Scandal In The Palace
Judges in India are divine beings. And if you're an ex-CJI, your sins are above mortal reproach.
ARUNDHATI ROY
Scandals can be fun. Especially those that knock preachers from their pulpits and flick halos off saintly heads. But some scandals can be corrosive and more damaging for the scandalised than the scandalee. Right now we're in the midst of one such.
At its epicentre is Y.K. Sabharwal, former Chief Justice of India, who until recently headed the most powerful institution in this country—the Supreme Court. When there's a scandal about a former chief justice and his tenure in office, it's a little difficult to surgically excise the man and spare the institution. But then commenting adversely on the institution can lead you straight to a prison cell as some of us have learned to our cost. It's like having to take the wolf and the chicken and the sack of grain across the river, one by one. The river's high and the boat's leaking. Wish me luck.
The higher judiciary, the Supreme Court in particular, doesn't just uphold the law, it micromanages our lives. Its judgements range through matters great and small. It decides what's good for the environment and what isn't, whether dams should be built, rivers linked, mountains moved, forests felled. It decides what our cities should look like and who has the right to live in them. It decides whether slums should be cleared, streets widened, shops sealed, whether strikes should be allowed, industries should be shut down, relocated or privatised. It decides what goes into school textbooks, what sort of fuel should be used in public transport and schedules of fines for traffic offences. It decides what colour the lights on judges' cars should be (red) and whether they should blink or not (they should). It has become the premier arbiter of public policy in this country that likes to market itself as the World's Largest Democracy.
Ironically, judicial activism first rode in on a tide of popular discontent with politicians and their venal ways. Around 1980, the courts opened their doors to ordinary citizens and people's movements seeking justice for underprivileged and marginalised people. This was the beginning of the era of Public Interest Litigation, a brief window of hope and real expectation. While Public Interest Litigation gave people access to courts, it also did the opposite. It gave courts access to people and to issues that had been outside the judiciary's sphere of influence so far. So it could be argued that it was Public Interest Litigation that made the courts as powerful as they are. Over the last 15 years or so, through a series of significant judgements, the judiciary has dramatically enhanced the scope of its own authority.
Investigate Sabharwal L-R: Arvind Kejriwal, Swami Agnivesh, Shanti Bhushan and Prashant Bhushan at a press meet
Today, as neo-liberalism sinks its teeth deeper into our lives and imagination, as millions of people are being pauperised and dispossessed in order to keep India's Tryst with Destiny (the unHindu 10% rate of growth), the State has to resort to elaborate methods to contain growing unrest. One of its techniques is to invoke what the middle and upper classes fondly call the Rule of Law. The Rule of Law is a precept that is distinct and can often be far removed from the principle of justice. The Rule of Law is a phrase that derives its meaning from the context in which it operates. It depends on what the laws are and who they're designed to protect. For instance, from the early '90s, we have seen the systematic dismantling of laws that protect workers' rights and the fundamental rights of ordinary people (the right to shelter/health/education/water).International financial institutions like the imf, the World Bank and the adb demand these not just as a precondition, but as a condition, set down in black and white, before they agree to sanction loans. (The polite term for it is structural adjustment. ) What does the Rule of Law mean in a situation like this? Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States, puts it beautifully: "The Rule of Law does not do away with unequal distribution of wealth and power, but reinforces that inequality with the authority of law. It allocates wealth and poverty in such indirect and complicated ways as to leave the victim bewildered."
Papa’s the best judge: Justice Sabharwal’s sons were running their businesses out of his ‘official’ Motilal Nehru Marg house
As it becomes more and more complicated for elected governments to be seen to be making unpopular decisions (decisions, for example, that displace millions of people from their villages, from their cities, from their jobs), it has increasingly fallen to the courts to make these decisions, to uphold the Rule of Law.
The expansion of judicial powers has not been accompanied by an increase in its accountability. Far from it. The judiciary has managed to foil every attempt to put in place any system of checks and balances that other institutions in democracies are usually bound by. It has opposed the suggestion by the Committee for Judicial Accountability that an independent disciplinary body be created to look into matters of judicial misconduct. It has decreed that an fir cannot be registered against a sitting judge without the consent of the chief justice (which has never ever been given). It has so far successfully insulated itself against the Right to Information Act. The most effective weapon in its arsenal is, of course, the Contempt of Court Act which makes it a criminal offence to do or say anything that "scandalises" or "lowers the authority" of the court. Though the act is framed in arcane language more suited to medieval ideas of feminine modesty, it actually arms the judiciary with formidable, arbitrary powers to silence its critics and to imprison anyone who asks uncomfortable questions. Small wonder then that the media pulls up short when it comes to reporting issues of judicial corruption and uncovering the scandals that must rock through our courtrooms on a daily basis. There are not many journalists who are willing to risk a long criminal trial and a prison sentence.
Until recently, under the Law of Contempt, even truth was not considered a valid defence. So suppose, for instance, we had prima facie evidence that a judge has assaulted or raped someone, or accepted a bribe in return for a favourable judgement, it would be a criminal offence to make the evidence public because that would "scandalise or tend to scandalise" or "lower or tend to lower" the authority of the court.
Yes, things have changed, but only a little. Last year, Parliament amended the Contempt of Court Act so that truth becomes a valid defence in a contempt of court charge. But in most cases (such as in the case of the Sabharwal...er... shall we say "affair") in order to prove something it would have to be investigated. But obviously when you ask for an investigation you have to state your case, and when you state your case you will be imputing dishonourable motives to a judge for which you can be convicted for contempt. So: Nothing can be proved unless it is investigated and nothing can be investigated unless it has been proved.
The only practical option that's on offer is for us to think Pure Thoughts.For example:
a. Judges in India are divine beings.
b. Decency, wholesomeness, morality, transparency and integrity are encrypted in their DNA.
c. This is proved by the fact that no judge in the history of our Republic has ever been impeached or disciplined in any way.
.
d. Jai Judiciary, Jai Hind.
It all becomes a bit puzzling when ex-chief justices like Justice S.P. Bharucha go about making public statements about widespread corruption in the judiciary. Perhaps we should wear ear plugs on these occasions or chant a mantra.
It may hurt our pride and curb our free spirits to admit it, but the fact is that we live in a sort of judicial dictatorship. And now there's a scandal in the Palace.
Last year (2006) was a hard year for people in Delhi. The Supreme Court passed a series of orders that changed the face of the city, a city that has over the years expanded organically, extra-legally, haphazardly. A division bench headed by Y.K. Sabharwal, chief justice at the time, ordered the sealing of thousands of shops, houses and commercial complexes that housed what the court called 'illegal' businesses that had been functioning, in some cases for decades, out of residential areas in violation of the old master plan. It's true that, according to the designated land-use in the old master plan, these businesses were non-conforming. But the municipal authorities in charge of implementing the plan had developed only about a quarter of the commercial areas they were supposed to. So they looked away while people made their own arrangements (and put their lives' savings into them.) Then suddenly Delhi became the capital city of the new emerging Superpower. It had to be dressed up to look the part. The easiest way was to invoke the Rule of Law.
The sealing affected the lives and livelihoods of tens of thousands of people. The city burned. There were protests, there was rioting. The Rapid Action Force was called in. Dismayed by the seething rage and despair of the people, the Delhi government beseeched the court to reconsider its decision. It submitted a new 2021 Master Plan which allowed mixed land-use and commercial activity in several areas that had until now been designated 'residential'. Justice Sabharwal remained unmoved. The bench he headed ordered the sealing to continue.
Vasant Kunj Mall: When Rule of Law winked and looked away
Around the same time, another bench of the Supreme Court ordered the demolition of Nangla Macchi and other jhuggi colonies, which left hundreds of thousands homeless, living on top of the debris of their broken homes, in the scorching summer sun. Yet another bench ordered the removal of all "unlicensed" vendors from the city's streets. Even as Delhi was being purged of its poor, a new kind of city was springing up around us. A glittering city of air-conditioned corporate malls and multiplexes where mncs showcased their newest products. The better-off amongst those whose shops and offices had been sealed queued up for space in these malls. Prices shot up. The mall business boomed, it was the newest game in town. Some of these malls, mini-cities in themselves, were also illegal constructions and did not have the requisite permissions.But here the Supreme Court viewed their misdemeanours through a different lens. The Rule of Law winked and went off for a tea break. In its judgement on the writ petition against the Vasant Kunj Mall dated October 17, 2006 (in which it allowed the construction of the mall to go right ahead), Justices Arijit Pasayat and S.H. Kapadia said:
"Had such parties inkling of an idea that such clearances were not obtained by DDA, they would not have invested such huge sums of money.
The stand that wherever constructions have been made unauthorisedly demolition is the only option cannot apply to the present cases, more particularly, when they unlike, where some private individuals or private limited companies or firms being allotted to have made contraventions, are corporate bodies and institutions and the question of their having indulged in any malpractices in getting the approval or sanction does not arise."
It's a bit complicated, I know. A friend and I sat down and translated it into ordinary English. Basically,
a. Even though in this present case the construction may be unauthorised and may not have the proper clearances, huge amounts of money have been invested and demolition is not the only option.
b. Unlike private individuals or private limited companies who have been allotted land and may have flouted the law, these allottees are corporate bodies and institutions and there is no question of their having indulged in any malpractice in order to get sanctions or approval.
The question of corporate bodies having indulged in malpractice in getting approval or sanction does not arise. So says the Indian Supreme Court. What should we say to those shrill hysterical people protesting out there on the streets, accusing the court of being an outpost of the New Corporate Empire? Shall we shout them down? Shall we say 'Enron zindabad'? 'Bechtel, Halliburton zindabad'? 'Tata, Birla, Mittals, Reliance, Vedanta, Alcan zindabad'? 'Coca-Cola aage badho, hum tumhaare saath hain'?
This then was the ideological climate in the Supreme Court at the time the Sabharwal "affair" took place. It's important to make it clear that Justice Sabharwal's orders were not substantially different or ideologically at loggerheads with the orders of other judges who have not been touched by scandal and whose personal integrity is not in question. But the ideological bias of a judge is quite a different matter from the personal motivations and conflict of interest that could have informed Justice Sabharwal's orders. That is the substance of this story.
In his final statement to the media before he retired in January 2007, Justice Sabharwal said that the decision to implement the sealing in Delhi was the most difficult decision he had made during his tenure as chief justice. Perhaps it was. Tough Love can't be easy.
In May 2007, the Delhi edition of the evening paper Mid Day published detailed investigative stories (and a cartoon) alleging serious judicial misconduct on the part of Justice Sabharwal. The articles are available on the internet. The charges Mid Day made have subsequently been corroborated by the Committee for Judicial Accountability, an organisation that counts senior lawyers, retired judges, professors, journalists and activists as its patrons. The charges in brief are:
1.That Y.K. Sabharwal's sons Chetan and Nitin had three companies: Pawan Impex, Sabs Exports and Sug Exports whose registered offices were initially at their family home in 3/81, Punjabi Bagh, and were then shifted to their father's official residence at 6, Motilal Nehru Marg.
