Monday, March 30, 2015

NYT Publishes Call to Bomb Iran - By Robert Parry -

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/03/29/nyt-publishes-call-bomb-iran

Published on
Sunday, March 29, 2015
by

NYT Publishes Call to Bomb Iran

An Iranian man holding a photo of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. (Iranian government photo)
If two major newspapers in, say, Russia published major articles openly advocating the unprovoked bombing of a country, say, Israel, the U.S. government and news media would be aflame with denunciations about “aggression,” “criminality,” “madness,” and “behavior not fitting the Twenty-first Century.”

But when the newspapers are American – the New York Times and the Washington Post – and the target country is Iran, no one in the U.S. government and media bats an eye. These inflammatory articles – these incitements to murder and violation of international law – are considered just normal discussion in the Land of Exceptionalism.

On Thursday, the New York Times printed an op-ed that urged the bombing of Iran as an alternative to reaching a diplomatic agreement that would sharply curtail Iran’s nuclear program and ensure that it was used only for peaceful purposes. The Post published a similar “we-must-bomb-Iran” op-ed two weeks ago.

The Times’ article by John Bolton, a neocon scholar from the American Enterprise Institute, was entitled “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran.” It followed the Post’s op-ed by Joshua Muravchik, formerly at AEI and now a fellow at the neocon-dominated School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins. [For more on that piece, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Neocon Admits Plan to Bomb Iran.”]

Both articles called on the United States to mount a sustained bombing campaign against Iran to destroy its nuclear facilities and to promote “regime change” in Tehran. Ironically, these “scholars” rationalized their calls for unprovoked aggression against Iran under the theory that Iran is an aggressive state, although Iran has not invaded another country for centuries.

Bolton, who served as President George W. Bush’s ambassador to the United Nations, based his call for war on the possibility that if Iran did develop a nuclear bomb – which Iran denies seeking and which the U.S. intelligence community agrees Iran is not building – such a hypothetical event could touch off an arms race in the Middle East.

Curiously, Bolton acknowledged that Israel already has developed an undeclared nuclear weapons arsenal outside international controls, but he didn’t call for bombing Israel. He wrote blithely that “Ironically perhaps, Israel’s nuclear weapons have not triggered an arms race. Other states in the region understood — even if they couldn’t admit it publicly — that Israel’s nukes were intended as a deterrent, not as an offensive measure.”

How Bolton manages to read the minds of Israel’s neighbors who have been at the receiving end of Israeli invasions and other cross-border attacks is not explained. Nor does he address the possibility that Israel’s possession of some 200 nuclear bombs might be at the back of the minds of Iran’s leaders if they do press ahead for a nuclear weapon.

Nor does Bolton explain his assumption that if Iran were to build one or two bombs that it would use them aggressively, rather than hold them as a deterrent. He simply asserts: “Iran is a different story. Extensive progress in uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing reveal its ambitions.”

Pulling Back on Refinement

But is that correct? In its refinement of uranium, Iran has not progressed toward the level required for a nuclear weapon since its 2013 interim agreement with the global powers known as “the p-5 plus one” – for the permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany. Instead, Iran has dialed back the level of refinement to below 5 percent (what’s needed for generating electricity) from its earlier level of 20 percent (needed for medical research) — compared with the 90-plus percent purity to build a nuclear weapon.

In other words, rather than challenging the “red line” of uranium refinement that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu drew during a United Nations speech in 2012, the Iranians have gone in the opposite direction – and they have agreed to continue those constraints if a permanent agreement is reached with the p-5-plus-1.

However, instead of supporting such an agreement, American neocons – echoing Israeli hardliners – are demanding war, followed by U.S. subversion of Iran’s government through the financing of an internal opposition for a coup or a “colored revolution.”

