Paara

More than one year has passed since the split in Fokana. We have two national organizations.
What are the achievements of each organization in the last one year? What did they do in the past year?
How is the split affected the community? Has it affected the community at all? Whether community benefited from the split? Or it had no effect? Did it benefit anyone?
Let us look back in frustartion…
(pl write only decent comments. No persoanl attacks)

A Former Nun’s Memoirs Rock India’s Catholic Church
By Madhur Singh
After 26 years as a nun, Jesme Raphael gave up her robes and walked out of the Congregation of the Mother of Carmel, the Catholic order in Kerala, India, that had been her home for three decades. Two years later, Raphael, now 53, has come out with her memoirs, Amen: An Autobiography of A Nun, cataloging lurid details of bullying, sexual abuse and homosexuality in the oldest Catholic women’s order in the idyllic coastal state in southern India. Shocking as it is, the book is only the latest in a long series of accusations and scandals afflicting the Catholic Church in the state with the largest population of Christians in India.
“All the brothers here send you greetings. Greet one another with a holy kiss [1 Corinthians 16:20],” Raphael quotes a priest as telling her, after she confronted him with allegations that “he kissed almost everyone who went for one-on-one meetings.” In other episodes, she tells of a forced lesbian encounter, being forced to strip in front of a naked priest who then masturbated, and being accused of being mentally unstable on complaining to her superiors.
Since the book’s release on January 30, publishers DC Books have already sold all 3,000 copies, and a re-print has been ordered. The Catholic church is miffed. “There is no dearth of anti-religion people in Kerala society,” says Dr Stephen Alathara, deputy secretary of the Kerala Catholic Bishops Council. “They are using this for their anti-social, anti-church activities.” In 1957, Kerala elected the world’s first democratically elected communist government, and it has been under communist rule since the last state elections in 2006.
A spokesperson for the Syro-Malabar order of the Catholic Church, Father Paul Thelakkat, adds that Raphael’s allegations stem from “some wounded feelings” which Raphael should have raised with the church instead of “maligning the life of religious nuns”. He goes on to add that Raphael’s allegations are “not especially serious”. “The church never claims there’s no sin within the church,” he says. “We’re not angels, we’re human beings of flesh and blood, so some omissions and failures can happen. But the church is perennially on a path of renewal and reformation, we’re trying to deal with these problems and such allegations.”
There has been no shortage of them in recent months. On February 11, Sister Josephine, a nun in the Daughters of Mary congregation in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala’s state capital, was found dead in her room in an apparent suicide. Members of the congregation said the 38-year-old nun had been under treatment for depression. After news of the incident spread, a crowd gathered around the house and shouted slogans alleging that harassment had led Sister Josephine to kill herself. The police had to intervene, and an inquiry into the case was later ordered. Six months earlier, on August 11 last year, 23-year-old Sister Anoopa Mary had been found hanging in her room in St Mary’s Convent in Kollam, north of the capital. In what was purportedly her suicide note, she had said she could no longer withstand the senior nuns’ harassment. Her father, a cook in the local Bishop’s house, charged that sexual exploitation had led his daughter to take her life. The convent has denied the allegations, though a court investigation is still ongoing.
Recently, there have been expulsions and other disciplinary action in response to other cases of misconduct within the Church. In June last year, a nun in a Christian hospital was expelled after a video of her having sex with a driver was circulated over mobile phones and the Internet. In October, Pope Benedict XVI had suspended a bishop in the coastal city of Cochin after his adoption of a 26-year-old woman as his daughter raised questions. The bishop has denied any wrongdoing, and said he adopted the woman out of fatherly love. But the church took him off all duties and instituted an inquiry.
“Such problems have been there in almost all convents [in Kerala],” says Joseph Pulikunnel, a veteran Syrian Catholic social reformer who edits Osanna, a magazine aimed at Kerala’s Catholic community. “The convents are closed to the public, we don’t know what is happening inside.” He says India’s Catholic church, which accounts for 70% of all denominations among India’s 25 million Christians, owns vast properties across the country, including over 30,000 educational institutes and 6,000 hospitals. In Kerala, the Church runs 60% of the private educational institutes. The state’s near 100% literacy — a singular case in a country where the average adult literacy rate is just about 60% — is thanks largely to the church’s zealous missionary activity. Yet, critics claim this gives the church a high degree of political and economic power. Church reform activists also say the affairs of the Catholic church — to which 60% of Kerala’s Christians belong — should be brought more directly under the control of Indian authorities to make its workings more transparent. As of now, church affairs are under the stewardship of the Pope.
In recent months, the church has been more forthcoming about the problems it faces. Sathyadeepam, Kerala’s Catholic weekly, released a report in January that said almost 20% of the region’s nuns — the church says there are about 45,000 — feel “insecure or unaccepted” in their convents. Cases of nuns speaking up like Raphael are still rare, but there may be an avalanche building up due to the changing social scenario. Earlier, girls from disadvantaged families embraced the vows, finding that life in a convent, while hard, saved them from the worst of deprivation. But once in an order, they found it difficult to complain or leave. “They simply had nowhere to go,” says Pulikunnel, “If they quit the convent, they’d be thrown out penniless, and their families wouldn’t take them back.”
But times have changed. Churches around the world have been coming to grips with legacies of quiet abuse, and Indian society, too, has evolved. There is no longer a stigma attached to giving up the robes and returning to the laity. There are plenty of well-paying jobs — nursing has proven particularly attractive for Kerala women as it is seen as a passport to a foreign job and big bucks — and many youngsters are not up for a lifetime of celibacy and a religious vocation. Although figures have not been collated, activists claim a steady decline in the number of young people taking the vows, or, like Raphael, renouncing their vows.
But to stem the rot that has set in, the church will first have to admit the real nature and extent of the problem. If Dr Alathara’s reaction is anything to go by, that candor is a long way off. When asked about the numerous allegations of sexual abuse in the church, he says, “[Alleging sexual abuse] is an old tool of hitting at the ecclesiastical society. It’s nothing new. It happened 2,000 years ago too.” Father Thelakkat’s reaction is somewhat similar — though he doesn’t deny Raphael’s allegations, he refuses to acknowledge their seriousness either: “The incidents may be true, but they are isolated cases.” Clearly, it’s time to connect the dots, and see the bigger picture.

