PROUT stands for PROgressive UTilization Theory. It means, the progressive utilization and rational distribution of all the earth's natural resources. PROUT advocates another type of revolution called "nuclear revolution." In nuclear revolution, every aspect of collective life - social, economic, political, cultural, psychic and spiritual - is completely transformed. New moral and spiritual values arise in society which provide the impetus for accelerated social progress. The old era is replaced by a new era - one collective psychology is replaced by another. This type of revolution results in all-round development and social progress.
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July 15, 2010
Dear Readers,
Millions around the world today are struggling - for survival and maybe to do some work. We here at WPA are also struggling. We are struggling for survival, and we are also struggling to feed the hungry people here in
India. There are millions of hungry people here. I do not know their names. I see their ramshackle houses, often made of nothing but pieces of tin or plastic. I see their serious faces as they take the food we offer them on sal leaves. I want to feed more and more people. Not only that, I want to provide other things for them also. I believe they have never seen or used a bar of soap. I would like to provide them bars of soap. It's a start, isn't it? I would like to provide them each with a set of new clothes. I wish I could build homes for them. But there are so many here without proper homes. I wish I knew the way to put them all in school and provide them regular medical checkups. Life is so easy in western countries. How to explain to you? Brothers and sisters, there is so much work to do here. If you can help, I would be very grateful. More than grateful. Cash is required. We need cash in order to buy huge bags (quintals) of rice, which is what they like to eat best. We need cash to buy fresh vegetables and different kinds of lentils and beans, which we cook and mix into the rice. We need cash to buy a few simple spices along with salt and oil. They need the oil because they are thin. But there are other things that can be mailed from outside India, either by airmail or seamail. We are adding powdered milk to the rice to make it more nutritious. We also add dessicated coconut fr the same reason. Cans of tomato paste, tomato sauce and tomato soup would be so welcome because fresh tomatoes cost a fortune here in India. All types of non-perishable goods, food and non-food, would be welcome here. Powdered kool aid or gator aid, powdered jello packages are especially good for recovering from flu, which comes often here without notice. There is no middleman in tihs project. There is you, me, and the hungry people here in north Bengal. We are distributing in Siliguri and Jalpaiguri districts, which are about three hours' train ride from Darjeeling and also from Sikkim and Bhutan. It is beautiful here, except for the hunger and poverty. Can't we try and fix that? Whatever you send goes from me straight to the people here. Please help me. I want to feed more and more people. I want to change the map here. I want to build a new world where nobody goes hungry, where everybody is clean and well fed. Can you help me, please, brothers and sisters? What else can I say. I am appealing to all of you for your help. If you can send cash, please use the Donate button on this site.
Or send check to the address also give on this site. If you feel to send something in kind, to send food and other nonperishable items essential for life, please write to me at wpaeditor@gmail.com. I am waiting to hear from you.
Love,
Garda Ghista
There are several requirements for the success of nuclear revolution - the presence of exploitation in any form, revolutionary organization, positive philosophy, revolutionary cadres, infallible leadership and revolutionary strategy. All these requirements are necessary. [The first is] the presence of exploitation. There are various types of exploitation in society. The form and character of exploitation changes as per changes in time, place and person. In every era of the social cycle, there are various kinds of exploitation. For example, in the economic sphere there is feudal exploitation, colonial exploitation, capitalist exploitation, imperialist exploitation and fascist exploitation. Exploitation may also manifest in such spheres as the physical, psychic, economic, political and cultural spheres. In the past the slave system was prevalent in the Greek and Roman Empires. The rulers sucked the blood of the vanquished to bolster their own interests. In psychic exploitation, the masses are misled with the help of pseudo-philosophies which encourage dogma and narrowmindedness. Democratic socialism and the theory of peaceful coexistence are examples of the hypocrite's psychology. In economic exploitation, vested interests deprive people of their minimum requirements. Money lending, charging exorbitant interest rates, compelling poor farmers to sell their produce through distress sales, etc., are examples of economic exploitation. Regardless of the type of exploitation used by the exploiters, when society is moving towards revolution, the role of the exploiters is exposed. The exploiters are unable to disguise their exploitation any longer.
