Eideard

Click to enlarge
By Vytautas Ambrazas

A monthly winner in the “The Cazenove and Loyd Leica Travel Photographer Competition 2011″. Now that competition has come to an end all 12 monthly winners go to the Grand Final.

Interview by Alan Moorehead

It is the violence of Gandhi’s death, this complete and contemptuous negation of everything he lived for, which is the shocking thing. Yet paradoxically, this is the aesthetic end to a life of non-violence, the end which, one imagines, the old man would have chosen for himself.

I remember, in the very middle of the war, I went as a war correspondent to interview him in Delhi. It was an excessively hot afternoon and I sat cross-legged on the floor sweating through my army uniform. Gandhi leaned back on a white bolster, wearing nothing but a loincloth, and he said amiably: “What is the good of our talking? You and the people you represent are committed to violence. I am interested only in non-violence. We have nothing to say to one another.”

I asked him if he was prepared to see the Japanese invade India (they were then very close in Burma) “Why not?” he said. “They can’t kill us all.” He went on to propound his famous doctrine: never oppose violence with violence. “Non-violence,” he said, “requires an even higher kind of courage than violence. You must be just as prepared to lay down your life – even more so.” I remember how cheerful he was that afternoon, how healthy with his great brown barrel of a chest, and how wittily he talked.

Nor was he much changed when I went to one or two of his prayer meetings in Delhi this winter. He was still getting up at four in the morning to exercise, he was still the nimblest (and I think the gayest) good brain in India, and he was still talking in parables on precisely the same theme.

Of course he becomes a martyr now; more than that – a mystical legend and a god. It is probably a waste of time trying to assess him in western terms. Inevitably, the mysticism and the fatalism intervene, blocking out all logic. I do not think Jawaharlal Nehru and the others ever expected practical politics from Gandhi, but they were inspired by him just the same. They loved him passionately.

I never met anyone in India who came away from a meeting with the old man without being captivated and in a slightly elevated condition of mind. He had an overpowering charm under that humility. He talked hard common sense as a rule and the mysticism ran between the lines.

What happens now? It seems almost impossible to be optimistic. The country has lost its figurehead, its living public conscience. Who is to speak against racial hatred now with that authority? The British kept the peace with police and prestige and Gandhi did it with love. Now, within six short months, both police and love have vanished together. Perhaps enough of his followers will obey his creed of non-violence. Whatever the immediate effect may be, at least his influence in the long run can only be for the good.

He has been missed in so many ways.

Giving a first major public sign that they may be ready for formal talks with the American-led coalition in Afghanistan, the Taliban announced Tuesday that they had struck a deal to open a political office in Qatar that could allow for direct negotiations over the endgame in the Afghan war.

The step was a reversal of the Taliban’s longstanding public denials that they were involved in, or even willing to consider, talks related to their insurgency, and it had the potential to revive a reconciliation effort that stalled in September, with the assassination of the head of Afghanistan’s High Peace Council…

American officials have said in recent months that the opening of a Taliban mission would be the single biggest step forward for peace efforts that have been plagued by false starts. The most embarrassing came in November 2010, when it emerged that an impostor had fooled Western officials into thinking he represented the Taliban and then had disappeared with hundreds of thousands of dollars used to woo him…

The opening of an office in Qatar is meant to give Afghan and Western peace negotiators an “address” where they can openly contact legitimate Taliban intermediaries. That would open the way for confidence-building measures that Washington hopes to press forward in the coming months. Chief among them, American officials said, is the possibility of transferring a number of “high-risk” detainees — including some with ties to Al Qaeda — to Afghan custody from Guantánamo Bay. The prisoners would then presumably be freed later…

The American officials said that another idea under consideration was the establishment of cease-fire zones within Afghanistan, although that prospect was more uncertain and distant. The officials asked not to be identified because of the delicacy of the talks.

Plus – they just may not have a clue of what they’re talking about.

RTFA. Longish with lots of detail. The most interesting part – to me – is that Qatar volunteered to host this potential peace process.

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has sternly rebuked the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, in an unusually fractious telephone call, according to media reports…

The Israeli prime minister telephoned Merkel on Monday to say he was disappointed that Germany had voted for a UN security council resolution condemning settlements that was vetoed by the US.

According to a German official quoted by Haaretz, Merkel was furious. “How dare you?” she said. “You are the one who has disappointed us. You haven’t made a single step to advance peace…”

The quoted comments reflect growing impatience in Europe with the impasse in the Israeli-Palestinian talks and a belief that Israel is stalling or impeding progress. With the exception of the US last Friday’s resolution was backed by all the security council members including Britain, Germany and France.

