Kochi, Dec 20 : Close on the heels of the arrest of a top Maoist leader Malla Raji Reddy at Angamaly, near here, on Monday night, Kerala Police last evening raided the office of a journal, said to be the ”unofficial mouthpiece of Maoist ideology”, and arrested its editor.

A police team, led by Thrikkakara Assistant Commissioner of Police Sethuraman, raided the office of ‘People’s March’ at Kakkanad here and seized around 1,000 copies of the magazine, pamphlets and a computer. The magazine’s editor Govindan Kutty was arrested.

Reddy and Suguna are to be produced in the Karimnagar court within 48 hours.

Two strategies against Iran

By Joyce Chediac

Published Dec 16, 2007 10:41 PM

A bitter dispute within the Bush administration became a public fight on Dec. 3 when all 16 U.S. spy agencies jointly announced, in a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) report, that Iran had neither a nuclear program nor nuclear weapons.

This intelligence about-face was not the result of new spy data or a better spying technique. It was a political move taken by the U.S. military itself to stop the clique headed by President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney from the dangerous adventure of bombing Iranian nuclear installations when the Pentagon is already hopelessly bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq.

This victory for Iran reflects the strength of the national liberation struggles in the Middle East, which have not been stopped by Pentagon threats or bombings. It also is a result of anti-war sentiment in the U.S., as even the Pentagon owns up to difficulties recruiting soldiers to fight in the Middle East.

The NIE report removed the linchpin holding up the Bush-Cheney argument for aggression against Iran: the nuclear weapons myth. Immediately after the report’s release, the attempt by the White House to corral the U.N. Security Council for a third round of sanctions against Iran fell apart.

Who is behind the report? “The secretaries of state and defense and the leaders of the uniformed military had decided that diplomacy was the best way to deal with an admittedly hostile and dangerous force in Tehran.” (Time, Dec. 17)

Tehran ‘has no nuclear weapons’

The NIE report represented all 16 U.S. spy agencies, eight of them directly linked to the military. Its conclusions are available online. It assessed with “high confidence” that “in 2003 Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program,” had not restarted it, and today “has no nuclear weapons.” While Iran continues to enrich uranium as part of its civilian nuclear energy program, the report finds it likely that Iran would not have enough plutonium for a nuclear weapon until 2015.

The NIE contradicted its own earlier findings, made in 2005, that Iran was secretly building nuclear weapons. The NIE issued this bombshell five years after a 2002 report in which U.S. spies claimed that Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction.” This blatantly false statement gave the Bush gang its rationale for launching what many in the military now see as their debacle in Iraq.

While Bush and Cheney were trying to construct a similar pretext for bombing Iran, the Pentagon spy agencies undercut the pretext.

A year ago “Bush asked the [Joint Chiefs of Staff] about attacking Iran. He was told that a bombing campaign could do severe damage to Iran’s military and nuclear facilities, but the Chiefs said they were opposed to such a strike because of the probable ‘blowback.’ The Iranians, Bush was told, could make life very difficult for the U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq. They could shut off the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, thereby creating a global economic crisis.” (Time)

In truth, U.S. generals have reasons to avoid a war at this time against a country of 71 million whose population is militantly anti-imperialist and showed what they could do just 30 years ago, when they staged a fierce and mass revolutionary struggle that ousted a U.S. puppet, the hated shah of Iran.

But Bush was moving ahead anyway, so the military pulled the rug out from under him. “The truth about Iran appeared to shatter the last shreds of credibility of the White House’s bomb-Iran brigade, and especially that of Vice President Dick Cheney,” wrote Time magazine.

A victory for Iran

This is why Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said, “This report tries to extract America from its impasse, but it also is a declaration of victory for the Iranian people against the great powers.” (aljazeera.net, Dec. 5) This view is held by the Iranian people as well, according to Al Jazeera’s reporter in Tehran.