2. That while he was a judge in the Supreme Court but before he became chief justice, he called for and dealt with the sealing of commercial properties case in Delhi. (This was impropriety. Only the chief justice is empowered to call for cases that are pending before a different bench.) .
3. That at exactly this time, Justice Sabharwal's sons went into partnership with two major mall and commercial complex developers, Purshottam Bagheria (of the fashionable Square 1 Mall fame) and Kabul Chawla of Business Park Town Planners (BPTP) Ltd. That as a result of Justice Sabharwal's sealing orders, people were forced to move their shops and businesses to malls and commercial complexes, which pushed up prices, thereby benefiting Justice Sabharwal's sons and their partners financially and materially.
4. That the Union Bank gave a Rs 28 crore loan to Pawan Impex on collateral security which turned out to be non-existent. (Justice Sabharwal says his sons' companies had credit facilities of up to Rs 75 crore.)
5. That because of obvious conflict of interest, he should have recused himself from hearing the sealing case (instead of doing the opposite—calling the case to himself.)
6. That a number of industrial and commercial plots of land in Noida were allotted to his sons' companies at throwaway prices by the Mulayam Singh/ Amar Singh government while Justice Sabharwal was the sitting judge on the case of the Amar Singh phone tapes (in which he issued an order restricting their publication.)
7. That his sons bought a house in Maharani Bagh for Rs 15.46 crore. The source of this money is unexplained. In the deeds they have put down their father's name as Yogesh Kumar (uncharacteristic coyness for boys who don't mind running their businesses out of their judge father's official residence.)
All these charges are backed by what looks like watertight, unimpeachable documentation. Registration deeds, documents from the Union ministry of company affairs, certificates of incorporation of the various companies, published lists of shareholders, notices declaring increased share capital in Nitin and Chetan's companies, notices from the Income Tax department and a CD of recorded phone conversations between the investigating journalist and the judge himself.
These documents seem to indicate that while Delhi burned, while thousands of shops and businesses were sealed and their owners and employees deprived of their livelihood, Justice Sabharwal's sons and their partners were raking in the bucks. They read like an instruction manual for how the New India works.
When the story became public, another retired chief justice, J.S. Verma, appeared on India Tonight, Karan Thapar's interview show on CNBC.He brought all the prudence and caution of a former judge to bear on what he said: "...if it is true, this is the height of impropriety...every one who holds any public office is ultimately accountable in democracy to the people, therefore, the people have right to know how they are functioning, and higher is the office that you hold, greater is the accountability...." Justice Verma went on to say that if the facts were correct, it would constitute a clear case of conflict of interest and that Justice Sabharwal's orders on the sealing case must be set aside and the case heard all over again.
This is the heart of the matter. This is what makes this scandal such a corrosive one. Hundreds of thousands of lives have been devastated. If it is true that the judgement that caused this stands vitiated, then amends must be made.
Sealing fates: Is it Enron zindabad, to hell with the poor?
But are the facts correct?
Scandals about powerful and well-known people can be, and often are, malicious, motivated and untrue. God knows that judges make mortal enemies—after all, in each case they adjudicate there is a winner and a loser. There's little doubt that Justice Y.K. Sabharwal would have made his fair share of enemies. If I were him, and if I really had nothing to hide, I would actually welcome an investigation. In fact, I would beg the chief justice to set up a commission of inquiry. I would make it a point to go after those who had fabricated evidence against me and made all these outrageous allegations.
What I certainly wouldn't do is to make things worse by writing an ineffective, sappy defence of myself which doesn't address the allegations and doesn't convince anyone (Times of India, September 2, 2007).
Equally, if I were the sitting chief justice or anybody else who claims to be genuinely interested in 'upholding the dignity' of the court (fortunately this is not my line of work), I would know that to shovel the dirt under the carpet at this late stage, or to try and silence or intimidate the whistle-blowers, is counter-productive. It wouldn't take me very long to work out that if I didn't order an inquiry and order it quickly, what started out as a scandal about a particular individual could quickly burgeon into a scandal about the entire judiciary.
But, of course, not everybody sees it that way.
Days after Mid Day went public with its allegations, the Delhi high court issued suo motu notice charging the editor, the resident editor, the publisher and the cartoonist of Mid Day with Contempt of Court. Three months later, on September 11, 2007, it passed an order holding them guilty of criminal Contempt of Court. They have been summoned for sentencing on September 21.
What was Mid Day's crime? An unusual display of courage? The high court order makes absolutely no comment on the factual accuracy of the allegations that Mid Day levelled against Justice Sabharwal. Instead, in an extraordinary, almost yogic manoeuvre, it makes out that the real targets of the Mid Day article were the judges sitting with Justice Sabharwal on the division bench, judges who are still in service (and therefore imputing motives to them constitutes Criminal Contempt): "We find the manner in which the entire incidence has been projected appears as if the Supreme Court permitted itself to be led into fulfilling an ulterior motive of one of its members.The nature of the revelations and the context in which they appear, though purporting to single out former Chief Justice of India, tarnishes the image of the Supreme Court. It tends to erode the confidence of the general public in the institution itself. The Supreme Court sits in divisions and every order is of a bench. By imputing motive to its presiding member automatically sends a signal that the other members were dummies or were party to fulfil the ulterior design."
Nowhere in the Mid Day articles has any other judge been so much as mentioned. So the journalists are in the dock for an imagined insult. What this means is that if there are several judges sitting on a bench and you have proof that one of them has given an opinion or an order based on corrupt considerations or is judging a case in which he or she has a clear conflict of interest, it's not enough. You don't have a case unless you can prove that all of them are corrupt or that all of them have a conflict of interest and all of them have left a trail of evidence in their wake. Actually, even this is not enough. You must also be able to state your case without casting any aspersions whatsoever on the court. (Purely for the sake of argument: What if two judges on a bench decide to take turns to be corrupt? What would we do then?)
So now we're saddled with a whole new school of thought on Contempt of Court: Fevered interpretations of imagined insults against unnamed judges. Phew! We're in La-la Land.
In most other countries, the definition of Criminal Contempt of Court is limited to anything that threatens to be a clear and present danger to the administration of justice. This business of "scandalising" and "lowering the authority" of the court is an absurd, dangerous form of censorship and an insult to our collective intelligence.
The journalists who broke the story in Mid Day have done an important and courageous thing. Some newspapers acting in solidarity have followed up the story. A number of people have come together and made a public statement further bolstering that support. There is an online petition asking for a criminal investigation. If either the government or the courts do not order a credible investigation into the scandal, then a group of senior lawyers and former judges will hold a public tribunal and examine the evidence that is placed before them. It's all happening. The lid is off, and about time too.
'People will forgive you for being wrong, but they will never forgive you for being right - especially if events prove you right while proving them wrong.' Thomas Sowell
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Monday, 24 September 2007
A must watch video on America
http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/index.php?filmID=601
19 September, 2007
Countercurrents.org
Naïve Americans who think they live in a free society should watch this video filmed by students at a John Kerry speech September 17, Constitution Day, at the University of Florida in Gainesville.
At the conclusion of Kerry's speech, Andrew Meyer, a 21-year old journalism student was selected by Senator Kerry to ask a question. Meyer held up a copy of BBC investigative reporter Greg Palast's book, Armed Madhouse, and asked if Kerry was aware that Palast's investigations determined that Kerry had actually won the election. Why, Meyer asked, had Kerry conceded the election so quickly when there were so many obvious examples of vote fraud? Why, Meyer, went on to ask, was Kerry refusing to consider Bush's impeachment when Bush was about to initiate another act of military aggression, this time against Iran?
At this point the public's protectors—the police—decided that Meyer had said too much. They grabbed Meyer and began dragging him off. Meyer said repeatedly, "I have done nothing wrong," which under our laws he had not. He threatened no one and assaulted no one.
But the police decided that Meyer, an American citizen, had no right to free speech and no constitutional protection. They threw him to the floor and tasered him right in front of Senator Kerry and the large student audience, who captured on video the unquestionable act of police brutality. Meyer was carted off and jailed on a phony charge of "disrupting a public event."
The question we should all ask is why did a United States Senator just stand there while Gestapo goons violated the constitutional rights of a student participating in a public event, brutalized him in full view of everyone, and then took him off to jail on phony charges?
Kerry's meekness not only in the face of electoral fraud, not only in the face of Bush's wars that are crimes under the Nuremberg standard, but also in the face of police goons trampling the constitutional rights of American citizens makes it completely clear that he was not fit to be president, and he is not fit to be a US senator.
Usually when police violate constitutional rights and commit acts of police brutality they do it when they believe no one is watching, not in front of a large audience. Clearly, the police have become more audacious in their abuse of rights and citizens. What explains the new fearlessness of police to violate rights and brutalize citizens without cause?
The answer is that police, most of whom have authoritarian personalities, have seen that constitutional rights are no longer protected. President Bush does not protect our constitutional rights. Neither does Vice President Cheney, nor the Attorney General, nor the US Congress. Just as Kerry allowed Meyer's rights to be tasered out of him, Congress has enabled Bush to strip people, including American citizens, of constitutional protection and incarcerate them without presenting evidence.
How long before Kerry himself or some other senator will be dragged from his podium and tasered?
The Bush Republicans with complicit Democrats have essentially brought government accountability to an end in the US. The US government has 80,000 people, including ordinary American citizens, on its "no-fly list." No one knows why they are on the list, and no one on the list can find out how to get off it. An unaccountable act by the Bush administration put them there.
Airport Security harasses and abuses people who do not fit any known definition of terrorist. Nalini Ghuman, a British-born citizen and music professor at Mills College in California was met on her return from a trip to England by armed guards at the airplane door and escorted away. A Gestapo goon squad tore up her US visa, defaced her British passport, body searched her, and told her she could leave immediately for England or be sent to a detention center.
Professor Ghuman, an Oxford University graduate with a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, says she feels like the character in Kafka's book, The Trial. "I don't know why it's happened, what I'm accused of. There's no opportunity to defend myself. One is just completely powerless." Over one year later there is still no answer.
The Bush Republicans and their Democratic toadies have, in the name of "security," made all of us powerless. While Senator John Kerry and his Democratic colleagues stand silently, the Bush administration has stolen our country from us and turned us into subjects.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider's Account of Policymaking in Washington; Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice.
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America Is No More
By Paul Craig Roberts19 September, 2007
Countercurrents.org
Naïve Americans who think they live in a free society should watch this video filmed by students at a John Kerry speech September 17, Constitution Day, at the University of Florida in Gainesville.
