Nepal’s Earthquake Politics

Amanda Snellinger

Oxford, England.

It finally hit. Nepal’s overdue earthquake. According to its seismic history the fault lines under the Himalayas belch to relieve pressure every seventy years or so. The last big one was in 1934. The next earthquake had been on the radar of the government, international donors and embassies, and cautious citizens who have the means to prioritize disaster preparedness. Some, including government agencies, were better prepared than others, but nothing can really prepare a nation for a disaster of this magnitude.

The earthquake gives a whole new meaning to what state restructuring will entail. Nepal has been trying to rewrite its constitution and restructure the nation to be a federal, democratic republic since 2008. It has been in political stalemate that forced the first constituent assembly to dissolve in 2012, and the second constituent assembly has been hashing out committees since it was elected in 2013. In many ways, the country is far away from the 2006 People’s movement that ousted the king and ended a decade of civil war. Lives have progressed: people have married, babies have been born, kids have become educated, and family members have passed. People are striving to better their prospects, for example multitudes of laborers have gone to other countries as guest workers and young people’s creative entrepreneurial endeavors–opening up museums, cafes and restaurants, and creating street art–are making Nepal’s cities more cosmopolitan. Nevertheless, Nepal has been struggling with what Heather Hindman has termed “long-term provisionality” due to the lack of national political progress and regular turn-over of governments. There have not been local elections since 1997, leaving villages and towns at the mercy of the whims of appointed bureaucrats and, for a time between 2008 and 2012, their local political leaders through “All Party Mechanisms.” Development and resource allocation from the center to the local level has been inconsistent and citizens have few means of accountability.

The Nepali people are a self-reliant bunch. They have to be. They have not had a state that consistently delivers basic goods and services in the lifetime of the young generation. The government plays a minimal role in many people’s lives. Consistent shortages of electricity, water, and fuel have forced communities and families to be creative in building their private infrastructure just to get on with daily life. Many of the Kathmandu valley’s new wells come from communities boring for much needed water and a number of villages have learned if they want a road, they must build it. As I was updating friends in the US on the earthquake and mentioned that the electricity was out, one responded, “Well that’s nothing new,” recalling brownouts of up to sixteen hours a day when she visited me in 2013. According to the Twitter-sphere, solar grids are still working. This is just a small example of how people’s tactics for enduring despite the state are now helping in the earthquake aftermath.

Of course, not all people have the resources to build their own infrastructure and pay for basic necessities that in much of the world are free. It is the poor and those living in rural areas who will suffer the most from the earthquake.  Nepalis will unite to help one another as much as they can. They have done so from around the world since the tremors began. Nepali citizens have proven their unity and commitment to each other over and over again when they are pushed to the limits. Now it is time for the government to do so, too. The largest oversight in the government’s disaster preparedness is the lack of robust, empowered local governance.

What lessons should be taken away from this expected but nonetheless heartbreaking tragedy? Nepal’s constituent assembly government needs to stand true to the promises of the 2006 People’s Movement. The underpinning logic for federalism was to devolve power from the center, Kathmandu, and relegate it to the provinces in order to create more regional autonomy. The ongoing debates over the federal state structure and nomenclature have focused on ethnicity and identity-based rights. These issues are central to addressing the many histories of marginalization and healing the wounds of a decade of civil war. However, these disputes obscure the fact that there is little political will among Nepal’s politicians to decentralize power. All of the parties are stuck in the centralized, top-down mode of governing. But this model is faulty because of its cascading effects. With the top level at an impasse, the middle and local levels are languishing. Imagine if robust local and regional governance had existed when this earthquake hit? Then the relief efforts would not be mimicking the ad hoc approach the central government has taken to governing and state restructuring over the last seven years.

The Rise of South African Xenophobia

Patrick Bond

Political symbols in South Africa are here today, gone tomorrow, but oppressive political economy endures. At surface level, an explosion of anti-racist activism amongst the most enlightened South Africans – up-and-coming black scholars trying to break various ceilings of residual apartheid power – is occurring at the same time a xenophobic implosion is wreaking havoc on the bottom socio-economic ranks.

In mid-March at the University of Cape Town (UCT), undergraduate politics student Chimani Maxwele threw a bucket of excrement onto the statue of colonial mastermind Cecil John Rhodes, catalysing a revolt against white-dominated power structures there and beyond. Less than three weeks later, a revolt by the poorest urban South Africans in the country’s two other major cities – Durban and Johannesburg – was aimed at a layer just as poor and oppressed: immigrants, mostly from elsewhere in Africa.

At least ten thousand people were displaced within days. With South Africa hosting an estimated five million foreign nationals living within its 53 million residents, terror has struck those with darker skins and the misfortune to live in the lowest-income areas: urban-peripheral shack settlements or near inner-city migrant labour hostels.

Rhodes falls but his borders keep rising

The #RhodesMustFall campaign caught fire at UCT, the main site of South Africa’s bourgeois class reproduction, with protesters demanding curriculum changes, racial equity in the professoriat and the resignation of university leadership. They were quickly victorious against at least one telling symbol: a huge statue of Africa’s most notorious English looter. The bronze Rhodes was removed from a central campus base within a month, carted off by university authorities to what will eventually be a lower-profile setting.

The campaign set the emergent 1% elites of UCT against the old 1% power structure. Historical recollections of Rhodes’ diamond monopoly-making fortune surfaced, leaving bourgeois commentators and news organs like Business Day rattled.

Rhodes, after all, helped establish many early systems of exploitation – including migrant labour (and women’s role in cheap labour provision), illogical African borders, dependency upon minerals extraction, land grabs, environmental destruction and the ultra-underdeveloped rural Bantustans – that persist today. Indeed they are now often found in even more profitable and amplified forms (casualised labour, mining house prerogatives), fully endorsed by South Africa’s current political and economic rulers no matter their skin hue.

However, the 99% versus the 99% in the shack settlements also frightened South Africa’s top 1%, mainly because of the hard-hitting impact on the national ‘brand’, a source of repeat elite panic. World public opinion is frowning on Pretoria, and, encouragingly, the rest of the continent has taken this long-overdue opportunity to channel myriad grievances against the regional hegemon.

Across Africa, broadcast and print media remind audiences of how the Zulu king Goodwill Zwelithini had set off the pogroms when on March 20 at a ‘moral regeneration’ rally, he referred to immigrants as ‘lice’ and ‘ants’: “you find their unsightly goods hanging all over our shops, they dirty our streets. We cannot even recognise which shop is which, there are foreigners everywhere… We ask foreign nationals to pack their belongings and go back to their countries.”