Bolton wrote: “An attack need not destroy all of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, but by breaking key links in the nuclear-fuel cycle, it could set back its program by three to five years. The United States could do a thorough job of destruction, but Israel alone can do what’s necessary. Such action should be combined with vigorous American support for Iran’s opposition, aimed at regime change in Tehran.”

But one should remember that neocon schemes – drawn up at their think tanks and laid out on op-ed pages – don’t always unfold as planned. Since the 1990s, the neocons have maintained a list of countries considered troublesome for Israel and thus targeted for “regime change,” including Iraq, Syria and Iran. In 2003, the neocons got their chance to invade Iraq, but the easy victory that they predicted didn’t exactly pan out.

Still, the neocons never revise their hit list. They just keep coming up with more plans that, in total, have thrown much of the Middle East, northern Africa and now Ukraine into bloodshed and chaos. In effect, the neocons have joined Israel in its de facto alliance with Saudi Arabia for a Sunni sectarian conflict against the Shiites and their allies. Much like the Saudis, Israeli officials rant against the so-called “Shiite crescent” from Tehran through Baghdad and Damascus to Beirut. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Congress Cheers Netanyahu’s Hatred of Iran.”]

Since Iran is considered the most powerful Shiite nation and is allied with Syria, which is governed by Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, both countries have remained in the neocons’ crosshairs. But the neocons don’t actually pull the trigger themselves. Their main role is to provide the emotional and political arguments to get the American people to hand over their tax money and their children to fight these wars.

The neocons are so confident in their skills at manipulating the U.S. decision-making process that some have gone so far as to suggest Americans should side with al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front in Syria or the even more brutal Islamic State, because those groups love killing Shiites and thus are considered the most effective fighters against Iran’s allies. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Secret Saudi Ties to Terrorism.”]

Friedman’s Madness

The New York Times’ star neocon columnist Thomas L. Friedman ventured to the edge of madness as he floated the idea of the U.S. arming the head-chopping Islamic State, writing this month: “Now I despise ISIS as much as anyone, but let me just toss out a different question: Should we be arming ISIS?”

I realize the New York Times and Washington Post are protected by the First Amendment and can theoretically publish whatever they want. But the truth is that the newspapers are extremely restrictive in what they print. Their op-ed pages are not just free-for-alls for all sorts of opinions.

For instance, neither newspaper would publish a story that urged the United States to launch a bombing campaign to destroy Israel’s actual nuclear arsenal as a step toward creating a nuclear-free Middle East. That would be considered outside responsible thought and reasonable debate.

However, when it comes to advocating a bombing campaign against Iran’s peaceful nuclear program, the two newspapers are quite happy to publish such advocacy. The Times doesn’t even blush when one of its most celebrated columnists mulls over the idea of sending weapons to the terrorists in ISIS – all presumably because Israel has identified “the Shiite crescent” as its current chief enemy and the Islamic State is on the other side.

But beyond the hypocrisy and, arguably, the criminality of these propaganda pieces, there is also the neocon record of miscalculation. Remember how the invasion of Iraq was supposed to end with Iraqis tossing rose petals at the American soldiers instead of planting “improvised explosive devices” – and how the new Iraq was to become a model pluralistic democracy?

Well, why does one assume that the same geniuses who were so wrong about Iraq will end up being right about Iran? What if the bombing and the subversion don’t lead to nirvana in Iran? Isn’t it just as likely, if not more so, that Iran would react to this aggression by deciding that it needed nuclear bombs to deter further aggression and to protect its sovereignty and its people?

In other words, might the scheming by Bolton and Muravchik — as published by the New York Times and the Washington Post — produce exactly the result that they say they want to prevent? But don’t worry. If the neocons’ new schemes don’t pan out, they’ll just come up with more.
© 2014 Consortium News
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat. His two previous books are Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth'.