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Shrii Prabhat R. Sarkar
This movement from euros to dollars weakened the alternative reserve currency to the dollar, halted the dollar's decline, and financed the massive US budget deficit a while longer. Possibly the game can be replayed with Spanish debt, Irish debt, and whatever unlucky country swept in by the thoughtless expansion of the European Union. But when no countries remain that can be destabilized by Wall Street investment banksters and hedge funds, what then finances the US budget deficit? The only remaining financier is the Federal Reserve. When Treasury bonds brought to auction do not sell, the Federal Reserve must purchase them. The Federal Reserve purchases the bonds by creating new demand deposits, or checking accounts, for the Treasury. As the Treasury spends the proceeds of the new debt sales, the US money supply expands by the amount of the Federal Reserve's purchase of Treasury debt. - Paul Craig Roberts
"Under LPB, financial crises and the massive damage they inflict on the entire (global) economy would become a thing of the past. Of course, there would be losers. Some Wall Street executives might have to find employment in Las Vegas or offshore banks. Some lobbyists, lawyers, credit analysts and accountants might need to find higher callings. Some politicians might even have to solicit more support from Main Street. Alas, Dodd-Frank bears no resemblance to Limited Purpose Banking. But bad laws don't always last, and this one may eventually lead us to LPB by showing us precisely what not to do - if we ever get another chance."
We cannot always rush the attorney general of India and the chairman of the National Human Rights Commission to Geneva to plead with the Amnesty International not to go public about what was happening in India, as PM Vajpayee did when he rushed Soli Sorabji and Justice Verma to hide the shame of Narendra Modi's Gujarat pogroms of 2002. We have still not accepted that that was also terrorism conducted according to the strategy of the Hindutva laboratory of the state of Gujarat. The world is watching. Due to certain considerations if some have not been so forward in condemnation it should not be taken to mean that such things had not happened, that it was mere Newton's third law.
In the transitional period of civilization, honesty in individual life is a prime necessity. We shall have to remain ever vigilant that the darkness of petty self-interest may not shroud this supreme human treasure. With the very extinction of honesty, civilization too will not survive; the long sa?dhana? of the human race will go in vain, and all intellectual achievements will become meaningless. Book knowledge that cannot be utilized in life has no value.
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Shrii Prabhat R. Sarkar
But I also think there is a history of colonialism and racism in the Congo that has created images in our brain of what the Congo is, and I think we just--or people just expect things like this to happen in the Congo. There's--amazing to me. I was in Bosnia in 1992 when women were being raped in the war, and I spent months and months and a lot of my life devoted to stopping those atrocities. But I will tell you, you know, within a year and a half, when it was heard that 20,000 to 40,000 white women were being raped in the middle of eastern Europe, that war got ended, and those women got protected. It's been thirteen years in the Congo. Thirteen years. Thirteen years. And I wish I could tell you that this recent gang rape was shocking. What's shocking is that it's not shocking. What's shocking is that this particular story got picked up by the wires, but got picked up three weeks after it occurred. The story of the three peacekeepers who died, you know, literally after that attack, got picked up the day it happened. And I think that's an indication of this kind of malaise and this kind of ennui that is around women being raped, and this acceptability, that just is very prevalent throughout the world. - Eve Ensler
In addition to their production value, home gardens have an important social and cultural function. At times, they serve as a status symbol and the aesthetic value partly outweighs the productive function. The exchange of home garden products and planting material is common in many traditional societies. Some plant species in home gardens are necessary for religious ceremonies; not being commercially viable, they are not cultivated. Most traditional medicinal plants are encountered in home gardens. Home gardens also fulfil ecological functions, particularly in landscapes where large, monotonous and mono-functional agricultural fields dominate. The multi-layered vegetation structure of home gardens, which resemble natural forests, offers a habitat to a diverse community of wild plants and animals. This structure appears to contribute substantially to the sustainability of home garden systems.
