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Today's Stories April 1 / 2, 2006 Alexander Cockburn Truth and Fiction in Elie Wiesel's "Night" March 31, 2006 Gary Leupp Better Off Under Saddam: an Inventory Patrick Cockburn Mosul Slips Out of Control Saree Makdisi Israeli Elections Big Winner: Avigdor Lieberman Ron Jacobs Where Capital is Not God: France Shows the Way Mark Engler There's Much More to be Done on Third World Debt Relief Curtis F.J. Doebbler An Appeal to International Lawyers: Hold Bush Accountable for Flauting International Law Laith al-Saud Iraq is Not in Civil War (Yet); It's Under Occupation Website of the Day Boobies, Dolphins and Flying Fish: Sailing the African Coast     March 30, 2006 Uri Avnery Israeli Elections: What the Hell Has Happened? Sen. Russell Feingold A Fact Check on a Presidential Crime: Myth vs. Reality on Bush's Warrantless Wiretapping Program Winslow T. Wheeler The Saga of the Joint Strike Fighter: Just Because Its High Tech and Costs $247 Billion Doesn't Mean It Works Dave Lindorff A Strategy of Massacres? Juan Santos The Ghost of George Wallace: Immigration and White Racism Frida Berrigan Privatizing the Apocalypse Joshua Frank War in Search of a Justification Vonnie Edwards Letter from the LA County Jail Neve Gordon Does Kadima's Victory Put the Peace Process in Reverse? Website of the Day The Women of New Orleans Speak   March 29, 2006 CounterPunch News Service Fake Saddam Interview Put Out by Israel Lobby Catspaw, Endorsed by NeoCons' Pet Cassandra, Now Wiping Egg From Face Patrick Cockburn Bush's Call for Ouster of Iraq PM Widens Rift with Shias John Ross When Water is Not a Human Right Omar Barghouti When is Killing Arab Civilians Considered a Massacre? William S. Lind Truth in Advertising from the Army? Missy Comley Beattie Missing in America Earl Ofari Hutchinson AWOL: Black Leaders and Immigration Website of the Day Colombia Support Network Needs Your Help   March 28, 2006 Sharon Smith Liberal Hypocrisy on Immigration: Krugman and Clinton Say Shut the Door Paul Craig Roberts Bush is No Conservative Tariq Ali Karachi Social Forum: NGOs or WGOs? Manuel Garcia, Jr. God's Torturers: from Torquemada to Opus Dei Ramzy Baroud False Impressions: the Media and the Middle East Evelyn Pringle Fentanyl's Body Count: the FDA's Math Problem Seth Sandronsky Inflation and Speculation Patrick Cockburn Shias May Now Turn on US Forces   March 27, 2006 Patrick Cockburn War Crime in a Mosque Joshua Frank The Democrats' Daddy Warbucks Ron Jacobs The Case of the Anti-Minutemen Five Jeff Lays Eternal Spending for a Never-Ending War Davey D. We Didn't Cross the Border, the Border Crossed Us Robert Billyard "I Did Not Join the British Army to Conduct US Foreign Policy" Jim Rigby Why We Let an Atheist Join Our Church Lisa Viscidi Justice and Impunity in Latin America: the Case of Rios Montt Nick Dearden Refugees: Thirty Years in the Western Sahara Gideon Levy Are We Done Killing Children, Yet? Website of the Day "Love Me, I'm a Liberal " (Updated) March 25 / 26, 2006 Alexander Cockburn Why There's No Strategy to End This War Patrick Cockburn The Battle for Baghdad: It's Already Begun Ralph Nader Bush's Divorce from Reality Christopher Reed Slave Labor and Hell Ships: Mitsubishi Awaits Judgment for Its War Crimes Jeff Ballinger Memo to Walter Mosley: the Crisis in Black Leadership Joseph Massad Blaming the Israel Lobby Brian Cloughley The Fifth Afghan War Chris Floyd Death in the Village of Isahaqi Elaine Cassel Abortion Politics: The FDA and Plan B Dave Zirin Death Row Talks Back to Etan Thomas John Chuckman Sorry, Prime Minister, Afghanistan is Not Canada's War Sharon Smith "Si Se Puede!": On Chicago's Streets Christopher Fons A City With Latinos Chris Kromm Coretta Scott King a Communist? There's a History Here John Bomar Neurotic-in-Chief: Bush's "Change of Course" Ron Jacobs More Than Just a Band Maymanah Farhat What MoMA Does to "Islamic" Art St. Clair / Walker / Vest Playlists: What We're Listening to This Week Poets' Basement Harley, Davies, Engel and Subiet Website of the Weekend Peacecast   March 24, 2006 Cockburn / Sengupta / Duff How the CPT Hostages were Freed P. Sainath Bribe or Die Todd Chretien Jim Crow Goes Fishing: the Racist War on Immigrants Marty Omoto The Other California Michael Carmichael Islamophobia at Downing Street: Tony Blair's Bipolarity Peter Phillips Impeachment Movement Grows; Media Yawns Gabriel Kolko The US Empire vs. Reality Website of the Day Music for Peace   March 23, 2006 Charles V. Peña Bush's Pro-Terrorism Defense Budget Joe DeRaymond El Salvador 2006: a Broken Nation Robert Fisk "US Authorities Say..." Jonathan Cook The Emerging Jewish Consensus in Israel Tom Engelhardt Whatever Happened to Congress?: an Interview with Chalmers Johnson Joshua Frank Political Lemmings: the Democrats and the Precipice Norman Solomon The Ultimate Scapegoat: Blaming the Media for Bad War News Robert Fitch / Joe Allen An Exchange on the State of Organized Labor Patrick Cockburn Kirkuk's Dr. Death CounterPunch News Service On the Proper Way to Address a Bible-Waving Republican State Senator from Maryland Website of the Day Bird-Dogging Kerry   March 22, 2006 David MacMichael Iranian Nuclear Showdown: an Unnecessary Crisis Juan Santos Brown Skin, Yellow Star: Making Latinos Illegal Paul Craig Roberts Hollow Nation: Americans Don't Live Here Anymore Patrick Cockburn Iraq's My Lai?: Shooting Any Iraqi Who Moves Ramzy Baroud The Jericho Raid Jason Leopold The Mysterious "Official One": Woodward's Plame-Leak Deep Throat Dennis Perrin Killer Lies from Cheney's Harlot William Blum The Cuban Punching Bag Jeffrey St. Clair Contract Casino Website of the Day Bird Flu: Will It Cross Over?   March 21, 2006 Paul Craig Roberts Bush's Delusional Speech Winslow Wheeler Lipstick on the Pig: the Fiasco of Congressional Earmark Reform Tom Engelhardt Cold Warrior in a Strange Land: an Interview with Chalmers Johnson Arnold Oliver To the Guy Who Called Me a Traitor: Dissent and the Iraq War Earl Ofari Hutchinson When Black Cops Go Bad: the Killing of Elio Carrion Mike Whitney Death Squad Democracy William A. Cook Israeli Human Rights: Starve the Palestinians Sophia A. McLennen Assault on Higher Education: the Conservative Push for the Right Student   March 20, 2006 Paul Craig Roberts A Collapsing Presidency Dave Lindorff Howard Dean Tells CounterPunch: DNC No Foe of Impeachment Ralph Nader The DNC's "Grassroots Agenda": Howard Dean's Plea for Advice Diane Christian License to Lie: Over to You, Dante Jeff Halper "To Hell with All of You": the Power of Saying No Harry Browne Unhappy St. Patrick's Day: Bush's Crackdown on Gerry Adams and Sinn Fein Norman Solomon Why are We Here?: Is There a Right Way to Wage a Wrong War? Patrick Cockburn Death Squads on the Prowl; Iraq Convulsed by Fear Website of the Day Abugate   March 18 / 19, 2006 Cockburn / St. Clair Three Years On: Where's the Resistance Here on the Home Front? Werther Bombs and Butchers: "Where Do We Get Such Men?" Chris Kromm Katrina Aid Package: Much Too Little; Much Too Late Patrick Cockburn Halabja: Kurds Destroy Monument to Victims of Saddam's Poison Gas Attack Elaine Cassel Abortion Politics and Animus for Women: Can Justice Kennedy be Swayed? S. Brian Willson Iraq Vets and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Fred Gardner The War on Kids Brian Cloughley General Insanity: the Prevarications of Gen. Peter Pace Laura Carlsen Challenging Disparity: Toward a New US Policy in Latin America Eamon Martin Life in the Shadows of the Empire: Mysterious Photographers of Nothing Julie Hilden Free Speech in the Classroom: Teachers Don't Enjoy Enough Legal Protection Alison Weir So Much for "Sunshine Week": AP Erases Video of Israeli Soldier Shooting Palestinian Boy Jeffrey St. Clair Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week Poets' Basement LaMorticella, Krieger, Louise, and Engek Website of the Weekend Are the Elites Turning Against the Effects of the Israel Lobby?   