KARL MARX : A TRIBUTE !!!!!!

Karl Heinrich Marx (1818-1883) was born on May 5, 1818 in the city of Trier, Germany. His father was a lawyer who came from a long line of Rabbis, but had changed his faith to Protestantism in order to keep his job. Karl Marx went to the University of Bonn to study law when he was 17 years old. Here he became engaged to Jenny von Westphalen, whose father, Baron von Westphalen, influenced Marx to read Romantic literature and Saint-Simonian politics. Only a year later, Marx was moved by his father to the University of Berlin where he studied Hegelianism, influenced byLudwig Feurbach and other Hegelians. He admired G.W.F. Hegel's dialectics and belief in historical inevitability, but Marx questioned the idealism and abstract thought of philosophy and maintained his belief that reality lies in the material base of economics. In distinct contrast to G.W.F. Hegel's concentration on the state in his philosophy of law, Marx saw civil society as the sphere to be studied in order to understand the historical development of humankind. In 1841 Marx earned his doctorate at Jena with his work on the materialism and atheism of Greek atomists.
It was difficult for Marx to find publishers because of his radical political views, so he moved to Cologne, which was known to house a strong liberal opposition movement. The liberal group the Cologne Circle published a paper by Marx defending the freedom of the press in their newspaper The Rhenish Gazette (in 1842 he was made the editor of the paper). In Cologne Marx met Moses Hess, a radical who organized socialist meetings, which Marx attended. At these meetings Marx learned of the struggles of the German working-class. Based on the information he gathered from the members present at the meetings, Marx wrote an article on the poverty of the Mosel wine-farmers in which he was highly critical of the government. When the article was published in 1843, the Prussian authorities banned The Rhenish Gazette and threatened Marx with his arrest. Marx married his fiancé and they fled together to Paris. Here he took a position as editor of a political journal called Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher (Franco-German Annals) that was designed to connect French socialism and radicalHegelianism. Although the journal only lived as long as one issue, it was a valuable opportunity for Marx. Through it he met his life-long friendFriedrich Engels, a contributor to the journal. Other prominent contributors included his old mentor from Berlin, Bruno Bauer, and the Russian anarchist Michael Bakunin.
While in Paris, Marx became a communist, and worked primarily on studying political economy and the history of the French Revolution. He wrote a series of papers known as ÷konomisch-philosophische Manuskripte aus dem Jahre(Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, 1844), however they were not published until the 1930s. The Manuscripts are influenced by Feuerbach and outline a humanist idea of communism. Marx contrasts capitalist society, and an alienated nature of labor, with communist society, in which human beings in cooperative production develop their nature freely. In 1844 Marx reviewed Bruno Bauer's book On the Jewish Question. More than a review, Marx used the article to critique the continued influence of religion over politics, and propose a revolutionary change to the structure of European society.
In 1845 Marx was expelled from France by Guizot. He fled with Friedrich Engels to Brussels where they stayed for three years with intermittent trips to England to visit Engels' family who had cotton-spinning interests in Manchester. While in Brussels Marx wrote a piece against the idealistic socialism of P.J. Proudhon called The Poverty of Philosophy. He also worked on his materialist conception of history, and developed the manuscript that would come to be named The German Ideology when it was published after his death. This paper argues that the nature of an individual is dependent upon the material conditions that determine his production. It is a historical study of modes of production through the ages, and in it Marx predicts the collapse of industrial capitalism and the advancement of communism. Marx joined the Communist League at this time, which was an organization of German émigré workers centered in London. Marx and Engels became the major theoretical force of the League, and at a conference in 1847 they were commissioned to write a declaration of the League's position. The hope was that the Manifest der kommunistischen Partei (The Communist Manifesto) would inspire social revolution, and no sooner was it published than the 1848 revolutions broke out across Europe. This work marks a turn in Marx's writing from appealing to natural rights as justification for social reform, to indicating that the laws of history would inevitably lead to the power of the working class. TheManifesto distinguishes communism from other movements, proposes specific social reforms, and includes a description of the struggles between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. It also explicitly encourages workers to unite in revolution against the existing regimes.
The panic caused by the February revolution of 1848 caused the Belgian government to expel Marx from Brussels. He was invited by the French provisional government to return to Paris. From there, he returned to Cologne with some friends to start the newspaper the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. The government there attempted to shut down the paper through legal means, and finally succeeded by finding pretexts to expel the editors. Marx and his friends were expelled after the revolts of May 1849, and the newspaper's last edition was June 1849. Marx had to return to Paris, but he was expelled again immediately, and moved on to London, which would be his final home.
In London Marx rejoined with the Communist League, confident that there would be further revolutionary action in Europe. He proceeded to write two pamphlets about the 1848 revolution in France and its effects, titled, The Class Struggles in France and The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. He felt that new revolution would only be possible if there was to be a new crisis, and he hoped to uncover what would cause this crisis. He spent a large amount of his time in the British Museum studying political economy toward this end. For the first part of the 1850s Marx, Jenny, and their four children lived in an impoverished state in a three room flat in London's Soho. The couple would have two more children, but only three in all would survive. The family survived primarily on gifts fromFriedrich Engels whose own income came from the family business in Manchester. Marx also earned a small amount from articles he wrote as the foreign correspondent for the New York Daily Tribune. In 1864 Marx and Friedrich Engels together founded the International Workingmen's Association, which would finally break up due to disagreements between Marx and the anarchist Mikhail Babuknin.
By 1857 Marx had written an 800-page manuscript which was to become Das Kapital (Capital). This is his major work on political economy, capital, landed property, the state, wage labor, foreign trade and the world market. In the early part of the 1860s he took a break from his work on Das Kapital to work on Theories of Surplus Value, a three-volume work. This text discusses specific theories of political economy, primarily those of Adam Smith and David Ricardo. In 1867 Marx published volume I of Das Kapital, an analysis of the capitalist process of production, with an elaboration on his version of labor theory value, surplus value, and exploitation, that he predicted would lead to a falling profit rate and the collapse of industrial capitalism. Marx continued to work on Volumes II and III of Das Kapital for the rest of his life, even though they were essentially finished in the late 1860s. Friedrich Engels would publish the last two volumes after Marx's death. By 1871 Marx's daughter Eleanor, who was 17 at the time, was helping her father with his work. She had been taught at home by Marx himself, and grew up