"Twenty countries (including America) are headed into bankruptcy and more will follow. That brings up the subject of state debt in the US. America has been in an inflationary depression for 18 months. States have been cutting back for two years," but still face huge budget gaps required to be closed....2011 will be a terrible year (with) 80% of states expect(ing) deficits of more than $200 billion. 2012 looks even worse." Most worrisome, "there is no recovery and there never has been....the US economy and financial system is comatose." The worst is yet to come and will hit hard on arrival. - Stephen Lendman
The poor are already disproportionately vulnerable to the effects of climate change because of their greater dependence on agriculture. Food security is becoming a major issue in many developing countries including India, with food prices spiralling upwards. According to the finance ministry's Mid-Year Review 2009-10, consumer price inflation reached 11.6% in September 2009 thanks mainly to rising food prices. Industrialised systems of livestock-rearing will also be affected as the benefits they enjoyed because of cheap energy costs and subsidies will no longer be available. The plans and polices of the past will thus no more be valid for the future.
The One who is the origin of all beings is the Supreme Entity. The Supreme Entity belongs to all, equally. To get protection and to enjoy the manifested universe of the Supreme Entity is the birthright of each and every being. Nobody has any right to accumulate excessive wealth. To accumulate and desire more mundane property is a crime against society and a sin against God. It is a highly immoral and antisocial action. To fight such vested interests and to wage a war against such antisocial activities is upright and sacramental.
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Shrii Prabhat R. Sarkar
While the Greenland iceberg is much bigger, England says the loss of such a big chunk of the Ward Hunt shelf is in some ways more significant because the ice is so old. "It's not like these things come and go every few years or decades," says England, noting that it would take centuries of cold weather to regrow Ellesmere's ice shelves. "We can't just sweep it under the carpet and say 'It's one of nature's cycles'," he said of the disintegration that shows little sign of letting up.
Tariq told the AP that the Taliban believed relief workers had hidden motives. "Behind the scenes [the aid workers] have certain intentions, but on the face they are talking of relief and help," he told the AP by telephone from an undisclosed location. "No relief is reaching the affected people, and when the victims are not receiving help, then this horde of foreigners is not acceptable to us at all".
The reality is that the BSP--as the Jikarpur shooting graphically illustrates--is also a tool of big business. A corrupt, caste-based political machine, the BSP has repeatedly aligned with the rightwing BJP in national and state politics. It exploits the anger of the Dalits and other impoverished Indians in the interests of a venal petty-bourgeois layer that was nourished by the Indian state's reservation (affirmative action) policy and that now seeks to use its claim to "represent" the Dalits to secure a share of the booty of Indian capitalism. ig business, for its part, well recognizes that the BSP is a useful and pliant instrument. According to India's Income Tax Department, the BSP has close to 3 billion Rupees (about $60 million US) in assets--an enormous sum in India. Indeed, the BSP's assets are second only to that of the Indian bourgeoisie's premier governing party, the Congress Party. - Arun Kumar
Initially German courts resisted Hitler's illegal acts. Hitler got around the courts by creating a parallel court system, like the Bush regime did with its military tribunals. It won't be long before a decision of the US Supreme Court will not mean anything. Any decision that goes against the regime will simply be ignored. This is already happening in Canada, an American puppet state. Writing for the Future of Freedom Foundation, Andy Worthington documents the lawlessness of the US trial of Canadian Omar Khadr. In January of this year, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the interrogation of Khadr constituted "state conduct that violates the principles of fundamental justice" and "offends the most basic Canadian standards about the treatment of detained youth suspects." According to the Toronto Star, the Court instructed the government to "shape a response that reconciled its foreign policy imperatives with its constitutional obligations to Khadr," but the puppet prime minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, ignored the Court and permitted the US government to proceed with its lawless abuse of a Canadian citizen. - Paul Craig Roberts
What are the primary requisites of an ideal [sustainable community]? There are five, which correspond to the five minimum requirements in PROUT. First, to provide food throughout the year, sufficient local raw materials must be produced through agriculture and scientific farming. These raw materials will provide the basis for industrial units and agro-industries such as dairy farms, horticulture, sericulture, etc. For such industries, you cannot depend on raw material from anywhere else. Secondly, there should be production of sufficient fibres and fabrics for clothing. For example, fibres from ladies fingers, pineapple, sugar beet, banana, basil, cotton, sisal, etc. can be used for clothing. Thirdly, primary and post-primary schools should be started on all sustainable communities. Higher education institutions should not be established just now. Fourthly, general and special medical units should also be established. Special medical centres would accommodate invalid people for a certain periods because Master Units may or may not run big hospitals. Medical units should emphasise alternative medical treatments. Fifthly, our sustainable communities should undertake schemes to construct houses for extremely poor people. This special housing scheme for the poor must be immediately established.
