THE WAY I SEE IT

-ROTO CHOBIN

We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter. – Denis Diderot

HYPOCRISY AND CHINA-BASHING

We saw many men and women jumping on the bandwagon of anti-china campaign. Amongst the campaigner was the ex-Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton who appealed George Bush to boycott the opening ceremony of Olympic because she is concern about human rights in China as if the human rights are not violated in USA. Shall we forget about the detainee in Guantanamo Bay prison? Shall we forget the invasion of Iraq and the photographic images of prisoner in Abu Ghraib prison? Killing of more than 1.2 million non-combatant Iraqis in the last five years is perhaps insignificant because the killing is taking place in Iraq, not in the land of American, British or Canadian.

Barrack Hussein Obama and John Sidney McCain also joined in a chorus of boos. And it was expected. They had to because the pull of Oval Office demands so. Let’s see if warmonger and Vietnam War veteran John McCain will be able to secure the president chair. I wish he fails as his presence in the white house will remind many to the era of “Baby Killer”, “Napalm Bomb” and “Agent Orange”. Hope that Hollywood star Mia Farrow and Steven Spielberg would now say something about the oppression and mal-treatment of native/marginal ethnic community in US.

On February 28, 2002 in Gujarat Muslims were massacred mercilessly and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) justified the genocide citing Newton’s law of action-reaction. In 2008, BJP is coming out in support of ‘Free Tibet’. They even want to show solidarity with the Spiritual leader of Tibet and the separatist cause. Wow! It indeed sounds great. Or was it just another case of double standard?

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and President Nicholas Sarkozy of France, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon have also expressed their intention – not to attend the Olympic. Do they want to turn the Olympic Games into a political arena? As far as I know, French thinker and educator Pierre de Coubertin made the proposition to revive Olympic Games of ancient Greece to promote WORLD PEACE. But in quest of global hegemony and under finger-pointing situation, world peace looks rather unattainable. On the contrary, resurgence of cold war seems more real. After the disintegration of USSR in 1991, it appears that the China being a communist country becomes an obvious target.

All this is not to say that China is unblemished. In fact, the insincerities of Chinese government come to the fore whenever they show their resentment with Japanese officials who pay a visit to the controversial Yasukuni shrine, which is associated with extreme militarism and dedicated to Japan’s war dead whereas they had already exhibited the extreme militarism in Tianenmen Square Protest, where People’s Liberation Army brutally crushed pro-democracy supporters and killed hundreds of their own compatriot. Then there were Tibetan rebels in 1959 Tibetan uprising. In 1980, China had admitted that Tibet has been misgoverned. It’s pointless to say that Tibet has been misgoverned when the Tibetans don’t want to be governed by them.


HYPOCRISY CONTINUES…

Kosovo parliament on 17 February 2008 declared independence from Serbia. And Germany became the first country to recognize Kosovo as sovereign state by renaming its diplomatic office as an embassy. The US, UK, France along with 19 out of 27 European Union states has formally recognized the republic of Kosovo. Why only Kosovo, Tibet and Israel should be supported by west. Why is that separatists like Tamil Eelam, Chechnya, Kashmir and Nagaland do not get equal attention as their counterparts. They too have the right of self-determination. Is it because these separatists would not take part in a puppet play and doesn’t fit in the game plan?


ISRAEL – PALESTINIAN IMBROGLIO

Before the introduction of cable TV, we only read and heard about Israel-Palestinian conflict. Now the bloodbath is taking place right in our drawing room. We see Israeli missiles being thrown at Palestinian. We saw journalist and civilian being killed by it. We see rubble and ruins, destitute and sufferer.

And so much blood and bitter tears had been shed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet there’s no moment of respite. Solution to this maelstrom of skirmishes seems far from imminent considering that both Israeli and Palestinian is hooked in the chicken-and-egg dilemma. Israeli wouldn’t give up the occupied territories because of terrorism and the Palestinian in order to regain their territory would not stop suicide attacks.

One wonder doesn’t the condition of Gaza remind the Israelites of Ghetto or concentration camp and lebensraum concept of Hitler? In the eye of onlooker, it is virtually as similar as holocaust or in Jewish terms – shoah. Palestinian seems to exist in the same condition as Jews in ghettos during Nazi time – appalling living condition, frustration, desolation, hopelessness. If Israelites have any respect for their forefather who perished in the holocaust, they ought to think of a fresh peace talk, which should be based on honest peace process and, more importantly, honoring the peace accord.