with a rich understanding of the capitalist system which would allow her to play an important part in the future of the British labor movement.
Marx's health rapidly declined during the last ten years of his life and he was unable to work at the same impressive pace he had set in his early years. He still paid close attention to contemporary politics, especially concerning Germany and Russia, and he often offered his comments. In hisCritique of the Gotha Programme he critiqued the actions of his admirers Karl Liebknecht and August Bebel, disagreeing with their compromises with state socialism in the interest of a united socialist party. He indicated in his letters to Vera Zasulich of this time that he imagined it could be possible for Russia to bypass a capitalist stage of development and move directly to communism by basing its economy on common ownership of land characterized by the village. In 1881 both Marx and his wife became ill. Marx had a swollen liver, and survived, but Jenny died on December 2, 1881. In January 1883 Marx was deeply saddened by the loss of his eldest daughter to cancer of the bladder. On March 14, 1883 Marx was found having passed away in his armchair. He is buried at Highgate Cemetery in London

DEVELOPMENT / PROBLEM / SOLUTION

Development, is it a problem?
Development is one solution to all problems, announces PM Modi. Any other PM in his place would have said the same thing. So this is not about who said it, but it is about what is said. Now I will play a casuist.
Two important terms are used in the statement, namely, ‘development’ and ‘problem’. Without thoroughly appreciating the meaning of these terms it is difficult to comprehend the significance of the statement. I do not pretend to know the meaning of these terms, I only show the terms mean different things to different people or class of people.

As for ‘development’, a Gujarati story by Dhumketu (pen name, real name Gaurishankar Govardhandas Joshi) comes to my mind. In a village, there are a few tangawalas (carriage drivers) that wait at the local railway station for an upcountry train to arrive. The tangawalas ferry the few passengers that alight at the station, to the village. The village then sees ‘development’. A motorised bus is introduced by an enterprising man of the village. The bus goes to the railway station and competes with the tangawalas in attracting passengers. One bus can carry all the passengers leaving none for the tangawalas. This gradually drives the tangawalas out of business. It was no doubt ‘development’ as we understand the term to mean, but was it development for the tangawalas and their horses? Did it solve all problems? I am sure there are no easy answers.
As for ‘problem’, nobody saw any problem in the village until the bus service was introduced. A problem is a problem when it is perceived as such, not otherwise. We cannot call something to be a problem by applying alien standards.
I often wonder whether ‘development’ itself is a problem seeking solutions in further development.