March 17, 2006 Eduardo Galeano Abracadabra: Uruguay's Desaparecidos Begin to Appear Greg Moses Bush and Nuclear Preemption: Do You Feel Safe With This Man's Finger on the Button? Richard Falk / David Krieger The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is Dying: What Now? Cindy and Craig Corrie Three Ways to Remember Rachel Amira Hass Hamas's Haniyeh: "I Never Sent Anyone on a Suicide Mission" Mike Marqusee Reasons to March James Petas and Robin Eastman-Abaya Philippines: the Killing Fields of Asia Website of the Day Black Shamrock   March 16, 2006 Norman Solomon Hook, Line and Sinker: War-Loving Pundits Tom Philpott Neoliberalism at the Garden Gate: Community Farming in LA Heather Gray Anne Braden: the South's Rebel Without a Pause Amira Hass Is Hamas Playing into the Hands of Israeli Hardliners? Missy Comley Beattie Dangerous-to-Society Women: Locked Up in the Tombs Sen. Russell Feingold President Bush has Broken the Law; He Must be Held Accountable Lucinda Marshall President Ken Doll: Bush Insults Women on Intl. Women's Day Andrew Bosworth From the Man Who Voted Against Katrina Aid: Joe Barton's War on CITGO Clancy Sigal In Celebration of Dachau's 73rd Anniversary, Halliburton Gets Concentration Camp Contract Website of the Day Help Rebuild the New Orleans Public Library March 15, 2006 Jonathan Cook Israel's Raid on the Jericho Jail Winslow Wheeler Hiding the Cost of War: Paying for Iraq with Supplemental Funding Diane Christian Sharon's Stroke Ron Jacobs New Tenants for Abu Ghraib?: a Cell for Kissinger and Haig Missy Comley Beattie How Many Brinks to Pass? Jared Bernstein The Minority Wealth Gap Noam Chomsky The Crumbling Empire Website of the Day French Students Reclaim the Streets of Paris   March 14, 2006 Earl Ofari Hutchinson No Requiem for a Black Conservative: the Fall of Claude Allen Dave Lindorff Why the Gitmo Tribunals are a Bad Idea: Exhibit A, t he Moussaoui Case Kevin Zeese Divide and Rule in Iraq Gone Awry Todd Chretien Counting the Dead in Iraq: Why is the Left Understating the Carnage? Jason Kunin Canada in Afghanistan: "We're Here Because We're Here" Thomas Palley The Economics of Outsourcing Cockburn / St. Clair Pages from the Liberals' War Website of the Day Golf Courses and Swimming Pools   March 13, 2006 Uri Avnery The Missing Word Dave Lindorff Extra, Extra! Media Reports on Censure Motion Mike Whitney South Dakota's Taliban: the Fanatics are on the Loose David Green Questions of Solidarity: Blacks and Jews in Neo-Con America Jeremy Scahill Rest Easy, Bill Clinton: Slobo Can't Talk Any More Mike Ferner Up Against the Wall, Son: Hungering for Justice During My First Congressional Testimony Corey Harris Memories of Ali Farka Touré Paul Craig Roberts Killing Off Milosevic: Was Serbia a Practice Run for Iraq? Website of the Day Prayer Flags for Peace March 11 / 12, 2006 Alexander Cockburn Democrats: When the War Was Lost Ralph Nader Bush at the Tipping Point Paul Craig Roberts Why Did Bush Destroy Iraq? Ben Tripp My Night at the Oscars: the Happy People Speak Out John Strausbaugh The Cowboys and the Village Voice: Alt Press Flagship Goes Corporate Landau / Hassen Why "We" Fight "Their" Wars Robert Bryce A Thousand Pages of Rage Gary Leupp Why They Really Think They Must Defeat Iran Fred Gardner "But He's Good on Our Issue" Ron Jacobs Condi and Iran: Folly, Tragedy and Farce Jonathan Scott Science Fiction's Black Oracle: the Genius and Courage of Octavia Butler Ramzy Baroud Who Will Stop Bush's Militant Militarists? Jordan Flaherty