Thursday, March 26, 2015

It has power looms, it powers the e-commerce boom, yet Bhiwandi remains a backwater - By Zeeshan Shaikh - The Indian Express

http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/mumbai/it-has-power-looms-it-powers-the-e-commerce-boom-yet-bhiwandi-remains-a-backwater/99/


The Indian EXPRESS

It has power looms, it powers the e-commerce boom, yet Bhiwandi remains a backwater

  0  0 Google +0
A Home in Mumbai in 9999?
It's true! Pay Rs.9,999* save upto   7.5 lacs on 1, 2 & 3 BHK in Mulund onemumbai.co.in/New-launch-Mulund
Ads by Google
A worker at a power loom (Source: Express photo)
A worker at a power loom (Source: Express photo)
Written by Zeeshan Shaikh | Bhiwandi | Published on:March 26, 2015 2:55 am
Track an order placed on an e-commerce site and in most cases, your package would have left a warehouse in Bhiwandi.
The city that lies 50 km on the northern fringe of Mumbai has 10 lakh power looms that weave nearly a third of the cloth that the country wears, and has 7 crore sq ft of warehouse space — the largest cluster in Asia — that powers the e-commerce boom.
But walk through Bhiwandi, and there is little to show on the ground. Barring a lone flyover and numerous real estate billboards promising a 1 BHK flat for Rs 25 lakh, itappears to be virtually untouched by the exponential infrastructural growth of other cities, even neighbours like Thane.
Bhiwandi lies at the crossroads of two majornational highways – the NH-3 and NH-8. This Muslim-dominated city has a population of 7 lakh, and a floating population of an equal number.
Its strategic positioning has thrown it up on the radar of both the Central and the state governments, which plan to transform this crumbling sprawl into a smart city complete with efficient utilities and public Wi-Fi. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis is keen that the area should be transformed into a logistics hub.
The last time Bhiwandi reaped a public spending windfall was when the Centralgovernment allocated Rs 70 crore in the Union Budget 2008 for the development of a power loom mega cluster.
Bhiwandi lies at the crossroads of two major national highways - the NH-3 and NH-8. Bhiwandi lies at the crossroads of two major national highways – the NH-3 and NH-8.
Eight years later, Faizan Azmi, the septuagenarian head of the Maharashtra Powerloom Federation, the umbrella body of the power loom owners says he is still wondering where and how that fund was spent.
“The government has neglected this sector and this town. Its policies are flawed for the simple reason that rather than providing financial help to those who do no not have access to credit they are designed to provide help to bigger players who have easy access to money. These policies are pushing smaller and marginal people out ofbusiness,” says Azmi.
CAUGHT INTO A TIME WARP
Bhiwandi’s textile industry was promoted by migrant Muslim weavers from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar fleeing the wrath of the British after the 1857 uprising.
Nothing much has changed in the way this age-old craft is practised apart from the industry making the transition from handlooms to power looms.
Yarn here is spun into a cloth of a rough hew which is called “Grey” in trade parlance. In the 150-odd years that the trade has been in existence in the city, no effort has been made towards vertical integration so that this Grey can be processed and dyed into fabric sold to the end-user.
Grey from Bhiwandi, even today, is sent to other centres for further processing into finished fabric. “We sell the cloth for anything as low between Rs 10 to 25 per metre. After processing which happens outside of Bhiwandi, the same cloth can be sold for anything upward of Rs 150 per metre. In the last 150 years there have been no concrete steps or government help in processing this cloth in the city itself,” Azmi says.
Bhiwandi was once able to produce cloth at very cheap prices with a complete disregard for legality as it had a large and cheap labour force and massive power thefts.
The city was once the bane of the state’s electricity board with power thefts as high as 65 per cent. But now it has been hit badly by imports, the privatisation of power supply and competition from other textile centres. Higher operational costs and lack of modernisation have also hurt the industry.
Seeing the spinning looms, the dire state of the industry is not evident. The number of power looms touches 10 lakh today, from 6.5 lakh in 2008, but margins are declining.
bhiwandi759m
ON THE FRINGES
The power loom industry employs nearly five lakh workers, who put in anywhere from 12 to 16 hours a day and are paid measly salaries of less than Rs 9,000 a month without any benefits. Zameeruddin Ansari, 56, has been working as a power loom operator for the past 40 years. He draws a monthly salary of Rs 9,000 after shuttling between six power looms for 12 hours non-stop.
There are no fans in the cauldron-like environs of the factory, which continuously dispenses small specks of cotton that eventually ends up clogging the lungs of many textile workers.
“It is not something that I like to do but there is nothing else that I can do in this phase of my life,” says Ansari.
The only bright spot is the extra Rs 80 Haq Mazdoori that he gets every month which is deemed as bonus granted by the employer. One of Ansari’s two sons has followed him into the profession while another has been packed off to a religious seminary for abetter life.
