(One)
To have made Saddam Hossein a martyr
is going to prove the gravest ever mistake
any US President has committed. Their mistakes
always outweigh their good deeds. Saddam Hossein
was not an angel; he committed crimes; any
ruler of his stature would have done. Angela
Davis was imprisoned for crimes committed
on her, not for crimes committed by her. It
was done by the US govt. Mohammed Ali ( Casius
Clay) was denied his freedom several times;
Malcolm X was assassinated not when he committed
crimes, but when he became moderate and took
a middle path. Martin Luther King was assassinated
in the United States of America. The assassin
killed Gandhi after touching his feet. So
crimes are to be punished; but who will punish
whom? This is a very dangerous question these
days. Milosevic was in prison; he was imprisoned
by foreigners. His country is as civilized
or more civilized than the countries that
imprisoned him. It has the traditions of the
Hellenic civilizations. President Noriega
has been imprisoned on the ground that he
trafficked in drugs. But, just think who imprisoned
him and why? Where is he now? Where are the
millions of Wampanoags and Cherokees and the
multitudinous Indian tribals of America? They
were all killed in cold blood. And who would
punish whom? Benjamin Franklin did know very
well that he was successor to the killers
of the American tribes. Abraham Lincoln knew
so, Thomas Jefferson knew so. Emerson knew
so and Whitman knew so. Did anyone mention
the crime? Who would punish whom? It is high
time the US regretted this wholesale killing.
It is high time the Latin American and North
American Rulers that hailed from the west
in not so distant a past regretted these killings.
And has any one of them uttered a word in
grief over the souls that roam about in the
dark and void? No, No, No.
Just think, how many American Presidents would
have been hanged or in imprisoned had the
number of people killed by each is the criterion
for punishment? Who killed thousands at one
stretch in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Who helped
Pinochet to kill in cold blood innocent people
who were suspected to be political opponents?
Who are the persons that run the Al-Garib
and Gondonamo prisons? And now who will punish
whom?
And who ran the wicked Goree island prisons
to encamp the Negroe slaves in order to
mollify them by physical torture? The whites
and their successors seem to glee in sadism
of unheard sort. But we know most whites
are not of this caliber. Among them are
great men and women. Among them are great
peace lovers and fighters for freedom.
And now who has punished Hossein? The arch-angels
of demoniac tendencies called him names
and have put an end to his life. History
would certainly record this judicial murder,
a great blunder; because this would not
stop bloods shed in Iraq and elsewhere,
but only perpetrate it.
The world seems to be going some what railed
and derailed. It is a paradox indeed. Rail
is really the law of history. That is why
Gordon Childe equated history with a train
installing its own rails. George Bush &co
seems to be some what disturbed by the developments
in the USA and the American continent. A
number of countries in the American continent
have turned left or near left. The victory
of Lulu in Brazil and Sandinistas under
Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua is a good indicator
of where America is heading to. With Chavez,
Morales, and Michaela Bachelet at the helm
of governments in their respective countries
and even countries like Uruguay turning
left, peace should have been the best choice
for the USA. Naturally peace lovers the
world over must have been mollified. But
aggressors never learn lessons. They always
augment tension. A tension free world would
have contributed greatly to prosperity.
Peace is the pre-condition for progress.
Progress, of course, is material growth
in different dimensions- economic, technological
and what not! In spite of greed and war,
mankind has achieved so much. Without war,
human attainments would have been greater.
It is also spiritual growth by way of culture
and arts, thought and meditation, painting
and poetry, and, of course, cinema and drama.
These have also developed to a very great
extent.
There is a tendency to equate class struggle
with aggressive imperialist wars. Never.
Class struggle is a natural law. Systems
will have to change, and this change is
not physical annihilation and robbing of
material wealth and destruction of history
and culture and heritage. Class struggle
is the operation of the dialectics of nature.
Imperialist aggression is the operation
of the anti-human forces to annihilate a
part of humanity. We do not deny that certain
attempts to speed up this operation were
erroneous; but it does not mean that class
struggle can be stopped.