Within ten days, that call had been taken up by Zulu loyalists in Durban, including the president’s son, Edward Zuma (born in Swaziland), who claimed immigrants “are the reason why there are so many drugs in the country” (he was prosecuted for illegal tobacco importation and tax fraud last year). Backed by most politicians, Zwelithini went into denial, first, complaining of media misinterpretation, and claimed he meant no harm against legal immigrants.

Yet the mass meeting of 10,000 mainly male Zulu traditionalists he assembled at the main Durban stadium on April 20 reverberated with xenophobic chants and booing of ambassadors from Africa. Zwelithini told the gathering he wanted an end to violence. But to achieve that required much more: Zuma finally deployed the army in Durban and Johannesburg hotspots the next night, as the police were proving incompetent.

Backlash

The fakery behind the image of a ‘Rainbow Nation’ was unveiled, as happened in 2008 and 2010 when xenophobia also reached critical mass. But for many years prior, the rest of the continent already knew South African predators. Grievances include exploitation by Johannesburg mining houses, retail chains, cellphone businesses and breweries, and the difficulty of getting a visa to even visit South Africa, especially from Kenya and Nigeria, the two main Anglophone competing powers on the continent. (Diplomatic-level tit-for-tat is one reason.)

Popular disgust across Africa at how little the South African state was doing to protect immigrants reverberated especially strongly where the refugees mainly hailed from: Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe. In many capital cities across Africa, the 99% lined up in marches, protests and boycotts against Africa’s sub-imperialist 1%.

On more than a dozen occasions, the targets were South African High Commissions and the branch plants and shops which transfer profits back to Johannesburg corporations. In some cases, like the South African shops that Walmart uses to penetrate Africa, the profits go further away still. In Mozambique’s natural gas fields, more than 300 South African workers employed by the oil company Sasol had to flee home as local residents complained the firm didn’t give jobs to locals.

Back in Durban and Johannesburg, immigrant resistance to lumpen-proletariat proto-fascism is uneven. In Durban, the city centre’s Congolese, Nigerian and Zimbabwe immigrants attempted a non-violent march against xenophobia, which was viciously broken up by municipal police on April 8.

As a result, hundreds of immigrants armed themselves and briefly skirmished with police and xenophobic mobs in Durban’s Point zone a few days later, just a few blocks from the city’s world-class aquarium and water park. Some even threatened urban guerrilla war. In Johannesburg’s Hillbrow inner-city zone, the immigrants’ geographic density was too intimidating for mobs from nearby (Zulu-dominated) migrant labour hostels to penetrate.

But in less concentrated sites in shack settlements, mainly in the Durban residential periphery, xenophobic attacks occurred repeatedly. Even now, nearly a month later, it appears unsafe for most immigrants to return to homes and businesses. As a result of ongoing danger, more than 1000 have been voluntarily repatriated to neighbouring countries. There is nothing more tragic than witnessing the long-distance buses load up from refugee camps, choc-full of traumatised people who have lost everything.

South Africa’s 1% don’t get it

Yet South Africa’s state leaders repeatedly demonstrated they hadn’t really internalised the crisis. On April 24, President Jacob Zuma claimed to immigrant groups, South Africa’s moral high ground still remains intact.” The same day, the secretary-general of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), Gwede Mantashe, repeated a controversial suggestion: “Refugee reception camps must be used to make sure that everyone who comes to South Africa is registered, they should be screened and get vetted,” though he admitted, “I know that the idea has been attacked viciously.”

Also that day, Deputy Police Minister Maggie Sotyu revealed how stressed South Africa’s elites had become, when she pleaded, “There are worse things happening in other countries but you will never see them in the media. The media is part of the community, so please, it must be biased when it comes to South Africa.”

These remarks reflected the widespread public shaming of Zuma’s government and its defensiveness. Indeed Zuma initially did very little to resolve or even properly band-aid the situation. State-supported anti-xenophobia media adverts, marches, speeches and campaigning generally missed the point: the impoverished young men doing the attacking had little patience for sanctimonious preaching.

On the one hand, a few middle-class NGOs and religious faith leaders provided vital emergency charity aid to refugee camps; in combination with some labour leaders, their anti-xenophobia marches during April briefly reclaimed central city spaces. On the other hand, the petit-bourgeois moralistic politicians and public commentators had no obvious way to get messages through to the lumpen-proletariat. One reason: an inability to analyse, much less address, the underlying conditions.

Jobs, housing and retail competition

Immigrants from the rest of Africa and from Asia (especially Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and China) in search of work are typically young males with networks that give them entry to residential areas, sometimes to informal employment, and sometimes even to shop-keeping opportunities. Because wives and children typically stay behind, the male migrants can at least temporarily accept much lower wages than local residents who usually must support larger families.

They also can save money by quadrupling up in small inner-city apartments or township shacks – often sleeping in shifts – which puts upward pressure on rental rates. Unscrupulous employers or landlords increase their own power by threatening to tell authorities about the illegal immigrants, as a weapon of super-exploitation often used especially on farms to avoid wage payments.

Another structural cause of xenophobia is excessive township retail competition: “overtrading.” This results from immigrants – especially from Somalia, Ethiopia, Pakistan and Bangladesh – using home-country syndicates to gain collective credit and bulk purchasing power from wholesalers. They then easily undercut the spaza shops run by local residents, and their operations have efficiently spread to nearly every corner of South Africa.

Internecine battles between petty capitalists soon move from price wars to physical intimidation, mostly against the immigrant shops. Scores of “service delivery protests” by communities against their municipal governments have turned into xenophobic looting sprees against immigrants.

These root causes can be solved only by redirecting state resources towards meeting needs (like housing) and creating jobs. Corporate taxes could be raised and vast budgets shifted away from white elephant infrastructure projects: a $30 billion coal export railroad, a new (unneeded) $25 billion Durban port, $100 billion for nuclear reactors and the like. Without a massive attack on inequality, the daily degradation of life for the 54% of South Africans who are below the poverty line will continue.

Zuma’s ANC government is at fault not only for neoliberal, pro-corporate, job-killing policies, but for tightening immigration regulations the last few years, which compels refugees to live under illegal informality. Zuma has continued his predecessors’ sub-imperial policies in the region in order to secure contracts for favoured corporations, including his nephew’s $10 billion oil deal in the eastern DRC, not far from where 1600 SA army troops are deployed against rebel competitors.

Zuma also gives continual fraternal support to repressive regimes in the region such as Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, the Swazi tyrant monarch Mswati and the corrupt Congolese regime of Joseph Kabila. More refugees result.

What pressure can reverse the root causes?

Mere ‘be-nice’ appeals and marches are not making any dent in the root causes of xenophobia or in state policies. What would be needed to change the Zuma government’s approach? What power can activists leverage?

