The Americans have been driven to an utterly privatized existence.Because once the public at large start exchanging notes, they'd immediately understand the rottenness of the system.
Therefore this is the first flush Victory of the Occupy Wall Street movement. It has brought people together. Even newspapers from the Vatican, Financial Times and New York Times are forced to concede that Inequality in America is Obscene.
There will be more victories in this ongoing struggle.It will take time.But I am hopeful that the first nail in dismantling the Military State that America represents has been struck by the brave protesters of Occupy Wall Street.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Saving Capitalism and Democracy from Carpetbaggers
October 24, 2011 The 99 per cent versus the One
Kanishk Tharoor
AP Occupy Wall Street protestors march outside the Federal Reserve, the day after successfully resisting a potential eviction from their camp in Zuccotti Park, in New York on October 15, 2011.
At its simplest, the 'Occupy Wall Street' movement hopes to change American discourse on economic policy.
Nearly three years ago, Barack Obama won the U.S. presidential election on the back of incredible popular mobilisation. In a country often bogged down in plodding party politics, there seemed to be something transcendent and epochal about his rise. Observers suggested that Mr. Obama did more than inspire voters; he energised a generational movement. This sense was no doubt aided by Mr. Obama's charisma and the messianic rhetoric of his campaign. He called for “the audacity of hope” and promised that “we are the ones we've been waiting for.”
After three years of disillusionment, a more organic movement has taken root in the United States. The “Occupy Wall Street” protests began innocuously one month ago, but now claim public space and public attention. They reached new heights of spectacle on Saturday when thousands flooded Times Square in New York City as part of a wider “global day of rage” against the West's stuttering economic systems.
The American protesters come from many of the groups who rallied to Mr. Obama in 2008: young people, students, urban middle classes, union members, the working poor, the underemployed, and the unemployed. Yet this time they are not hitched to the ascendance of one man. They denounce the growth of stark inequality and the erosion of social mobility in America. They decry what they see as the collusion of the state with corporate and financial interests. And they tap into the widely-shared belief that the bankers, speculators, and traders responsible for the economic recession have escaped it unscathed while leaving behind a vast hinterland of despair and struggle.
Mr. Obama's campaign hyperbole returned to life in an unexpected way. Among the many striking signs I've seen around these protests, one placard at Zuccotti Park (the square in downtown Manhattan “occupied” by activists for the past month) reprised his old line: “We are the ones we've been waiting for.” It was a rebuke to the President, not a pledge of fealty. For the newly galvanised left, those heady days of Obama-euphoria in 2008 seem terribly remote. The President and his party are not even auxiliary to the burgeoning movement. Its impetus doesn't spring from the imperatives of electoral politics, but from a much more inchoate and deeper well of feeling in American society.
Post-2008
We can trace this anger to the hardships that descended on many Americans following the 2008 economic collapse. The ranks of the unemployed have swollen; jobs are harder to come by for both the under- and over-educated; students graduate with unpayable debts; once free-flowing credit has dried up; prudent savers have seen their pensions vanish into thin air; government austerity measures threaten public sector jobs and what remains of America's social safety net. Protesters can summon an army of statistics to show how inequality in America has spiralled after three decades of intensifying deregulation (for instance, according to the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute, average incomes between 1979 and 2008 in the U.S. grew by over $10,000, but all that growth went to the richest 10 per cent of the country, while the incomes of the remaining 90 per cent effectively declined). Some activists replace the traditional slogans on their placards with economic charts, cluttering demonstrations with arrows and figures. It is perhaps fitting that the identity of this movement has coalesced around a number. Calling themselves the “99%,” the protesters assail a hypothetical “1%,” the rich elite that holds a country and its government in thrall.
The rawness and generality of this sentiment — aimed at financial institutions, corporations, the wealthy, and a supposedly complicit government — has convinced many critics that the protesters lack a coherent agenda: “What do these people want?” In fairness, it's difficult to summarise the movement. I've heard suggestions that the U.S. is in the midst of its own “Anna Hazare moment,” but the comparison doesn't hold water. “Occupy Wall Street” has no figurehead and only the faintest tracing of a leadership structure. Where Anna's followers demanded concrete legislative action in the Jan Lokpal bill, “Occupy Wall Street” activists maintain a long, pious list of causes, from the reform of the financial system to stopping house foreclosures to ending U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This series of grievances in the “Declaration of the Occupation of New York City” (the closest thing to a manifesto yet to emerge from the movement) can seem exhaustively idealistic or, worse, vague and impractical. But its role is not to serve as some blueprint for actual legislative reform. Instead, it allows the movement to remain open and inclusive to its growing number of sympathisers. While they frustrate the media and resist easy definition, the “Occupy Wall Street” protests continue to hit a nerve in an uncertain and depressed nation.
