Audacity to Speak 07-04-10

Audacity to speak

Mirza A. Beg
April 10, 2007

During the long night of colonialism, Urdu poets gave voice and sustenance to the freedom struggle of India. In the Urdu cadence, this poem is dedicated to all yearning to be free.

Power amuck, demands conformity
“Those not with us, are against us”
Intolerance shrouded in naiveté
Repression cloaked in democracy


Will the meek inherit the Earth?
Not here, not today
Silence soaked in subtle conformity,
Sustains ignorance and tyranny


The impudent power to kill withers
Faced with defiant courage, to speak
Executioner's tired arms tremble
Scared of brave heads on the block


The struggle to breathe free,
Arduous, tenacious and eternal
Ordeal, bearable adorned with hope
Of the bliss of a distant morning


When the plunderers stand exposed
Their power swept away
Failing to imprison the fragrance
Failing to muffle the Song-bird

Mirza A Beg can be contacted at mab64@yahoo.com

Iraq, drains America 05-09-19

Iraq, a drain on American power

Mirza A. Beg

September 19, 2005

ear-old invasion of Iraq has been terribly mismanaged. Most Americans were oblivious to it because Iraq is "over there" and the amenities of the average American were not directly affected. The terrible mismanagement in the wake of Hurricane Katrina has opened their eyes to the abject incompetence of the Bush administration.

Finally more and more Americans are asking, why are we in Iraq? The two reasons promoted by Bush were WMDs in Iraq and the complicity of Saddam in the 9/11 attacks. Both have been proven to be not only false, but also contrived. The roster of mismanagement in Iraq is long. Nothing in Iraq has been done right.

The fall of Saddam was quick, but as many predicted, American forces are stuck in a quagmire of guerrilla war in Iraq. American soldiers live imprisoned in the green zones. Almost every day they lose a few of their comrades. They keep fighting the same battle over and over again but cannot sustain the occupation. Even the road from the airport to Baghdad is not safe.

Falsehood exposed, Bush under the tutelage of his "neocon" mentors, invented a fallback position - bringing democracy to Iraq.

"Bush a champion for democracy" would be laughable, if it were not so sad to the Latin Americans and to the people of the Middle East. In April 2002 Bush recognized the coup in Venezuela, against the democratically elected government of Hugo Chavez, even before the dust had settled. The coup failed within 48 hours, with Chavez back in a stronger position.

Recently, Rev. Pat Robertson, a close religious-political ally of Bush, suggested assassination of Chavez, with not a word of condemnation from Bush. In March 2004 Bush struck again at the democratically elected Aristide government of hapless Haiti. Under the American installed dictator Haiti has gone from bad to worse.

It is preposterous for Bush to constantly threaten Iran and Syria with the bluster "all options are open", meaning war. Then counter-intuitively expect them to seal their long borders with Iraq to the guerrilla traffic. In the interest of safety their policy is to keep the US bogged down in Iraq. It sounds even sillier to the rest of the world when the US cannot seal its own border from the illegal immigration from Mexico.

The regular threats from Bush have been a bonanza that the mullahs in Iran could not have dreamed of. A belligerent Bush first wiped out their archenemy Saddam, but is helpless to stop the formation of a Shia dominated religious government of Iran's choice in Iraq. As if this were not enough, by constant saber rattling the US arouses nationalism in the secular opposition to line up behind the mullahs of Iran.

Russia, China, India and many European countries are weary of an intemperate hyper power. They are afraid to criticize the US directly and are diplomatic in their criticism, but they would not lift a finger to help in Iraq. Russia and China convinced the Uzbekistan government to kick the US airbase out. They hope that losses in troops and materials in Iraq would cut the US down to size. It is not too difficult to imagine how and from where the weapons are coming to arm the resistance.

From the bully pulpit of the presidency, dutifully reported by the media, Bush gives the 'Happy Talk' of victory, trying to keep public support for a war based on repeated falsehoods. In the pages of the international newspapers, Bush is regarded as a super bully who took out a regional bullying maniac, Saddam Hussein. The international outpouring of help after Katrina is indicative of the ambivalent feelings. They like and grieve with the Americans as they did after 9/11, but distrust and dislike the Bush government.

Bush attempts to pull at the national heartstrings by invoking the sacrifice of dead American soldiers to continue his failed policies. It is insulting that soldiers should keep dying and killing to defend Bush's misadventure simply because many have already given their lives for their belief that they were defending their country.