The most obvious factor in recent weeks was the reputational damage (including to tourism) that the government and big business are feeling. Apparently only such damage can compel Zuma to act.

As Bandile Mdlalose from the Community Justice Movement wrote inPambazuka, the continent’s main ezine, “We in Durban civil society should consider a boycott campaign.” With Durban the only candidate for the 2022 Commonwealth Games, she argued that one target should be a “Commonwealth decision, expected on September 2, to give the 2022 Games to our undeserving city.” Durban authorities say they will also bid for the 2024 Olympic Games.

Protesters in many other countries are tackling South Africa at this level, so as to force the Pretoria regime to adopt more humane policies. The question is whether, pitted against ANC politicans, local corporations and fast-rising Zulu ethnicism, a still-stunned layer of South African progressives can join the debate how best to shift from mere moralising towards standing up alongside African protesters.

Finance houses warn of loss of Australia’s AAA credit rating

Mike Head

In the lead-up to next week’s Australian federal budget, representatives of the global financial markets have warned of a sharp worsening of the country’s economic position, and ratcheted up their demands for the Abbott government to slash social spending.

A series of statements, highlighted on front pages of the Australian Financial Review last week, declared that the nation’s triple A credit rating was at risk because of ongoing budget deficits. Any downgrade could, in turn, threaten the ratings of Australia’s four major banks.

The Australian economy avoided recession in the 2008–09 financial crisis largely as a result of China’s massive stimulus packages and its continuing high demand for minerals. However, it has been hit hard by slowing growth in China, Australia’s largest export market. Prices for iron ore have halved over the past year and for coal over the past five years.

Deutsche Bank issued a report, described by the Australian Financial Reviewas “scathing” and “bleak,” which predicted that the country was headed for 15 years of consecutive budget deficits, through to 2023–24. It warned that debt would rise to levels where the AAA credit rating would be cut.

Adam Boyton, Deutsche Bank Australian chief economist, made a thinly veiled condemnation of hints from Prime Minister Tony Abbott that next week’s budget might not contain major spending cuts. Boyton said that despite the precipitous fall in export commodity prices, which has slashed an estimated $238 billion from government revenues over the past 30 months, Australia had a “spending problem” not a “revenue problem.”

Wall Street-based investment bank Goldman Sachs warned that the government was running out of time to contain another $50 billion blowout in the federal budget this year. In a note to clients, Goldman Sachs chief economist Tim Toohey said that, within months, global ratings agency Standard & Poor’s could place on a “negative outlook” the AAA rating that Australia has held since 2003, during the mining boom.

“A mix of sharply lower commodity prices, weak growth and political impasse have resulted in an unprecedented degree of fiscal slippage over recent years,” he stated. Toohey said the plunge in iron ore prices in recent months alone would slash another $55 billion off government revenues over the next four years.

Toohey’s “political impasse” is a reference to the government’s eventual abandonment, because of intense public opposition, of a number of key provisions in last year’s budget—such as charges to see doctors, welfare cutoffs, deregulation of higher education fees and the erosion of pension levels.

Former Commonwealth of Australia Bank CEO David Murray amplified the message. He said the budget deterioration, combined with already record low interest rates, made the AAA rating “increasingly vulnerable, with little room to move.” He said any downgrade would also hit the large banks, whose borrowings are effectively underwritten by the federal government, increasing the urgency for them to set aside extra capital to protect themselves against a funding crisis.

Murray, who headed the Abbott government’s financial system inquiry, released a report last December insisting that the banks were under-capitalised, and over-dependent on foreign borrowings. The government has yet to respond to his call for banks to be required to hold higher capital reserves, a recommendation that the banks have trenchantly opposed.

The unraveling of the two-decade mining boom has exposed the underlying susceptibility of the Australian economy to the impact of the ongoing global breakdown that began seven years ago. New private capital expenditure—a measure of business investment in production—has dropped more than 7 percent since 2011 and is predicted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics to fall by another 8.6 percent in 2014–15.

In another note to clients last week, Andy Scaman, a London-based portfolio manager at Stratton Street, said it was time to question if Australia’s luck had run out. He placed Australia below his firm’s cutoff for a “wealthy nation” because net foreign liabilities, in 2011, stood at 81.5 percent of gross domestic product, above the 50 percent threshold that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) regards as marking vulnerability to external crises.

Over the past 15 months, the Reserve Bank of Australia has cut official interest rates to a record low of 2.25 percent in an unsuccessful bid to boost business and consumer spending. It is also trying to lift flagging exports by driving down the value of the Australian dollar. However, this has instead produced a precarious housing price bubble, particularly in the main financial centres, Sydney and Melbourne, with investors pouring funds into real estate speculation rather than productive activity. Median house prices in Sydney have risen 30 percent during the past three years.

The IMF announced that it is sending a team to Australia next month to examine the risks posed by the property speculation and levels of household debt, which now stand at a record 177 percent of household income, one of the highest ratios in the world.

IMF mission chief James Daniels called for a “sensible strategy” to eliminate the budget deficit, combined with “tax reform” and a new drive, like that unleashed by the Hawke and Keating Labor governments in the 1980s and 1990s, to lift productivity. This means further cutbacks to public spending to reduce corporate and high income taxes and a deeper assault on wages and working conditions.

Over the past several weeks, the Abbott government, aided by the media and the Labor Party opposition, has used the barrage of nationalist propaganda surrounding the centenary “celebrations” of Anzac Day, in part to distract attention from the economic and political crisis surrounding the budget.

In February, the deep public hostility to the government triggered a leadership challenge to Abbott within his Liberal Party, which he narrowly survived. The handing down of the May 12 budget will once again point to the government’s fragility. Despite slashing spending in last year’s budget, particularly by cutting health and education funding to the states by $80 billion over the next decade, the deficit is still forecast to remain at near-record levels for the foreseeable future.

Treasurer Joe Hockey last week acknowledged the risk to the triple-A credit ranking, saying that failure to restore a surplus would imperil the rating. But the government is under mounting pressure from the corporate elite to impose the full burden of the economic reversal on the working class, or face punishment by the financial markets.

York, Pennsylvania: Mass unemployment and temporary jobs

Douglas Lyons & Samuel Davidson

Six years into the supposed economic recovery, double-digit unemployment, record poverty, layoffs and temporary jobs are the norm in York, Pennsylvania.

Located in Central Pennsylvania, about 30 miles from the State Capital of Harrisburg, York has a population of 44,000. Like many cities its size in Pennsylvania, York is mired in unemployment, low-paying jobs and poverty.

In 2013, the official unemployment rate was 13 percent, more than twice the state average of 5.6 percent. Thirty-nine percent of the adult population is not counted in the labor force and less than half of all adults are employed, compared to 58 percent for the state as a whole.