It is in this context, this editorial,
once again, deplores George Bush for his
attempt to enhance the US military strength
in Iraq. Earlier we had condemned the proliferation
of hostilities by the US and its satellites
in different parts of the world. We again
do that; we also condemn the escalation
of war by the imperialists, by hook or by
crook, in many parts of the world.
We are not for nuclear weapons; for that
matter, we are of the view that nuclear
tests and utilization of nuclear energy
should be stopped once and for all. However,
the US that has heaped nuclear weapons that
could destroy the whole world for a number
of times sermonizes to the world of the
danger of the nuclear armaments! It is an
irony. US should disarm itself in the nuclear
sphere. Only then it gets the moral force
to ask others to do that. Without moral
force any advice becomes invalid. Not even
a worm should be attacked for a cause for
which its slayer is not standing for; US
is doing that; it is always imposing its
dictates, not imparting its moral force.
(Two)
India is getting a slice of nuclear power,
she thinks. My poor country, my beloved
India. She is entangled in the tentacles
of Imperialist octopus. She will get nothing,
but bones! But a dog that tries to go back
to the days when it was a wolf, bones would
suffice. Are we all going primitive and
savage again? Are we going to kill and get
killed again? The Indian program of nuclear
activity is known in the name of the Buddha.
What a catastrophe of language! The cataclysmic
coinage of a nomenclature! We should be
ashamed, certainly. India could very well
have done without a treaty with the United
States. India could continue its own natural
foreign policy. But alas, wisdom is a thing
arriving only when it is too late. See the
change in Govt of India attitude towards
the decree to kill Saddam Hossein; in the
first instance it was a justification of
the judgment to kill him; the foreign affairs
minister was saying that the judgment to
kill Saddam would be accepted by the world
and Iraq with cordiality. Now the Govt of
India stance has changed to a request not
to kill him. Where had this wisdom gone?
(Three)
I feel the ezine, so far, has been liked
by its readers. It has been rich in poems
and articles. The fourth issue also does
have thorns and flowers. I fear my forthright
views have cost me many friends. I am sorry
for them. How could I dilute my opinions
for the sake of a few men or women who indulged
in self-deceit? I could not. I hope the
world developments would open their eyes.
I make this appeal because I have loved
and liked them all. I have seen a beautiful
poem on (rather against) war by Joop Bersee
in www.kritya.in. I would have liked this
poem to be in my ezine; I am sad I could
not have it. It is a powerful work of poetry
with a well-dimensioned vision.
This issue has a lot of poems in it. This
time the editor’s choice has two poems:
one from Dawn Zapletal and the other from
Mariam Ala Amjadi; they represent two generations;
but astonishingly , both have great poetic
appeal in their very simple way of coining
and joining words. A writer in Malayalam
had once asked: “After all what is
literature but a pack of synonyms?”
I do not subscribe to the view. But we must
admit that words and their combination constitute
literature. And the poems I have added in
this issue represent some of the best combinations
of words. The specialty in this issue is
an interview by Farideh Hasan Zadeh with
Annie Finch; the interview part also has
the views on poetry by Mariam Ala Amjadi
in an interview with the same interviewer.
(Four)
I am writing this on the Christmas occasion.
The man who said that it is as difficult
for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven
as it is for the camel to enter through
the eye of a needle was born in the winter
of a year about two thousand years ago.
The man who professed the fatherhood of
God and brother hood of man still lives
with us. He stood for peace and equality
and love. He was a loving God. We have only
frowning gods around us. Like the grandma
of Maxim Gorky, we always wish to have loving
gods in and around us. And a new year is
in the offing. Let us dream again a world
of peace and harmony, where the lion and
goat stay together in the same stable, a
world where the US and Korea or Syria or
Iran could stay together in peace and love,
a world where Israel and Palestine could
embrace in amity and joy. Children would
laugh in splendour and their laughter would
be splashes of streams where human love
is flowing. I do remember the cruel photographs
I had to publish in the last issue on the
atrocities on children of Lebanon. I despise
them. I hope the world would not have to
view such photographs again!
And now the fourth issue of www.thanalonline.com
is in your hands.
With love, with a merry Christmas greeting
And with happy New Year greetings,
Yours sincerely,
C.P.Aboobacker, Editor
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