WHISKY TRIVIA - INSTERESTING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1 The world's most expensive bottle of Scotch whisky is Isabella’s Islay ($6.2 million).
2 The oldest Scotch whisky on the market is the Aisla T’Orten 107 years old, distilled in 1906. It costs $ 1.43 million
3 Glenfiddich is the world's best-selling single malt
4 Johnnie Walker Red Label is the world's best-selling Scotch
5 The Famous Grouse is the best-selling whisky in Scotland
6 Glenmorangie is the best-selling single malt in Scotland.
7 The world's fastest growing Scotch today is Black Dog. India is a major contributor to its sales.
8 The five most popular single malts globally are Glenfiddich, The Glenlivet, Glenmorangie Original, Aberlour and Laphroaig
9 Bruichladdich’s The Octomore is the most heavily peated whisky in the world (167ppm)
10 The three oldest single malts currently sold are Glenturret, Oban and Glenlivet
11 The oldest distillery in Scotland is Glenturret (1775), followed by Bowmore (1779)
12 With each bottle of Laphroaig that you buy, you are entitled to a lifetime lease of one sq foot of the distillery’s land, along with a personalized certificate of ownership
13 Cadenhead’s Whisky Shop on Canongate, has a unique selling point: customers can have a bottle poured straight from a cask and labeled with their name. When sealed it has a label with the ‘born on date’, as whisky stops aging as soon as it leaves the wooden barrel, so each bottle is a unique blend.
14 The highest price paid at an auction for a bottle of Scotch was $631,850 for a 6-liter The Macallan “M” single malt, in a decanter by Lalique. (The highest price paid at an auction for a standard sized Scotch was $460,000 for a 64-year-old Macallan malt whisky)
15 Edradour is the smallest distillery in Scotland. The entire operation is run by just three people
16 The Glenmorangie distillery is one of the smallest in the Highlands and employs just sixteen craftsmen, called ‘The Sixteen Men of Tain’
17 The most expensive country in which to buy Scotch, ironically, is the UK, where it is made
18 In the UK, its home country, the five most popular blended Scotch whiskies are The Famous Grouse, William Grant’s, Bell’s, Teacher’s and J&B Rare. Note: Johnnie Walker does not feature in the list of best-selling blends in its home country.
19 A closed bottle of Scotch can be kept for 100 years and still be good to drink. After opening, a bottle of Scotch whisky will remain good for five years.
20 The Australian Wine Research Institute has introduced a measure called a standard drink. In Australia, a standard drink contains 10 g (12.67 ml) of alcohol, the amount that an average adult male can metabolize in one hour.
21 Although their proof differs, standard drinks of beer, wine and spirits contain the same amount of alcohol – 0.6 ounces each. They’re all the same to a breathalyzer.
22 18,000 litres of Scotch whisky worth over $800,000 were accidentally flushed down the drain at Chivas Brothers’ Dumbarton bottling plant in 2013.
23 Experts advise you to drink single malt with just a dash of water. The water supposedly ‘releases the serpent’ from the whisky
24 If there is a serpent, there is also an angel. As it ages, 2-2.5 % of the whisky maturing in a barrel is lost to evaporation every year. Distillers refer to this as the ‘angel’s share’.
25 There is also a devil. The whisky absorbed by the wood of barrel during maturation is known as the 'devil's cut’
26 Some sources claim that the Irish whiskey distillers brought the Irish custom of triple distillation with them to Scotland. Auchentoshan was probably started by Irish settlers, led by the MacBeathas, starting this custom. The source of the name Auchentoshan is Gaelic. It means 'corner of the field'.
27 The United States and Ireland spell it as 'whiskey'. A simple way to remember the spelling: if it comes from a country without an ‘e’ in its spelling, then it is spelt 'whisky'. (e.g., Scotland, Canada, Japan, India, etc.)
28 Indian 'whisky' is technically flavoured rum, because it's essentially made from sugar