Over 37 percent of all residents, more than one in three, live in poverty, and the childhood poverty rate is 51 percent, with two out of every three children, five and under, living in poverty. Median household income is slightly more than $30,000, and per capita income is about $15,000.

Patricia Perry

Unlike many industrial centers in Pennsylvania that used to house massive steel mills and other industry, York’s economy has been dominated by smaller manufacturers, many of which have closed or laid off workers. Those that remain have used the high level of unemployment to push down wages.

Patricia Perry worked at the Sylvania plant for 15 years until it shut down this past September. The plant, until recently, had employed over 600 people. She, along with 118 other workers, lost their jobs when the plant was closed.

“I am going to relocate because there are no jobs here,” Perry said. “I have been out of work for nearly six months. My unemployment is running out. The pay is low around here.”

The now closed Sylvania plant in York, Pennsylvania once employed 600 people

Osram Sylvania, the North American business of OSRAM AG located and headquartered in Munich, Germany, produces lighting commodities for consumers, businesses, the automobile industry, and for tech industries such as computer developers and aerospace. According to its web page, Osram Sylvania is “one of the world’s largest manufacturers”.

The company employs over 35,000 workers in 53 production plants located in 18 countries. In the last decade, it has expanded its international footprint, tripled its sales and doubled its world market share. In York, however, it cited sales decline and lower consumer demand as the rationale for closing the plant and two others in Manchester, New Hampshire, and Central Falls, Rhode Island.

“I was a press operator. I ran 10 machines at once,” Perry continued. “If someone didn’t come in, I would also have to cover their machines. I would make sure everything was running, deliver the parts, checking that the parts were coming out right.

“The company said that they were closing our plant because it was not profitable enough. They have other plants around the country, and they were going to move the production to a plant in Kentucky and another one in Pennsylvania.

“I was making $19.85 an hour. So far, all the manufacturing jobs around here only pay at most $14 an hour if you’re lucky. All my experience is in production manufacturing, I don’t have any experience in office work. I am even trying to find volunteer work so that I can get office experience, but I can’t even find volunteer work.

“The politicians say that unemployment is at an all-time low. If this is low, what were things like when it was high? They cut the unemployment down to only six months. People used to get an extension, but that was all cut.”

110 people lost their job when Clarks Shoes closed this distribution plant near York

In nearby Hanover, shoe manufacturer Clarks closed one of its distribution centers after it moved to a brand new facility across the road that is much more automated. One hundred ten workers lost their jobs.

Also in Hanover, 120 workers at a clothing distribution center lost their jobs earlier this year when Delia Retail filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

As in the rest of the country, many businesses are taking advantage of high unemployment to hire workers as temporary, paying low wages and holding out the prospect of a permanent job as an incentive to work hard.

Nationally, the use of temporary workers has grown to over three million, a more than 50 percent increase since 2009, with the number expected to rise to over four million by the end of the decade.

Leah Walker

Leah Walker is a temporary worker for a company that packages products and ships them to stores for sale. “You can’t make a living off of $8 or $9 an hour. You just can’t live,” she said. “There is a lot of unemployment, and that is bad, and it is also keeping raises low. It used to be if you were working for a company making $10 an hour, soon another company would open up, and they would be paying $11 an hour.

“I have been working here for six months; it took me a year to find this job. I have been through all the temporary agencies and online sites. Monster’s, Career Link, you name it, I been there.

“I am temp to hire, I go for an interview this week or next, but I am being realistic about it. They have three positions and there are umpteen temporaries working there. So no, it is not set in stone that I will get the job.”

“Living is a struggle,” Walker continued. “My pay is not much more than minimum wage. Right now the company doesn’t have much work. Our hours have been cut back, and I am only working 20 or 25 hours a week. Sometimes I only work two days a week.

“We are just skinning by. The situation is very stressful. You have food and bills to pay, and you have to put gas in your car so you can get to work.”

Another major problem facing temporary workers is the lack of health care. Many companies have cut hours for temporary workers so that they don’t have to provide them health insurance, while others offer plans with the worst benefits.

“As a temporary you have no health benefits,” Walker said. “When you go for the job, they just throw something at you like Aflac. That is not insurance, Aflac just pays you a lump sum each day and it is very expensive.”

York is a prime example of deindustrialization in the US, where plant after plant has been closed down to invest production in other countries where the owners can exploit more sources of cheap labor.

The Harley-Davidson plant in York, for instance, still employs hundreds of workers but has experienced the same restructuring as elsewhere. The restructuring of Harley-Davidson in 2009 and 2012 resulted in over $300 million in yearly savings for the company, trimming the workforce from around 2,000 to 1,000 workers.

Catherine Smith

Catherine Smith, who works at a McDonald’s, has two friends who recently lost their jobs, including one who worked for Harley-Davidson. She said: “There are jobs, but they all pay the minimum wage. My friend worked at New York Wire and they closed down. He had worked there for 20 years and now he can’t find a job anywhere. He is having a really hard time paying his bills and keeping his house. Seventy or 80 people worked in the plant. It may be relocating, and some of the people may get jobs if they follow the plant, but it is hard to relocate.”

“Another friend worked at Harley-Davidson,” Smith said. “He was forced to retire when they closed one side of the plant down. He is barely making it on his retirement. He has a house to keep up and bills to pay, and the retirement is not very much. Property taxes keep going up, and he just struggles to live.

“I shouldn’t be working. I have post-traumatic stress disorder from things that happened to me when I was young. But I can’t live on the little I get from Social Security. My PTSD is just the same as people who were in the military. I can’t make my payments, so I have to come here. I only work part-time, and it is not very much money.”

US sends hundreds of troops to quake-stricken Nepal

W.A Sunil

The United States has significantly increased its military presence in Nepal as part of the relief operations underway following the devastating earthquake that struck the country on April 25. As it has done in previous disasters in other countries, the Pentagon is exploiting the tragedy to forge closer ties and collaboration with its Nepalese counterparts.

The Los Angeles Times reported on Saturday that up to 500 troops will arrive in Nepal in the coming days along with four vertical-takeoff Osprey aircraft, Army Chinook helicopters and C-130 cargo planes. According to Reuters, teams of soldiers with portable radars and including airstrip repair experts, will be sent to two provincial airports to facilitate the landing of heavy transports.

The dispatch of US troops takes place amid complaints from the UN and other agencies about the hold-up of supplies arriving at the Tribhuvan International Airport near Kathmandu and their distribution to quake-affected areas. Brigadier General Paul Kennedy, who is in charge of the US operations, told the media: “Nepal serves as the worst case scenario for military planners… It is land-locked and there are only a small number of useable airfields that will handle military-sized aircraft.”