As to international peace brokers in the Middle East peace process, they truly need to work as an unadulterated mediator – disallowing bias views and extreme lobbying. If not, we just have to say: Long live Nazism! Long live genocide!


ALL THAT GLITTER IS GOLD

It is absolutely not necessary that one must drink Pepsi and Coca Cola because people will not die if they don’t drink this stuff. A person could manage with plain water. PepsiCo and Coca Cola Co. have often hit the headlines in India for exhausting ground water, which is required for irrigation. Moreover, land swallowed by this kind of redundant industries can be used for growing crops to feed millions and millions of people. We need solid food – not carbonated water – to survive. Turning the farmland into fuel land as in the USA and elsewhere, and Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in India, China, South East Asia and Middle East, I dare say, has made a great impact on food crisis. And we recently saw the consequent of it when the people in Bolivia, Cameroon, Egypt, Indonesia, Senegal and Uzbekistan had went on the rampage to protest against the scarcity of food and rising food prices.

Again, we don’t need any cheap car like Tata Nano. We could manage with public transport. And it is just that we are being brainwashed and pushed by corporate, and allowed them to inculcate in our mind that we really are desperate for cheap car. Or am I wrong in thinking that food have precedence over luxurious items. Besides, who is going to peer inside your stomach if it is full or empty? It is façade that matter most to the people. Thus, we have a flashy cars and a wanton war to procure oil to keep those flashy cars on the run.


GLOBAL’S CAPITAL

Twenty-five years ago, when I was a kid I used to put out a mug filled with water or milk or black tea at night on the byaggo or uko sembya (unroofed porch) like all other kids at Ziro. And, in the morning, we would find our mug froze from top to bottom. So without the help of refrigerating technology we could make ice creams. And we certainly did take pleasure in those indigenous ice creams. But it’s all gone now. Three inches
thick ice has turned into wafer thin. And the summer is getting unbearable. So we do not need any scientists to tell us that the global warming is not real.

Civil Society Coalition on Climate Change (CSCCC) reports (available at http://www.csccc.info) – which seems to me more like a report on what the rich can do and the poor cannot, rather than climate change – suggests oneself to adapt with climate change instead of doing something to reduce the agent that cause global warming. What else can we do than adapt if the hypocrite is not ready to give up their hypocrite lifestyle? And while going through this report it occurs to me that those collective geniuses at CSCCC almost exhaust the word ‘insurance’ that reminds me and reintroduce me to the year 1997-98 when a large number of bigoted people of Arunachal were struck by fear psychosis because an obsessive scientist from Assam predicted a massive destructive earthquake in Arunachal. I doubted a nexus between that obsessive scientist and insurance company. There never was any investigation. It is an ironic that people believed such whimsical prediction while everyone shelves the topic of global warming.

Furthermore, CSCCC wrote so much about wealth in their report that makes the report virtually farce and unreliable. Believe it or not, according to CSCCC report, the wealth is a cure for all ailments. There’s no doubt; nearly half of the world population or more than that will vindicate that Money makes the world go round.

If money is that much important, then let’s make money. That’s not a big deal. Eh? First, we have to forget about the “GHGs” and “Asian Brown Haze”. Athletes who seem to be concern about their health in a polluted environment, let’s say Beijing, need to adapt with high level pollution of land, air and water. More importantly, the restriction imposed on Arunachal for doing indiscriminate timber business has to be revoked as Arunachal has an abundant supply of Burmese teak and pinewood. After all, it brings in a lot of money. Besides, legions of people who went solvent after the ban may once again become a filthy rich. And when enough money will be made, we can have caviar everyday. And when the sturgeon fish will extinct, we could always devour each other. We seem to be very proficient at that.


THE MORE, THE MERRIER

Very few journals are capable of catching my attention and one such is OUTLOOK magazine. In mid-June 2008, they brought out an issue with special reference to environment. Honestly, it was excellent. But I couldn’t help myself marveling at consideration that outlook group have already six titles in their control and, of late, they had launched one more journal. Hmm… how many trees would that be? Perhaps, this is what we call onslaught on consumer by media.

With that, the writer rests.