BIG PHARMA COS. GAME PLAN STANDS EXPOSED :

The US Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s signature 2010 healthcare reform, has succeeded in extending insurance coverage to millions of Americans who would not otherwise have it. But whether Obama-care succeeds in curbing excessively high healthcare costs will depend on the Obama administration’s other policies, particularly in an area that might seem unrelated: the US’s ongoing discussions with India over intellectual property.
Pharma costs account for an increasingly large component of US healthcare spending. Indeed, outlays for prescription drugs, as a share of GDP, have nearly tripled in just 20 years. Lowering healthcare costs thus requires greater competition in the Pharma industry – and that means allowing the manufacture and distribution of generic drugs.
Instead, the Obama administration is seeking a trade deal with India that would weaken competition from generics, thereby making lifesaving drugs unaffordable for billions of people – in India and elsewhere. This is not an unintended consequence of an otherwise well-intentioned policy; it is the explicit goal of US trade policy.
Major multinational Pharma companies have long been working to block competition from generics. But the multilateral approach, using WTO, has proved less effective than they hoped, so now they are attempting to achieve this goal through bilateral and regional agreements. Latest negotiations with India – the leading source of generic drugs for developing countries – are a key part of this strategy.
In the 1970s India abolished Pharma patents, creating an advanced and efficient generics industry capable of providing affordable medicines to people throughout the developing world. That changed in 2005, when WTO’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) forced India to allow drug patents.
But, in the view of America’s pharma industry, TRIPS did not go far enough. The Indian government’s desire to enhance its trade relations with the US thus provides this industry an ideal opportunity to pick up where TRIPS left off, by compelling India to make patents easier to obtain and to reduce the availability of low-cost generics.
So far, the plan seems to be working. Last fall, during his visit to the US, Indian PM Narendra Modi agreed to establish a working group to re-evaluate the country’s patent policy. US participants in this group will be led by the Office of the US Trade Representative, which serves the Pharma companies’ interests, rather than, say, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Science Foundation or the National Institutes of Health.
How might India tighten its patent system? For starters, it could lower its standards for what is considered a ‘novel’ product, and thus one that merits intellectual-property protection. As it stands, India sets the bar quite high, resulting in its refusal to grant patents for new combinations of existing drugs. India could also stop issuing compulsory licenses to allow other companies to produce a patent holder’s drug, in exchange for a fee – an arrangement permitted under TRIPS, but anathema to the drug industry.
India’s current policies allow drugs to be sold at a small fraction of the monopoly prices commanded by patent holders. For example, the Hepatitis-C drug Sovaldi is sold for $84,000 per treatment in the US; Indian manufacturers are able to sell the generic version profitably for less than $1,000 per treatment. This generic price is still a huge expense for people living on a few dollars a day; but, unlike the US price, it is manageable for many governments and aid organizations. This is hardly an isolated example. Low-cost generics have made it possible to treat tens of millions of HIV/AIDS patients in the developing world.
In fact, the threat of competition from Indian generics is partly responsible for major Pharma companies’ decision to make some of their drugs available to the world’s poor at low prices. If the US compels India to tighten its patent rules substantially, so that they resemble US rules more closely, this outcome could be jeopardized.
Of course, if America’s strong patent regime were, as its proponents claim, the best way to foster innovation in the Pharma industry, the Obama administration’s policy toward India could perhaps be justified. But that is not the case.
Because patents are essentially government-granted monopolies, they lead to the same inefficiencies and rent-seeking behavior as any other such market distortion. A patent that raises the price of a drug a 100 fold has the same effect on the market as a 10,000% tariff. Furthermore, patent-supported research encourages secrecy as companies disclose only the information needed to acquire patents. Yet openness is crucial for efficient scientific progress.
If the Obama administration succeeds in forcing India to strengthen its patent laws, the change would harm not only India and other developing countries; it would also enshrine a grossly corrupt and inefficient patent system in the US, in which companies increase their profits by driving out the competition – both at home and abroad. After all, generic drugs from India often provide the lowest-cost option in the US market once patent terms have expired.
Obama was right to push for a healthcare reform that would increase this sector’s efficiency and accessibility. In its dealings with India, the Obama administration is pursuing a policy that flouts these goals, with consequences not just for India and the US, but for the entire world.