Kennedy claimed that the US was not going to be involved in air-traffic control operations at the Kathmandu airport because that would raise issues of national sovereignty. “The last thing you really want to cede is the air tower, because they control who is coming and who is bringing what,” he said. In fact, as the Los Angeles Times reported, US officials have already extracted permission for specialist Air Force personnel to work closely with local air traffic staff.

For all the expressions of concern about the victims of the Nepalese earthquake, Washington is using the disaster as a public relations exercise for the US military, to establish closer military-to-military relations and as a dry run for intervening in such difficult conditions, including in Nepal, in the future.

The “aid” exercise underscores the scope of the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” aimed against China. Every country in the region, including impoverished Nepal, is being caught up in this intensifying geo-political rivalry. Washington’s indifference to the plight of the quake victims is underscored by the fact that the US has provided just $22.5 million in relief aid to date. Its main interest in Nepal is that it borders China, in particular the politically volatile region of Tibet.

The US developed close relations with the Nepalese monarchy and the military over decades. In the 1950s and 1960s, the CIA helped finance, arm and train right-wing Tibetan exiles based in camps in Nepal to carry out sabotage and attacks across the border inside China. While those militias were abandoned following the US-China rapprochement in the 1970s, the relations continued.

From 1996, Washington provided support the Nepalese army in its ruthless operations against guerrilla fighters of the Nepal Communist Party of Maoist (NCP-M), which was placed on the US State Department’s list of terrorist organisations in 2003. The US was caught off-guard by the political crisis in Nepal in 2006, which led to the abolition of the monarchy, the entry of the Maoists into the political establishment and elections that were held in 2008.

The Pentagon is engaged in training and joint exercises with the Nepalese army. At the time of the earthquake, two US Special Forces teams were inside Nepal engaged in little-publicised high altitude training exercises. Their presence only became widely known after the 26 elite soldiers were tasked with finding survivors and providing medical assistance.

In comments reported in the Los Angeles Times, Nepalese Army Colonel Anand Adhikari praised the arrival of US military forces to provide disaster relief. He declared that the US and Nepalese militaries have “good interoperability.” Adhikari has served in a yearlong military planning group with US Central Command at MacDill Air Force base and is shortly leaving for the US National War College for a study year.

The Nepalese earthquake has become the focus, not of international cooperation, but of international rivalry. China, which is concerned with Nepal being drawn into the US orbit, has sent a 62-member search-and-rescue team and four planes with 170 soldiers as well as promising $3 million as aid.

India, which is collaborating with Washington, has traditionally regarded Nepal as part of its sphere of influence. The Indian government dispatched 13 military transport aircraft carrying 300 Disaster Response personnel, along with military helicopters, to Nepal within hours of the quake.

Both India and China deny that they are engaged in a competition for influence in Kathmandu. However, over the past three years, India has trebled its aid to Nepal to $US1.5 billion in a bid to match China. Over the past year, Indian Minister Narendra Modi has twice visited the country.

The tragedy in Nepal is continuing to worsen. Yesterday the country’s National Emergency Operation Centre announced the death toll had risen to 7,040 and the number of injured to more than 14,000. Nepal’s Army Chief General Gaurav Rana warned that final figure on the number of dead would be between 10,000 and 15,000.

According to the United Nations, 8.1 million people out of a population of 28 million have been affected by the quake. Thousands of people, including a number of foreigners, are still missing. Some 600,000 houses have been damaged.

Many people lack food, drinking water, shelters and health care and there is a growing fear of disease epidemics. Three million people require food assistance. According to Information Minister Minedra Risal, Nepal immediately needs 400,000 tents and had only been able to provide 29,000 so far.

Frustration and discontent is growing over the government’s failure to provide adequate relief. A shop keeper exclaimed to the media: “What kind of government do we have here? I have not seen a drop of water or food in four days.” Hundreds of people protested outside the parliament last Wednesday demanding the government increase the number of buses to affected areas and improve aid distribution.

The government and the army fear the prospect of social unrest. Army Chief Rana said: “There is unrest, and we are watching it. Yes, there is the threat of an epidemic, and we are watching it.” He added that many people “would be angry” about the government’s response and stressed that the army and the police are working to “identify local hot spots and control things.”

No doubt the US military will be collaborating with its Nepalese counterparts, not just on issues of aid, but to prevent social and political instability.

Murdoch’s Scottish Sun backs the Scottish National Party

Jordan Shilton

The Scottish Sun announced last Thursday that it was supporting a Scottish National Party (SNP) vote in Britain’s May 7 general election.

The paper superimposes a picture of SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon on Princess Leia’s body, next to a headline, “May the 7th be with you: Why it’s time to vote SNP.”

Media commentary made much of the fact that, while supporting the SNP in Scotland, the right-wing tabloid called for a Conservative vote in the rest of the UK. Criticism was made of the paper’s inconsistency—and some dismissed it as merely an expression of its anti-Labour agenda. The New Statesman, for example, wrote, “Of course, there is one uniting factor in these two front pages: they are both calculated to do maximum damage to Ed Miliband.”

The problem with such an explanation is that it does not address the central fact that the media’s attack on Labour has focused on the claim that the SNP will hold party leader Miliband “to ransom”, forcing him to adopt anti-austerity measures, while endangering the unity of the UK. The Sun ’s English edition lists as the second reason, after the economy, for supporting the Tories, “Stop the SNP running the country.”

Whatever other motivations are involved, Murdoch’s endorsing of the SNP punctures this carefully constructed myth of the SNP representing an anti-austerity party.

On this fundamental issue, no contradiction exists from the standpoint of the ruling class in backing the Conservatives in England and the SNP in Scotland. Both parties are in reality right-wing organisations fully beholden to the financial elite. They are both committed to driving down the living standards of the working class, each using their own brand of nationalism in the process to keep workers divided.

While Murdoch backed a No vote in last September’s referendum, he built up close relations with former SNP leader Alex Salmond over several years. Salmond cultivated his ties with the media mogul as part of his efforts to present the SNP as a business-friendly party ready to slash corporate taxes and establish a cheap-labour platform in Scotland to attract inward investment.

In the current election campaign, concealed behind a blizzard of anti-austerity rhetoric, the SNP is holding firm to this right-wing programme. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) think tank acknowledged that the SNP’s policy commitments implied support for austerity along with the other main parties. According to the IFS analysis, the SNP’s spending plans would impose the longest period of austerity of all the major parties.

The party commits to balancing the UK’s budget deficit of £90 billion by 2023. As an SNP source told the Herald, “Our proposals would see the deficit fall in each and every year of the next Parliament, bringing the overall deficit down to below 2 percent by 2019-20, in line with the average of the last 60 years. The current budget deficit will be eliminated at this point.”