About 1,900 American soldiers have died and 15,000 wounded in Iraq. Of course, they should be mourned, but the enormous Iraqi civilian casualties should also matter to us. They certainly matter to the Iraqis and all others who care for human life. Estimates range to more than 100,000 Iraqis dead and many hundreds of thousands wounded, with no end in sight to the mayhem. Iraqi casualties are the most potent recruitment tool for Iraqi guerrillas. But the Pentagon callously refuses to tabulate or acknowledge the Iraqi civilian dead and wounded.

Fatigue from the deceit, incompetence and hubris of the Bush administration has started to set in. The much-ballyhooed Homeland Security Department after three years and billions of dollars was unable to cope with a slow, well-predicted unfolding disaster in the wake of hurricane Katrina. Increasing number of Americans, even the Fox news watchers, now know that the war in Iraq was contrived.

Just as we wonder why many countries live under corrupt dictatorships, others wonder why Americans elected such an incompetent president, one who is weakening America by frittering away its goodwill and enormous power by such cruel misuse of that power.

Mirza A. Beg is a freelance writer in Alabama, USA. Acknowledgement to Media Monitors Network (MMN)

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Nobel for Yunus 06-10-13

Peace Prize for Muhammad Yunus

Mirza A. Beg

Friday, October 13, 2006

Counter Currents, Friday, October 13, 2006
http://www.countercurrents.org/eco-beg141006.htm

Milli Gazette, Friday October 13, 2006
http://www.milligazette.com/dailyupdate/2006/20061014_yunus_peace_prize_muslims.htm

Al Jazeerah, Saturday October 14, 2006
http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2006%20Opinion%20Editorials/October/14%20o/Peace%20Prze%20for%20Muhammad%20Yunus%20%20a%20Credit%20to%20Nobel%20Committee%20By%20Mirza%20A.%20Beg.htm

Media Monitor Network, October 14, 2006
http://world.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/36607

Amar Desh, Bangladesh, October 17th 2006
http://amardesh.u46.futurecrafts.com/

Pine Magazine, Atlanta, Monday, October 16, 2006
http://pine-magazine.com/content.php?id=231

Muslim Observer, October, 19th 2006
http://muslimmedianetwork.com/mmn/?p=442

Bhatkallys, on line October 14, 2006
http://www.bhatkallys.com/article/article.asp?aid=2924

Dur Desh Weely (Canada), October 16, 2006
http://www.durdesh.net/news/Article325.html

Indian Muslims.Info, October 14, 2006
http://www.indianmuslims.info/news/2006/october/14/articles/peace_prize_for_muhammad_yunus_a_credit_to_nobel_committee.html?PHPSESSID=2f64791465b5a0acd24df020602b0d94

The coveted Nobel Peace prize for the year 2006 went to Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh and the Grameen Bank (Villagers Bank, in Bengali language), he started in 1976. Returning with a degree in economics under the Fulbright scholarship from the United States, Muhammad Yunus was appalled by the famine in the wake of cyclone and floods of 1974. It compounded the terrible toll of the war of independence that gave birth to Bangladesh in 1971. As a young economist with a prestigious degree and a teaching position at a college, he thought he could help. He traveled the country side and found people, particularly women severely indebted to money-lenders charging exorbitant interests, designed to keep them perpetually indebted, in effect indentured slavery. The local banks based on “sound capitalistic principles” could not help because the poor, who often go hungry, could not offer collateral (a guaranteed security).

Yunus recalled in 2004 that the idea of loaning very small amounts of money to the needy germinated, when he met twenty-one year old Sufia Begam, a mother of three little children. She wove beautiful bamboo stools with young calloused hands. For each stool she borrowed nine cents worth of material on inflated price from a middle-man and got a return of two cents to feed her hungry children. Thus went the perpetual cycle of grinding poverty. Shocked, Yunus with his students surveyed the villagers and found that 43 people, collectively owed an enormous amount of $27 to the middleman, for the benefit of subsistence living and eternal debt.

He paid back their debt of $27, to liberate them from the clutches of the cycle of exploitation, so that they could buy their own materials much cheaper, and pay him back when they could. They paid him back slowly in about a year. These poor women got their dignity back and helped Yunus to give birth to the revolutionary idea, of the Grameen Bank in 1976. Over the years the Garmeen Bank has loaned $5.72 billion to more than 6 million Bangladeshis, more than ninety percent are women. The bank has about one percent default rate, much better than the commercial Banks. It counts even beggars as it members and has had positive balance sheet in all but three years of its existence. It did get donations once the idea gained some publicity, but in the last eight years it has been a self sufficient, viable institution without a need for donors.