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Shrii Prabhat R. Sarkar
In 1963, the government of Maharashtra ended famine forever in the State. It did this without adding a morsel to anyone's diet. It did so simply by passing an Act in the Legislature that deleted the word 'famine' from all laws of the State. No kidding. This was called 'The Maharashtra Deletion Of The Term "Famine" Act, 1963" (And was dug up after decades by an independent researcher from Bangalore.) The basis for this? Let the Act explain itself. It asserts that "there is now no scope for famine conditions to develop." Why so? Because "the agricultural situation in the State is constantly watched by the State government." And "relief measures as warranted by the situation are provided as soon as signs of scarcity conditions are apparent." Goodbye Famine. The next para says the term 'famine' " has now become obsolete, and requires therefore to be deleted" (emphasis added) from "other laws on the subject in their application to the State." It decrees that "for the words 'famine or acute scarcity' the word 'scarcity' shall be substituted," in all laws of the State. Lucky Maharashtra -- it can't ever have acute scarcity either. - P. Sainath
Today, a personal story of a national tragedy. Five years ago, Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans. Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a Syrian-born New Orleans building contractor, stayed in the city while his wife and children left to Baton Rouge. He paddled the flooded streets in his canoe and helped rescue many of his stranded neighbors. Days later, armed police and National Guardsmen arrested him and accused him of being a terrorist. He was held for nearly a month, most of which he was not allowed to call his wife, Kathy. Today, in a rare broadcast interview, Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun join us to tell their story, along with the man who chronicles it in the book Zeitoun, Dave Eggers
On Monday, Writers' Buildings had pressed the panic button declaring 11 Bengal districts as drought-affected. On Saturday, Yunus of Basantapur village under Ausgram police station, consumed pesticide and killed himself; his family said Yunus couldn't have repaid the Rs 30, 000 he borrowed at high interest from a money-lender for kharif cultivation. Arindam Neogi, sub-divisional officer (SDO), Burdwan (north), said the farmer was brought to the hospital on Friday night from Ausgram, about 50 km from Burdwan town, and died around 6.30 am on Saturday.
It is very easy to talk big about revolution. Audiences may be awestruck and applaud, but to actually bring about a revolution is not at all easy. Those warrior or intellectually-minded workers who are the pioneers of revolution will have to learn to be disciplined, take proper revolutionary training, build their character, be moralists; in a word, they will have to become what I call sadvipras [ spiritual moralists].. A sadvipra will not launch a movement against honest people, even if he or she does not like them. But a sadvipra will definitely take action against dishonest people, even if he or she likes them. In such matters it will not do to indulge any kind of mental weakness. Such strict, ideological sadvipras will be the messengers of the revolution. They will carry the message of revolution to every home in the world, to every vein and capillary of human existence. The banner of victorious revolution will be carried by them alone.
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Shrii Prabhat R. Sarkar
"Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right."