The succour that religion provides to the oppressed and the weak is evident in Bhiwandi going by the glaring symbols of religiosity on display in the poorer parts of the city like Shanti Nagar where Ansari resides.
Inspiration and heroes who provide hope are Islamic warriors such as Salahuddin Ayyubi — better known as Saladin the Egyptian Sultan — who successfully led an opposition against the European Crusaders in the 11th century. A tribute to him comes in the form of schools named after him. Shanti Nagar, a slum of two lakh migrants which has come up on forest land is one of the 27 slum pockets of Bhiwandi, home to labourers and migrants.
The frustration is more evident on the faces of migrant workers who are called “Chaddias” by the locals. Having left behind their families, these bachelors like 32-year-old Dilshad Ahmed stay in 80 sq ft hovels along with dozens of others putting in 16 to 19 hours a day. “There is no work back there. That is why I am trying my luck in Bhiwandi,” says Ahmed.
ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT
This frustration of the workers seems to pervade the political class as well who feel that the city has been made to miss the development bus.
Despite its strategic advantage, Bhiwandi is yet to be included under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission.
The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) had unveiled a development plan for over 50 villages outside Bhiwandi. The only impact of this plan seems to be a towering 30-storey building on the outskirts. The interior of the city, meanwhile, is cramped and filthy.
Javed Dalvi, Leader of the Opposition in the Bhiwandi-Nizampur Municipal Corporation and a former mayor compares the journey of Bhiwandi with Pimpri-Chinchwad to drive home the point of how both cities have moved in opposite directions on development.
“The Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation and the Bhiwandi-Nizampur Municipal Corporation were set up almost at the same time. Look at where Pimpri-Chinchwad is and where Bhiwandi stands. Inspite of this city’s importance we still do not have an IAS officer to head the corporation. None of the major works or infrastructure that were taken up in the last decade were completed,” says Dalvi.
MARKET INITIATIVE
The emergence of Bhiwandi as a logistics hub has more to do with private sector initiative rather than state-led effort.
The state government had for the first time in 1983 approved the setting up of warehouses in Bhiwandi. A decade later, businessmen sensed an opportunity with economic liberalisation, giving a boost to business.
The political situation too presented an opportunity. Bhiwandi had gained infamy as a communal cauldron, which led to depressed land prices. Companies created huge depots to stock their goods.
This laid the foundations of a transhipment point that gained traction with the entry of professional logistics companies.
Powerloom owners like Vinod Malde, 44, saw that the future lies in the logisticsbusiness, and invested heavily in buying land in the early part of this decade. He now owns 300 acres, which house warehouses. His Arham Logiparc provides services to a premium global whitegoods brand.
Every order for a new television or computer made in Mumbai is routed through Malde’s park which packs and dispenses the product to its destination.
Malde claims that there would be nearly 10,000 big or small warehouses in the area which would be serving entire Western India supplying everything from toothpaste to computer parts.
“If Bhiwandi stops functioning for a day entire Mumbai will get crippled. We are treated like porters of this economy. Necessary for its functioning but unseen and unthought about when it comes to providing any kind of benefits,” says Malde.
SMART MOVE
Architect K K Durraj who designed nearly half the major warehouses in Bhiwandi persuaded the Devendra Fadnavis government to regularise some of the illegal ones and provide a commitment to turn the region into a logistics hub.
Interestingly the present Floor Space Index that the government has allowed for warehouses is 0.1 which means that on a 100 sq ft plot a developer can build only 10 sq ft of space. Inspite of the insistence of local developers that the proposal should be eased the state government which wants to develop the area as a logistics hub is still dilly-dallying.
“The Chief Minister has promised to look into the issues of the cities development. However what can you say about the state’s commitment to the city when you see that a city which provides so much revenue to the exchequer still does not have direct rail connectivity to Mumbai,” K K Durraj CMD of KK and Associates said.
Inspite of the government’s visible neglect, Bhiwandi and its outskirts seem to be teeming with people ferried in hundreds of buses to the local warehouses to pack and ship goods.
Many of these warehouses have impromptu fruit and vegetable markets set up outside the warehouses to cater to the largely women workers who work in eight-hour shifts and come as far away as Lonavala and Vasai.
With the proliferation of these warehouses, working conditions are poor. Huge trucks ferrying goods jostle for space on crumbling roads with workers coming in and out of warehouses.
“It is scary some at times travelling within the warehouse with trucks travelling on patchy roads. We have heard that the government is planning to develop these areas. We hope it does before someone loses their life,”says Vandana Pawar a resident of Vashi who works in one of the warehouses.