Gitmo on the Mississippi: Life Under the Klan Wasn't This Bad John Chuckman Parable of the Hatchet: the Fallacy of Nation-Building in Afghanistan Joe Allen Smearing Ron Carey and the TDU: Bob Fitch's Hatchet Job Julia Kendlbacher Amazonia: Where All Life Matters St. Clair / Walker / Pollack / Vest Playlist: What We're Listening to This Week Poets' Basement Hassen, Harley, Ford and Subiet Website of the Weekend No Hay Ser Humano Ilegal   March 10, 2006 Ben Rosenfeld The Great Green Scare and the Fed's Case Against Rod Coronado: a War on the First Amendment Lila Rajiva The Gitmo Documents: Miller, Boykin, Cambone and Feith Saree Makdisi From Rachel Corrie to Richard Rogers: the Wall, the Javits Center and the Bullying of an Architect Elena Shore FBI Grills US Professor Over Support for Venezuela Joshua Frank How the Green Party Slays Their Own Dave Zirin Lynching Barry Bonds Aura Bogado An Interview with Subcomandate Marcos   March 9, 2006 John Walsh Neocon Daniel Pipes Advocates Civil War in Iraq as Strategic Policy Annie Zirin Leftwing Generals: the Dark Side of Liberal Imperialism Brian McKenna We All Live in Poletown Now: GM and the Corporate Uses of Eminent Domain Chris Floyd Scar Tissue: How the Bushes Brought Bedlam to Iraq Rachard Itani "Over There": Iraq as Soap Opera Niranjan Ramakrishnan The Action Thing Wylie Harris Immigration and Jeffersonian Democracy: Free Borders Make Good Neighbors Alexander Cockburn Ex-State Department Security Officer Charges Pre-9/11 Cover-Up Website of the Day About Pace: Expelling Anti-War Students   March 8, 2006 Patrick Bond The Loans of Mass Destruction: Wolfowitz's Anti-Corruption Hoax at the World Bank Brian Concannon, Jr. Elusive Victories in Haiti Pat Williams Buyer's Remorse: Bush, the View from the Purple States Lance Selfa The Democrats and Dubai: the Politics of Distraction Mokhiber / Weissman Have You Ever Been Convicted of a Felony? Walter Brasch Compromising Civil Liberties Vijay Prashad For Them Indian Mangoes: Anatomy of an Agreement Website of the Day Rachel Corrie: a Call to Action   March 7, 2006 Werther Half a Trillion Dollars: It's an Awful Lot of Money to Make Us Less Safe and Less Free John Blair Dr. Strangelove is Our President: Global Peace Through Nuclear Weapons Dave Lindorff The Impeachment Groundswell and Bush's Last Hope: the Democrats Mike Whitney No Immunity: Israel's Policy of Targeted Assassination Warren Guykema Who is Afraid of Rachel Corrie? Sen. Russell Feingold Misleading Testimony About NSA Domestic Spying Robert Jensen Why I am a Christian (Sort Of) Norman Solomon Digitalized Hype: a Dazzling Smokescreen? Bernie Dwyer Hopeful Signs Across Latin America: an Interview with Noam Chomsky Website of the Day Golem Song March 6, 2006 Ralph Nader Bush and Katrina: "Situational Information?" Dave Zirin Why Did Pat Tillman Die? an Investigation Reopens Vanessa Redgrave Censorship of the Worst Kind: the Second Death of Rachel Corrie Walter A. Davis Theater, Ideology and the Censorship of "My Name is Rachel Corrie" Joshua Frank Down By Law: the Mysterious Case of David Cobb Nate Mezmer A Second Look at "Crash": More Myths About Blacks and Racist Cops Paul Craig Roberts America's Bleak Jobs Future Website of the Day Crossroads: Race, Class and Art March 4 / 5, 2006 Alexander Cockburn The Dubai Ports Purchase: National Insecurity, Imported or Homegrown? Jennifer Van Bergen Bush's NSA Spying Program Violates the Law Steven Higgs Dying for Their Work: Westinghouse Workers and the Highest Level of PCBs Ever Recorded Winslow T. Wheeler The Generals, the Legislators and the Gulfstream VIP Transports Ron Jacobs Stealing Back Adam's Rib Rev. William E. Alberts Remember Damadola Colin Asher Goodbye, Dubai: the Teamsters and the Ports Fred Gardner Denney's Law "Pariah" Scapegoats and Shunning: Sexual Fascism in Progressive America