Despite the resolution being carefully worded to reflect American policy on settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the US wielded its veto for the first time under Barack Obama’s presidency…

Netanyahu told Merkel that he was planning a new initiative to be disclosed in the next few weeks. “I intend to make a new speech about the peace process in the next two to three weeks,” he was quoted as saying.

The only thing Netanyahu is interested in advancing is more rightwing politics in Israel. If he must stretch himself to vent more hot air and lies into the diplomatic ether – so be it. He has plenty of practice.

And he knows he can count on the United States Congress and the White House to back whatever crap lies he utters.

Soldier who thinks these kids admire something more than his hardware
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

The Pentagon announced $178 billion in cost savings over five years but softened the blow by recycling much of the money into other programs and helping pay down the budget deficit by trimming its bureaucracy.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the Pentagon would achieve the savings partially by taking the extraordinary step of reducing U.S. troop levels. He also announced cuts or cancellations of poorly performing weapons programs, including a $13-billion Marine Corps landing craft, designed by General Dynamics Corp.

The budget proposal is already raising hackles in some quarters of Congress, which ultimately controls the Defense Department’s budget…

Hackles belonging to members of Congress beholden to the military-industrial complex. Fools whose understanding of economics are grounded in [1] 19th Century imperial economics and politics – and [2] personal gain.

Gates said the military services had come up with $100 billion in savings over five years that would be redirected within other military programs. He said an additional $78 billion would go toward deficit reduction, made up primarily of $54 billion in Pentagon-wide savings, changes to economic assumptions, and cutting troop strength beginning in 2015.

The plan calls for cancellation of a ground-launched missile built by Raytheon Co, and the second overhaul in a year of the Pentagon’s largest weapons program: Lockheed Martin Corp’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

Under the proposal, the Pentagon would trim its force levels by up to 47,000 U.S. troops starting in 2015. That is long after U.S. troops are due to leave Iraq at the end of this year. It is also the year when U.S. war planners hope to hand over responsibility for Afghan security to local forces.

Someday – just maybe, someday – we may elect a Congress which will turn the dollars dedicated to death and destruction, imperial power and greed, to ends productive for our whole nation.

Regal hypocrites proud of being boring and backwards
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

John Kerry says the Senate is prepared to vote on a nuclear arms treaty with Russia.

“We are certainly prepared to move for a vote,” he said on the Senate floor. “I want to emphasize that there are no amendments from colleagues on the Democratic side. We are prepared to vote on this treaty … We will take any amendment at any time…”

The treaty would resume mutual inspections of U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals while limiting both nations to 1,550 warheads and 700 launchers each…

Some Senate Republicans have opposed bringing the measure up with so little time left in the lame-duck session. Opening debate on the measure was stalled Thursday night when the chamber moved on to other issues.

Senate Democrats were trying to make progress on considering the treaty despite a Republican threat to block any legislation brought up before the Senate acts on a measure authorizing continued government spending. On Wednesday, senators voted 66-32 to take up the treaty.

The treaty cleared the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in September and has been endorsed by leading Republican figures, including former President George H.W. Bush and Lugar of Indiana.

RTFA. Trudge through the Byzantine logic employed by useless pimps for the lobbyist class that rules Congress.

Hypocrites, liars, demagogues of the worst sort, the U.S. Senate is the ultimate modern example of institutionalized corruption.

A “Peach” of a police dog
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Meet Japan’s newest police dog — all 3 kg of her.

In what is a first for Japan and perhaps the world, a long-haired Chihuahua named “Momo” — “Peach” — passed exams to become a police dog in the western Japanese prefecture of Nara.

The brown-and-white, perky Momo was one of 32 successful candidates out of 70 dogs, passing a search and rescue test by finding a person in five minutes after merely sniffing their cap.

“Any breed of dog can be entered to become a police dog in the search and rescue division,” said a Nara police spokesman…

Momo will be used for rescue operations in case of disasters such as earthquakes, in the hope that she may be able to squeeze her tiny frame into places too narrow for more usual rescue dogs, which tend to be German Shepherds.

Good for you – little Peach.

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

With critical decisions ahead on the war in Afghanistan, President Obama is about to receive an unusual opportunity to reshape the Pentagon’s leadership, naming a new defense secretary as well as several top generals and admirals in the next several months.