Modi's Overtures To Israel Are Deeply Dangerous By Mani Shankar Aiyar - NDTV

Modi's Overtures To Israel Are Deeply Dangerous


·          
·          
·          
·         submit to reddit
·         inShare
·         Flip
·         http://www.ndtv.com/static/ndtv_2014/images/printstory.png
ALSO READ

(Mani Shankar Aiyar is a Congress MP in the Rajya Sabha)

An election in distant Israel would not normally warrant a column on ndtv.com. But last week's surprise victory of Benjamin Netanyahu for a fourth term as Prime Minister has such sinister implications for our domestic national identity, and our foreign and defence policy, that we must evaluate the outcome for its implications for us.

Compared to India, Israel is a tiny country of some six million people (of whom 1.7 million are Israeli Arabs), as is its neighbour, Palestine, with about 4 million in the West Bank and nearly 2 million in Gaza. But because we were deeply involved, as a member of two key UN committees, with the end of the British mandate in Palestine (which happened in the same year that we secured our Independence), the Israel story came to be closely linked to the India story. In India, the price we had to pay for Independence was Partition. We were, therefore, wary of endorsing the idea of partitioning Palestine to bring the Israeli state into existence. Nehru suggested a "One-State" solution - that the British should leave behind a composite, secular nation comprising both Arabs and Jews who would frame a federal constitution under which one part would have a Jewish majority and the other an Arab majority, but bound together in a federal state that would be jointly and democratically governed by Jew and Arab together.

The Jews said no to this because they wanted their own separate homeland; the Arabs said no because they saw no reason to pay the price of losing their homeland for a genocide committed not by them but by European Christians during the Second World War. Initially, there was a majority in the relevant UN committees which argued that partition would only lead to even more and longer-lasting problems. Eventually, however, the US and the Soviet Union persuaded or pressurized an overwhelming majority of the international community to vote in favour of partition. India was the only non-Arab, non-Muslim member to stand out against partition.

The November 1947 partition of Palestine led to a brief war in April-May 1948 during which the Arab armies were roundly defeated by the US-armed and Western-backed Zionists seeking a separate State of Israel, and the Palestinian Arab population was largely driven like cattle from their villages to become a rootless diaspora. That disaster is known to all Palestinians and Arabs as Al-Naqba ('The Catastrophe').