John Scagliotti Brokeback Mountain: Pain is Not Enough Seth Sandronsky When the White House Walks Away: Bush, Arnold and the Flood Risk in the Central Valley Joan Roelofs A Challenge to Rebuild the World Arjun Makhijani The US / India Nuclear Pact: a Bad and Dangerous Deal Ardeshr Ommani Destroying the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Diana Barahona An Open Letter to Freedom House: Release Info on Your Federal Grants Ben Tripp Bonzo, Wherefore Art Thou? St. Clair / Socialist Worker Staff Playlist: What We're Listening To Poets' Basement Engel, Davies, Buknatski Website of the Weekend The Return of Pearl Jam March 3, 2006 Laura Carlsen Mexico: the Power of Corruption and the Corruption of Power John V. Whitbeck Two States or One? Chris Floyd The Monolith Crumbles: Reality and Revisionism About Iran Mohamed Hakki Wolfowitz at the World Bank: Cronyism and Corruption Pratyush Chandra Bush in India: Dinner with George and Manmohan John Scagliotti Why are There No Real Gays in "Brokeback Mountain"? Website of the Day Support the IRC!   March 2, 2006 Paul Craig Roberts How the Economic News is Spun Dave Lindorff Troops to Bush: Get Us Out of Here! Ramzy Baroud Middle East Democracy: the Hamas Factor Saul Landau Halfway Down the Road to Hell Joe Allen The Murder of George Jackson: an Interview with His Lawyer, Stephen Bingham Steve Shore Berlusconi on Capitol Hill: "I Am Italy!" Denise Boggs Roadless and Clueless: Wilderness Logging Greenwashed by Enviro Groups Norman Finkelstein The Attacks on Beyond Chutzpah Website of the Day ScreenHead   March 1, 2006 Mairead Corrigan Maguire The Human Right to a Nuclear Free World Niranjan Ramakrishnan The India That Can No Longer Say No Faheem Hussain Bush in Pakistan Antony Loewenstein Spinning Us to War with Iran: an Aussie Perspective Elizabeth Schulte The Charge to Overturn Roe Has Begun Mike Whitney Sudan: Beware Bolton's Sudden Humanitarianism John Ryan Canada and the American Empire Michael Donnelly Brokeback Mountain: a No Love Story Tom Reeves Haitian Election Aftermath Website of the Day Mardi Gras Index: Reuilding of New Orleans Stalled         Subscribe Online

Weekend Edition April 1 / 2, 2006 A Bull Market for Sensex, Fashion Models and Farmer Suicides Where India's Brave New World is Headed By P. SAINATH FARM SUICIDES in Vidharbha crossed 400 this week. The Sensex share index crossed the 11,000 mark. And Lakme Fashion Week issued over 500 media passes to journalists. All three are firsts. All happened the same week. And each captures in a brilliant if bizarre way a sense of where India's Brave New World is headed. A powerful measure of a massive disconnect. Of the gap between the haves and the have-mores on the one hand, and the dispossessed and desperate, on the other. Of the three events, the suicide toll in Vidharbha found no mention in many newspapers and television channels. Even though these have occurred since just June 2 last year. Even though the most conservative figure (of Sakaal newspaper) places the deaths at above 372. (The count since 2000-01 would run to thousands.) Sure, there were rare exceptions in the media. But they were just that - rare. It is hard to describe what those fighting this incredible human tragedy on the ground feel about it. More so when faced with the silence of a national media given to moralising on almost everything else. In the 13 days during which the suicide index hit 400, 40 farmers took their own lives. The Vidharbha Jan Andolan Samiti points out that the suicides are now more than three a day - and mounting. These deaths are not the result of natural disaster, but of policies rammed through with heartless cynicism. They are driven by several factors that include debt linked to a credit crunch, soaring input costs, crashing prices, and a complete loss of hope. That loss