The only difference between the SNP’s programme and that of the Conservatives and Labour is therefore one of timing. Prime Minister David Cameron’s party has pledged to eliminate the budget deficit by 2018 through a further multi-billion package of spending cuts following the election.

Cameron has made a deliberate appeal to English nationalism, releasing a mini manifesto for England two weeks ago that supported calls for English votes for English laws. In this way, he has sought to exploit the divisions whipped up during the campaign for last year’s Scottish independence referendum to split the working class along regional lines—so as to prevent a united movement in opposition to the assault on living standards.

The SNP’s election campaign thus far has sought to tone down talk of Scottish independence, in favour of pursuing an alliance to prop up a Labour government in the next parliament.

In comments on BBC’s “Question Time” Thursday, Miliband rejected a coalition or any formal agreement with the SNP. But speaking in Cardiff the next day, he told Sky News, “It will always be a matter for the House of Commons how they vote on the Queen’s speech, for example”—indicating his belief that the SNP will back Labour without any formal pact.

The Daily Telegraph revealed an internal SNP document identifying areas of common ground between its policies and Labour, confirming that it would seek an arrangement with a minority Labour government to back it on a case-by-case basis.

The SNP portrays a deal with Labour as the “Progressive Alternative” to the Conservatives. The internal document declares, “By electing SNP MPs, the people of Scotland can vote to get rid of the Tories, protect the welfare of everyone who lives here, and promote progressive politics across the UK.”

The SNP’s orientation to Labour exposes its anti-austerity pose. Reviled by workers across the country, Labour is the party that organised the multi-billion pound bailout of the criminal financial elite in 2008, led Britain into successive wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq, and initiated the brutal austerity drive expanded by the current Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition and imposed in Scotland by the SNP.

The SNP’s ability to portray itself as an anti-austerity party is largely thanks to the support given to it by the pseudo-left groups in last year’s referendum, and in the current election campaign by figures like Tommy Sheridan.

Murdoch’s backing for Sturgeon and Salmond is nevertheless a high-risk gamble.

The SNP is still committed to stoking national divisions on behalf of sections of the business elite in Scotland who support the devolution of powers, such as setting taxes and possibly outright independence, as a means of competing with its rivals and pressing ahead with the assault on the working class.

In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, Jim Sillars, former deputy leader of the SNP, stated that the SNP would make a call for a second independence referendum the centrepiece of its 2016 manifesto for the Scottish parliamentary elections. Sturgeon refused to deny Sillars’ suggestion, stating that the party could support a referendum in principle in a future manifesto.

The re-emergence of the issue of another independence referendum, barely six months after 55 percent of the electorate voted No in last September’s vote, reflects the depth of the crisis of capitalist rule in Britain. Far from putting an end to the debate over Scottish separation, the referendum laid the basis for deepening regional and national conflicts across Britain and for the SNP and its allies to misdirect popular hatred of the Tories and Labour.

Sillars’ latest call is in part an attempt to apply pressure to Labour or the Conservatives to reach a favourable deal with the SNP following May 7. Asked how Sillars’ demand for a new referendum could be justified, an SNP spokesman stated, “If we can achieve the kind of policy objectives we want to see, particularly around the anti-austerity and the devolution of powers, then that is fantastic. If they backslide then the dynamics change.”

One could hardly be more explicit. If powers to cut corporation tax and other measures are not extended to Holyrood, the SNP would initiate a campaign for another independence vote. In either case, the consequences for workers throughout Britain will be the same: an intensification of regional competition for investment, which will produce a race to the bottom in wages and living standards.

Muslim girl expelled from French high school for wearing long skirt

Anthony Torres

A high school girl from northeastern France was expelled for wearing a skirt that school authorities considered too long and an ostentatious sign of her religious beliefs. The affair points to the anti-Muslim atmosphere that now predominates in official circles in France.

The teenager was expelled from her high school for nine days by the principal. The ministry of education defended the decision: “In this case, it was considered that the student was carrying out religious propaganda. It is not an expulsion that was put in place, but a dialogue that has been opened up with her family. And it is noteworthy that her mother made a statement to ask for the situation to be handled calmly.”

The absurd and reactionary treatment meted out to the student reflects the sharp rightward evolution of the French political establishment over the last decade. The school expelled the student based on the 2004 law outlawing all “ostentatious” religious symbols, even though the young woman was not wearing any visible religious sign.

The high school student’s case is not isolated. Last year, 130 similar cases took place and 20 this year, according to the Collective against Islamophobia in France. The number of anti-Muslim actions has sharply risen this year, moreover, since the Kouachi brothers’ terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo.

The goal of such Islamophobic laws is to divide the working class, attack democratic rights, encourage racist and anti-immigrant sentiment, and to push through unpopular policies of austerity and war in France and across Europe. The young high school student is the victim of a sharp turn to the right that has developed over decades in Europe.

The 2004 law was voted amid rising social anger with the anti-working class policies of French President Jacques Chirac. It was part of a strategy to divert working class opposition to the social crisis and a governmental agenda of cutting pensions, attacking social services, and intensifying police repression. The law was initially put forward as teachers were on strike to defend their pensions and public education spending more broadly.

This attack against Muslims in France encouraged a series of Islamophobic attacks across Europe. Several years ago, a law was voted in Switzerland to ban the construction of minarets. Over the last year in Germany, marches were organized over several weeks by the far-right Pegida movement to oppose Islam in Europe.

For years, the ruling elite in France has encouraged collective hysteria against Islam in order to attack the working class.

In 2009, French President Nicolas Sarkozy launched a debate on “national identity” and a law against wearing the burqa. This law was part of Sarkozy’s strategy of appealing to neo-fascist voters who had voted for Sarkozy in the 2007 presidential elections.

The law against the burqa and the “national identity” debate provided political cover for the French ruling elite to legitimize the neo-fascist National Front over the ensuing years, as well as an escalating series of imperialist wars against Muslim countries. The anti-burqa law in particular encouraged hostility to resistance to NATO’s imperialist occupation of Afghanistan, which was cynically presented as a struggle to defend women’s rights.

The entire political establishment bears responsibility for Islamophobic laws in France. The law against the burqa obtained the support of Manuel Valls, the current Socialist Party (PS) prime minister, and the Stalinist French Communist Party (PCF). PCF deputy André Gerin presided over the legislative committee that drafted the anti-burqa law. The law also won the support of France’s various pseudo-left parties, from the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA) to the Independent Workers Party (POI).

By supporting laws targeting Muslims, these parties of the affluent middle class demonstrate their hostility to democratic rights and to the struggle to unify the working class.