The Bank has grown over the years. In 1983 it got incorporated, owned by the rural poor (94%) and the Government of Bangladesh (6%). The Garmeen Bank has gradually expanded to finance even larger community based projects, such as irrigation systems and fisheries, to help grow rice and raise fish, a staple for the poor in Bangladesh. The concept, now known as “Micro-credit” has been duplicated in many other poor countries serving almost 17 million people with limited success.
The citation by the Nobel Committee said, “Yunus and Grameen Bank have shown that even the poorest can work to bring about their own development.”

The Nobel committee can be proud of itself for selecting an idealist with a vision. Yunus proved that an ideal can be transformed into an institution for the benefit of millions of the most deserving human beings. The Nobel peace prize for Yunus does more honor to the distinguished name of the Nobel Peace Prize than the other way around. There are some very glaring omissions from the roster of Nobel recipients. The name Mahatma Gandhi has become synonymous with peace, but for political reasons he never received the coveted honor. For that oversight, actually intended omission, the name Nobel Peace Prize will forever be less luminous than it could have been.

In general the peace prize has been awarded to people who eminently deserved the recognition but in modern times there have been some strange inclusions. The prestige of the Peace Prize has suffered greatly by the inclusion of some very questionable people, such as Le Duc Tho and Henry Kissinger in 1973; Anwar Sadat and Menacham Begin in 1978; and Shimon Perez and Yassir Arafat in 1997. Of these only Le Duc Tho of Vietnam had the decency not to accept the prize.
The Nobel peace Prize has acquired such prestige because of its association with people who have genuinely worked for peace and the uplift of humanity, some times in the most trying circumstances. In recent years some of the outstanding recipients have been Martin Luther King, Aung San Suu Kyi, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa and Dalai Lama. This year as well there were some very dubious names on the list, but the Nobel committee should be commended for the excellent choice of Muhammad Yunus, for a life time of consistent hard work for the dignity of labor and justice to the largely neglected, who for no fault of their own were born poor in the teeming hovels and villages of the third world.

Yunus proved that the poor need respect, trust, economic justice, and a helping hand. They do not need pity and charity. It is truly a Peace Prize because there can not be peace without justice, particularly economic justice.
Mirza A. Beg can be contacted at mab64@yahoo.com

Bush sank N Orleans 05-09-03

Bush Vacationing while New Orleans drowned.
Mirza A. Beg,

Thursday, September, 1 2005

Al Jazeerah Saturday, September3, 2005
http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2005%20Opinion%20Editorials/September/3%20o/Incompetence%20in%20Response%20to%20New%20Orleans%20Drowning%20By%20Mirza%20A.%20Beg.htm

Media Monitor Network Saturday, September, 3, 2005
http://worldhttp.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/18873

Birmingham Post Herald, Wednesday, September 7, 2005
http://www.postherald.com/co090705.shtml

Muslim Observer, Friday, September 9, 2005

Sadbhav Mission Patrika, September-October, 2005

What is the government for? Should one not expect that the most important job of the government would be the protection of all its citizens, particularly those who can not protect themselves, the weakest sections of the society? If so, our government failed miserably, in spite of all the belated “photo ops” emanating from the White House.

It is too early to get the figures on those who lost their lives in the devastation in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The indications are that it will be enormous, perhaps thousands.

Hurricanes are regular visitors to the Caribbean Island countries, Florida and the Gulf coast of the United States. Protection, evacuation and relief work has become a cyclical summer exercise. But Hurricane Katrina was different. It was a rare but deadly category 5 Hurricane and it was barreling to wards the vulnerable city of New Orleans.

The oft-maligned little Cuba, a country blockaded and isolated by the US for 45 years has been able to evacuate millions of people in an orderly fashion often without loss of life, as in cases of category 4 hurricanes, Michelle in 2001 and Ivan in 2004.

Tremendous loss on the Mississippi coast could have been minimized had the Governor of Mississippi, taken the threat from being on the advancing side of a category 5 hurricane with the seriousness it deserved. The saddest part is, the tragedy of New Orleans could have been avoided.

The devastation visited on New Orleans is only partly the result of Hurricane Katrina. Everyone, who follows the news, knows that a major part of New Orleans is built of the sinking reclaimed marshland that is up to 20 feet below the sea level. The system of raised levees surrounding the city, keep the city from drowning in the waters of Lake Pontchartrain.