At the conclusion of Kerry's speech, Andrew Meyer, a 21-year old journalism student was selected by Senator Kerry to ask a question. Meyer held up a copy of BBC investigative reporter Greg Palast's book, Armed Madhouse, and asked if Kerry was aware that Palast's investigations determined that Kerry had actually won the election. Why, Meyer asked, had Kerry conceded the election so quickly when there were so many obvious examples of vote fraud? Why, Meyer, went on to ask, was Kerry refusing to consider Bush's impeachment when Bush was about to initiate another act of military aggression, this time against Iran?
At this point the public's protectors—the police—decided that Meyer had said too much. They grabbed Meyer and began dragging him off. Meyer said repeatedly, "I have done nothing wrong," which under our laws he had not. He threatened no one and assaulted no one.
But the police decided that Meyer, an American citizen, had no right to free speech and no constitutional protection. They threw him to the floor and tasered him right in front of Senator Kerry and the large student audience, who captured on video the unquestionable act of police brutality. Meyer was carted off and jailed on a phony charge of "disrupting a public event."
The question we should all ask is why did a United States Senator just stand there while Gestapo goons violated the constitutional rights of a student participating in a public event, brutalized him in full view of everyone, and then took him off to jail on phony charges?
Kerry's meekness not only in the face of electoral fraud, not only in the face of Bush's wars that are crimes under the Nuremberg standard, but also in the face of police goons trampling the constitutional rights of American citizens makes it completely clear that he was not fit to be president, and he is not fit to be a US senator.
Usually when police violate constitutional rights and commit acts of police brutality they do it when they believe no one is watching, not in front of a large audience. Clearly, the police have become more audacious in their abuse of rights and citizens. What explains the new fearlessness of police to violate rights and brutalize citizens without cause?
The answer is that police, most of whom have authoritarian personalities, have seen that constitutional rights are no longer protected. President Bush does not protect our constitutional rights. Neither does Vice President Cheney, nor the Attorney General, nor the US Congress. Just as Kerry allowed Meyer's rights to be tasered out of him, Congress has enabled Bush to strip people, including American citizens, of constitutional protection and incarcerate them without presenting evidence.
How long before Kerry himself or some other senator will be dragged from his podium and tasered?
The Bush Republicans with complicit Democrats have essentially brought government accountability to an end in the US. The US government has 80,000 people, including ordinary American citizens, on its "no-fly list." No one knows why they are on the list, and no one on the list can find out how to get off it. An unaccountable act by the Bush administration put them there.
Airport Security harasses and abuses people who do not fit any known definition of terrorist. Nalini Ghuman, a British-born citizen and music professor at Mills College in California was met on her return from a trip to England by armed guards at the airplane door and escorted away. A Gestapo goon squad tore up her US visa, defaced her British passport, body searched her, and told her she could leave immediately for England or be sent to a detention center.
Professor Ghuman, an Oxford University graduate with a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, says she feels like the character in Kafka's book, The Trial. "I don't know why it's happened, what I'm accused of. There's no opportunity to defend myself. One is just completely powerless." Over one year later there is still no answer.
The Bush Republicans and their Democratic toadies have, in the name of "security," made all of us powerless. While Senator John Kerry and his Democratic colleagues stand silently, the Bush administration has stolen our country from us and turned us into subjects.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider's Account of Policymaking in Washington; Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice.
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Wednesday, 19 September 2007
The Marie Antoinettes of Maharashtra
by P. Sainath; The Hindu; September 18, 2007
The remarks of Shankersinh Vaghela and Vilasrao Deshmukh on Maharashtra farmers capture the elite mindset. Those doing badly are in trouble because of their own laziness. Killing themselves in large numbers only proves how lazy they are.
In the good old days, a Minister or Governor getting out of something he had said simply denied it. “I was misquoted.” Or it was “a total fabrication.” Television complicates things. Cures for foot-in-the mouth-disease get messy when you’ve goofed up on camera. The ruling etiquette now is: “My words were taken out of context.” Only, we are seldom told what that “context” is.
And so it was in Maharashtra this week. First, Union Textiles Minister Shankersinh Vaghela appeared to be fighting the coming Gujarat elections in Maharashtra. That too, at a meeting of the Cotton Brokers’ Association in Akola district. He extolled the farmers of his home State and batted for Gujarati pride. Which is fine. His own people, both farmers and non-farmers, are very hard-working. But then he added that the problem with farmers in Maharashtra was that they “just sit around and don’t go to their farms.” He wanted them to learn about hard work from his own State. “You must emulate the farmers of Gujarat. Come there and see for yourselves,” he said.
That these homilies were delivered in Vidharbha — a region seeing countless farm suicides — was bad enough. But there was more to follow. The guardian of the destinies of 100 million people in Maharashtra took the mike and rubbed it in. “There is some truth in what he has hinted … we must keep it in mind,” said Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh.
And then — in a shot at humour — “Our farmers here, too, are ‘innovative.’ They sprinkle water on cotton, add stones to it, to increase the weight of their yield when they bring it to market.” And still more: “A farmer here is also innovative in increasing his cotton sowing area on paper, to seek government aid. Vidharbha farmers don’t lag behind in innovation.”
The Chief Minister has since said his words were taken out of context. Which sort of obliges him to explain — what was the context? Did he say such things at all, in any context? His response to a channel that carried his speech: “Nothing was said in Akola that was insulting to the farmers. Using specific parts of the speech, the opposition is now making a mountain out of a molehill. The speech has been used in such a way that it appears to be insulting the farmers. Being a farmer myself I know of the hardships faced by them. Implementing programmes for their benefit is primary for me.” Which “specific parts?” Obviously, the Chief Minister said things he would like to distance himself from. But it is very difficult to do that when those “specific parts” are on camera and are repeatedly being telecast. The subsequent exercise seems to result more in damage expansion than damage control.
The fallout has been most damaging. It was barely a month ago that Mr. Deshmukh’s own party in the State gave in a report to its Central leadership, slamming his failures on the farm front. In Vidharbha region, his own party workers see this speech as a blunder that will cost them dearly. And party leaders in Delhi seem quite annoyed.
Meanwhile, a seed industry lobby has just advanced claims of stunning success for the Vidharbha farmer with Bt cotton. Yet this presents the leaders with a dilemma. The timing of the industry’s claims is odd. It comes when the State is struggling to polish its image on the Vidharbha front. The claim is that the farmer in the region actually earned thousands of crores of rupees more last year. For one thing: how did “lazy” farmers end up doing so well? For another, that was the same year in which the State government’s own survey declared that over three fourths of farm households there were in distress. Of course, the State survey studied 17.64 lakh farm households or millions of people. The industry’s ‘sample’ was less than 350 farmers in the region.
More vital, though, is how the whole drama captures the elite mindset. Those doing badly are in trouble because of their own laziness. If they were hard-working, there would be no problem. Killing themselves in large numbers only proves how lazy they are. Most top leaders of the State have not visited a single distressed farm household of their own accord through all this period of crisis. The same leaders always have time for Bollywood functions. Maharashtra’s top bosses met families of suicide victims — most reluctantly — for the first time in 2006. That’s because they had to tag along with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on his trip to Vidharbha last year.
It’s curious how Maharashtra, with its “lazy” farmers, led the country for three or more decades in cotton and sugar production before running into trouble. According to this government, the last season saw a gigantic “bumper crop” of almost 350 lakh quintals of cotton. And now industry says the next crop will exceed even that by 100 lakh quintals. Not bad for a bunch of lazy farmers fighting floods, pest, rising input costs, falling prices, chikangunya and their own government.
Well over 90 per cent of the State’s cotton is produced in rain-fed regions. For farmers in Vidharbha to produce the quality they do with no irrigation is a huge achievement. More so when the State itself is plugging inputs like Bt seed that demand more and more water. This hardly squares with their being lazy.
Above all, the farmers of the region the two leaders were mocking have had to contend with a government that came to power on a promise of Rs. 2700 per quintal of cotton — then betrayed that promise at once. So who is the cheat? The mythical little guy wetting his cotton to make it heavier? Or a government whose ruthless gutting of a poll promise destroyed so many lives? Or was the Congress party’s manifesto quoted “out of context?”
Yet all this is like a re-run of a very bad movie. It is what the elite like to believe of the poor. In 2003-04, as reports on the Andhra Pradesh suicides grew in number, many well-read persons in Maharashtra asked in wide-eyed innocence: “what is it with these Andhra Pradesh farmers? What’s wrong with them? How come we don’t have those suicides here in Maharashtra?”
Three years on, we all know better. But Mr. Vaghela, apparently, does not. He also overlooked the “advantage” that Gujarat enjoys in two respects. It has the biggest “parallel” or chor Bt seed industry. Some farmers claim that the ‘desi’ Bt coming out of Gujarat works better than Monsanto’s product. So many cotton growers in Gujarat don’t pay the gigantic royalties per bag that they would to the multinational were they forced to use its brand. In Maharashtra, a government agency is the distributor for the most expensive Bt seed of the MNC. That’s why farmers in Vidharbha in fact try to buy the Gujarati version. Some even respectfully call it “non-royalty Bt.”
Farmers in Gujarat also have up to 40 per cent irrigation, in one estimate. Which dwarfs Vidharbha’s three per cent. There is another “advantage” no less risky. All the States going through the crisis have seen cycles of large-scale, new generation chemical use. Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Vidharbha went into those cycles before Gujarat did. (And they too saw initial gains.) The rest, we know, is history. And Mr. Vaghela, at least, ought to learn from it. There are huge problems ahead.
Whether Mr. Deshmukh will learn is another question altogether. There have been two years in which Vidharbha could have been turned around quite a bit. But the laziness that came in the way was not that of the farmer. The laziness in forgetting what your manifesto promised was also not that of the farmer. Nor is the laziness involved in going to the region many times without visiting the affected households. Something real leaders ought to do.
Mr. Deshmukh’s own government has made one major contribution. It carried out the largest survey ever of its kind on farm households in the region. Its own survey says close to 75 per cent of farm households — or nearly seven million people — there are in distress. In just six districts. It confirms that people were and are working harder and harder to earn less and less. That some two million people are in what the survey calls “maximum distress.”
Brushing aside your own findings and holding forth on the failings of the farmers invites public outrage. And that outrage has come, leading to the “clarifications.” The causes of farm distress have been documented many times over both in Vidharbha and in other regions. To push the kind of reasons Mr. Vaghela and Mr. Deshmukh have advanced is to emulate the French Queen at the time of the 1789 Revolution who wanted to know why, if the hungry masses did not have bread, they could not eat cake instead. Current wisdom is that she never really said this. (Perhaps, like Mr. Deshmukh’s, her words were “taken out of context.”) Either way, Marie Antoinette would have felt at home in Maharashtra. Here we destroy the masses, not royalty.