The 2004 law against the veil has encouraged employers to victimize Muslim workers, such as when a Muslim worker was fired for wearing a veil at the Baby-Loup day care center.

As for the 2009 anti-burqa law, it has escalated social tensions and police repression in immigrant suburbs across France. A riot broke out in Trappes in 2013, after police violently arrested a woman wearing the veil and then beat and insulted her husband.

It is in this atrocious political atmosphere that a high school student can be expelled for no other reason than claims that her skirt is too long.

France to spend billions on military rearmament program

Kumaran Ira

After a defense meeting at Presidential Elysée palace on Wednesday, French President François Hollande announced a major boost in defense spending. He announced an extra €3.8 billion in defense spending over the next four years to cover both overseas military operations and permanent deployment of troops throughout France.

“Several decisions have been taken,” Hollande said, stressing that he spoke as the head of armed forces. The current €31.4 billion defense budget will be increased, with an extra €600 million in spending next year, reaching as much as €1.5 billion in 2019. Paris is preparing to review the 2014-2019 Military Spending Law on May 20 to “release €3.8 billion of additional appropriations on the four years,” according to Hollande.

Extra military spending will come from further plundering of the working class through the austerity measures and social cuts advocated by Hollande’s Socialist Party (PS). Hollande called the military spending increase “a large effort, even a major effort.”

On Thursday, Finance Minister Michel Sapin announced cuts in health care and housing. “It’s legitimate that priority goes to security,” he told Europe1 radio.

Bloomberg cited Finance Ministry sources saying that “the housing budget, which includes subsidies for families and students as well as incentives for home builders, will be reduced and the ministry in charge will be asked to better allocate its resources.” Health care, which already faces big spending cuts this year, will be at the center of efforts to cut spending in 2016.

Hollande sought to justify his reactionary program of austerity and war, which has made him the most unpopular French president of the post-World War II period, by claiming the bill would protect the French population from terrorism. He was alluding to the deployment of 10,000 troops inside France itself in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo shootings this January.

Hollande is also expanding the military’s manpower resources. Of the 10,000 troops deployed across France after the Charlie Hebdo attack, 7,000 soldiers are to be permanently deployed, according to Hollande. Up to 18,500 jobs in the military that were set to be eliminated will be kept, in order to bolster troop deployments at home and abroad.

Under conditions where the ruling class has nothing to offer to millions of unemployed youth, Paris is preparing to use them as cannon fodder in its imperialist wars. Hollande is promoting “voluntary military service” for young people aged between 18 and 25 without qualifications. The government recently announced the establishment of seven “voluntary military service” centers that will receive around 2,000 young people next year.

Hollande justified these policies, claiming they would protect the French people from terrorism and allow for stepped-up military interventions abroad.

Hollande said, “I am making this choice because it is that of France, of its protection, its security, and I know that the French people, if they want to be confident in the future, must feel they are safe and protected everywhere. It is one reason that justifies the decision, giving confidence to the French people. … They have it in the army, in the political authorities that take decisions, but they must know that the necessary spending will be placed at the service of these objectives.”

He added, “I have also argued that our exterior deployments must also be placed at an elevated level.”

Hollande’s claim that he is building up the military to boost the French population’s confidence in his government is a political fraud. The French ruling elite is terrified of rising social discontent and anger in the working class with the Hollande administration. It is dramatically expanding police state measures designed to intimidate and repress social discontent, while escalating its imperialist wars of pillage in its former colonial empire.

Participating in the US-led wars in the Middle East, including in Syria, Libya and Iraq, France is also waging wars in former French colonies in sub-Saharan Africa, such as Mali and the Central African Republic. Around 10,300 troops are deployed in France’s overseas operations.

The PS’s rearmament program is also part of a broader turn to militarism and war by the imperialist powers around the world that pose the sharpest possible dangers to the working class internationally. It can only be met by a unified international struggle of the working class against war, based on a revolutionary and socialist perspective.

Tensions between the major capitalist powers threaten to plunge the population of Europe and the world into a catastrophic war. Europe is embroiled in a conflict with Russia over the civil war that broke out in Ukraine after the NATO-backed fascist-led coup in Kiev last February, a conflict that Hollande said could lead to “total war.” Under its “pivot to Asia”, Washington is fomenting a war drive aimed at China, and French media have called for preparations to blockade Chinese oil imports from the Middle East in the Indian Ocean.

Tensions between the major European imperialist powers historically rooted in two world wars of the 20th century, notably between Germany and France, are also exploding. As the anti-European Union neo-fascists of the National Front rise in France, Berlin has launched a broad re-militarization program that is being watched nervously by the French ruling elite.

Germany plans to boost its defense budget by 6.2 percent over the next five years, increase defense spending to more than €35 billion by 2019, and comprehensively modernize its army. From 2010 to 2014, Berlin has raised defense spending by 7 percent to €32.4 billion, while French defense spending fell 2.5 percent over the same period, to €31.4 billion.

Initial comments have begun to appear in the French media expressing concerns over German rearmament, however, particularly after Berlin responded positively to proposals for the creation of an EU army in which it would play a dominant role. Le Monde attacked this policy as an attempt to disguise plans for German military domination of Europe. It described Berlin’s calculations as follows: “We cannot scare our neighbors as we rearm. It is better to give a European gloss to our re-militarization.” It added that French policymakers, however, “are not in a hurry to see Germans in uniform.”

As Hollande’s policy makes clear, French imperialism’s response is to launch an arms race in Europe that threatens humanity with disaster.

US warplanes kill dozens of civilians in Syria

Patrick Martin

US airstrikes in Syria killed dozens of civilians in a predominately Arab-populated village in the eastern part of Aleppo province Friday. The death toll was still rising as more bodies were found and missing family members were accounted for.

Initial reports had put the number of deaths at 52, but at least one US media outlet, McClatchy News Service, said it had obtained a list of 64 dead from ten families. Whatever the final figure, it is the worst atrocity perpetrated by the US-led campaign of bombing supposedly directed at Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has long supported the US-backed campaign to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, at least nine children were among the victims of the US airstrike on the village of Bir Mahali. It described them as victims of a “massacre committed by the US-led coalition under the pretext of targeting the Islamic State.”

The group had previously downplayed civilian casualties in Syria, claiming that only 60 civilians had died in the hundreds of airstrikes by warplanes of the United States, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf sheikdoms participating in the war against ISIS.

The US Central Command, which regularly reports US airstrikes in Syria and Iraq without any detail on the death toll or the exact targets struck, said the May 1 attack was among nearly a dozen in “the area of” Kobani, the largely Kurdish-populated town on the Syrian border with Turkey that became the focal point for US air strikes last fall. Bir Mahali is 33 miles south of Kobani.