The greatest heights eluded Ted Kennedy over a lifetime of achievement and pain. No presidency. No universal health care, chief among his causes.

Instead, Kennedy built his Washington monument stone by stone, his imprint distinct on the Senate’s most important works over nearly half a century. He toiled across the Potomac River from the graveyard of his fallen brothers.

The last of the Kennedys who fascinated the nation with their ambition, style, idealism, tragedies — and sometimes sheer recklessness — Edward Moore Kennedy died late Tuesday night at 77. A black shroud and vase of white roses sat Wednesday on his Senate desk, which John Kennedy had used before him.

So dropped the final curtain on “Camelot,” the already distant era of the Kennedy dynasty.

The Massachusetts senator’s extended political family of fellow Democrats and rival Republicans, steeled for his death since his brain-tumor diagnosis a year ago yet still jarred by it, joined in mourning. Kennedy was the Senate’s dominant liberal and one of its legendary dealmakers.

Just last year he jumped into a fractious Democratic presidential nomination fight to side with Barack Obama, giving the Illinois senator a boost that had the air of a family anointment.

“For his family, he was a guardian,” Obama said Wednesday. “For America, he was a defender of a dream.”

The president, vacationing in Martha’s Vineyard, was awakened after 2 a.m. and told of Kennedy’s death. He spoke soon after with the senator’s widow, Victoria, and ordered flags flown at half-staff on all federal buildings.

Kennedy will be buried Saturday at Arlington National Cemetery after a funeral Mass in Boston. He will lie in repose at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston before that.

Also buried at Arlington, the military cemetery overlooking the capital city, are John and Robert Kennedy; John Kennedy’s wife, Jacqueline; their baby son, Patrick, who died after two days, and their stillborn child.

To Americans and much of the world, Kennedy was best known as the last surviving son of the nation’s most glamorous political family. Of nine children born to Joseph and Rose Kennedy, Jean Kennedy Smith is the only one alive.

To senators of both parties, he was one of their own.

“Even when you expect it, even when you know it’s coming, in this case it hurts a great deal,” said Democrat Patrick Leahy of Vermont.

Politicians also calculated the consequences for Obama’s push for expanded health coverage. For several months, at least, Kennedy’s death will deprive the Democrats of a vote that could prove crucial for his signature cause of health reform.

His illness had sidelined him from an intense debate that would have found him at the core any other time. Conservative Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, his improbable Republican partner on children’s health insurance, volunteerism, student aid and more, said the Senate probably would have had a health care deal by now if Kennedy had been healthy enough to work with him.

“Iconic, larger than life,” Hatch said of his friend. “We were like fighting brothers.”

He was the last of the famous Kennedy brothers: John the assassinated president, Robert the assassinated senator and presidential candidate, Joseph the aviator killed in action in World War II when Ted was 12.

He lost his sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, less than two weeks ago, saw the bright promise of nephew John F. Kennedy Jr. end in a plane crash in 1999 and struggled with excesses of his own until he became a settled elder statesman.

Like Obama, Kennedy was a master orator. But the words that live for the ages seem to be those he uttered in tragedy or defeat.

Older Americans remember his eulogy of Robert Kennedy, when he asked history not to idealize his brother but remember him “simply as a good and decent man who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.”

Remembered, too, is his speech conceding the 1980 Democratic presidential nomination to the incumbent Jimmy Carter. “For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die,” he said.

By then, his hopes of reaching the White House had been damaged by his behavior a decade earlier in the scandal known as Chappaquiddick.

On the night of July 18, 1969, Kennedy drove his car off a bridge and into a pond on Chappaquiddick Island, on Martha’s Vineyard, and swam to safety while companion Mary Jo Kopechne drowned in the car. He pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident; a judge said his actions probably contributed to the young woman’s death. He received a suspended sentence and probation.

Kennedy’s legislative legacy includes health insurance for children of the working poor, the landmark 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, family leave and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. He was also key to passage of the No Child Left Behind Education law and a Medicare drug benefit for the elderly, both championed by Republican President George W. Bush.

In the Senate, Republicans respected and often befriended him. But his essential liberalism marked him as a lightning rod, too. He proved a handy fundraising foil motivating Republicans to open their wallets to fight anything he stood for.

In 1980, Kennedy’s task of dislodging a president of his own party was compounded by his fumbling answer to a question posed by CBS’ Roger Mudd: Why do you want to be president?

“Well, I’m, uh, were I to, to make the, the announcement, to run, the reasons that I would run is because I have a great belief in this country,” he began.

It’s a question that all savvy politicians ever since make sure won’t catch them unprepared.

In his later years, Kennedy cut a barrel-chested profile, with a swath of white hair, a booming voice and a thick, widely imitated Boston accent. He coupled fist-pumping floor speeches with charm and formidable negotiating skills.

“I think that once he realized he was never going to be president — that that was not the legacy he had to follow — he really worked at becoming the best senator he possibly could,” Leahy said. “And he did.”