The remarks of Shankersinh Vaghela and Vilasrao Deshmukh on Maharashtra farmers capture the elite mindset. Those doing badly are in trouble because of their own laziness. Killing themselves in large numbers only proves how lazy they are.
In the good old days, a Minister or Governor getting out of something he had said simply denied it. “I was misquoted.” Or it was “a total fabrication.” Television complicates things. Cures for foot-in-the mouth-disease get messy when you’ve goofed up on camera. The ruling etiquette now is: “My words were taken out of context.” Only, we are seldom told what that “context” is.
And so it was in Maharashtra this week. First, Union Textiles Minister Shankersinh Vaghela appeared to be fighting the coming Gujarat elections in Maharashtra. That too, at a meeting of the Cotton Brokers’ Association in Akola district. He extolled the farmers of his home State and batted for Gujarati pride. Which is fine. His own people, both farmers and non-farmers, are very hard-working. But then he added that the problem with farmers in Maharashtra was that they “just sit around and don’t go to their farms.” He wanted them to learn about hard work from his own State. “You must emulate the farmers of Gujarat. Come there and see for yourselves,” he said.
That these homilies were delivered in Vidharbha — a region seeing countless farm suicides — was bad enough. But there was more to follow. The guardian of the destinies of 100 million people in Maharashtra took the mike and rubbed it in. “There is some truth in what he has hinted … we must keep it in mind,” said Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh.
And then — in a shot at humour — “Our farmers here, too, are ‘innovative.’ They sprinkle water on cotton, add stones to it, to increase the weight of their yield when they bring it to market.” And still more: “A farmer here is also innovative in increasing his cotton sowing area on paper, to seek government aid. Vidharbha farmers don’t lag behind in innovation.”
The Chief Minister has since said his words were taken out of context. Which sort of obliges him to explain — what was the context? Did he say such things at all, in any context? His response to a channel that carried his speech: “Nothing was said in Akola that was insulting to the farmers. Using specific parts of the speech, the opposition is now making a mountain out of a molehill. The speech has been used in such a way that it appears to be insulting the farmers. Being a farmer myself I know of the hardships faced by them. Implementing programmes for their benefit is primary for me.” Which “specific parts?” Obviously, the Chief Minister said things he would like to distance himself from. But it is very difficult to do that when those “specific parts” are on camera and are repeatedly being telecast. The subsequent exercise seems to result more in damage expansion than damage control.
The fallout has been most damaging. It was barely a month ago that Mr. Deshmukh’s own party in the State gave in a report to its Central leadership, slamming his failures on the farm front. In Vidharbha region, his own party workers see this speech as a blunder that will cost them dearly. And party leaders in Delhi seem quite annoyed.
Meanwhile, a seed industry lobby has just advanced claims of stunning success for the Vidharbha farmer with Bt cotton. Yet this presents the leaders with a dilemma. The timing of the industry’s claims is odd. It comes when the State is struggling to polish its image on the Vidharbha front. The claim is that the farmer in the region actually earned thousands of crores of rupees more last year. For one thing: how did “lazy” farmers end up doing so well? For another, that was the same year in which the State government’s own survey declared that over three fourths of farm households there were in distress. Of course, the State survey studied 17.64 lakh farm households or millions of people. The industry’s ‘sample’ was less than 350 farmers in the region.
More vital, though, is how the whole drama captures the elite mindset. Those doing badly are in trouble because of their own laziness. If they were hard-working, there would be no problem. Killing themselves in large numbers only proves how lazy they are. Most top leaders of the State have not visited a single distressed farm household of their own accord through all this period of crisis. The same leaders always have time for Bollywood functions. Maharashtra’s top bosses met families of suicide victims — most reluctantly — for the first time in 2006. That’s because they had to tag along with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on his trip to Vidharbha last year.
It’s curious how Maharashtra, with its “lazy” farmers, led the country for three or more decades in cotton and sugar production before running into trouble. According to this government, the last season saw a gigantic “bumper crop” of almost 350 lakh quintals of cotton. And now industry says the next crop will exceed even that by 100 lakh quintals. Not bad for a bunch of lazy farmers fighting floods, pest, rising input costs, falling prices, chikangunya and their own government.
Well over 90 per cent of the State’s cotton is produced in rain-fed regions. For farmers in Vidharbha to produce the quality they do with no irrigation is a huge achievement. More so when the State itself is plugging inputs like Bt seed that demand more and more water. This hardly squares with their being lazy.
Above all, the farmers of the region the two leaders were mocking have had to contend with a government that came to power on a promise of Rs. 2700 per quintal of cotton — then betrayed that promise at once. So who is the cheat? The mythical little guy wetting his cotton to make it heavier? Or a government whose ruthless gutting of a poll promise destroyed so many lives? Or was the Congress party’s manifesto quoted “out of context?”
Yet all this is like a re-run of a very bad movie. It is what the elite like to believe of the poor. In 2003-04, as reports on the Andhra Pradesh suicides grew in number, many well-read persons in Maharashtra asked in wide-eyed innocence: “what is it with these Andhra Pradesh farmers? What’s wrong with them? How come we don’t have those suicides here in Maharashtra?”
Three years on, we all know better. But Mr. Vaghela, apparently, does not. He also overlooked the “advantage” that Gujarat enjoys in two respects. It has the biggest “parallel” or chor Bt seed industry. Some farmers claim that the ‘desi’ Bt coming out of Gujarat works better than Monsanto’s product. So many cotton growers in Gujarat don’t pay the gigantic royalties per bag that they would to the multinational were they forced to use its brand. In Maharashtra, a government agency is the distributor for the most expensive Bt seed of the MNC. That’s why farmers in Vidharbha in fact try to buy the Gujarati version. Some even respectfully call it “non-royalty Bt.”
Farmers in Gujarat also have up to 40 per cent irrigation, in one estimate. Which dwarfs Vidharbha’s three per cent. There is another “advantage” no less risky. All the States going through the crisis have seen cycles of large-scale, new generation chemical use. Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Vidharbha went into those cycles before Gujarat did. (And they too saw initial gains.) The rest, we know, is history. And Mr. Vaghela, at least, ought to learn from it. There are huge problems ahead.
Whether Mr. Deshmukh will learn is another question altogether. There have been two years in which Vidharbha could have been turned around quite a bit. But the laziness that came in the way was not that of the farmer. The laziness in forgetting what your manifesto promised was also not that of the farmer. Nor is the laziness involved in going to the region many times without visiting the affected households. Something real leaders ought to do.
Mr. Deshmukh’s own government has made one major contribution. It carried out the largest survey ever of its kind on farm households in the region. Its own survey says close to 75 per cent of farm households — or nearly seven million people — there are in distress. In just six districts. It confirms that people were and are working harder and harder to earn less and less. That some two million people are in what the survey calls “maximum distress.”
Brushing aside your own findings and holding forth on the failings of the farmers invites public outrage. And that outrage has come, leading to the “clarifications.” The causes of farm distress have been documented many times over both in Vidharbha and in other regions. To push the kind of reasons Mr. Vaghela and Mr. Deshmukh have advanced is to emulate the French Queen at the time of the 1789 Revolution who wanted to know why, if the hungry masses did not have bread, they could not eat cake instead. Current wisdom is that she never really said this. (Perhaps, like Mr. Deshmukh’s, her words were “taken out of context.”) Either way, Marie Antoinette would have felt at home in Maharashtra. Here we destroy the masses, not royalty.
A Deafening Silence On Report Of One Million Iraqis Killed
By Patrick Martin
17 September, 2007
WSWS.org
When those responsible for the American war in Iraq face a public reckoning for their colossal crimes, the weekend of September 15-16, 2007 will be an important piece of evidence against them. On Friday, September 14 there were brief press reports of a scientific survey by the British polling organization ORB, which resulted in an estimate of 1.2 million violent deaths in Iraq since the US invasion.
This staggering figure demonstrates two political facts: 1) the American war in Iraq has produced a humanitarian catastrophe of historic proportions, with a death total already higher than that in Rwanda in 1994; 2) those arguing against a US withdrawal on the grounds that this would lead to civil war, even genocide, are deliberately concealing the fact that such a bloodbath is already taking place, with the US military in control.
The reaction to the ORB report in the US political and media establishment was virtual silence. After scattered newspaper reports Friday, there was no coverage on the Friday evening television newscasts or on the cable television news stations. There was no comment from the Bush White House, the Pentagon, or the State Department, and not a single Republican or Democratic presidential candidate or congressional leader made an issue of it. On the Sunday morning talk shows on all four broadcast networks the subject was not raised.
This was not because those involved were unaware of the study, which received wide circulation on the Internet and was prominently reported in the British daily press. Nor was there any serious challenge to the validity of the study’s findings.
Opinion Research Business (ORB), founded by the former head of British operations for the Gallup polling organization, is a well-established commercial polling firm. It gave a detailed technical description of the methods used to make a scientific random sample.
Six months ago, by contrast, an ORB survey in Iraq was hailed by the White House because some of its findings could be given a positive spin in administration propaganda. That survey, conducted in February and made public March 18 in the Sunday Times of London, found that only 27 percent of Iraqis believed their country was in a state of civil war and that a majority supported the Maliki government and the US military “surge,” and believed life was getting better in their country.
That survey also reported figures on violence that largely dovetail with those of the survey conducted in August and reported last Friday, including 79 percent of Baghdad residents experiencing either a violent death or kidnapping in their immediate family or workplace. But its findings of Iraqi political opinions—not the figures on deaths—were given headline treatment in the US press, with articles in the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor and other national media outlets.
White House press spokesman Tony Snow cited the ORB poll at a March 23 news briefing, when he used its findings to rebut the results of a poll of Iraqis by ABC News, the British Broadcasting Corporation, the German ARD network and USA Today newspaper. Asked about the ABC poll’s finding that Iraqis were more pessimistic about the future, Snow declared, “there was also a British poll at the same time that had almost diametrically opposed results.” He added that the British poll had “twice the sample” of the ABC poll, and should therefore be considered more authoritative.
The March ORB poll was widely hailed in the far-right media, including Fox News Network. The right-wing magazine National Review declared, “Supporters of Operation Iraqi Freedom will be buoyed by a new poll of Iraqis showing high levels of support for the Baghdad security plan and the elected government implementing it.”
The latest ORB poll, focusing on the enormous death toll produced by the US invasion, has received no such positive reception at the White House. There is, of course, ample reason for such hostility. The figures reported by ORB undermine Bush administration claims that its goal in Iraq is to “liberate” the Iraqi people from tyranny and terrorism, or to defend “freedom and democracy.”
The real motivation for the war was spelled out by former Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan in a newly published book of memoirs, in which he wrote, “Whatever their publicized angst over Saddam Hussein’s ‘weapons of mass destruction,’ American and British authorities were also concerned about violence in an area that harbors a resource indispensable for the functioning of the world economy. I’m saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: The Iraq war is largely about oil.”