of faith and the rise in the numbers of deaths has been sharpest since last October. That's when a government that came to power promising a cotton price of Rs.2,700 a quintal ensured it fell to Rs.1,700. A thousand rupees less. When 322 of 413 suicides have occurred since just November 1, you'd think that is newsworthy. When the highest number, 77, take place in March alone, you'd believe the same. You'd be wrong, though. The Great Depression of the Indian countryside does not make news. But the Sensex and Fashion Week do. "There is nothing wrong," an irate reader wrote to me, "in covering the Sensex or the Fashion Week." True. But there is something horribly wrong with our sense of proportion while doing so. Every pulse beat and flutter on the Sensex merits front-page treatment. Even if less than two per cent of Indian households have any kind of investments in the stock exchange here. This week's rise does not just mark the highest ever. It makes the lead story on the front page. That's because the "Sensex beats Dow in numbers game." The strap below that headline in a leading daily reads: "Dalal Street's 11,183 eclipses Wall Street." It's moved to 11,300 since then. On television, even non-business channels carry that ticker at the right hand corner. Keeping viewers alert to the main chance even as they draw in the number of deaths in the latest bomb blasts. At one point, the mourning for President K.R. Narayanan was juxtaposed to the joys of the Nifty and the Sensex. The irony does get noticed but it persists. The great news for Fashion Week lovers is that this year will see two of them. There's a split in the ranks of the Beautiful People. Which means we will now have 500 or more journalists covering two such events separately. This in a nation where the industry's own study put the Indian designer market at 0.2 per cent of the total apparel market. Where journalists at such shows each year outnumber buyers - often by three to one. Contrast that with the negligible number of reporters sent out to cover Vidharbha in the depths of its great misery. At the LFW, journalists jostle for `exclusives' while TV crews shove one another around for the best `camera space.' In Vidharbha itself, the best reporters there push only the limits of their own sanity. Faced with dailies that kill most of their stories, or with channels that scorn such reports, they still persist. Trying desperately to draw the nation's attention to what is happening. To touch its collective conscience. So intense has been their tryst with misery, they drag themselves to cover the next household against the instinct to switch off. Every one of them knows the farm suicides are just the tip of the iceberg. A symptom of a much wider distress. The papers that dislike such stories do find space for the poor, though. As in this advertisement, which strikes a new low in contempt for them. Two very poor women, probably landless workers, are chatting: "That's one helluva designer tan," says the first to the other. "Yeah," replies the other. "My skin just takes to the Monte Carlo sun." The copy that follows then mocks them. "You'll agree," it says, "chances that the ladies above rub shoulders with the glitterati of the French Riviera are, well, a little remote." It throws in a disclaimer, of course. "We don't mean to be disrespectful ... " But "this is a mere reminder to marketers that a focus on customers with stronger potential does help." That is an ad for the `Brand Equity,' supplement of a leading newspaper group. Nearly 5,000 shanties were torn down in Mumbai in the same eventful week. But it drew little attention. Their dwellers won't make it to the French Riviera either. Those in media focus, though, might. Mumbai's planned Peddar Road flyover, seen by some of the metro's mega rich as hurting their interests, grabbed