He was first elected to the Senate in 1962, taking the seat that his brother John had occupied before winning the White House, and he served longer than all but two senators in history.

Kennedy was diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumor in May 2008 and underwent surgery and a grueling regimen of radiation and chemotherapy.

He made a surprise return to the Capitol last summer to cast a decisive vote for the Democrats on Medicare. He made sure he was there again in January to see his former Senate colleague sworn in as president but suffered a seizure at a celebratory luncheon afterward.

His survivors include a daughter, Kara Kennedy Allen; two sons, Edward Jr. and Patrick, a congressman from Rhode Island, and two stepchildren, Caroline and Curran Raclin.

Edward Jr. lost a leg to bone cancer in 1973 at age 12. Kara had a cancerous tumor removed from her lung in 2003. In 1988, Patrick had a non-cancerous tumor pressing on his spine removed. He also has struggled with depression and addiction and recently spent time at an addiction treatment center.

WRONGLY JAILED IN NYC
Making A Joke Out Of Justice
By RAVI SHANKAR

The arrest of Harvard University Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. in Cambridge, Mass., fueled a debate over the quicksand of race and law enforcement. To me, the racially fraught encounter of a professor with the police is all too familiar; it returns me with a shudder to the weekend of July 10, which I spent in a Manhattan jail.

My ordeal began with a party at a Chelsea gallery for the arts journal that I edit. Brilliant performances led to a boisterous dinner and then it was out to my car for the drive home to Connecticut and my wife and daughter. Turning onto Sixth Avenue from 34th Street, I found myself assailed by flashing red and blue. An amplified voice commanded me to pull over.

The officer approached, flashlight fixed in my face, and ordered me onto the sidewalk. “Is there a problem?” I asked. Three other cops surrounded me. I started to explain what I was doing in the city — a poet returning from a literary event.

The lead cop shouted, “Just do what I say!”

And so I obediently did the field-sobriety dance: touched nose with pinky and stood on one foot, tightrope-walked the crack in the sidewalk, blew into the Breathalyzer.

The officer conferred with his partners, then approached with a grin, hand extended as if to shake mine. “Good news,” he said, “you passed the Breathalyzer.” Then, with perfect comic timing: “The bad news is, there’s a warrant out for your arrest.” The extended hand reached for my wrist, twisting it behind my back.

Arrest? For what? The officers spun into motion. The back door of the police van slid open, a hand pushed my head down and shoved me in. The officer turned to his partner. “Always a good day when you can bag a sand nigger.”

Streaks of streetlight receded into the distance through the slats of the police van’s window, a rough jostle over potholes, my hands in the cuffs tightly immobilized behind me. At the 14th Precinct station my wallet was emptied, my shoelaces and belt taken and I was placed in a holding cell.

I hadn’t been read my rights or granted a phone call. After an hour my arresting officer returned — but only to take me for a mug shot and digital fingerprinting. Eventually he showed me my arrest warrant. It was for a 5-foot-10, 140-pound white male. I happen to be a 6-foot-2, 200-pound, Indian man. I pointed out the discrepancy. “Tell it to the judge,” he said.

There was also an unpaid speeding ticket, four years old, from Westchester County. They weren’t going to hold me for that, were they? Apparently they were. Cuffed, chain-gang fashion, to a line of other prisoners, I was marched past the front desk, where officers serenaded us with a sarcastic chorus of “Here Comes the Bride.” We were driven to Central Booking, photographed and searched once more — spread-eagled against the wall — and divided up into three large cells.

My cellmates in 1A included a Polish bartender with a pierced chin, accused of an assault he didn’t remember committing, a street peddler from Senegal and a rowdy Dominican who laughed uproariously at his story of being busted for cooking meth. Time passed fitfully. Occasionally someone spoke to me.

“Yo, India,” an athletic Puerto Rican man with a blackened tooth nodded, “What you in here for?” When I told him, he laughed. I had gotten caught in a city sweep, he said. “It’s like a competition. First precinct to one hundred collars wins.” It didn’t matter who or why.

I dozed off again. Morning came. Fifty guys were already upstairs, waiting to be arraigned. Our group might be called after lunch.

Lines of Samuel Beckett floated to me in shards: We wait. We are bored. In an instant all will vanish and we’ll be alone once more, in the midst of nothingness.

As the day trickled by, rage gave way to resignation, then despondency. Late in the afternoon, the first three people from our cell were called. Every two hours, an officer summoned another batch. Then, it was 10 p.m., court closed. Three of us remained.

“Sorry boys,” the officer called out. “Better luck tomorrow.”

On Sunday morning, my name was called and I was allowed to contact my family and speak to a public defender.

More than 30 hours had passed since my arrest. After a certain point, waiting becomes a form of brutality, a gratuitous torment. I was exhausted. My body ached, and I could smell myself, a bitter odor seeping from under my collar.

At noon, I was called to the judge. She stared down at me as the public defender reviewed my charge, noting that the warrant was for a 5-foot-10 white male.

“Yes,” she said, “he’s clearly not white. Dismiss that.” She then did a double take on my file. “Why does this man have a public defender?”

“Well,” said my lawyer, “in the process of expediency …”

She interrupted. “He can come back and talk to me when he has an attorney.”

The gavel dropped, the bailiff barked and I retreated in a daze. Arrested on Friday, I’d been just another “sand nigger,” an easy catch in the night’s sport. Arraigned on Sunday, I was now a professor, presumably wealthy enough to hire a lawyer. The irony was just one in a long weekend of indignities. The old speeding ticket would have to be answered. But that was for another day. Right now, all I wanted was out.