Equally significant is the silence from congressional Democrats and the Democratic presidential candidates, all of whom claim to be opposed to the Iraq war. This antiwar posturing, however, has nothing in common with genuine compassion for the plight of the Iraqi people or principled opposition to the predatory interests of American imperialism in the oil-rich country.
The Democrats oppose the Bush administration’s conduct of the war, not because it has been a bloody and criminal operation, but because it has been mismanaged and unsuccessful in accomplishing the goal of plundering Iraq’s oil resources and strengthening the strategic position of US imperialism in the Middle East.
The Democrats do not want to highlight the massive scale of the bloodbath in Iraq, as suggested by the ORB survey, because they share political responsibility for the war, from the vote to authorize the use of force in October 2002, to the repeated congressional passage of bills to fund the war, at a total cost of more than $600 billion. In any war crimes trial over the near-genocide in Iraq, leading Democrats would take their place in the dock, second only to the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld war cabal.
Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program Sunday, the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, Senator John Kerry, denounced suggestions that congressional Democrats would allow the United States to be defeated in Iraq. He criticized the Bush administration’s conduct of the war on the ground that it had weakened US national security interests, particularly in relation to Iran.
“We’re not talking about abandoning Iraq,” Kerry said. “We’re talking about changing the mission and adjusting the mission so that the bulkier combat troops are withdrawn, ultimately, within a year, but that you are continuing to provide the basic backstop support necessary to finish the training, so they stand up on their own, and you are continuing to chase Al Qaeda.”
Kerry made it clear that he advocated a more aggressive, not less aggressive, policy in the Middle East. “We need to get out of Iraq in order to be stronger to deal with Iran,” he said, “in order to deal with Hezbollah and Hamas, to regain our credibility in the region. And I believe, very deeply, they understand power.”
When “Meet the Press” host Tim Russert pressed Kerry on the refusal of the Democrats to force the White House to stop the war by cutting off funding, Kerry evaded the question, claiming—falsely—that such action would require 67 votes in the Senate to override a presidential veto. The supposed 67-vote hurdle is an obstacle deliberately conjured up by the congressional Democrats, in order to play their double game of publicly posturing as opponents of the war while allowing the Bush administration to continue waging it.
Kerry continued: “I will fund the troops to protect the national security interests of America, to accomplish a mission that increases our national security and protects the troops themselves. We are not proposing failure...”
What does the pursuit of “success” mean in the context of the reports of 1.2 million violent deaths in Iraq since the US invasion and occupation? It means the devastation of that country will continue until the American and international working class intervenes to put an end to it.
17 September, 2007
WSWS.org
When those responsible for the American war in Iraq face a public reckoning for their colossal crimes, the weekend of September 15-16, 2007 will be an important piece of evidence against them. On Friday, September 14 there were brief press reports of a scientific survey by the British polling organization ORB, which resulted in an estimate of 1.2 million violent deaths in Iraq since the US invasion.
This staggering figure demonstrates two political facts: 1) the American war in Iraq has produced a humanitarian catastrophe of historic proportions, with a death total already higher than that in Rwanda in 1994; 2) those arguing against a US withdrawal on the grounds that this would lead to civil war, even genocide, are deliberately concealing the fact that such a bloodbath is already taking place, with the US military in control.
The reaction to the ORB report in the US political and media establishment was virtual silence. After scattered newspaper reports Friday, there was no coverage on the Friday evening television newscasts or on the cable television news stations. There was no comment from the Bush White House, the Pentagon, or the State Department, and not a single Republican or Democratic presidential candidate or congressional leader made an issue of it. On the Sunday morning talk shows on all four broadcast networks the subject was not raised.
This was not because those involved were unaware of the study, which received wide circulation on the Internet and was prominently reported in the British daily press. Nor was there any serious challenge to the validity of the study’s findings.
Opinion Research Business (ORB), founded by the former head of British operations for the Gallup polling organization, is a well-established commercial polling firm. It gave a detailed technical description of the methods used to make a scientific random sample.
Six months ago, by contrast, an ORB survey in Iraq was hailed by the White House because some of its findings could be given a positive spin in administration propaganda. That survey, conducted in February and made public March 18 in the Sunday Times of London, found that only 27 percent of Iraqis believed their country was in a state of civil war and that a majority supported the Maliki government and the US military “surge,” and believed life was getting better in their country.
That survey also reported figures on violence that largely dovetail with those of the survey conducted in August and reported last Friday, including 79 percent of Baghdad residents experiencing either a violent death or kidnapping in their immediate family or workplace. But its findings of Iraqi political opinions—not the figures on deaths—were given headline treatment in the US press, with articles in the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor and other national media outlets.
White House press spokesman Tony Snow cited the ORB poll at a March 23 news briefing, when he used its findings to rebut the results of a poll of Iraqis by ABC News, the British Broadcasting Corporation, the German ARD network and USA Today newspaper. Asked about the ABC poll’s finding that Iraqis were more pessimistic about the future, Snow declared, “there was also a British poll at the same time that had almost diametrically opposed results.” He added that the British poll had “twice the sample” of the ABC poll, and should therefore be considered more authoritative.
The March ORB poll was widely hailed in the far-right media, including Fox News Network. The right-wing magazine National Review declared, “Supporters of Operation Iraqi Freedom will be buoyed by a new poll of Iraqis showing high levels of support for the Baghdad security plan and the elected government implementing it.”
The latest ORB poll, focusing on the enormous death toll produced by the US invasion, has received no such positive reception at the White House. There is, of course, ample reason for such hostility. The figures reported by ORB undermine Bush administration claims that its goal in Iraq is to “liberate” the Iraqi people from tyranny and terrorism, or to defend “freedom and democracy.”
The real motivation for the war was spelled out by former Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan in a newly published book of memoirs, in which he wrote, “Whatever their publicized angst over Saddam Hussein’s ‘weapons of mass destruction,’ American and British authorities were also concerned about violence in an area that harbors a resource indispensable for the functioning of the world economy. I’m saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: The Iraq war is largely about oil.”
Equally significant is the silence from congressional Democrats and the Democratic presidential candidates, all of whom claim to be opposed to the Iraq war. This antiwar posturing, however, has nothing in common with genuine compassion for the plight of the Iraqi people or principled opposition to the predatory interests of American imperialism in the oil-rich country.
The Democrats oppose the Bush administration’s conduct of the war, not because it has been a bloody and criminal operation, but because it has been mismanaged and unsuccessful in accomplishing the goal of plundering Iraq’s oil resources and strengthening the strategic position of US imperialism in the Middle East.
The Democrats do not want to highlight the massive scale of the bloodbath in Iraq, as suggested by the ORB survey, because they share political responsibility for the war, from the vote to authorize the use of force in October 2002, to the repeated congressional passage of bills to fund the war, at a total cost of more than $600 billion. In any war crimes trial over the near-genocide in Iraq, leading Democrats would take their place in the dock, second only to the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld war cabal.
Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program Sunday, the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, Senator John Kerry, denounced suggestions that congressional Democrats would allow the United States to be defeated in Iraq. He criticized the Bush administration’s conduct of the war on the ground that it had weakened US national security interests, particularly in relation to Iran.
“We’re not talking about abandoning Iraq,” Kerry said. “We’re talking about changing the mission and adjusting the mission so that the bulkier combat troops are withdrawn, ultimately, within a year, but that you are continuing to provide the basic backstop support necessary to finish the training, so they stand up on their own, and you are continuing to chase Al Qaeda.”
Kerry made it clear that he advocated a more aggressive, not less aggressive, policy in the Middle East. “We need to get out of Iraq in order to be stronger to deal with Iran,” he said, “in order to deal with Hezbollah and Hamas, to regain our credibility in the region. And I believe, very deeply, they understand power.”
When “Meet the Press” host Tim Russert pressed Kerry on the refusal of the Democrats to force the White House to stop the war by cutting off funding, Kerry evaded the question, claiming—falsely—that such action would require 67 votes in the Senate to override a presidential veto. The supposed 67-vote hurdle is an obstacle deliberately conjured up by the congressional Democrats, in order to play their double game of publicly posturing as opponents of the war while allowing the Bush administration to continue waging it.
Kerry continued: “I will fund the troops to protect the national security interests of America, to accomplish a mission that increases our national security and protects the troops themselves. We are not proposing failure...”
What does the pursuit of “success” mean in the context of the reports of 1.2 million violent deaths in Iraq since the US invasion and occupation? It means the devastation of that country will continue until the American and international working class intervenes to put an end to it.
Monday, 17 September 2007
Financial management is the new witchcraft.
The Northern Rock crisis, and the City's excesses, expose the dangers in our remaining ignorant of market complexities
Max Hastings
Monday September 17, 2007
Guardian
It has been an unfamiliar delight to wake up the past few mornings knowing that I am neither a shareholder nor depositor in Northern Rock. In the usual course of events, whenever a company goes pear-shaped my pension fund proves to be involved. Friends often ring me to ask which businesses I have shares in, to be sure to avoid them.
Yet, however pleasing it is to see City folk sweat, it is obvious that schadenfreude would be misplaced. We are all going to feel pain somewhere from the chaos in the financial markets. The feel-good factor, which has proved vastly more important than any government personality or policy in sustaining Labour in power, will be imperilled. Politics could be transformed if hard times hit the high street and housing market.
Present events seem unlikely to signal the collapse of capitalism or even a major recession, but it must surely mean a reality check on the follies of recent years, in which tycoons and ticket collectors alike have splurged far more money than they could sensibly afford on buying companies or, at the humbler end of the scale, plasma TV screens so large that newsreaders' warts show through their makeup.
A wise City editor cherishes the maxim, "Don't invest in things you don't understand". How many of those inside the soaring towers east of Temple Bar have known what they have been betting their ranches on lately, never mind the rest of us out in no man's land? Of course there are some very clever people steering the world's financial institutions. But the evidence suggests that there are also some frighteningly stupid ones.
Incomprehension makes us the City's prisoners. We know what vacuum cleaner manufacturers do, and waiters and lawyers and doctors and even ministers. We are told that the activities of the City of London now account for a frighteningly large proportion of national economic activity.
But as to what those activities are, who can tell? I have met lots of investment bankers, hedge fund managers, currency dealers. But I would struggle to describe on one side of a sheet of paper how they spend their days, beyond peering at screens. I bet you would, too.
Financial management is the new witchcraft, an art that makes many of its practitioners absurdly rich, commands the grudging respect of millions, but relies upon skills and secrets that remain opaque to all outside the Magic Circle.