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
France's University of Caen, in a team led by molecular biologist, Gilles-Eric Seralini, did a study that showed Roundup contained one specific inert ingredient, polyethoxylated tallowamine, or POEA. Seralini's team demonstrated that POEA in Roundup was more deadly to human embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells than even the glyphosate itself. Monsanto refuses to release details of the contents of its Roundup other than glyphosate, calling it "proprietary." [3]
The Seralini study found that Roundup's inert ingredients amplified the toxic effect on human cells--even at concentrations much more diluted than those used on farms and lawns! The French team studied multiple concentrations of Roundup, from the typical agricultural or lawn dose down to concentrations 100,000 times more dilute than the products sold on shelves. The researchers saw cell damage at all concentrations. Glyphosate and Roundup are advertised as "less toxic to us than table salt" in a pamphlet from the Biotechnology Institute promoting GMO crops as 'Weed Warrior.' Thirteen years of GMO crops in the USA has increased overall pesticide use by 318 million pounds, not decreased as promised by the Four Horsemen of the GMO Apocalypse. The extra disease burden on the nation from that alone is considerable. - William Engdahl
Many people threaten to suffocate under the burden of their debt. Some 61 percent of Americans have no financial reserves and are living from paycheck to paycheck. As little as a single hospital bill can spell potential financial ruin. Chanelle Sabedra's husband has found another job, this time as a warehouse worker for a company that makes aircraft turbines. But he doesn't earn enough to get the family out of the homeless shelter. "I haven't got a new job yet," says Sabedra. Her husband's job doesn't pay enough, and the couple has now joined the growing ranks of the working poor, for whom even two low-wage jobs are insufficient to feed their families. "We need the second income," says Sabedra. "Just the baby alone is $600 a month for half-day care." In pre-recession America, she and her husband would have had two jobs each to make ends meet. They would have worked at the cash register at Wal-Mart during the day, flipped burgers at McDonald's in the early evening and perhaps spent half the night working as a security guard or cleaning buildings. These are all low-paying jobs, hardly careers, but the combined income is usually enough to keep a family afloat. In pre-recession America, life wasn't luxurious for Chanelle Sabedra, but it was doable if they were willing to work hard enough and sacrifice enough of their lives to stay afloat. What kind of a job is she looking for now? "Anything right now. Mostly I'm looking for retail, or just anything to get me started, but there's just nothing out there," says Sabedra. - Thomas Schulz
Faced with a wave of religious sentiments, opposition from environmentalists (spearheaded by the respected environmentalist Prof G D Agarwal who sat on a 31-day fast on the banks of the river), academicians and local villagers, a three-member Group of Ministers (GoM) -- headed by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and comprising Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde and Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh -- reversed its earlier decision of continuing with the construction of the hydel dam project in view of the financial implications involved. This decision assumes terrible importance, and may actually serve as a precedent, since Rs 650-crore had already been spent on the controversial project, and another Rs 2000-crore is locked in supplies and future orders. Also, this decision is not going to evoke any strong reaction from the industry because the project was being laid out by the public sector National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC). But if it was, for instance, being pursued by Reliance Industries, I am sure the Finance Minister would have dug his heels, and the media would have cried hoarse. - Devinder Sharma
Once we better understand and embrace these three values in relation to the food system, we can see clear ways work to protect--and advance--them. One powerful way to do that is through policy, such as promoting access to healthy foods and making it easier for everyone to connect to farmers. We can see, too, the power of developing uniform, and trusted, product standards such as the organic certification. And finally, we can see the role the government should play in regulating marketing through bodies like the Federal Communication Commission, which has historically created limits to fraudulent green claims on products. With historic floods devastating as many as 20 million people in Pakistan, a chunk of glacier four times the size of Manhattan breaking free from Greenland, and temperatures from Moscow to New York City hitting historic highs and leaving us all roasted, more and more people are starting to feel the direct impact of what may very well be the signs of climate chaos to come. -Anna Lappe
The world is a transitory phase or changing phenomenon within the scope of the Cosmic Mind. It is going in eternal motion, and such a motion is the law of nature and the law of life. Stagnancy means death. Hence no power can check the social cycle of evolution. Any force, external or internal, can only retard or accelerate the speed of transition, but cannot prevent it from moving. Therefore progressive humanity should cast off all skeletons of the past. Human beings should go on accelerating the speed of progress for the good of humanity in general. Those spiritual revolutionaries who work to achieve such progressive changes for human elevation on a well-thought, pre-planned basis, whether in the physical, metaphysical or spiritual sphere, by adhering to the principles of Yama and Niyama, are sadvipras.