•Ravi Shankar is an associate professor of English and poet-in-residence at Central Connecticut State University and editor of Drunkenboat.com

Anti-national and anti-Hindu Marxists in Kerala
C I Issac (The author is a retired Professor of History, and lives in Trivandrum)

21 Jul 2009
http://www.vijayvaani.com/FrmPublicDisplayArticle.aspx?id=707

Kerala once contributed much to Hindu culture and civilization, but is now poised as its destroyer, discharging Yama dharma. This land has a great line of teachers/rishis, beginning with Jagadguru Sankaracharya. Aryabhatta I, astronomer and mathematician; Govindaswamin, ninth century CE, who wrote a bhasya on Mahabhaskaariya; Sankara Narayana, author of the astronomical treatise Sankaranarayaneeyam; Bhaskara II, author of Lilavati, Bijaganita, Sidhantasiromani; Madhava, famous astronomer and mathematician of the fourteenth century, are true sons of the Hindutva tradition of ancient Kerala.
This Kerala has been under threat for the last six decades under communist influence. Communism penetrated Kerala by benefitting from socio-economic situations during the pre-independence decades. Now Kerala thinks and acts just opposite to the national mainstream.
Communism in the princely states of Kerala did not do well. More than 50 percent of its geographical area - British Malabar - was then part of present day Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. The Communists realized that the seeds of communism could thrive only in the Malayalam speaking area because this region had been ploughed out by missionaries through western education by which Hindu values were submerged or practically out of use. That is why Communists initiated the movement for a Malayalam speaking Kerala instead of a geographic one.
Their dreams blossomed in 1956. In the next general election in the state, the Communist Party became triumphant. This victory was not of Marxian ideology, but the Hindu reaction against Christian opportunism and monopolization of political and economic power. By encashing the Christian conspiracy behind setting fire to the Sasta Temple at Sabrimala and subsequent Hindu sentiments, communists won the election. But those elevated to power through Hindu votes made their priority the impoverishment of Hindus and dismantling of Hindu faith from this land.
While the undivided communist party was in power during 1957-58, its first priority was to reduce temples to self-extinction and impoverish Hindus. The regime first of all put the enquiry report of the Sabarimala Temple destruction in ‘cold storage.’ Then it began Hindu impoverishment via annihilation of Hindu landownership with the land reforms of 1957.
To save Christian landlords, the church intervened to allow use of excess land in the hands of Christians by including relaxation clauses in the Land Reform Bill, thus excluding plantation lands / estates from the purview of land reforms. Now with mounting minority pressure, again the government amended the old Land Reform Act to incorporate those Christian and Muslim surplus lands which were converted as cashew plantations by giving estate status to it.
Major holders of coconut plantations and paddy lands were Hindus and their temples; their holdings were not brought under ‘estates’ when the land reform bills were drafted. Hence the entire land of temples became surplus land and temple deity the landlord/janmi. But the land owned by churches was not subjected to land reforms. Thus the ‘revolutionary land reforms’ of Kerala only impoverished the Hindus. At present, the average landholding of a Christian family is 126.4 cents and Hindus and Muslims are 69.1 and 77.1 cents respectively [1].
This anti-Hindu approach led a sizable number of Hindus to desert the communist fold, so the Communist Party leaned towards a policy of minority appeasement. The immediate result was the birth of an exclusive Muslim district, Malappuram, when all corners of national life warned of the danger in doing so. Now this district is the hatchery of all anti-national and terrorist activities in Kerala.
Subsequently a Christian district also carved out, a political decision which legitimized the state’s communal divide. History reveals how far Muslim bigots were appeased by the Marxist Party. In 1946, one Unnian Saheb of Perinthalmanna in Malabar, reconverted to Hinduism along with his family and received the name Ramasimhan.
A Moplah mob (Malabar Muslims) brutally exterminated the entire family as an admonition to all who wish to return to poorva dharma. All political parties, with Marxist Party in vanguard position under its self-styled revolutionary leader EMS Namboodirpad, tried to misdirect the police investigation and save the guilty [2].
The state conference of rgw Marxist Party held in February 2005 at Malappuram officially declared stained Muslim fanatic Wariamkunnathu Kunjahammed Haji, leader of the notorious Moplah Revolt who killed thousands of Hindus including innocent women and children in cold blood during the 1921 Khilafat agitation at Malabar, as a martyr of the Communist Party. Even the Muslim League is reluctant to do this.
The universal failure of Communism as an alternative economic and political model and the 1964 split in the Communist Party drained its mass base in Kerala. The communist attitude on vital national issues like Chinese aggression alienated them from the public. EMS Namboodiripad said: “The Chinese had entered territory that they thought was theirs and hence there was no question of aggression as far as they were concerned. At the same time, the Indians were defending territory that they considered theirs and so they were not committing aggression either. …..” [3].