While U.S. spies have exposed one lie, it does not mean that what they are saying now is the whole truth. Iran says it has never sought to produce atomic weapons. “Ali Lariyane, delegate of the Supreme Leader of the National Higher Security Council, said if the U.S. government has any evidence of this, it should hand it over to Mohammad El Baradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency.” (Prensa Latina, Dec. 7)

Iran, an oppressed country, has every right to develop nuclear weapons as a deterrent against the U.S. and Israel, which are bent on Iran’s destruction and pose the real threat in the Middle East. Israel has 75 to 200 nuclear warheads, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. The U.S., with more than 9,000 nuclear warheads, has a string of bases in the Middle East, three aircraft carrier groups in the Arabian/Persian Gulf with guns pointed at Iran, and troops on two of Iran’s borders, in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Want to subvert Iran

The main movers in the report are National Intelligence Director Adm. Mike McConnell and Thomas Fingar, chair of the National Intelligence Council. McConnell, who came out of retirement to take on this study, was the chief security advisor to the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the dissolution of the Soviet Union and during the first Gulf War. Fingar has a long intelligence history with the State Department and was part of John Negroponte’s inner circle.

Members of Congress had requested the NIE report. Among elected officials mentioned in the New York Times in conjunction with the report is Republican Sen. Charles Hagel of Nebraska.

In a recent speech at the Center for Strategic and International Relations on U.S.-Iran relations, Hagel gave more details on the view of the departments of State and Defense and of the Joint Chiefs on how to approach Iran.

“Loose talk of World War III, intimidation, threats, bellicose speeches only heighten the dangers we face in the world. … What confidence should we have in a strategy that, to date, has nothing to show for it … that has achieved no tangible changes to Iran’s nuclear program and actually has seen the Middle East become more dangerous and Iran more defiant? Is the U.S. pursuing a policy that could very well produce a self-fulfilling prophecy of the president’s warning of World War III?

“By refusing to engage Iran in direct, unconditional and comprehensive talks, we are perpetuating dangerous geo-political unpredictabilities. Our refusal to recognize Iran’s influence does not decrease its influence, but rather increases it.

“Our strategy must be one focused on direct engagement and diplomacy … backed by the leverage of international pressure, military options, isolation and containment … not unlike the strategies that the United States pursued during the Cold War against the Soviet Union.”

‘Talks’ as cover for destabilization

Hagel continued, “Inside Iran, there are social strains and serious differences of opinion. … There are political divides in Tehran. … Our strategy should exploit these differences. … The United States must be wise enough … and patient enough … not to follow the same destructive path on Iran that we did on Iraq.”

The forces backing the NIE report are just as hostile towards Iran as Bush and Cheney. They merely think other tactics would be more successful in bringing down Iran. For example, at a conference on regional security in Bahrain on Dec. 8, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates called Iran “a grave threat to regional security even without nuclear weapons.” (New York Times, Dec. 9)

If Bush doesn’t bomb Iran in the next year, it doesn’t mean that the next administration won’t. Norman Podhoretz, a senior neoconservative and a cheerleader for bombing Iran, is foreign policy advisor to Rudolph Giuliani’s presidential campaign. And neither of the Democratic Party frontrunners, Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, has pulled back from shrill and aggressive positions on Iran.

Mass struggle made Pentagon blink

This is a falling out among thieves on how best to bring Iran down and how to stop the struggle in the Middle East. The NIE benignly describes itself as “the intelligence community.” It is really a collection of assassins, liars, mass murderers and destabilizers of progressive governments. The Bush-Cheney forces are no different. Both sides are hired guns for a U.S. ruling class determined to control Middle Eastern oil.

It is the strength of the mass liberation struggles—from Iran to Iraq to Afghanistan to Lebanon to Palestine—which made the biggest military colossus in the world blink. The spy report is an admission that Pentagon bombs cannot stop the mass struggle and often drive it forward. It is this struggle that will determine the fate of the Middle East.

From workers.org

Most of us think that mafia means only syndicates like Dawood Ibrahim & company and Chota Rajan & company etc. There are also licensed mafias like Tata in the name of legal corporate enterprises.

New Faces of Ratan Tata….

1.Scrap Dealer – Recently in Bhopal there was a huge protest (above photo) when Ratan
Tata offered to clean the scrape lying at the Union Carbide Factory at the heart of
Bhopal city.He was trying to make it look as if he was doing a social work but the people of Bhopal know his devilish intentions.In the name of cleaning Bhopal Ratan Tata is after the Chemicals worth millions which is still there in the Union Carbide Factory which had killed more than 30,000 thousands people in their sleep.This tragedy if popularly know as “Bhopal Gas Tragedy”.Since Union Carbide was an American Company,is Ratan Tata an agent (Dalal) of American Imperialism?