Few of those who preside over the cauldrons possess social or cultural graces. In the company of City folk, I often recall some lines from Anthony Powell's novel A Buyer's Market, describing the tycoon Sir Magnus Donners at a lunch party: "On the lips of a lesser man his words would have suggested processes of thought of a banality so painful - of such profound and arid depths, in which neither humour, nor imagination, nor, indeed, any form of human understanding could be thought to play the smallest part - that I almost supposed him to be speaking ironically, or teasing his guests by acting the part of a bore in a drawing-room comedy."
Here I must search my soul, pondering how large a part is played by envy in determining the sceptical view we outsiders take of the multimillion bonus league. Of course the worm is there. In the next generation, the only social division likely to matter in Britain will be between those taking huge sums home from the City, and those earning relatively paltry amounts outside it.
A decision at the outset of one's career to become a doctor or journalist or civil servant comes close to ensuring that one can never hope to share an upper-middle class lifestyle that will be the almost exclusive prerogative of entrepreneurs, bankers, management consultants and inheritors of wealth. This has always been true in some degree, but in future there will be a near-apartheid distinction.
Whatever the outcome of current turbulence, moving money will continue to be a vastly more profitable activity than almost anything else in Britain, save playing football. Many of us can live with this state of affairs, containing our resentment, as long as those in charge appear to know what they are doing. When, however, as in the past few weeks, we see idiot lending policies generating frightening turmoil, it is impossible not to feel pretty sore towards those in charge of spell-making.
Mrs Thatcher was an ardent advocate of personal financial empowerment. She sought to enable us all to be responsible for our own affairs, to exercise discretion over our pensions and so on. Yet few people are capable of using such discretion wisely. My own pension fund statements might as well be written in Arabic for all they mean to me, except I can grasp the brute fact that my pot somehow shrank in the early months of this year, long before the summer upheavals. It is now worth only fractionally more than it was in 2001, before the then market collapse. Management fees take a fat bite every year, of course, heedless of whether the investments have prospered or not.
I expect no personal sympathy, because I am in a happy financial position compared with most of the rest of the country. But it seems reasonable to ask: if I, supposedly well able to look after myself, find it hard to make my pension fund work decently, how on earth can millions succeed, who lack my opportunities to raise hell?
The challenge for the City of London is to convince the public that, even if its workers are extravagantly rewarded for their services, what they do benefits the rest of us; that their activities are not exclusively self-serving. This will become much harder if the turmoil of recent weeks, driven by stunning banking incompetence, feeds through into the real world and starts hurting peoples' pockets, as it seems likely to do.
A hubris, a madness, has overtaken the financial world in the past two or three years, causing some of its chief practitioners to delude themselves that the old rules of prudence had gone out of the window. A vast pool of easy money has been pursuing a much smaller supply of sensible investments. Businesses have overpaid for most properties they have bought, because that was the only way to get the deals. Banks have bought a load of stuff now seen to be worthless.
This recklessness has, of course, been matched in City private lives, where Krug, yachts, Porsches and racehorses are at premiums. The big-hitters have been indifferent about how many millions, or indeed tens of millions, they paid for a country house which they wanted.
It seems premature to speculate that all this conspicuous consumption is now at an end. Neither we nor the Bank of England have any idea how bad the housing debt crisis is going to get, or what its knock-on effects will be. Most people outside the City would love to see humbled the high-rollers who have so conspicuously failed in their responsibilities. The trouble is, if this happens it seems likely that the rest of us will catch colds at least as discomforting as those afflicting the fat cats.
Max Hastings
Monday September 17, 2007
Guardian
It has been an unfamiliar delight to wake up the past few mornings knowing that I am neither a shareholder nor depositor in Northern Rock. In the usual course of events, whenever a company goes pear-shaped my pension fund proves to be involved. Friends often ring me to ask which businesses I have shares in, to be sure to avoid them.
Yet, however pleasing it is to see City folk sweat, it is obvious that schadenfreude would be misplaced. We are all going to feel pain somewhere from the chaos in the financial markets. The feel-good factor, which has proved vastly more important than any government personality or policy in sustaining Labour in power, will be imperilled. Politics could be transformed if hard times hit the high street and housing market.
Present events seem unlikely to signal the collapse of capitalism or even a major recession, but it must surely mean a reality check on the follies of recent years, in which tycoons and ticket collectors alike have splurged far more money than they could sensibly afford on buying companies or, at the humbler end of the scale, plasma TV screens so large that newsreaders' warts show through their makeup.
A wise City editor cherishes the maxim, "Don't invest in things you don't understand". How many of those inside the soaring towers east of Temple Bar have known what they have been betting their ranches on lately, never mind the rest of us out in no man's land? Of course there are some very clever people steering the world's financial institutions. But the evidence suggests that there are also some frighteningly stupid ones.
Incomprehension makes us the City's prisoners. We know what vacuum cleaner manufacturers do, and waiters and lawyers and doctors and even ministers. We are told that the activities of the City of London now account for a frighteningly large proportion of national economic activity.
But as to what those activities are, who can tell? I have met lots of investment bankers, hedge fund managers, currency dealers. But I would struggle to describe on one side of a sheet of paper how they spend their days, beyond peering at screens. I bet you would, too.
Financial management is the new witchcraft, an art that makes many of its practitioners absurdly rich, commands the grudging respect of millions, but relies upon skills and secrets that remain opaque to all outside the Magic Circle.
Few of those who preside over the cauldrons possess social or cultural graces. In the company of City folk, I often recall some lines from Anthony Powell's novel A Buyer's Market, describing the tycoon Sir Magnus Donners at a lunch party: "On the lips of a lesser man his words would have suggested processes of thought of a banality so painful - of such profound and arid depths, in which neither humour, nor imagination, nor, indeed, any form of human understanding could be thought to play the smallest part - that I almost supposed him to be speaking ironically, or teasing his guests by acting the part of a bore in a drawing-room comedy."
Here I must search my soul, pondering how large a part is played by envy in determining the sceptical view we outsiders take of the multimillion bonus league. Of course the worm is there. In the next generation, the only social division likely to matter in Britain will be between those taking huge sums home from the City, and those earning relatively paltry amounts outside it.
A decision at the outset of one's career to become a doctor or journalist or civil servant comes close to ensuring that one can never hope to share an upper-middle class lifestyle that will be the almost exclusive prerogative of entrepreneurs, bankers, management consultants and inheritors of wealth. This has always been true in some degree, but in future there will be a near-apartheid distinction.
Whatever the outcome of current turbulence, moving money will continue to be a vastly more profitable activity than almost anything else in Britain, save playing football. Many of us can live with this state of affairs, containing our resentment, as long as those in charge appear to know what they are doing. When, however, as in the past few weeks, we see idiot lending policies generating frightening turmoil, it is impossible not to feel pretty sore towards those in charge of spell-making.
Mrs Thatcher was an ardent advocate of personal financial empowerment. She sought to enable us all to be responsible for our own affairs, to exercise discretion over our pensions and so on. Yet few people are capable of using such discretion wisely. My own pension fund statements might as well be written in Arabic for all they mean to me, except I can grasp the brute fact that my pot somehow shrank in the early months of this year, long before the summer upheavals. It is now worth only fractionally more than it was in 2001, before the then market collapse. Management fees take a fat bite every year, of course, heedless of whether the investments have prospered or not.
I expect no personal sympathy, because I am in a happy financial position compared with most of the rest of the country. But it seems reasonable to ask: if I, supposedly well able to look after myself, find it hard to make my pension fund work decently, how on earth can millions succeed, who lack my opportunities to raise hell?
The challenge for the City of London is to convince the public that, even if its workers are extravagantly rewarded for their services, what they do benefits the rest of us; that their activities are not exclusively self-serving. This will become much harder if the turmoil of recent weeks, driven by stunning banking incompetence, feeds through into the real world and starts hurting peoples' pockets, as it seems likely to do.
A hubris, a madness, has overtaken the financial world in the past two or three years, causing some of its chief practitioners to delude themselves that the old rules of prudence had gone out of the window. A vast pool of easy money has been pursuing a much smaller supply of sensible investments. Businesses have overpaid for most properties they have bought, because that was the only way to get the deals. Banks have bought a load of stuff now seen to be worthless.
This recklessness has, of course, been matched in City private lives, where Krug, yachts, Porsches and racehorses are at premiums. The big-hitters have been indifferent about how many millions, or indeed tens of millions, they paid for a country house which they wanted.
It seems premature to speculate that all this conspicuous consumption is now at an end. Neither we nor the Bank of England have any idea how bad the housing debt crisis is going to get, or what its knock-on effects will be. Most people outside the City would love to see humbled the high-rollers who have so conspicuously failed in their responsibilities. The trouble is, if this happens it seems likely that the rest of us will catch colds at least as discomforting as those afflicting the fat cats.
Friday, 14 September 2007
Harry Potter and immigration
by Aviva Chomsky; Providence Journal; September 13, 2007
HARRY POTTER as a parable of immigrants’ rights? Both my kids thought I was crazy when I first suggested this notion, half-way through the book on a recent Saturday afternoon. The more I read, though, the more sense the idea made.
Among the crucial issues separating the bad guys from the good guys in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is their position on the rights of Muggles, half-bloods and Muggle-borns. For the non-initiated, let me clarify: Muggles are ordinary humans without wizarding powers. A half-blood is the offspring of a Muggle and a pure-blood wizard. Muggle-borns are people with wizard powers born into Muggle families, like the heroine Hermione.
The evil Malfoy family sniffs about its ancient lineage and its pure blood; young Draco torments Hermione at school about being a “Mud-blood,” contaminated by her Muggle background. When Voldemort’s followers take over the Ministry of Magic they establish a “Muggle-Born Registration Commission” and distribute a pamphlet entitled “Mudbloods and the Dangers they Pose to a Peaceful Pure-Blood Society.”
Wizards fake their family trees to claim pure-blood status. A wizard accused of having Muggle parentage begs to be spared prison because he’s a half-blood—his father was a wizard, and he has written documentation of his legal status. The Registration Commission interrogates prisoners to determine their correct status, and punishes a woman of non-wizard parents for using a wand, a privilege reserved for wizards.
Some have suggested that Voldemort’s obsession with purity of blood and ancient wizarding families is meant to suggest a reference to Nazi Germany. But the Nazis were not the only historical example of a group claiming the right to dominate others based on ancestry, birth or blood. Spanish Christians relied on the concept to justify the expulsion of Muslims and Jews in 1492, and the domination and enslavement of Africans and indigenous Americans thereafter. U.S. law uses the concept today to justify the exclusion of millions of people in the United States: non-citizens, or even worse, those it defines as “illegal immigrants.”
“But U.S. nationality isn’t based on ideas about blood!” my readers will protest. “We are all immigrants here! Our laws explicitly prohibit discrimination based on race, ethnicity, or national origin!”