Since 1967 the motto of the Kerala Marxists shrank to mere sharing political power. They also opted for the annihilation of those ideologically against them, resulting in the killings of RSS workers, which continues unabated.
RSS started work in Kerala in the 1940s. The first political murder happened on 12 April 1957 at Alleppey, when a farm labour, Abdul Khader, was stabbed to death by Communists. On 2 May 1957, a toddy tapper, Gangadharan, a member of INTUC, was killed at Alleppey. Thereafter, the Marxist regime sponsored the annihilation of political opponents, which is still going on.
By the 1970s, the communists split into half a dozen parties including Naxalite groups. The splits were caused by power sharing, not ideological differences. The great looser was the Marxist Party, hence its prime agenda became the retaining of cadre and political power. The result was indiscriminate killings of those opposed to their ideology or functioning. Since 1969, RSS became the chief target of Marxist wrath.
The first prey Ramakrishnan of Vadickal village, Thalassery, a Mukya Sishak of the village RSS Shakha, in 1969. An accused in this murder was Pinarayi Vijayan, now State general secretary and PB member of the CPM. From 1969 to this day, 160 RSS workers and 39 workers of other political parties have been murdered Marxists in Kerala. More than 177 houses of RSS workers have been destroyed and a good number of RSS/ BJP activists ostracized from their villages of Kannur district. In some areas in Kannur, especially Thalassery, Panoor, Kathiroor and Kuthuparamba, only those policemen are posted who back Marxist cadre or are their pawns.
On 1 December 1999, K.T. Jayakrishnan, a UP schoolteacher of Panoor in Kannur district, was brutally hacked to death in his classroom in front of 45 children of below nine years of age. All 45 children lost their mental stability and recovered only after six months of intensive treatment. When the Marxists threatened Jayakrishnan, the court had directed the state police to give him protection. At the time of his murder, two policemen were on duty with rifle loaded with dead ammunition.
In the light of government sponsored butchering, the High Court of Kerala recently proceeded suo-motto against the Marxist led Government of Kerala. To save the face of the Party, the Government moved the Supreme Court against the suo-motto suit. The Supreme Court not only declined the Govt. writ appeal but commented that the steps taken by the High Court were laudable.
The Party’s propaganda wing targets Hindu sannyasins and mathams and ridicules them as “human gods.” Their chief target is Mata Amritananda Mai. Most top comrade’s children study in Amma’s educational institutions on an underwriting from comrade parents that their wards should ‘sincerely participate in all the religious activities including Bhajans’.
On the other hand, Hindu sannyasins’ educational institutions are forbidden to ordinary comrades. The reason behind the double standard is that party base will shrink if one becomes a true Hindu. Marxists strictly follow communism’s universal style: “all are equal and some are more equal.”
Once EMS, upholding the Soviet view that the Second World War was “an imperialist war,” was in danger of having his property attached by the British for working against the war effort. As he went to underground, Namboodiripad anticipated the attachment and dodged it by transferring it to his wife’s name [4].
Another Communist priority was the mercy killing of temples – because the temple is the source of Hindu power. Hence they sought to annihilate the influence of temples from the minds of the Hindus. Focusing on textbooks in school, they consciously avoided topics related to Puranas, Epics and Vedas. Before the 1970s, textbooks carried more than eighty percent from ancient Hindu texts. This is now reduced to fifteen percent and is derogatory to Hindu life. A recent development is to create unnecessary controversies regarding famous temples to generate mental stress amongst worshippers.
Now the Marxist Party is in a capitalist mood and is functioning in corporate style. Its state general secretary functions like a CEO of the Marxist Party [Pvt. Ltd]. The party runs businesses like resorts, factories, amusement park, TV channels, and other ventures, and makes more surplus than real capitalist undertakings. To Karl Marx, surplus is ‘unpaid labour’; that is why he stood for socialistic/communist mode of production.
In China, though the party favoured multinationals and private entrepreneurs, it did not directly engage in commercial enterprises. But now the self styled proletarian party has no time to look after the welfare of the working classes and oppressed. All office bears of the state unit are busy with hectic business activities.
Currently in Kerala, the Marxist Party’s chief enemy is not capitalistic forces or Islamic terrorists, but temples and Hindu sannyasins. They fear nationalism and Hindu dharma. That is why they are targeting BJP/RSS workers. The penetration of another Semitic “materialistic religion,” Communism, and its messing up Hindu society is a serious threat to nationalistic forces. I hope one day my mother country will overcome and shine as a Jagadguru.
Notes