2.Arms Dealer – By flying the American made F-16 and F-18 Super Hornet recently at Bangalore Ratan Tata has almost confirmed the buying of these Fighter Planes by Indian Air Force thus confirming he is an Agent (Dalal) of the American Imperialism.

3.Land Mafia – By displacing thousands of farmers,tribals,dalits in the name of development Ratan Tata is making sure that he is the biggest land holder in the whole of the world thus qualifying himself as a ruthless Land Mafia.

Is he doing all this because he bought Corus just to satisfy his ego?Is he doing all this because he has to pay the Banks who financed him in the Corus Deal?
Shame on you Ratan Tata…

Via: Bhumkal

In this era of globalisation, government is cutting subsidies for poor in the name of reforms and claiming that subsidies harm our economy and continuing subsidies is not possible. The largest SEZs have been allocated to Mukesh Ambani, the world’s richest man. This is a criminal subsidy that the State is providing to the rich by stealing from the poor. Government is providing subsidies for corporate capitalists like Tata and Ambani and also multinational companies by allotting them land @ cheap price that was grabbed from farmers for SEZs. These subsidies can be called as criminal minded subsidies. Giving subsidies to world’s richest man is the ugliest example of criminal minded subsidies.

Via: MLSM Media

“We have 50 percent of the world’s wealth, but only 6.3 percent of its population. . . In this situation we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will allow us to maintain this position of disparity. We should cease to talk about the raising of the living standards, human rights, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.”

– George Kennan, Director of Policy Planning of the U.S. Dept. of State, 1948

Following is a partial list of the crimes committed  by U.S. Imperialism from 1983 to 2003. The following list is to presented to satisfy all those who still harbor the illusions about the U.S. foreign policy that remains the same – whether the government is of Republicans or Democrats.

Area                        Year     Type of Engagement                 Results

Source: http://www.neravt.com/left/invade.htm

Chinese edition of “Hate Amerikkka 2 Death” video has been released.

“When capital and the ruling classes apologise for: Colonialism, the 14 hour day, Class Privilege, the 7 day working week, children in coalmines, the opium wars, the massacre of the paris commune, slavery, the spanish-american war, the boer war, starvation, apartheid, anti-union laws, the first world war, flanders, trench warfare, mustard gas, aerial bombing, the soviet intervention, the armenian genocide, chemical weapons, fascism, the great depression, hunger marches, nazism, the spanish civil war, militarism, asbestosis, radiation death, the massacre of Nanking, the second world war, belsen, dresden, hiroshima, racism, the mafia, nuclear weapons, the korean war, DDT, McCarthyism, production lines, blacklists, thalidomide, the rape of the third world, poverty, the arms race, plastic surgery, the electric chair, environmental degradation, the vietnam war, the military suppression of greece, india, malaya, indonesia, chile, el salvador, nicaragua, panama and turkey, the gulf war, trade in human body parts, malnutrition, exxon valdez, deforestation, organised crime, the heroin and cocaine trade, tuberculosis, the destruction of the ozone layer, cancer, exploitation of labour and the deaths of 50,000,000 communists and trade unionists in this century alone, then – and only then – will I consider apologising for the errors of socialism.” – J. V. Stalin

“Strange how blind people are! They are horrified by the torture chambers of the Middle Ages, but their arsenals fill them with pride!”

– Bertha Von Suttner

NAGPUR: The Nagpur bench of Bombay high court on Tuesday dismissed dreaded outlaw Arun Ferreira’s alias Sanjay Choudhary’s petition alleging mental and physical torture by the police of four states – Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh.

Earlier too, a division bench comprising justices D D Sinha and Bhushan Dharmadhikari dismissed dreaded naxal Murli alias Ashok Satyam Reddy’s similar plea. Both petitions were dismissed on ground of lack of evidence from the side of petitioners. Murli and Ferreira were arrested by the Nagpur police along with two others – Dhananjay alias Dhannu Burle and Naresh Bansod – at Deekshabhoomi on May 8. In his petition, Ferreira said that during his stay at Amgaon lock-up, he was severely beaten up by the police along with intelligence bureau officials. He alleged that he was threatened by the police personnel that if his wife Jennifer, who is believed to be a Maoist sympathiser, would be arrested if she comes to Nagpur and his counsel Surendra Gadling would be implicated for defending naxals.