And there’s the rub. While our laws do prohibit this kind of discrimination, they also prescribe it. Our immigration, citizenship and naturalization laws are based explicitly on discrimination on the basis of national origin. Where you were born, and what passport you carry, determine whether you have the right to come here, to visit, to work, or to live here.
It wasn’t always that way. Until the Civil War, U.S. citizenship was based on race rather than birthplace, and there were no restrictions on immigration. It wasn’t until after the Civil War that the concept of citizenship-by-birth was inscribed into U.S. law. Before that, whites could be citizens, no matter where they were born, while non-whites, which at the time meant primarily Native Americans and African Americans, could not be citizens, even if their ancestors were here long before any Englishmen arrived. People considered racially unfit for citizenship were welcomed, or even forced to immigrate, in the case of Africans, on condition that they and their descendants would remain a permanent underclass of non-citizens—physically present, but with few legal rights.
But citizenship-by-birth didn’t mean the end of racial discrimination. It meant that lawmakers scrambled to make sure that those they considered racially unfit couldn’t take advantage of the new citizenship law. Almost immediately after the new law was enacted, in 1866, Congress began restricting immigration. Chinese, Japanese and then all Asians were only the first to be told that they couldn’t come any more, because the government didn’t want their children to be able to obtain citizenship by birth.
I’m not claiming to be able to read J. K. Rowling’s mind. But for her readers in the United States, the desperate struggle of Muggle-borns and half-bloods to document their status, the punishments meted out by the Ministry of Magic to those who try to work or attend school without documents proving their lineage, and Voldemort’s obsession with determining just who has true wizard ancestry, and restricting and punishing those who don’t, have some pretty powerful resonances with the last massive legalized form of discrimination in our own society: discrimination against non-citizens.
I suppose it’s possible to make a general statement about tolerance and discrimination in a society characterized by serious legalized inequality, and yet discuss the issue entirely in the abstract, with no reference at all to the discrimination going on around you. But a tome about tolerance written in Nazi Germany, for example, would inevitably be read as a commentary on Nazi policies — either that, or as evidence of just how brainwashed the public was, that it could advocate tolerance while remaining oblivious to the intolerance of its own society.
The main audiences for Rowling’s book are in Britain and the United States. In both countries, tolerance is officially promoted at the same time that one group of people is conspicuously excluded: immigrants. Citizenship-by-birth may be racially blind if a country has open borders, but with walls, border patrols, and a long history of racially restrictive immigration laws, “citizenship” becomes just another means to enforce discrimination and exclusion.
Legalized discrimination in the United States goes way beyond the immigration-quota system that still prescribes different treatment for people from different countries.
What else can it be called, when millions of people are not allowed to work, not allowed to go to school, not allowed to live in certain places, not allowed access to all of the benefits that society offers to the rest of its members? When the police raid workplaces to round them up and deport them? When they live in fear that their very existence will be discovered, and they will be punished?
Perhaps we can all learn something from Rowling’s characters: from the Weasley family, ardent defenders of the rights of the non-wizard-born, on to Hermione, the “mud-blood” who out-wizards them all, and finally Harry, whose quest to defeat the evil Voldemort is inextricably bound up with the defense of the rights of those whom Voldemort seeks to expel, exploit and destroy. If we cannot see reflections of our own national discourse on immigrants in their struggle, perhaps we are closing our eyes to Rowling’s most important lesson.
Aviva Chomsky is a professor of history at Salem State College. Her new book, They Take Our Jobs! And 20 Other Myths About Immigration, was just published by Beacon Press.
HARRY POTTER as a parable of immigrants’ rights? Both my kids thought I was crazy when I first suggested this notion, half-way through the book on a recent Saturday afternoon. The more I read, though, the more sense the idea made.
Among the crucial issues separating the bad guys from the good guys in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is their position on the rights of Muggles, half-bloods and Muggle-borns. For the non-initiated, let me clarify: Muggles are ordinary humans without wizarding powers. A half-blood is the offspring of a Muggle and a pure-blood wizard. Muggle-borns are people with wizard powers born into Muggle families, like the heroine Hermione.
The evil Malfoy family sniffs about its ancient lineage and its pure blood; young Draco torments Hermione at school about being a “Mud-blood,” contaminated by her Muggle background. When Voldemort’s followers take over the Ministry of Magic they establish a “Muggle-Born Registration Commission” and distribute a pamphlet entitled “Mudbloods and the Dangers they Pose to a Peaceful Pure-Blood Society.”
Wizards fake their family trees to claim pure-blood status. A wizard accused of having Muggle parentage begs to be spared prison because he’s a half-blood—his father was a wizard, and he has written documentation of his legal status. The Registration Commission interrogates prisoners to determine their correct status, and punishes a woman of non-wizard parents for using a wand, a privilege reserved for wizards.
Some have suggested that Voldemort’s obsession with purity of blood and ancient wizarding families is meant to suggest a reference to Nazi Germany. But the Nazis were not the only historical example of a group claiming the right to dominate others based on ancestry, birth or blood. Spanish Christians relied on the concept to justify the expulsion of Muslims and Jews in 1492, and the domination and enslavement of Africans and indigenous Americans thereafter. U.S. law uses the concept today to justify the exclusion of millions of people in the United States: non-citizens, or even worse, those it defines as “illegal immigrants.”
“But U.S. nationality isn’t based on ideas about blood!” my readers will protest. “We are all immigrants here! Our laws explicitly prohibit discrimination based on race, ethnicity, or national origin!”
And there’s the rub. While our laws do prohibit this kind of discrimination, they also prescribe it. Our immigration, citizenship and naturalization laws are based explicitly on discrimination on the basis of national origin. Where you were born, and what passport you carry, determine whether you have the right to come here, to visit, to work, or to live here.
It wasn’t always that way. Until the Civil War, U.S. citizenship was based on race rather than birthplace, and there were no restrictions on immigration. It wasn’t until after the Civil War that the concept of citizenship-by-birth was inscribed into U.S. law. Before that, whites could be citizens, no matter where they were born, while non-whites, which at the time meant primarily Native Americans and African Americans, could not be citizens, even if their ancestors were here long before any Englishmen arrived. People considered racially unfit for citizenship were welcomed, or even forced to immigrate, in the case of Africans, on condition that they and their descendants would remain a permanent underclass of non-citizens—physically present, but with few legal rights.
But citizenship-by-birth didn’t mean the end of racial discrimination. It meant that lawmakers scrambled to make sure that those they considered racially unfit couldn’t take advantage of the new citizenship law. Almost immediately after the new law was enacted, in 1866, Congress began restricting immigration. Chinese, Japanese and then all Asians were only the first to be told that they couldn’t come any more, because the government didn’t want their children to be able to obtain citizenship by birth.
I’m not claiming to be able to read J. K. Rowling’s mind. But for her readers in the United States, the desperate struggle of Muggle-borns and half-bloods to document their status, the punishments meted out by the Ministry of Magic to those who try to work or attend school without documents proving their lineage, and Voldemort’s obsession with determining just who has true wizard ancestry, and restricting and punishing those who don’t, have some pretty powerful resonances with the last massive legalized form of discrimination in our own society: discrimination against non-citizens.
I suppose it’s possible to make a general statement about tolerance and discrimination in a society characterized by serious legalized inequality, and yet discuss the issue entirely in the abstract, with no reference at all to the discrimination going on around you. But a tome about tolerance written in Nazi Germany, for example, would inevitably be read as a commentary on Nazi policies — either that, or as evidence of just how brainwashed the public was, that it could advocate tolerance while remaining oblivious to the intolerance of its own society.
The main audiences for Rowling’s book are in Britain and the United States. In both countries, tolerance is officially promoted at the same time that one group of people is conspicuously excluded: immigrants. Citizenship-by-birth may be racially blind if a country has open borders, but with walls, border patrols, and a long history of racially restrictive immigration laws, “citizenship” becomes just another means to enforce discrimination and exclusion.
Legalized discrimination in the United States goes way beyond the immigration-quota system that still prescribes different treatment for people from different countries.
What else can it be called, when millions of people are not allowed to work, not allowed to go to school, not allowed to live in certain places, not allowed access to all of the benefits that society offers to the rest of its members? When the police raid workplaces to round them up and deport them? When they live in fear that their very existence will be discovered, and they will be punished?
Perhaps we can all learn something from Rowling’s characters: from the Weasley family, ardent defenders of the rights of the non-wizard-born, on to Hermione, the “mud-blood” who out-wizards them all, and finally Harry, whose quest to defeat the evil Voldemort is inextricably bound up with the defense of the rights of those whom Voldemort seeks to expel, exploit and destroy. If we cannot see reflections of our own national discourse on immigrants in their struggle, perhaps we are closing our eyes to Rowling’s most important lesson.
Aviva Chomsky is a professor of history at Salem State College. Her new book, They Take Our Jobs! And 20 Other Myths About Immigration, was just published by Beacon Press.
Thursday, 13 September 2007
Getting Rich - Paul Mckenna
Final Day: The success strategy
The millionaires I have interviewed while devising this system have all shared the same fundamental route to success. Today I reveal the six stepping stones to wealth
Paul McKenna
One of the most amazing discoveries I had when studying the high achievers for this book was that, while they all have their individual styles in business, they all share the same fundamental strategy for creating wealth. Broadly speaking, that strategy involves thinking about a product, service or business in an entrepreneurial way.
Today I will show you how you can use this same wealth-creating template to create your own successful projects. I used to find the idea of “entrepreneurship” a bit daunting, but then I spoke with Peter Jones, widely acknowledged as one of Britain’s most successful young entrepreneurs.
Despite his modest beginnings, his businesses have an annual turnover of £200 million. He pointed out to me that the word “entrepreneur” simply means “someone who gets paid for adding value”. When you are willing to think of yourself as a value creator, your “job” becomes quite simple: identify a field where you would like to add value, then identify the value you would like to add.
Now I will outline the six steps to wealth that emerged again and again as I studied the business geniuses for this book. Do not worry if you are already in business or are determined to remain an employee – these same six steps will be of great use to you to find the hidden wealth in your current working situation, whatever it may be.
Let’s get things started . . .
Step 1: Choose something you have a passion for or genuine interest in
Sir Richard Branson began in magazines and then rock music; Peter Jones took his fascination with tennis and computers and used them first to set up a tennis academy and then a business selling computer accessories. In his words, “Having a passion for what you do is very important, especially when you are going to be working all hours to try and make the business work. In addition, your passion and belief will motivate others around you.”
Of course, your passion and interest can come from what you hate as much as what you love. When Dame Anita Roddick started the Body Shop, she was as determined to provide a safe and animal-friendly alternative to the standard operating practices of the cosmetics industry as she was to create a vehicle for putting her beliefs into action about what truly mattered in the world.
Step 2: Figure out where you can add value
Once you have identified something you have a genuine interest in and passion for, you then need to look for what you can bring to that field that isn’t already there.