1] Kerala Padanam, Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad, Kozhikode, 2006, p 54. Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad is a Marxist party organization.
2] For further information, see EMS’s Selected Works, [Mal], Vol. VII, pp 356-57
3] EMS on Chinese Aggression. Quoted from: Comrade Mohit Sen, A Traveler and the Road – The Journey of an Indian Communist, Rupa & Co, New Delhi, 2003. [Then EMS was then the National General Secretary of CPI [M]. He made this comment in a press conference].
4] “It is also worth noting that the Tesildar found that the value of the property was more than Rs. 50,000/-. Namboodiripad cheated the government of stamp duty and showed the value of this deed as Rs. 9,000/- only. E. Balakrishnan, History of the Communist Movement in Kerala.
The author is a retired Professor of History, and lives in Trivandrum

http://news. bbc.co.uk/ 2/hi/health/ 8211925.stm

People with conditions such as HIV, TB and malaria should not rely on homeopathic treatments, the World Health Organization has warned.
It was responding to calls from young researchers who fear the promotion of homeopathy in the developing world could put people’s lives at risk.
The group Voice of Young Science Network has written to health ministers to set out the WHO view.
WHO TB experts said homeopathy had “no place” in treatment of the disease.
In a letter to the WHO in June, the medics from the UK and Africa said: “We are calling on the WHO to condemn the promotion of homeopathy for treating TB, infant diarrhoea, influenza, malaria and HIV.
Homeopathy does not protect people from, or treat, these diseases.
“Those of us working with the most rural and impoverished people of the world already struggle to deliver the medical help that is needed.
“When homeopathy stands in place of effective treatment, lives are lost.”
Dr Robert Hagan is a researcher in biomolecular science at the University of St Andrews and a member of Voice of Young Science Network, which is part of the charity Sense About Science campaigning for “evidence-based” care.
He said: “We need governments around the world to recognise the dangers of promoting homeopathy for life-threatening illnesses.
“We hope that by raising awareness of the WHO’s position on homeopathy we will be supporting those people who are taking a stand against these potentially disastrous practices.”
‘No evidence’
Dr Mario Raviglione, director of the Stop TB department at the WHO, said: “Our evidence-based WHO TB treatment/managemen t guidelines, as well as the International Standards of Tuberculosis Care do not recommend use of homeopathy.”
The doctors had also complained that homeopathy was being promoted as a treatment for diarrhoea in children.
But a spokesman for the WHO department of child and adolescent health and development said: “We have found no evidence to date that homeopathy would bring any benefit.
“Homeopathy does not focus on the treatment and prevention of dehydration - in total contradiction with the scientific basis and our recommendations for the management of diarrhoea.”
Dr Nick Beeching, a specialist in infectious diseases at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital, said: “Infections such as malaria, HIV and tuberculosis all have a high mortality rate but can usually be controlled or cured by a variety of proven treatments, for which there is ample experience and scientific trial data.
“There is no objective evidence that homeopathy has any effect on these infections, and I think it is irresponsible for a healthcare worker to promote the use of homeopathy in place of proven treatment for any life-threatening illness.”

Homeopathy fails scientific testing:
http://www.bbc. co.uk/science/ horizon/2002/ homeopathy. shtml

Homeopathy – FAQ
By jaycueaitch
I thought I would post the most frequently asked questions about homeopathy with my answers to them. If I’ve missed any, please let me know.
Q1. Are homeopathy and herbalism the same thing?
A1. No! Herbal remedies are made from plants and frequently contain active ingredients, although the amount varies depending on growing conditions. Homeopathic remedies have been repeatedly diluted until no trace of the active ingredient remains.
Q2.. How is the remedy supposed to have an effect?
A2. Homeopaths claim that the solvent (water or alcohol) remembers the active ingredient. This supposedly happens because the homeopath “succuses” the solution to “potentise” it. This consistes of shaking the container then banging it against a leather covered board. They don’t explain how this happens or offer any evidence that it does. Physicists and chemists have been unable to find this “memory”.
Q3. Do homeopathic remedies work?
A3. Double-blinded trials have shown that they work no better than placebos (sugar pills or water that have not been produced by homeopathic techniques). A double blinded trial is one where neither the givers nor receivers of the medication know who is getting the remedy under test and who is getting a placebo. As an example, consider a trial with 200 patients. A researcher would prepare 200 numbered courses of “medication” but 100 chosen at random would be placebo. The researcher notes which are which but this information is not passed on. The numbered sets of medication are then passed to another researcher who assigns the medication to patients. This researcher should know only their names and nothing else. The assigned sets of medication are then passed to the dispensers, who thus do not know who is getting placebo and who is getting remedy. These people then note the patients response to treatment. At the conclusion, it is revealed who has received what so the effectiveness of the remedy can be assessed. In such tests, homeopathic remedies perform no better than placebos. See here for example.
Q4. Is homeopathy a holistic therapy?
A4. Despite the claims by homeopaths it would appear that the answer to this question is “no”. When Sense About Science and the BBC sent undercover researchers to homeopaths to enquire about malaria prevention, they were sold homeopathic remedies and not told anything about bite prevention. The founder of homeopathy, Samuel Hahnemann, instructed his followers to treat the symptoms as they appeared and when the symptoms disappeared the disease would be cured. This is what modern-day homeopaths accuse orthodox medics of doing. Hahnemann wrote the Organon prior to the germ theory of disease. Modern homeopaths do not have this excuse.
Q5. I read that Louis Pasteur renounced the germ theory on his death bed. Is this true?
A5. The germ theory rests not on Pasteur’s say-so but on experiment and observation – up to and including seeing bacteria under microscopes and viruses with electron microscopes. This allegation about Pasteur is only to be found on homeopathic and other alternative health websites and shows up the fundementally antiscientific nature of alternative medicine in that it argues from authority and not from evidence.
Q6. Are homeopathic remedies free of side effects?
A6. The remedies themselves are free of effects of any kind as pointed out above. However, if you rely on homeopathic remedies to prevent or cure a serious disease such as malaria there is the risk pointed out by Peter Fisher – himself a homeopath – that you may die.
The following have been suggested by blog readers
Q7. What are homeopathic provings?
A7. These are the means by which remedies are chosen. Homeopaths assume that “like cures like” so to treat a patient’s symptoms they give a remedy that causes those symptoms. Samuel Hahnemann tried various full strength poisons on himself and noted the symptoms. Modern homeopaths use pretty much anything that takes their fancy, give out diluted versions of it to their test subjects and whatever happens to the test subjects during the “proving” is assumed to be caused by the remedy. Here you can find links to Society of Homeopaths member Mary English “proving” such things as the Great Wall of China, a shipwreck and a thunderstorm.
Q8. Homeopathic remedies dispensed by homeopaths or sold in high street chemists are almost always pills rather than liquid. Why is this if the remedies are produced by dilution?
A8. The homeopath places a drop of the final dilution onto a sugar pill. The water evaporates and, according to homeopaths, leaves its “memory” of the active ingredient behind.
Q9. Is it true that homeopathy stimulates the immune system?
A9. Homeopaths frequently assert this but offer no evidence in support of it. It is difficult to see how sugar and water do stimulate the immune system in any event. Vaccinations stimulate the immune system but homeopaths often oppose vaccination.