There have been other wars since, but the present international position favours a "Two-State" solution which guarantees Israel's continued existence but adds  that there must also be an independent, sovereign Palestine state in the territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 war on the West Bank of the Jordan river and the Gaza strip in the Sinai peninsula.

In the run-up to last week's election, which Benjamin Netanyahu seemed to be on the verge of losing, he suddenly turned around to assert that he would not allow the Palestinians to have a State of their own, and would continue to encourage Jewish settlements on Palestinian territory to preclude the emergence of an integrated Palestinian State. He also denounced the Arab citizens of Israel, who make up about 15% of Israel's electorate, warning the Jews to come out to vote for him to defeat the Arab fifth column in their midst. That is how, by appealing to the basest fears of the Jewish voter, he suddenly came up from behind.

All this is relevant to us because Israel has emerged as Modi's favourite friend in West Asia in contradistinction to the Arabs, stretching from Oman to Morocco, whom Nehru had cultivated as the Arab bulwark of the Nonaligned Movement, thereby thwarting Pakistan's attempts to play the Islamic card against us. In more practical terms, it is the Arabs, not the Israelis who are hosting seven million Indian expatriate workers who constitute our largest single source of remittances in foreign exchange. India's consistent pro-Arab policy has been a principal cause of the warm welcome our workers have enjoyed. In trade too, Arab destinations like Dubai have emerged as principal outlets for Indian exports. Our stakes in the Arab world are high.

On the other hand, Israel is the largest supplier now of India's defence requirements. The security cordon has drawn us closer and closer over the years to an Israel whose domestic policies are repugnant to much of what we have stood for all these years, and been diametrically the opposite of our own approach to inclusivist nation-building in diversity. Much of the Israeli attitude to its Arab minorities and Arab neighbours has been anathema to generations of Indian, particularly since Gandhiji in 1938 proclaimed, "Palestine belongs to the Arabs as France belongs to the French and England to the English." This principled stand has now been distorted by being viewed through the prism of defence cooperation. More disturbingly, the Israeli attitude to Muslims and Islam reflects Hindu extremist views in India. Both the Israeli Jewish mainstream and the Indian fringe believe in religion-based nationhood, with Zionism sharing many of the characteristics and prejudices of the Hindutva brigade. That is what has led Modi to send his felicitations to Netanyahu in Hebrew, the Israel language, as a special gushing gesture of delight at extreme views having catapulted Netanyahu to his last-minute win.

My mind goes back to the only visit I have made to Palestine - in 1998 to join the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Al-Naqba. I was taken to the home of a Hamas leader, then locked in political battle with Yasser Arafat's party. After he told the amusing story of Arafat having asked him to bring out his cadres for the commemoration, to which the Hamas leader had replied that he could not because Arafat had locked them all up, I more seriously enquired how he could imagine that the Arabs would ever prevail. Pat came his answer, "We are making Palestine in our bedrooms!" He went on to explain that the Arab population of Israel was expanding so much faster than that of the Jews, principally because there was  so much net Jewish emigration out of Israel to the glorious West that by the middle of the 21st century, Israel's Arabs would outnumber the Jews. I thought it another joke, but Netanyahu seems to have taken seriously the possibility of the Israeli Arab vote becoming the determining element in Israeli elections. That is a demographic trend that cannot be reversed so long as so many young Jewish citizens of Israel wish to seek their fortunes outside Israel, thus belying the Zionist argument that a Jewish homeland on Palestinian territory is a necessity that justifies any amount of discrimination against its own non-Jewish citizens, and any amount of aggression against its Palestinian neighbours.

Secular India should not be joining Modi in extending felicitations to the fourth-time Israeli Prime Minister, but in expressing our solidarity with Arabs everywhere in the tragedy of Netanyahu that has now overtaken them - a veritable second Al-Naqba.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. NDTV is not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, suitability, or validity of any information on this article. All information is provided on an as-is basis. The information, facts or opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of NDTV and NDTV does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.

Story First Published: March 24, 2015 00:00 IST