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Shrii Prabhat R. Sarkar
It was under a Democratic national administration; approximately one million Rwandans were slaughtered while then-President Bill Clinton refused, for an extended period of time, to acknowledge the mass executions of the Tutsis by Hutu forces as an act of genocide. A procedure which served to thwart aid to these African people. Clinton also while in office, personally crafted and signed into law a controversial legislative initiative titled the Omnibus Crime Bill. This federal mandate, which expanded the number of prosecutable offenses recognized by the national crime ledger, resulted in the addition of nearly half a million African Americans into the prison system. This dramatic spike occurring from the time Clinton assumed office to only a few years after his reign. Furthermore, the former President's numerous assurances he would impose equitable immigration practices regarding thousands of Haitians fleeing dictatorial rule after the military overthrow of democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide - as was exercised for white Cubans during the Cuban Revolution - register as additional misdeeds committed against the Democratic Party Faithful. Such a reality prevails, as Clinton would break this campaign promise, and subsequently redirect the vast majority of these members of the African diaspora back to Haiti, as they attempted to reach North American shores on makeshift rafts. - Frederick Meade
This political class stands between all of us down here and the tiny minority in the ruling class waaaaaay up there, wherever the hell up there is. No use to squint. You can't see it from where we are. That comes in mighty handy in denying the existence of a ruling class. n the other hand, you do not need to see an egg-sucking dog in action to know what to expect -- or not to expect. The track record of the political class is an open book. As the layer of millionaires buffering the elites who pay for their campaigns, they've done their jobs. They approved the Bush administration's massive tax cut for the rich. They dropped the per-child tax credit for families with incomes less than $20,000. They "reformed" prescription drugs right out of Medicare. They reformed health care into hundreds of billions of increased profits for the insurance industry. However, the American political class' finest moment came in September 2008 when the financial greed machinery of American investment houses went tits up. The Republican and Democratic parties, major corporations, and manufacturers of US opinion came together in one of the greater bipartisan efforts in modern US history. There was nothing to do, they all agreed, but buy up $700 billion in "toxic asset" investments. "Otherwise," they prophesied, the world would end. Meaning that the ongoing national Ponzi scheme they have always sold to the American people as the US economy, would finally crash. - Joe Bageant
I am informed that the climate of impunity is one of the reasons why conflict continues in Manipur. The AFSPA, as far I understand is an addition to the overall impunity framework that has contributed to the deterioration of the state of rule of law in Manipur. My opinion is also shared by national bodies including Justice Jeevan Reddy Committee; the Second Administrative Reforms Commission; and the Prime Minister's Working Group on Confidence-Building Measures in Jammu and Kashmir. I am informed that these eminent bodies have recommended the government to withdraw AFSPA from operation since they are of the informed opinion that a law like the AFSPA will only facilitate violence and not prevent it. II am convinced that under the current circumstances in Manipur the withdrawal of AFSPA will not in itself solve the Manipur crisis. - Nagaraj MYSORE RAGHUPATHI
I had high hopes that the new administration would tell the truth to its citizens about why we invaded Iraq and what we are doing currently in the country. President Obama promised to move forward and not look to the past. However problematic this refusal to examine on the past -- particularly for historians -- the president should at least inform the U.S. public of the current conditions in Iraq. How else can we expect our government to formulate appropriate policy? More extensive congressional hearings on Iraq might have allowed us to learn about the myths propagated about Iraq prior to the invasion and the extent of the damage and destruction our invasion brought on Iraq. We would have learned about the tremendous increase in urban poverty and the expansion of city slums. Such facts about the current conditions of Iraq would help U.S. citizens to better understand the impact of the quick U.S. withdraw and what are our moral responsibilities in Iraq should be. - Adil Shamoo
The inevitable consequence of capitalist exploitation is worker revolution. When the capitalists, maddened with excessive greed, lose their common sense completely and forsake their humanity totally, then for worker revolution the opportune time has come. However, it cannot be said that worker revolution will automatically occur just because an opportune time has come. Proper conditions relating to place and person will bear much of the responsibility. Revolution takes place when, from the economic perspective, only two classes remain in society: the exploiting capitalists and the exploited workers. But if there are no intellectuals and warriors (military-minded men) from a mental standpoint - in other words if there are no people who, though workers from an economic standpoint, are intellectuals or warriors from a mental standpoint - worker revolution will not be possible. It is not the work of people who have a worker mentality to bring about revolution. They avoid struggle; they are playthings of the capitalists. At the high point of the Capitalist Age, the capitalists easily manipulate the worker-minded labourers. If the military- and intellectually-minded workers lack spirit, they will also be bought by the capitalists' money. Thus worker revolution ultimately depends on workers who have sufficient spirit and are mentally vipras or ksÌatriyas.