By Lisa Miller, NEWSWEEK
Aug 31, 2009
http://www.newsweek .com/id/212155
America is not a Christian nation. We are, it is true, a nation founded by Christians, and according to a 2008 survey, 76 percent of us continue to identify as Christian (still, that’s the lowest percentage in American history). Of course, we are not a Hindu-or Muslim, or Jewish, or Wiccan-nation, either. A million-plus Hindus live in the United States, a fraction of the billion who live on Earth. But recent poll data show that conceptually, at least, we are slowly becoming more like Hindus and less like traditional Christians in the ways we think about God, our selves, each other, and eternity.
The Rig Veda, the most ancient Hindu scripture, says this: “Truth is One, but the sages speak of it by many names.” A Hindu believes there are many paths to God. Jesus is one way, the Qur’an is another, yoga practice is a third. None is better than any other; all are equal. The most traditional, conservative Christians have not been taught to think like this. They learn in Sunday school that their religion is true, and others are false. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.”
Americans are no longer buying it. According to a 2008 Pew Forum survey, 65 percent of us believe that “many religions can lead to eternal life”-including 37 percent of white evangelicals, the group most likely to believe that salvation is theirs alone. Also, the number of people who seek spiritual truth outside church is growing. Thirty percent of Americans call themselves “spiritual, not religious,” according to a 2009 NEWSWEEK Poll, up from 24 percent in 2005. Stephen Prothero, religion professor at Boston University, has long framed the American propensity for “the divine-deli- cafeteria religion” as “very much in the spirit of Hinduism. You’re not picking and choosing from different religions, because they’re all the same,” he says. “It isn’t about orthodoxy. It’s about whatever works. If going to yoga works, great-and if going to Catholic mass works, great. And if going to Catholic mass plus the yoga plus the Buddhist retreat works, that’s great, too.”
Then there’s the question of what happens when you die. Christians traditionally believe that bodies and souls are sacred, that together they comprise the “self,” and that at the end of time they will be reunited in the Resurrection. You need both, in other words, and you need them forever. Hindus believe no such thing. At death, the body burns on a pyre, while the spirit-where identity resides-escapes. In reincarnation, central to Hinduism, selves come back to earth again and again in different bodies. So here is another way in which Americans are becoming more Hindu: 24 percent of Americans say they believe in reincarnation, according to a 2008 Harris poll. So agnostic are we about the ultimate fates of our bodies that we’re burning them-like Hindus-after death. More than a third of Americans now choose cremation, according to the Cremation Association of North America, up from 6 percent in 1975. “I do think the more spiritual role of religion tends to deemphasize some of the more starkly literal interpretations of the Resurrection, ” agrees Diana Eck, professor of comparative religion at Harvard.
So let us all say “om.”

How the Non-Resident Indian has fallen from grace
Swapan Dasgupta Sunday August 16, 2009
Times of India
There was a time, not all that long ago, when the annual ‘home’ visit of the non-resident uncle or aunt was the most important item in the dreary social calendar of a middle-class Indian family. An air of expectancy would fill the household as the bulky suitcases were unpacked and the gifts distributed — a muffler for the grandfather, a cardigan and a bottle of perfume for mother, a duty-free Johnnie Walker for father, denim jeans for the teenager, chocolates for the neighbour and a compact umbrella for the old maid. We would be shown photographs of the spacious suburban house and the big car which would be contrasted with the creaking 12-yearold Fiat outside.
Until the early 1990s, India was home to a middle-class that lived in a state of permanent deprivation. However much we loved our country and waved the flag on the few occasions India won a Test match, our Third World status confronted us incessantly. Although life was never as unbearable as in the Communist bloc, we lacked those little luxuries that make drudgery bearable.
Leaving India was an idea assiduously nurtured if you were audacious and ambitious. The grass, it was known, was far greener in the West. There, despite the social and racial disdain an immigrant was subjected to, you could make it with hard work and some enterprise. In the social milieu of the West, the expatriate Indian counted for very little. Barring the odd exception, he could never make it to the inside track of the power structure. But he ensured for himself a relatively decent standard of living. True it was a life minus servants, but it was also minus the hassles of unending shortages, petty corruption and telephones that worked erratically.
It wasn’t merely the Green Card and, ultimately, the coveted blue American or red British passport that made the NRI feel more superior. It mattered to him that his superiority was recognised and acknowledged at home. Despite not being there for 11 months in the year, the NRI became the centre of attraction in the family. He was fawned upon when he came home to India; his pronouncements were heard with awe and reverence; and he was flattered by banks and governments into parting with his few surplus dollars, in exchange for extraordinary benefits denied to rupee earners.
Nor was the importance of the NRI confined to the family. Even mighty politicians and stand-offish babus courted NRIs with an eye on some crumbs of hospitality during visits abroad. In the 1970s and 1980s, i encountered many petty travel agents, restaurant owners and property speculators in the Indian ghettos of London who counted for little in Britain but who had free access into the houses of our politicians.
All this seems a long time ago. The balance of power began tilting against the NRI sometime in the late 1990s. First, the government of India lifted the absurd restrictions on foreign travel and the purchase of hard currency by resident Indians. More important, you could use your Indian credit card abroad and not scrounge for NRI hospitality. Secondly, the spurt in domestic manufacturing and free imports implied that you didn’t have to depend on the visiting NRI for those little extras. Since many of the best global brands are available in India at competitive prices, the shopping list of discerning Indian travellers have shrunk dramatically to include only the exotic. Finally, the globalisation of Indian business signalled the end of a one-sided flow of capital. It’s no longer a case of India depending on NRI munificence but the West wooing Indian capital.
The average NRI’s fall from grace in India has been precipitate. The vacuous condescension that marked earlier attitudes has been replaced by desperation to find some accommodation somewhere. The big NRI players have no problem — they have seen their social worth in the West keep pace with India’s soaring reputation as a rising power. But the small fish whose tie and a twang once enabled him to lord over his less fortunate brethren in India has seen envy replaced with disinterest.
To the NRI confronted with a precarious descent into obscurity, there is only a small solace: interventions on the net. Taking advantage of a more connected world, the professional NRI (who knows no other identity) has stepped up his battles to cast India in his own confused image. No Indian website is free from the voluminous but pernicious comments of the know-all, ultra-nationalist NRI banging away on the computer in splendid isolation. From being India’s would-be benefactors, the meddlesome NRI has become an intellectual nuisance, derailing civil discourse with his paranoia and pseudo-superiority. It’s time he was royally ignored.