Times-Picayune has been reporting about the impending disaster waiting for New Orleans for years. The 1995 floods in New Orleans took six lives. Responding to the impending danger from the future hurricanes, the Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project (SELA), to be completed in 10 years by the Army Corps of Engineers. In 2003 the Bush administration cut the SELA budget drastically, according to the Times-Picayune, directly related to the war in Iraq.

It has been widely known for a long time that a Hurricane hitting New Orleans directly would be one of the worst disasters ever, in the history of the United States.

Well it did. The hurricane hit on Monday morning, but by the afternoon the sigh of relief was palpable that New Orleans had dodge the bullet. Then the day of the deluge, Tuesday dawned; the levees were breached, with the horrible sights of a city being swallowed by the dreaded floods predicted for a long time.

The question is why were the Corps of Engineers not ordered to at least try to shore up the Levees designed for category 3 Hurricane, when it was known for at least three days that a category 5 hurricane is barreling towards New Orleans. Only the president could have ordered such an effort.

In any disaster the first few hours are critical for saving lives. All levels of government failed in a disaster. They knew it was coming for about four days. Why were the military amphibious vessels, hovercrafts and helicopters from the many naval bases scattered around the Naval bases on the Gulf-coast not ordered to readiness before the hurricane, and ordered to deploy on Tuesday morning to help the trapped people immediately after the disaster unfolded? Again only the President could have ordered the Military to action.

Incompetence of the Bush administration is on display again. As New Orleans drowned Bush was vacationing, till some one jarred him the next day, a whole 36 hours, later about the political consequences.

Mirza A. Beg can be contacted at mab64@yahoo.com

Greetings for 2007 06-12-15

Greetings for the Year 2007
Mirza A. Beg
Friday, December 15th, 2006

Media Monitor Network, Friday, December 15th, 2006
http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/38772

Al Jazeerah, Saturday, December 16, 2006
http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2006%20Opinion%20Editorials/December/16%20o/Greetings%20for%20the%20Year%202007%20By%20Mirza%20A.%20Beg.htm

Dear Friends:

Time flows onward leaving the successes and the wreckages of yesteryears to enrich or haunt our morrows. The calendar says- this is a festive season; Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanza, Eid al Adha and many other festivals in many lands will be celebrated in late December of this waning year, followed by the dawn of 2007. Will it be a new beginning; respite from mayhem and relief from economic deprivation for our fellow beings- a real peace for all? It is too much to hope for, but hope we must, to keep striving for the universal peace.

Many will give and get gifts, some mundane, some meaningful. We are likely to feel the warmth or deprivation of the loved ones more acutely. The first six years of the 21st Century have seen turmoil and wars conceived in hubris. Hundreds of thousands of our fellow beings have perished, because we did not care enough for the value and dignity of human life while sanctimoniously paying only lip-service to the ethical principles of our religions and ideologies.

Many prone to reflection were initially confused with the changes in the array of political forces in the world, grappling for meaningful directions. Others clung to the hackneyed moorings of a myopic frame of mind. The fog has significantly cleared to reveal that the real enemy is our willingly cultivated ignorance, lost in trivia and half-truths on the airwaves feeding on our gullibility.

The world is not as different as is painted by the propagandists in delusional colors. Contrived collision of “us and them” has happened many times before. To fodder the flames of hatred our designated enemies are presented as caricatures. It is time to erase that fake line between them and us; it is an opportunity to face the outside world with strength, yes; but more importantly with understanding and compassion. Strength without understanding is always misdirected.

Thoughtless, rash actions extract a grim price from generations to come. We need to learn this oft-repeated lesson from history, as expressed in my interpretation of an Urdu poem:

History's sad, tormented, unblinking gaze
Records the twist and turn of human vagaries
Recompense for the deeds of impetuous moments
Are extracted from tormented hapless centuries

Some of us in the richer countries have been blessed with more wealth and opportunities than most in the world. In this season of giving and receiving, we need to keep in mind- to those whom much is given, more is expected. Understanding is much harder to give and receive, than material things.

It is time to shed the mental lock of the belligerent attitudes of the 20th Century into the new millennium inaugurated by the 21st century to usher a longed for peace on Earth and goodwill to mankind. May you have the joy of the season, and a peaceful and fulfilling new era starting with the Year 2007.

Mirza A. Beg can be contacted at mab64@yahoo.com