McClatchy said that US warplanes had become involved in longstanding ethnic conflicts between Arabs and Kurds in the Euphrates River valley, an area with a mixed population that also includes Assyrians and other Christians. It cited reports from “activists pointing out that the fishing and farming village of about 4,000 Arabs has had tense relations with Kurds living nearby—especially with the Kurdish ‘People’s Protection Units’ or YPG.”

The implication was that Bir Mahali was targeted, not because of the presence of Islamic State forces—it is not clear whether there were any in the village—but because the Kurdish militia wanted to wreak havoc on an Arab-populated town.

The US military worked with the YPG in the months-long siege of Kobani. The YPG has political ties to the PKK, the Kurdish nationalist guerrilla force that has fought inside Turkey for decades, and is on the US State Department’s list of “terrorist” organizations.

The US-YPG connection demonstrates yet again that Washington uses the term “terrorist” in a completely cynical fashion, branding groups because they oppose US foreign policy, or fight US client states, not because of the methods they employ. When it comes to violence against civilians, as the atrocity in Bir Mahalli demonstrates, the US government is the world’s foremost practitioner of terrorism.

A statement from the Combined Joint Task Force, the official name for the US-led coalition bombing ISIS targets in both Iraq and Syria, said that there were 24 airstrikes carried out on May 1-2, of which 17 were in Syria, hitting Raqqa, the lone provincial capital under ISIS control, as well as targets near Kobani, Al Hasakah and Dair Az Zawr.

The seven airstrikes in Iraq were near Mosul, Tal Afar, Baiji, Ramadi and Fallujah, the five cities controlled by ISIS either wholly or in part.

The US military did not admit the killing of a large number of civilians in Bir Mahalli, but said it was investigating claims. Major Curtis Kellogg, a military spokesman, told the Associated Press, “We currently have no information to corroborate allegations that coalition airstrikes resulted in civilian casualties,” adding, “Regardless, we take all allegations seriously and will look into them further.”

The reported mass killing of civilians in Syria comes amid indications that key US client states in the region, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, are stepping up their support for anti-government “rebels” fighting the Assad government.

The Washington Post reported April 30, “The delivery of additional weapons and financial aid from Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar have facilitated recent advances against government forces in northwest Syria by the Army of Conquest, a newly formed umbrella of diverse rebel groups, including al-Qaeda’s affiliate and other Islamist groups, along with ‘moderate’ [i.e., pro-US] fighters.”

Last month these forces captured the northwestern provincial capital Idlib, and then the city of Jisr al-Shughur, as well as numerous bases and outposts of the Syrian army, in an offensive that threatens to cut off the capital city, Damascus, from the Mediterranean coastal region that is Assad’s political stronghold. Jabhat al-Nusra, the al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, has played a major role in this military push.

The Post also reported that at a meeting of the anti-ISIS coalition in early April, hosted by Jordan, “administration officials were bombarded with questions about US leadership of the 60-nation group, and how it would address the global expansion of the Islamic State.”

The New York Times, reporting on the same meeting, said that members of the US-led coalition were pressing Washington “to agree to a broadening of the campaign to include terrorist groups that have declared themselves to be ‘provinces’ of the Islamic State.”

This could include extending the military operation to include targets in Libya, where ISIS is alleged to support Ansar al-Sharia, a local Islamist formation, as well as unspecified measures against supposed ISIS supporters in “Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Yemen, according to American counter-terrorism officials.”

Natural Calamities: Wrath Of God or Human Error

S. Darapuri

As a small child I remember watching some Bollywood films, where invariably to show the displeasure of God, earthquakes and floods were being shown.
Even till today somewhere in the back of my mind whenever such calamities occur, strong urge grips me, forcing me to believe that natural calamities are nothing but the wrath of the God against the erring beings.

The other day, as I sat jostling with the apprehensions and doubts about voicing my sentiments on watching the Nepal tragedy, a spokesperson of a reputed TV channel, said it all.

“Pashupatinath temple remains intact in face of the deadly disaster”. Although other old temples also had turned into rubble, he deliberately or out of sheer ignorance failed to mention that. Next morning, a leading newspaper on its front page, showed picture of devastated Buddhist temple. Whatever did it want to convey, was hard to discern?

That some Gods protect themselves but fail to protect their followers? Or Lord Buddha, whom some claim to be ‘avatar’ of Lord Vishnu, though he himself never claimed to be one and seemed satisfied in being regarded as just another human being; and a teacher whose teachings had to be followed not blindly but after putting to test; was not as powerful enough as Pashupatinath, to save his temple from the calamity.

Few years back the Kedarnath tragedy was interpreted to be a wrath of a displeased displaced goddess by some, the arguments given by some renowned researchers were being completely ignored.

The point is, are we just going to sit in one corner deriving solace in some kind of childlike exercise in finding miraculous explanations to man-made calamities and keep losing our valuable natural and historical heritage.

Older structures are certainly not going to be there for long but advanced technology and scientific knowledge could help in protecting them for more longer time. And the most important fact is that it is now high time, that man stops fiddling with Nature.

Recurrent natural calamities seem to affirm the fact that no matter how much man with self created weapons of destruction may claim to be powerful, he still stands dwarfed in face of power of the Nature.

There is also another universal Law of Nature that without compassion for fellow beings, survival of humanity is impossible. We are somewhere failing as human beings. For the same reason, not for a moment we hesitate to spill blood of ‘Live Humans’ in our desperate bid to protect stone made structures.

God does not reside either in stones or manmade structures, He is known for his omnipresence. Only recently, the film ‘PK’ tried hard to prove it. Before that, many reformers and saints tried to prove that. But that also does not give us the right to break structures of historical importance and aesthetic excellence. Every human being is a God’s creation, is a common belief, then why does our religiosity fail to prevent us from tainting our hands with the blood of other beings and yet deprived of guilt we tend to bear the audacity of proclaiming ourself to be ‘pure’, ‘clean’ and ‘vegetarian’ to the core.

In the present time, being a Third World Country there is a need to save our natural and human resources from all kinds of destruction. There is a need to draw out clear cut plan to save the country from natural and manmade calamities. Science and Technology should be directed to produce devices that avert recurrent disasters, if not avert, atleast alert the people at the right time. Policies of government should have a human face, attitude of preparedness should be there to deal with disasters of anykind. There is more and more need to educate people especially in moral education, to awaken their moral consciousness, so that each task is carried out in the direction of welfare of humanity. There is an urgent need to remind each individual that we are part of a ‘human civilisation’ where violence and savageness against anyone has no place! It is also to be remembered, forgetting to be humane, is the gravest sin and violence meted out against humankind and Nature alike!