At its simplest level, “Occupy Wall Street” hopes to change American discourse. The demonstrations seek to re-centre American politics after they were wrenched off-kilter by the right-wing Tea Party movement, its Republican supporters, and by a pliant and weak Democratic party. This is a battle to be waged as much in front of cameras as it is in the finer points of political debates. Events in New York's Times Square on Saturday made for triumphant spectacle. The protesters — all critics of the current economic order — conquered the city's most garish and iconic plaza, its every edifice smothered in flickering neon advertisements. The rally confirmed the swelling appeal of the movement. I shuffled about a packed Times Square, in awe at the size, diversity, and remarkably good humour of the crowd.
The day before, I was an observer at another victory of the “Occupy Wall Street” protests. Thousands arrived in the small hours of Friday morning to successfully prevent the New York Police Department from evicting the encampment at Zuccotti Park. As people in the park celebrated, several politicians from the Democratic party — mostly local councilmen — spoke to the crowd. Already, segments of the Democratic party have taken notice of the movement and try to exploit its momentum. Buoyed by recent successes, the protesters are here to stay. When asked for his own opinion about “Occupy Wall Street,” Mr. Obama has equivocated, stopping short of offering a full endorsement. One suspects that the longer the protests last, the more Mr. Obama will have to consider bending to its sentiments. In Zuccotti Park, I watched one Democratic party official struggle to make himself heard. His speech was swallowed in the din of a movement committed to going forward, with or without him.
(Kanishk Tharoor is a writer based in New York City.)
Kanishk Tharoor
AP Occupy Wall Street protestors march outside the Federal Reserve, the day after successfully resisting a potential eviction from their camp in Zuccotti Park, in New York on October 15, 2011.
At its simplest, the 'Occupy Wall Street' movement hopes to change American discourse on economic policy.
Nearly three years ago, Barack Obama won the U.S. presidential election on the back of incredible popular mobilisation. In a country often bogged down in plodding party politics, there seemed to be something transcendent and epochal about his rise. Observers suggested that Mr. Obama did more than inspire voters; he energised a generational movement. This sense was no doubt aided by Mr. Obama's charisma and the messianic rhetoric of his campaign. He called for “the audacity of hope” and promised that “we are the ones we've been waiting for.”
After three years of disillusionment, a more organic movement has taken root in the United States. The “Occupy Wall Street” protests began innocuously one month ago, but now claim public space and public attention. They reached new heights of spectacle on Saturday when thousands flooded Times Square in New York City as part of a wider “global day of rage” against the West's stuttering economic systems.
The American protesters come from many of the groups who rallied to Mr. Obama in 2008: young people, students, urban middle classes, union members, the working poor, the underemployed, and the unemployed. Yet this time they are not hitched to the ascendance of one man. They denounce the growth of stark inequality and the erosion of social mobility in America. They decry what they see as the collusion of the state with corporate and financial interests. And they tap into the widely-shared belief that the bankers, speculators, and traders responsible for the economic recession have escaped it unscathed while leaving behind a vast hinterland of despair and struggle.
Mr. Obama's campaign hyperbole returned to life in an unexpected way. Among the many striking signs I've seen around these protests, one placard at Zuccotti Park (the square in downtown Manhattan “occupied” by activists for the past month) reprised his old line: “We are the ones we've been waiting for.” It was a rebuke to the President, not a pledge of fealty. For the newly galvanised left, those heady days of Obama-euphoria in 2008 seem terribly remote. The President and his party are not even auxiliary to the burgeoning movement. Its impetus doesn't spring from the imperatives of electoral politics, but from a much more inchoate and deeper well of feeling in American society.
Post-2008
We can trace this anger to the hardships that descended on many Americans following the 2008 economic collapse. The ranks of the unemployed have swollen; jobs are harder to come by for both the under- and over-educated; students graduate with unpayable debts; once free-flowing credit has dried up; prudent savers have seen their pensions vanish into thin air; government austerity measures threaten public sector jobs and what remains of America's social safety net. Protesters can summon an army of statistics to show how inequality in America has spiralled after three decades of intensifying deregulation (for instance, according to the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute, average incomes between 1979 and 2008 in the U.S. grew by over $10,000, but all that growth went to the richest 10 per cent of the country, while the incomes of the remaining 90 per cent effectively declined). Some activists replace the traditional slogans on their placards with economic charts, cluttering demonstrations with arrows and figures. It is perhaps fitting that the identity of this movement has coalesced around a number. Calling themselves the “99%,” the protesters assail a hypothetical “1%,” the rich elite that holds a country and its government in thrall.