It is a rare confluence of tenure calendars and personal calculations, coming midway through Mr. Obama’s first term and on the heels of an election that challenged his domestic policies. His choices could have lasting consequences for his national security agenda, perhaps strengthening his hand over a military with which he has often clashed, and are likely to have an effect beyond the next election, whether he wins or loses.

That is all the more reason that Mr. Obama’s choices are certain to face scrutiny in a narrowly divided Senate, whose Republican leadership has declared itself intent on defeating him.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has said he plans to retire next year, while the terms of four members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are scheduled to end: Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman; Gen. James E. Cartwright, the vice chairman; Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the Army chief; and Adm. Gary Roughead, the chief of naval operations…

At the top of the new pantheon of military power, the president needs a heavyweight to succeed Mr. Gates, an unexpected holdover from the Bush administration who stayed longer than many expected to become perhaps the most influential member of the Obama cabinet…

Any commander in chief is theoretically free to replace his top civilian and military subordinates whenever he chooses, but it rarely happens all at once.

RTFA. Long, it contains all the what-ifs and scary-terrorist-under-the-bed scenarios plus a few Cold War clangers thrown in for good measure.

I presume the Republicans will try to build a furious defense against any change, any progress in modernizing our military – and worst of all – any attempt to reduce taxpayer welfare to the military-industrial corporations who still own the oldest geezers in the Republican Party.

Removing Israeli cluster bomblets in Lebanon

A global treaty banning cluster munitions has gone into force.

The Convention on Cluster Munitions, which became binding international law today, prohibits the use, production and stockpiling of the weapon, which is blamed for killing and maiming tens of thousands of civilians…

The treaty requires signatories to destroy stockpiled cluster munitions within eight years, clear contaminated areas within 10 years and help affected communities and survivors…

Cluster bombs are dropped from planes or fired by mortars before the canisters open mid-air, releasing bomblets that scatter over a wide area. Most explode immediately, but those that fail to detonate on impact can claim victims many years after the end of the conflict…

More than two dozen countries have been affected by cluster bombs and activists say three out of five casualties occur during day-to-day activities.

Most of the victims are children and some are killed when they mistake the bomblets for toys.

The United Nations estimates almost half of all casualties are from Laos, where people are still at risk of being injured from unexploded bomblets.

Between 1964 and 1973, at the height of Vietnam War, the US military dropped more than 2 million tons of explosive ordnance, including an estimated 260 million cluster munitions, mainly to disrupt enemy supply lines that passed through Laos.

It is thought that around 30 per cent of bomblets failed to explode on impact, and over two-thirds of the country is still contaminated. Experts say they kill or injure about 300 people a year.

Thank you – to the nations with stockpiles of these weapons – who nevertheless signed the treaty, will eliminate these anti-civilian weapons and respect the ban: UK, France, Germany and Japan.

China, Russia and Israel have not signed on either. I hope you’re all happy in bed together.

What was the really big demonstration in Washington DC over this weekend? Was it the teabaggers bringing their bigot baggage to town? Or my peacenik brothers and sisters still pissed because Obama and the Obamacrats have decided they can do military imperialism more successfully than the Republicans?

Sorry, folks. In fact, it was a rally for undocumentados.

Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in the U.S. capital on Sunday to demand immigration reform that defends the rights of foreign workers, but their voices may have been muted by Democrats’ push for a historic vote on healthcare.

Carrying signs that said “Justice and Dignity for All U.S. Immigrants” and “We just want to work,” the immigration activists filled five blocks of the National Mall. Some protesters wore T-shirts that read, “Our journey as immigrants is a journey for human rights.”

New York Democratic Representative Nydia Velazquez said: “Every day without reform is a day that 12 million hard-working immigrants must live in the shadow of fear, and … a day that a family is torn apart. That is wrong and it is unAmerican…”

President Barack Obama benefited in 2008 from a huge Hispanic turnout, drawn by his promise to deliver immigration reform allowing millions of illegal immigrants a path to citizenship.

Frustrated that Obama has yet to fulfill a pledge to overhaul the nation’s immigration system, immigration supporters have warned him to deliver this year or face the consequences in congressional elections in November…

While Hispanics are seen as unlikely to switch support to Republicans, who have fought immigration reform without a clampdown on illegal immigrants, they could hurt Democrats by failing to turn out at the polls.

Which is a funny way to put it. Republicans have traditionally opposed anyone being able to immigrate here unless they had education and skills and could pass for white.

So, which is it? Americans have the attention span of a cricket? Americans multi-tasking is watching TV and drinking a beer at the same time? Or must we always rely on the entertainment mavens who control what passes for news drooling from the lips of well-sculpted talking heads?