yards of newsprint and endless broadcast time. There was barely a word seen or heard from those whose homes were razed to the ground. Meanwhile, more and more people flee the countryside for urban India. Candidates for future demolitions. In the village, we demolish their lives, in the city their homes. The smug indifference of the elite is matched by the governments they do not vote in, but control. When the National Commission for Farmers went to Vidharbha last October, it brought out a serious report and vital recommendations. Many of these have become demands of the farmers and their organisations. At its Nashik meeting in January, the All-India Kisan Sabha (a body with 20 million members) called for immediate implementation of the NCF report. Instead, both the Centre and the State Government have sent more and more `commissions' to the region. To `study' what was well known and already documented. It's a kind of distress tourism now. It just adds the sins of `commissions' to those of omission. Favouring corporates The damage is not only in Vidharbha but across the land. Why is the Indian state doing this to its farmers? Isn't farming, after all, the biggest private sector in India? Because being private isn't enough. Ruthlessly, each policy, every budget moves us further towards a corporate takeover of agriculture. Large companies were amongst the top gainers from distress sales of cotton in Vidharbha this season. The small private owners called farmers must be sacrificed at the altar of big corporate profit. The clearest admission of this came in the McKinsey-authored Vision 2020 of Chandrababu Naidu in Andhra Pradesh. It set out the removal of millions of people from the land as one of its objectives. Successive governments at the Centre and in many States seem to have latched on to that vision with much zeal. In some ways, the present United Progressive Alliance takes up where Mr. Naidu left off. Where are those being thrown off the land to go? To the cities and towns with their shutdown mills. With closed factories and very little employment. The great Indian miracle is based on near jobless growth. We are witnessing the biggest human displacement in our history and not even acknowledging it. The desperation for any work at all is clear in the rush for it at just the start of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme. Within a week of its launch, it saw 2.7 million applicants in just 13 districts of Andhra Pradesh. And close to a million in 12 districts of Maharashtra. Note that the Rs.60 wage is below the minimum of several States. Know, too, that many in the lines of applicants are landed farmers. Some of them with six acres or more. In the Warangal district of Andhra Pradesh, a farmer who owned eight acres of paddy fields was a person of some status 10 years ago. Today, he or she, with a family of five, would be below the poverty line. (If that's the case with landowners, imagine the state of landless labourers.) If the State Government's role in Vidharbha is sick, that of the Centre is appalling. Making sad noises is about as far as it will go. As the NCF report shows, much can be done to save hundreds of more lives that will surely otherwise be lost. But it avoids that path. Its vision of farming serves corporates, not communities. And the media elite? Why not a Vidharbha week? To report the lives and deaths of those whose cotton creates the textiles and fabrics that they do cover. If just a fourth of the journalists sent to the Fashion Week were assigned to cover Vidharbha, they'd all have many more stories to tell. P. Sainath is the rural affairs editor of The Hindu (where these two pieces initially ran) and the author of Everybody Loves a Good Drought. He can be reached at: psainath@vsnl.com.

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