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Shrii Prabhat R. Sarkar
It is a characteristic of vested interests that they never bother to think of anyone except themselves. They must eat and the rest of humanity only exists to be eaten. They want increasingly more objects for their gratification. Those who earn three thousand rupees a month think that this is an extremely meagre amount, but they never stop to consider the needs of those who earn a negligible thirty rupees a month. A poor man has to pay his rent, maintain his family, educate his children, buy milk for his babies, and save something to put towards the cost of his daughter's marriage, all out of thirty rupees. Are these needs only applicable to the upper stratum of society? Are they not the minimum necessities of life? Rich people do not want to consider the needs of the poor, because if they do they will have to make some sacrifices. Where will their luxuries and comforts come from if hunger does not burn the bellies of the poor? Is it not a fine idea if the daughters of the poor go on collecting cow dung forever, and their sons work like slaves in the houses of the rich for generations together? Is this not a fine arrangement? As for the high hopes of the poor, aren't they ridiculous? Aren't they out of touch with reality?
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Shrii Prabhat R. Sarkar
Inside the drab district hospital, where dogs patter down the corridors, sniffing for food, Ratan Bhuria's children are curled together in the malnutrition ward, hovering at the edge of starvation. His daughter, Nani, is 4 and weighs 20 pounds. His son, Jogdiya, is 2 and weighs only eight. Landless and illiterate, drowned by debt, Mr. Bhuria and his ailing children have staggered into the hospital ward after falling through India's social safety net. They should receive subsidized government food and cooking fuel. They do not. The older children should be enrolled in school and receiving a free daily lunch. They are not. And they are hardly alone: India's eight poorest states have more people in poverty -- an estimated 421 million -- than Africa's 26 poorest nations, one study recently reported. - JIM YARDLEY
Eventually, the Commonwealth Bank had branches in every town and suburb; and in the bush, it had an agency in every post office or country store. As the largest bank in the country, it set the rates and set policy, which the others had to follow for fear of losing customers. The Commonwealth Bank was widely perceived to be an insurance policy against abuse by private banks, serving to ensure that everyone had access to equitable banking. It functioned as a wholly owned state bank until the 1990s, when it was privatized. Its focus then changed to maximization of profits, with steady and massive branch and agency closures, staff layoffs, and reduced access to Automated Teller Machines and to cash from supermarket checkouts. It has now become just another part of the banking cartel, but proponents say it was once the lifeblood of the country. Today there is renewed interest in reviving a publicly-owned bank in Australia on the Commonwealth Bank model. The United States and other countries would do well to consider this option too. - Ellen Brown
Last week, the American Bankruptcy Institute reported a 9 percent rise in personal bankruptcies in July as compared to June, and noted that one in every 125 American households has filed for bankruptcy. On Tuesday, the Federal Reserve Board acknowledged that US economic growth has slowed over the past several months and admitted that growth going forward would fail to meet its previous forecasts. The only new action the central bank took was to resume, on a small scale, its purchase of Treasury securities. This will have no significant impact on job creation. The effect of the Fed's posture is to maintain high unemployment for months and years to come. This corresponds to the policy of the Obama administration, which has abandoned even its inadequate stimulus proposals and shifted more directly toward the imposition of social cuts and austerity measures. The administration's occasional rhetoric about creating jobs cannot conceal the reality of a class-war policy tailored to the interests of the corporate and financial elite, which is using mass unemployment to blackmail workers into accepting wage and benefit cuts and speedup. - Barry Grey
"At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. Oh had I the ability, and could reach the nation's ear, I would, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. "For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. "We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake."