Chicago, Aug 16 (IANS) Actor Shah Rukh Khan’s two-hour detention and questioning at the Newark International Airport could well be a result of the random selection parameter built into the US immigration’s security system rather than racial profiling.
Now whether that parameter was designed deliberately to focus on people of certain names, religion, background, nationality or race is a different story altogether. On the face of it, Khan may have been randomly picked out by the US Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services’ database. The system at the airport threw up Khan’s name for any number of variable reasons. It is hard to speculate on the algorithm that triggered it.
Someone might argue that the Khan = Muslim = possible terrorist = detention logic, although profoundly offensive, it seems to have been built into the system with the rationale that it is better to humiliate a thousand innocent Khans than let a potential terrorist Khan enter the US.
However, this explanation does not make sense because Khan has been visiting the US for many years. As a matter of fact, he only recently finished a shooting schedule of his latest film “My Name is Khan”, which ironically deals with the kind of stereotyping and profiling that he just experienced.
Isn’t the Bureau’s database designed in a way where the immigration officer, who detained Khan, could have instantly pulled up the actor’s record and known about his many past visits? Apparently not, because once the system randomly selects someone it is expected of the officer in question to go through the standard procedure of detention for questioning.
At some level it is understandable that the whole security apparatus has been designed to not just take out potential terrorists in their first attempt but to disrupt their operation at any and every stage. No one at the Bureau is likely to acknowledge that the system works the way it does because of a built-in combination of intelligent and brute logic as well as preordained bias.
Forget the Bureau’s own database; a simple Google search of Khan’s name would have at the very least made the detaining officer question his action. There are 3,610,000 search results of his name on Google. Depending on when it is searched this number is sometimes even higher. Such a Google search should have stopped any reasonable immigration officer in their tracks to wonder that for a terrorist, Khan has managed a fantastic cover of being one of the world’s biggest movie stars.
Perhaps behind creating a security system that depends as much on brute and random logic as intelligent sifting was the deeply embarrassing case of Mohammad Atta, the ringleader of the 9/11 terror attacks.
In 2005, Navy Captain Scott J. Phillpott, who was in charge of the Pentagon’s counter-terrorism project codenamed ‘Able Danger’, created a stir when he said in January 2000 his team had identified Atta as a member of an Al-Qaeda terror cell operating in Brooklyn, New York. And yet Atta was able to travel in and out of the US unmolested. Atta’s lapse was attributed to the fact that he first went by part of his name as Mohamed el-Amir and eventually travelled to the US in June 2000 as Mohammed Atta.
The result of the security churning that followed 9/11 was the compilation of a list of nearly 1.1 million names who were either terror suspects or people of interest by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The list has been a subject of serious scrutiny and criticism by civil liberties groups, which believe it is sweeping in its reach and more often than not throws up those who have absolutely nothing to do with any terrorist groups.
An internal audit report recently quoted by The Washington Times underscored the failures in managing the list. It said there were at least 10 people who should have been kept out of the US according to the list but were allowed to enter while there were many more who should not have been on it but remain there.
It quoted Democratic Senator Patrick J. Leahy, who as the chairman of the Judiciary Committee has oversight of the FBI, as saying “that the FBI continues to fail to place subjects of terrorism investigations on the watch list is unacceptable”.
“Disturbingly, (the) report reveals that in 72 percent of the cases, the FBI has also failed to remove subjects from the list in a timely manner. … Given the very real and negative consequences to which people on the watch list are subjected, this is unacceptable.”
It is not clear whether Khan’s name is on this list or not but the fact he showed up on the immigration’s database it is conceivable that a similar name is on it. However, it should be rather easy for the law enforcement agencies to specifically exclude someone of Khan’s global recognition from such a list.
Now that every visitor to the US and even permanent residents are fully fingerprinted on arrival every time it is hard to comprehend why specific names attached to specific fingerprints and passport numbers cannot be exempted. For some reason once a person gets on the FBI watch list it is very difficult to get off. The Washington Times story said some 65,000 names were audited and more than a third of it were outdated.
Security experts say that the random selection parameter is designed to make preventive determination more effective. They acknowledge that one of the negative fallouts is that many innocent people get singled out because of this parameter. They also point out that when the national threat index is higher the system is designed to become less discriminating. In simple terms, during heightened alerts it is possible that the system will sweep up many more people with a set of specific names and backgrounds than it would normally do.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, for all domestic and international flights, the current US threat level is High, or Orange, which is just below the highest Red. That may partly explain how the actor was singled out because of his name. It is a form of profiling based on many parameters such as names, religion, ethnicity and nationality.
As Khan acknowledged the immigration officials were polite but the question is not one of etiquette but effectiveness. Khan managed to stir up those who matter because of who he is. Lesser mortals might have had to go through a more nerve-racking experience once red flags go up against their names and they are asked to step aside at the immigration counter.
(Mayank Chhaya is the editor of South Asia Daily in the US. He can be contacted at m@literateworld.com)