Murli had alleged that 30ml petrol was pumped into his rectum using a syringe while he was in custody at the Amgaon police station. As a result, he was under severe pain and bled while attending nature’s call. To add to woes, the cops had not allowed him to sleep for six days on the trot under pretext of interrogation, Murli had claimed. However, all his claims fell flat when his endoscopy and colonoscopy test results revealed that he was suffering from piles and no apparent signs of torture as claimed by him were found in the test.

The policemen came under a barrage of allegations from the two outlaws. The accused duo claimed that they were threatened by the police that they will be subjected to slow poisoning with the help of some unknown chemical. Ferreira, who, according to the police worked as sales agent for a leading pharmaceutical company, claimed that he was being threatened by the Chhattisgarh police of making him ‘infertile’ by placing ice cubes in his under garments. The outlaws also complained of lack of medical aid from the doctors.

Advocate Anand Deshpande appeared for the state government.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com

While the farmers and indigenous people of India are fighting for their existence, our neighboring country Bangladesh is also under the continuous threat of corporate greediness. We can easily hear the increasing voice of protest in Bangladesh about the Tata investment proposal . Economist S. Nazrul presents why this project will be just another name of corporate exploitation

Economists are famous for making ambiguous, guarded, and qualified statements. However, at times a spade needs to be called a spade. Press reports indicate that the wheels of the government machinery are turning towards an approval of the Tata investment proposal.

This is one such occasion when clear statements need to be made, and here is one statement — the Tata investment proposal is not good for Bangladesh, and neither the current (unelected) nor the future (elected) government should approve it. Since this is not the place for a detailed and technical discussion, I will present 5-points against the Tata investment proposal in the following blunt manner.

Export of gas in embodied form
The Tata investment proposal is basically a proposal to export Bangladesh’s gas in another form. Under this proposal, the gas will be used to produce steel and fertiliser, much of which will be exported to India and other parts of the world.

How can Bangladesh agree to such a proposal when she herself is in dire need of her limited gas reserves to meet current and, in particular, future domestic demand? According to reports, Tata is demanding a 20 year guarantee of gas supply at a concession price.

The Daily Star of May 15 reports that the executive chairman of the Board of Investment (BOI) is advocating Kafco formula as the model to follow in deciding the price at which gas will be supplied to Tata plants.

This is tragic indeed! He should read some of the articles written by Prof. Nurul Islam to know that Kafco has proved, and is proving, a bleeding wound for the government exchequer. Extension of the Kafco formula to Tata will simply increase the bleeding.

The proposed Tata investment is of the predatory type, aimed at taking away the limited amount of non-renewable mineral resource (namely gas and coal) that the country has. It is, therefore, not a good idea.

Very limited employment expansion
The proposed Tata investment will not lead to any sizeable employment expansion, and hence, there will not be any appreciable “trickle down” benefit from this investment. The steel plant, the fertiliser plant, and the power generation plant, are all very capital intensive, employing at best a few thousand people, many of whom will be coming from outside the country.

In a country of 150 million, several thousand jobs will hardly make an impact. Tata investment is not aimed at utilising Bangladesh’s renewable and abundant resource, namely the labour force.

The Tata investment is, therefore, entirely different from foreign investments coming to the garments, textile, and other labour-intensive industries (in SEZ and EPZs) which together are creating hundreds of thousands of job for Bangladeshis.

While Bangladesh may welcome foreign investment aimed at utilising the country’s renewable resource, labour, it should be equally wary about Tata’s predatory proposal. Equating these two types of foreign investments would be a grave mistake for Bangladesh.

Very feeble forward and backward linkages
The Tata investment will benefit Bangladesh very little in terms of forward and backward linkages. The reach and width of the forward linkage is very limited because most of the steel and gas produced will actually be exported to India and other destinations.

There is not much of backward linkage either. All the machineries for the plants will basically come from outside. There will be very little input demand to be met from Bangladesh’s domestic sources, other than, of course, gas and coal.

So, instead of providing a big boost to the entire economy, the Tata plants will remain as an enclave without much of a link with the rest of the economy, an enclave whose main purpose will be to siphon away the country’s mineral energy resources.