Against Ordinance On Land Acquisition Act

  Condemn the Black Ordinance amending the Land Act of 2013, brought by the Modi Government and needs  the widest mobilizations of the kisans and rural poor to force its reversal. The Modi Government has shown its contempt for Parliament and democratic norms by adopting the ordinance route in its eagerness to satiate the demands of corporates and FDI.

The ordinance is both authoritarian in its method and utterly anti farmer and anti rural poor in its substance.

The Ordinance brings in a new chapter 3A into the Principal Act of 2013 . This addition expands the definition of public purpose by including five new sectors almost every project from irrigation to power and through another amendment to private hospitals and private educational institutions from the necessity of getting consent from farmers whose land is being acquired. It does not differentiate between Government and public sector projects from those in the private sector. Thus in effect it is even worse than the 1894 Act .

The Ordinance also exempts all these projects from the necessity of a social impact assessment (SIA). SIA is an important process for an impartial assessment of how much land is actually required for a project, how many families are going to be affected, whether or not there is any alternative less displacing land available and so on. It is known that corporate take over much more land than the actual project requires and also fudge figures of those affected. The Ordinance also removes any limit on the time that the land can be held by the company which has acquired it if it has not set up the project. The 2013 Act had kept 5 years as the limit after which the land would have to be returned.

The Ordinance permits easy acquisition of multi-crop land by excluding a large number of projects from the entire Chapter 3 of the Act of 2013 which deals with this subject. This will undoubtedly bring not only distress to farmers who enjoy a good income when land is well irrigated and supports multi-crops but will also have a negative impact on food security.

The Ordinance is thus totally against the interest of farmers. The knowledgeable people had been critical of the earlier Act of 2013 for being inadequate in its protection of farmers and other project affected sections. But this ordinance eliminates even the protections which were included in the Act after the struggle of farmers, their democratic organizations and the Left parties.

  People in India have already started the struggle and campaign against this Black ordinance. The clarion call of the hour is : a broad based united struggle of all the political forces and mass organizations opposed to this onslaught on farmers’ rights.

WHY N WHAT I HATE

TRUTH OR CREATED TRUTH

We must learn to question the OFFICIAL VERSION OF EVERYTHING -- regardless of whether it is an "irrefutable historical fact", or whether it is written in the scripture or any religion, or whether it is spoken by a "great man", or whether it is a view upheld by famous editors and television anchors. Everything must be held up to the clear light of reason, and examined dispassionately.
In every situation of life, very powerful and influential people want you and me to believe in their version of the truth, and to refrain from ever questioning it. The version of truth that they so authoritatively speak is a manufactured truth, an "artificial truth". Usually, what leaders speak -- including religious leaders and leaders of communities -- is a partisan truth, a truth that suits their personal agendas and the agendas of their followers. There is always much that they don't want you to think about.
Such people often manufacture and own popular icons, as if they are trademarks. Such icons are held to be unquestionable -- for instance, mythical or historical figures like "Chhatrapati" Shivaji, "Babasaheb" Ambedkar, "Mahatma" Gandhi, "Shahid" Bhagatsingh, and "Prophet" Mohammad who were leaders in their times, but are now elevated to the status of unquestionable demigods. Such icons are foisted on the gullible public by people who seek unquestioned power, glory and wealth. Questioning their godly status may lead to violence or boycott.
It is our fundamental duty to question the people who foist these icons upon us and hide behind these icons. It is our duty to resist such efforts to control our behaviour and our mind. And it is our duty to refuse to be cowed down by violence -- physical or otherwise -- that is perpetrated if such historical characters are "insulted". Remember, dead persons cannot be insulted; they are dead and gone, and the works that they did -- whether great or otherwise -- is now part of our history.
We owe no debts to those who are dead and gone, irrespective of whether they were great or otherwise. If anything, we owe a debt to the weak, the meek and gullible, the indoctrinated and the oppressed who are still alive among us. We owe it to them, and to ourselves, to stand up against psychological and social bullying, and dare to understand the whole truth