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Frederick Douglass, 1852
Paradise was buried under a vast, cataclysmic mud flow that struck Ladakh district, the beautiful Shangri-la in the Indian Himalayas, last week, killing over 160 people in and outside Leh, the area's main town. Flash floods and landslides near Leh, which in two hours also destroyed two decades of infrastructure growth, unleashed questions about the fatal effects of pollution and shortsighted economic development on millennia-old sensitive ecological systems. Leh has become a terrible warning about global warming. The disaster struck Leh and nearby villages early on Friday, just after midnight. According to accounts, a wave of mud 20 meters high and several kilometers wide hit Choglamsar village, practically carrying it away, then smashed the village into Leh town about six kilometers distant. - Raja Murthy
"Atlanta is an economically polarized city," the BBC notes. "[I]t has the fastest growing number of millionaires in the US but also has the third-highest proportion of people living below 50 percent of the poverty line." Similar conditions prevail in countless major urban centers in the US. With a few exceptions, the American news media did not report on the events in East Point. Most national television networks did not cover it on Wednesday, and the major US dailies--the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal--had not written on it as of Thursday evening. Ignoring what took place in East Point will not make the conditions that produced it go away. Everywhere similar social conditions predominate: massive joblessness, the foreclosure crisis, hunger, and the daily humiliations of want, on the one side, and, on the other, the amassing of staggering personal fortunes. These are the preconditions for a social explosion. - Tom Eley
But, in jurisprudence, when a parent is arraigned in court for having intentionally caused the starvation death of a child, the charge is murder. If a homicidal crime is judged to have been caused by unpremeditated neglect, the charge will be reduced from murder to manslaughter. In the case of India, the officials of the Indian government have witnessed millions of its citizens dying of year after year in photographs, video, testimony and detailed written material from annual government investigations, as they approved legislation that assured its continuance. UN statistics over decades have shown no improvement in reducing this horrendous and painful death toll, and often, even recently, a worsening of the amount of its citizens dying for having been denied food has been documented. Yet year after year this mass death goes on being legislated.TThe half-billion Indians who are nourished, and the millions that are over-nourished go about their lives and occupations in full knowledge and awareness of this mass death, though distracted by India's commercial media's entertainments, advertising to consume, dramatization of religious conflict and promoted fear of neighboring nations. UN statistics show death by starvation or from malnutrition caused diseases for two million of India's children under the age of five every year. How many millions more over the age of five and how many of their parents perish is perhaps best illustrated by this month's UN report that one third of the world's starving 'live' in India. (India's population is 1,150,000, 000, billion, one third would be 38,000,000.) That same New York Times that regularly nicknames India 'the world's largest democracy' got around to feature a horrific side of India's particular type of formal democracy with pathetic photo of a mother sitting next to her starving child on the front page of its August 8, 2010 edition. = Jay Jansen
Sarkozy's speech in Grenoble bristled with military rhetoric. The president announced that he would "wage war" against drug pushers and criminals. Alluding to the administrative department of the new superintendent, Eric Le Douaron, he added that, "In this department and in this city (Grenoble), no housing estate, no street, no stairwell, no row of houses will find itself beyond the rule of the Republic. This is now your task." He announced that the Department of Isère would be equipped with a large number of police cars and police officers expressly for night duty. By 2012, as many as 60,000 surveillance cameras would be installed there. - Françoise Thull and Marianne Arens
The existence of exploitation in society can be ascertained through the prevalence of such factors as extreme poverty; social insecurity; injustices against the common people; lack of purchasing capacity to acquire the minimum requirements of life; huge economic and social differences between various classes; the irrational distribution of wealth; etc. The present social, economic and political conditions in India exemplify all these ailments. India is on the verge of revolution.
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Shrii Prabhat R. Sarkar
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