The rawness and generality of this sentiment — aimed at financial institutions, corporations, the wealthy, and a supposedly complicit government — has convinced many critics that the protesters lack a coherent agenda: “What do these people want?” In fairness, it's difficult to summarise the movement. I've heard suggestions that the U.S. is in the midst of its own “Anna Hazare moment,” but the comparison doesn't hold water. “Occupy Wall Street” has no figurehead and only the faintest tracing of a leadership structure. Where Anna's followers demanded concrete legislative action in the Jan Lokpal bill, “Occupy Wall Street” activists maintain a long, pious list of causes, from the reform of the financial system to stopping house foreclosures to ending U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This series of grievances in the “Declaration of the Occupation of New York City” (the closest thing to a manifesto yet to emerge from the movement) can seem exhaustively idealistic or, worse, vague and impractical. But its role is not to serve as some blueprint for actual legislative reform. Instead, it allows the movement to remain open and inclusive to its growing number of sympathisers. While they frustrate the media and resist easy definition, the “Occupy Wall Street” protests continue to hit a nerve in an uncertain and depressed nation.
At its simplest level, “Occupy Wall Street” hopes to change American discourse. The demonstrations seek to re-centre American politics after they were wrenched off-kilter by the right-wing Tea Party movement, its Republican supporters, and by a pliant and weak Democratic party. This is a battle to be waged as much in front of cameras as it is in the finer points of political debates. Events in New York's Times Square on Saturday made for triumphant spectacle. The protesters — all critics of the current economic order — conquered the city's most garish and iconic plaza, its every edifice smothered in flickering neon advertisements. The rally confirmed the swelling appeal of the movement. I shuffled about a packed Times Square, in awe at the size, diversity, and remarkably good humour of the crowd.
The day before, I was an observer at another victory of the “Occupy Wall Street” protests. Thousands arrived in the small hours of Friday morning to successfully prevent the New York Police Department from evicting the encampment at Zuccotti Park. As people in the park celebrated, several politicians from the Democratic party — mostly local councilmen — spoke to the crowd. Already, segments of the Democratic party have taken notice of the movement and try to exploit its momentum. Buoyed by recent successes, the protesters are here to stay. When asked for his own opinion about “Occupy Wall Street,” Mr. Obama has equivocated, stopping short of offering a full endorsement. One suspects that the longer the protests last, the more Mr. Obama will have to consider bending to its sentiments. In Zuccotti Park, I watched one Democratic party official struggle to make himself heard. His speech was swallowed in the din of a movement committed to going forward, with or without him.
(Kanishk Tharoor is a writer based in New York City.)
Trust the Human Genius to Eventually Flower and to Prevail
| No,my friend,our exchanges are not an exercise in futility.It may strike a chord somewhere.Let us live in hope.Though,in the interregnum,things might seem quite hopeless.Trust the human genius to eventually flower, and to prevail. My exposition wasn't about the misuse of religion at all. That's quite another story.I'm convinced that Religion itself is the MOST important tool of socialization in the hands of the ruling elites to subjugate the populace to readily accept the thesis that they have to bow down before a class of "SUPERIOR "people,just as they get used to bowing before deities in the temple. Mind you, bowing down in itself doesn't debase us.The point is to WHAT we bow down to.I would say that bowing down to the concept of universal EQUALITY of all and the world as one family, Vasudhaiv Kutumbakam, are concepts any rational person will agree are worth bowing down before. Again,I believe, there is a Creative Principle which holds us all together. Otherwise the gravitational pull will cause us to implode.This is the Universal Spirit.I bow down in utmost reverence to this Spirit,which is generally called God. A Oneness with this Universal Spirit makes my day and takes care of whatever I may want. I'll also clarify that I have nothing against any religious practice which may remind us and help us to be ONE with this GOD.But we have to understand and be ONE with the concept of Aham Brahmasmi. Just as I Am That, everyone else is .Because it is the SAME power,same Energy, which pervades everything in this Cosmos.Unless we are One with this power, nothing will ever seem quite right,something will always seem missing, howsoever money, power or fame we might earn. Unfortunately,everyone, most of all the ruling elites,are only interested in dividing peoples on the basis of religion or nationalities or anything.DIVIDE and RULE is a classic policy used by the ruling elites since antiquity.But the sad part is that we fall prey to such propaganda because we haven't yet understood who we REALLY are. But I'm hopeful that in this information age that we live in,it will not be very difficult for people to find whatever they may want.And when the people are empowered, the old hierarchies are bound to crumble. |
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