Wrong industrial structure
Tata investment will be a step toward a wrong industrial structure in Bangladesh. The other day even Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh lamented India’s oligopolistic and government patronage-dependent industrial structure (see The Daily Star of May 14). Being one of the largest industrial houses of India, Tata is the pre-eminent member of this oligarchy.

When India herself is regretting, it will be a grave mistake on the part of Bangladesh to gravitate toward an oligarchic industrial structure by approving the Tata investment proposal.

In the case of Bangladesh, the damage will be all the greater because Tata is a foreign entity. If allowed to go ahead, Tata investment will lead to a lopsided industrial structure dominated by a foreign giant.

This is exactly the kind of industrial structure that Bangladesh should avoid. Bangladesh may, instead, follow Taiwan’s example of fostering a non-oligarchic industrial structure populated by numerous small and medium sized plants and companies.

Taiwan’s non-oligarchic and more competitive industrial structure has served her well, as the comparative experiences of Taiwan and Korea in the face of the Asian financial crisis at the end of the 1990s amply demonstrated.

While the chaebols-dominated Korean economy plunged into a deep recession, Taiwan was hardly affected by the crisis. Chaebols were oligarchic and dependent on government patronage, exactly the characteristics of the proposed Tata investment.

In the case of Korea, at least the chaebols were national companies. In case of Bangladesh, Tata is a foreign company.

Worrisome influence on the nation’s body politic
The final point arises from the fact that, in many respects, Bangladesh is still a weak state. This state already finds it difficult to withstand the predatory onslaughts of domestic capitalists.

It will find it even more difficult to withstand the influence and pressure of a giant like Tata, which will in general enjoy the support and sympathy of the state of India. In fact, the commercial interest of Tata may emerge as an additional complication in the good neighbourly relationship between Bangladesh and India.

Having occupied a significant industrial and physical space inside the country, the company will be in a position to exert considerable influence on the state and body politic of this nation, and it is difficult to be sure that this influence will always be beneficial.

The way Tata is trying to get its investment proposal approved during the tenure of the current interim, unelected government does not bode well in that respect.

Above are the 5-points against Tata. Of course, all these points can be further elaborated and substantiated. In fact, Prof. Wahiduddin Mahmud’s report on the Tata investment proposal, published earlier by this newspaper, does so in many respects.

There are also other discussions and analyses available. However, the important point is that if bureaucrats and other decision makers develop private interests in the project, then no amount of argumentation and analyses will help, because they will simply play deaf and blind and do their own thing.

The current government’s anti-corruption drive has been targeted so far mainly toward politicians. However, many bureaucrats, too, had an important role in the corruption, embezzlement, and selling-out of national interests to foreign companies that the nation witnessed in the past years. It is difficult to believe that they have all rectified themselves.

The present government has set the good precedence of confiscating ill-gotten wealth and bringing such wealth back to the country from outside. What this means is that, sooner or later, those who want to enrich themselves at the expense of the nation can be brought to book.

They should know that the people of Bangladesh, including non-resident Bangladeshis (NRBs), are watching. The remittance money sent home by NRBs has now reached almost $6 billion per year, exceeding the country’s combined net export!

Tata’s total investment figure, which many suspect looks bigger on paper than its actual worth, pales by comparison with the investment that NRBs are making in their country each year, and they are not planning on remitting the investment income!

So, for the Bangladesh economy, NRB remittance is the real source of investment, and the authorities should try to make the best use of this resource.

NRB remittance, together with the garments export earning, is keeping Bangladesh afloat. Both of these owe to Bangladesh’s main renewable resource, namely labour. The government should focus on making the best use of investment, both domestic and foreign, that is labour-intensive.

It should save the country’s limited quantity of mineral resources for optimum domestic use. It should, therefore, say “Thank you, but no!” to the Tata investment proposal.

meghbarta.org

Khammam – 8 peasants struggling for land killed in police firing

Response of Congress Government of AP:

• Firing ‘unfortunate’;
• Judicial enquiry underway;
• Blames ‘naxalite’ participation in rally and ‘provocation by the protestors’
• Chief Minister need not resign

Nandigram: 14 peasants struggling for land killed in firing by police and CPI(M) cadres

Response of CPI(M) Government of W Bengal:

• Firing ‘unfortunate’;
• Judicial enquiry underway;
• Blames ‘naxalite’ participation in protest and ‘provocation by the protestors’
• Chief Minister need not resign