Here are some of the questions the rich-thinking entrepreneurs ask themselves in examining the potential to add value to any business, product or service:
–– Who is already making money in this area?
–– What sets apart the most successful people in this field from the rest?
–– What’s missing? What isn’t being done?
–– What do the people who are already using this product or service really want?
–– What can I offer that’s different to everyone else?
Step 3: Vividly imagine every detail of how the business will work
One of the surprising differences between the most successful entrepreneurs I interviewed and the rest was their willingness to take the time to vividly imagine the details of every new enterprise before leaping into action. For example, Sol Kerzner designs a hotel in his mind long before he builds it in the real world. He imagines every detail – how it will look, how each surface will feel, how the whole environment will be. Sir Richard Branson makes pages and pages of detailed notes, describing every aspect of the business in great detail.
Peter Jones actually “interrogates” the whole concept, searching for both the obvious and hidden areas of potential profits and potential obstacles to its success. If the obstacles can be overcome and he can see the business working, he gets a massive burst of motivation. He vividly imagines the business working and keeps this visualisation regularly in mind.
He says: “I am a great believer that it is always easier to achieve something that you have already done, even though I may have achieved it only in my own mind. This gives me great confidence.” However you choose to do it, taking the time to build your business in your mind and/ or on paper is an essential step in the process. Be sure to look at the downside as well as the up – the more potential obstacles you can foresee and solve in advance, the fewer real obstacles you will face and the easier it will be to overcome them.
Step 4: Evaluate the risks and decide which ones are worth taking
Willingness to take risks after calculating the upside and downside is a common one among successful entrepreneurs. The genius film-maker George Lucas made billions from the merchandising rights to his Star Wars movies. When I spoke to him, he told me that he got the idea when he took a careful look at the potential upside and downside of the very first movie in the series. “Everyone has since thought this was a clever financial strategy,” said Lucas, “but the truth is that I was concerned that the film might not work commercially. I knew it had the potential to achieve cult status, so I figured if I could make money on the merchandising it would help me to fund another film.” Here’s a quick way to calculate the risk/reward ratio of any new enterprise for yourself . . .
Calculating risks
1. Think about a decision you are considering making that feels a bit risky.
2. On a scale from 1 to 10, how much good could come of taking this risk if you are successful?
3. On a scale from 1 to 10, how much of a negative impact would this risk not working have on your business or in your life?
4. If the first number is bigger than the second, the risk/reward ratio is weighted towards action; if the second number is bigger than the first, it’s probably best to find another way to proceed.
Step 5: Take massive action
Another thing I noticed about the rich thinkers and successful entrepreneurs was that there is virtually no gap between their decisions and their actions. Once they decided to go ahead with a project, the first action steps were generally taken within 24 hours.
When Mark Burnett arrived in LA in 1982, he had £300 in his pocket and no return ticket. His first job was selling T-shirts on Venice beach. Today he is the most successful TV producer in the world. He told me his motto is “jump in” – take action even if you are not entirely ready. He firmly believes that a major part of his success has been his willingness to go for what he’s passionate about, even if he isn’t completely convinced he can actually pull it off. For myself, I like to think of action as the great equaliser.
No matter what your level of intelligence, education or capital, a willingness to take massive action instantly puts you on an equal footing with the wealthiest men and women in the world.
Step 6: Expect obstacles, learn from setbacks and keep moving towards your goals
Although only some of the rich thinkers I worked with would describe themselves as optimists, all of them are realists. Nothing in life unfolds exactly as planned, and a road without bumps is almost certainly not headed anywhere worthwhile.
Rather than take obstacles as a reason to give up or a “sign from the universe”, the truly successful entrepreneurs simply use each obstacle as an opportunity for creative problem-solving and creative action. If a business ultimately doesn’t work out, they pick themselves up, dust themselves off and move on. This resilience comes from self-belief and thorough downside planning. Peter Jones shared his version of this process: if obstacles keep occurring, I stop and ask: What can I learn from this obstacle? What do we need to do differently to make it work? I then create a new visualisation of how the business needs to function and keep running this scenario in my mind until I know it will work. If another obstacle or challenge occurs further down the line, I can then return to my vision for guidance and motivation. While things may not always happen totally as I planned, I always get to my goal in the end.
The millionaire mindset
Donald Trump: “You have 50,000 thoughts a day. You might as well make them big ones”
I Can Make You Rich, by Paul McKenna, published on September 11 by Transworld Publishers, £18.99. Available for £17.09 from Times BooksFirst, 0870 1608080
The millionaires I have interviewed while devising this system have all shared the same fundamental route to success. Today I reveal the six stepping stones to wealth
Paul McKenna
One of the most amazing discoveries I had when studying the high achievers for this book was that, while they all have their individual styles in business, they all share the same fundamental strategy for creating wealth. Broadly speaking, that strategy involves thinking about a product, service or business in an entrepreneurial way.
Today I will show you how you can use this same wealth-creating template to create your own successful projects. I used to find the idea of “entrepreneurship” a bit daunting, but then I spoke with Peter Jones, widely acknowledged as one of Britain’s most successful young entrepreneurs.
Despite his modest beginnings, his businesses have an annual turnover of £200 million. He pointed out to me that the word “entrepreneur” simply means “someone who gets paid for adding value”. When you are willing to think of yourself as a value creator, your “job” becomes quite simple: identify a field where you would like to add value, then identify the value you would like to add.
Now I will outline the six steps to wealth that emerged again and again as I studied the business geniuses for this book. Do not worry if you are already in business or are determined to remain an employee – these same six steps will be of great use to you to find the hidden wealth in your current working situation, whatever it may be.
Let’s get things started . . .
Step 1: Choose something you have a passion for or genuine interest in
Sir Richard Branson began in magazines and then rock music; Peter Jones took his fascination with tennis and computers and used them first to set up a tennis academy and then a business selling computer accessories. In his words, “Having a passion for what you do is very important, especially when you are going to be working all hours to try and make the business work. In addition, your passion and belief will motivate others around you.”
Of course, your passion and interest can come from what you hate as much as what you love. When Dame Anita Roddick started the Body Shop, she was as determined to provide a safe and animal-friendly alternative to the standard operating practices of the cosmetics industry as she was to create a vehicle for putting her beliefs into action about what truly mattered in the world.
Step 2: Figure out where you can add value
Once you have identified something you have a genuine interest in and passion for, you then need to look for what you can bring to that field that isn’t already there.
Here are some of the questions the rich-thinking entrepreneurs ask themselves in examining the potential to add value to any business, product or service:
–– Who is already making money in this area?
–– What sets apart the most successful people in this field from the rest?
–– What’s missing? What isn’t being done?
–– What do the people who are already using this product or service really want?
–– What can I offer that’s different to everyone else?
Step 3: Vividly imagine every detail of how the business will work
One of the surprising differences between the most successful entrepreneurs I interviewed and the rest was their willingness to take the time to vividly imagine the details of every new enterprise before leaping into action. For example, Sol Kerzner designs a hotel in his mind long before he builds it in the real world. He imagines every detail – how it will look, how each surface will feel, how the whole environment will be. Sir Richard Branson makes pages and pages of detailed notes, describing every aspect of the business in great detail.
Peter Jones actually “interrogates” the whole concept, searching for both the obvious and hidden areas of potential profits and potential obstacles to its success. If the obstacles can be overcome and he can see the business working, he gets a massive burst of motivation. He vividly imagines the business working and keeps this visualisation regularly in mind.
He says: “I am a great believer that it is always easier to achieve something that you have already done, even though I may have achieved it only in my own mind. This gives me great confidence.” However you choose to do it, taking the time to build your business in your mind and/ or on paper is an essential step in the process. Be sure to look at the downside as well as the up – the more potential obstacles you can foresee and solve in advance, the fewer real obstacles you will face and the easier it will be to overcome them.
Step 4: Evaluate the risks and decide which ones are worth taking
Willingness to take risks after calculating the upside and downside is a common one among successful entrepreneurs. The genius film-maker George Lucas made billions from the merchandising rights to his Star Wars movies. When I spoke to him, he told me that he got the idea when he took a careful look at the potential upside and downside of the very first movie in the series. “Everyone has since thought this was a clever financial strategy,” said Lucas, “but the truth is that I was concerned that the film might not work commercially. I knew it had the potential to achieve cult status, so I figured if I could make money on the merchandising it would help me to fund another film.” Here’s a quick way to calculate the risk/reward ratio of any new enterprise for yourself . . .
Calculating risks
1. Think about a decision you are considering making that feels a bit risky.
2. On a scale from 1 to 10, how much good could come of taking this risk if you are successful?
3. On a scale from 1 to 10, how much of a negative impact would this risk not working have on your business or in your life?
4. If the first number is bigger than the second, the risk/reward ratio is weighted towards action; if the second number is bigger than the first, it’s probably best to find another way to proceed.
Step 5: Take massive action
Another thing I noticed about the rich thinkers and successful entrepreneurs was that there is virtually no gap between their decisions and their actions. Once they decided to go ahead with a project, the first action steps were generally taken within 24 hours.
When Mark Burnett arrived in LA in 1982, he had £300 in his pocket and no return ticket. His first job was selling T-shirts on Venice beach. Today he is the most successful TV producer in the world. He told me his motto is “jump in” – take action even if you are not entirely ready. He firmly believes that a major part of his success has been his willingness to go for what he’s passionate about, even if he isn’t completely convinced he can actually pull it off. For myself, I like to think of action as the great equaliser.
No matter what your level of intelligence, education or capital, a willingness to take massive action instantly puts you on an equal footing with the wealthiest men and women in the world.
Step 6: Expect obstacles, learn from setbacks and keep moving towards your goals
Although only some of the rich thinkers I worked with would describe themselves as optimists, all of them are realists. Nothing in life unfolds exactly as planned, and a road without bumps is almost certainly not headed anywhere worthwhile.
Rather than take obstacles as a reason to give up or a “sign from the universe”, the truly successful entrepreneurs simply use each obstacle as an opportunity for creative problem-solving and creative action. If a business ultimately doesn’t work out, they pick themselves up, dust themselves off and move on. This resilience comes from self-belief and thorough downside planning. Peter Jones shared his version of this process: if obstacles keep occurring, I stop and ask: What can I learn from this obstacle? What do we need to do differently to make it work? I then create a new visualisation of how the business needs to function and keep running this scenario in my mind until I know it will work. If another obstacle or challenge occurs further down the line, I can then return to my vision for guidance and motivation. While things may not always happen totally as I planned, I always get to my goal in the end.
The millionaire mindset
Donald Trump: “You have 50,000 thoughts a day. You might as well make them big ones”
I Can Make You Rich, by Paul McKenna, published on September 11 by Transworld Publishers, £18.99. Available for £17.09 from Times BooksFirst, 0870 1608080
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