The massacre of peasants at Nandigram on March 14 had evoked an explosion of outrage among the Left intelligentsia. Many intellectuals broke ranks with the CPI(M) after Nandigram, choosing to side with the valiant struggle of the Nandirgam peasantry. Intellectuals close to the CPI(M), however, had issued a statement that had expressed pain and anguish at the incident while continuing to assert faith in the progressive intentions and democratic credentials of the CPI(M)-led LF Government in West Bengal. Many of these intellectuals , supporters of CPI(M), are teachers at JNU – like Prof. Prabhat Patnaik, Utsa Patnaik, Jayati Ghosh and others.

Of course, this statement, while expressing pain at the loss of life and injuries of the Nandigram victims, had stopped short of expressing solidarity with the Nandigram peasants’ struggle to defend their land. One can’t but help contrasting this with the excellent statement signed by many of the selfsame intellectuals in the wake of the Khammam firing. That statement unstintedly expresses “our total solidarity with the mass upsurge of the poor for land”. Is a mass upsurge of peasantry for land to be recognised as such only when led by one’s own party?

But what is to be appreciated is that these intellectuals loyal to the CPI(M), in their statement on Nandigram, had been confident that the CPI(M)-led Government of West Bengal genuinely regretted the firing and was committed to ensuring justice for the victims.

Their statement declared that ” nobody belonging to the Left would ever justify repressive action against peasants and workers who are the basic classes of the Left“, had termed the “tragedy at Nandigram” to be “an entirely unanticipated, unjustified and unfortunate turn of events “, and had confidently claimed that “the state government has committed itself to recompensing the families of the victims“. In view of the state government’s efforts, these supporters of CPI(M) had then appealed for some closure so as “not to let the wounds of Nandigram become festering sores.”

Has the CPI(M) lived up to this confidence reposed in it by its own loyalists?

Consider the following statements made by senior CPI(M) leaders following the Khammam firing:

“At Khamman, the situation had not warranted police firing…Only some brickbats had been thrown. But, at Nandigram, the police were forced to open fire” – CPI(M) PB Member and former WB Chief Minister Jyoti Basu, Hindu, July 31

“The CPI-M is not at all ashamed of the Nandigram incident and the question of giving compensation to families of those killed in police firing on 14 March or taking action against police officials doesn’t arise… At the best we can offer some pity.” – CPI-M Central Committee member Benoy Konar (Statesman July 31) (emphasis ours)

Is the Nandigram firing really “unjustified” according to the CPI(M)? Clearly not. The CPI(M), in fact, is belying the confidence of its supporters that “nobody on the Left would ever justify” police firing of workers and peasants. In exactly the same manner as AP Chief Minister YSR and the Congress are justifying the Khammam firing by claiming ‘provocation’ and ‘violence’ by ‘Naxalites’, CPI(M)’s topmost leaders (including the veteran Jyoti Basu) continue to claim that the police firing at Nandigram was required, necessary.

Is the CPI(M)-led Government accepting the responsibility for compensation to those who lost loved ones, livelihoods (being unable to work due to severe and debilitating injuries including widespread loss of eyesight), and homes as a result of the repression? Far from it, CPI(M) leaders are saying that the question of paying compensation or punishing even police officials does not arise. To add insult to injury, they have the temerity to “at best” offer a grudging “pity”.

Comrade Basu and Konar, weren’t the martyrs of Nandigram also CPI(M) cadres, comrades of the Khammam martyrs, until the threat of land grab by the CPI(M) Government? Weren’t the peasants of Nandigram inspired by the legacy of the Left-led Tebhaga movement just as those at Khammam were inspired by the legacy of the Left-led Telengana movement? At Khammam peasants were asking the Government to implement land reforms; at Nandigram, they were demanding that the Government keep its promise of ‘land to the tiller’, and stop handing over poor peasants’ lands to corporate houses.

Isn’t CPI(M)’s crude and callous justification of the Nandigram firing an insult –not just to the martyrs of Nandigram – but also to the martyrs of Khammam, and to the expectations of its own most loyal supporters among the intellectuals?

For a discussion of the deep discomfort of CPI(M) intellectuals over Nandigram, and CPI(M)’s own total refusal to address their concerns, see http://sanhati.com/front-page/304/