We get an e-mail from one of my mother's best high school girl friends. I reply.

Hi Joye,

This is Mark replying to your so very thoughtful e-mail.  Let us just say that Ralph has not yet embraced 20th century computer e-mail technology.  I cut and pasted your e-mail and will leave it on the kitchen table for him to read in the morning.  I know he will be pleased to hear from you and grateful for the Howie Selke update.

We are very sorry to hear about your Aunt Wanda.  She sounds like a very thoughtful lady, what with having made provisions for the books and things.  After Anne died, the job of being the archivist and curator of "stuff" here at 1004 S Grove Avenue either fell unto me, onto me, or I embraced it.  Have found many treasures.  Gave away about 200 books to the Lake Zurich Lions Club for the book sale, at the end of last April.  That cleared up SOME book shelf space.  Opened a couple of very old blanket chests and found a treasure trove of stuffed animals (very high end creatures) that Marianne had accumulated from her childhood days.  Boxed them, wrapped them, and then put them under the Christmas tree as presents from each of her family members (me, dad, Gay, Gay's husband Mike, my son Adam, Gay and Mike's son Scott).  Marianne took them back to Providence, RI, where she now resides.  Looked about her smallish place of residence, and said, "hmm, have no room for MOST of these adorable guys.  Let me go on-line to see if I can find someone who can repair them, clean them up, and then maybe give them away?"  

This she did, and a most beautiful series of e-mail correspondence followed, in which the stuffed animal cleaner / repair craftsperson readily agreed to fix 'em up, AND to find them loving homes, and also agreed to clean up and fix up the THREE (and only three) that were too important for Marianne to part with, all pro bono, of course.  My parents failed to raise any materialists.  We love to give away our good stuff, that we no longer have room for (literal room, and room in our hearts); knowing that they will be placed in excellent, loving homes is more than enough of a reward.

Around September 1, Ralph got sick.  He lost 33 (we debate this, he claims 30) pounds, and shrunk 4" (he refuses to admit this; I can tell the difference).  He had to lose 15 pounds in two weeks before his primary care guy, an internist started to take his situation seriously.  Although Gay suggested to him that many of the symptoms he was enduring were also side affects of the "sleeping pill" perscription the doctor had written for him, Ralph has never been any good at listening to what blood relatives lacking the necessary credentials has to say.  BUT, when his golfing buddy Drew Fletcher sent him an e-mail, saying, "Hey, Ralph, about that sleeping pill you're taking, you exhibit about 75% of the symptoms that are side affects.  Think about stopping that medication."  Which Ralph indeed did do (he gives great credence to the opinions of his golfing buddies, no matter what their credentials are) at which point in time he began to regain his lost weight.  He was so delighted to get to 185.  Not so delighted now to be over 200 (slightly), which is about 5 more pounds than he started from, back when he began to lose the weight.

He also said, and this was within the last 10 days, that, for the first time since his horrifying bout with persistent nagging illness began (basically, he had never been sick a day in his life, except for when he had to have his appendix removed, circa 1970)!  And the absence of illness is a blessing, indeed.

He and I have played golf, since about 15, November, 2011, oh, I'd guess, something like 160 times.  The owner of the course and all the people that worked there were so worried about dad, not having seen him during the month of August, after mom died (there is much paperwork and nonsense that needs to be performed in the aftermath), and then after his 2 1/2 months of illness, that they simply said, "come out and play golf with Mark any time."  The head golf professional at the course, Donny Habjan was the assistant golf pro at Midlothian Country club and used to play with Floyd Ganzer every Saturday morning, so, there is a Blue Island connection.

For me, the opportunity to play golf almost every day with my father for the last 6 1/2 months has been the blessing of a lifetime.  I had forgotten how much I love him, and how much fun we've always had playing golf together.  Of course, I usually beat him now, BUT NOT ALWAYS.  IN January, we were playing, and at the end of nine holes, he had shot 39.  But, it was very cold and windy.  But, I am thinking, "hmm, if he can make 8 bogies and one par on the back nine, he will shoot his age," so I make with him a Faustian bargain:

"Dad, if you will only play the back nine with me, I will NEVER again ask you for anything to do with golf."

Oh, he was so reluctant, but, he loves me, has basically never been able to say "no" to me, about anything to do with playing more golf, and agreed.  Things went pretty much as scripted, EXCEPT, that he had to make 8-foot long snaky putts on each of the last two holes to shoot 44 on the back nine, for, a total of 83.

MY FATHER SHOT HIS AGE!  Ta da!  And then I explained it to him, and went and bragged in the golf shop all about him.

We played the next day, he started with 44 on the front nine.  I was playing brilliantly, and not paying attention to him.  He shot 39 on the back nine.  Shot his age, two days running.  A couple of days later, he shot 41-41, BEAT his age!!!!

And then, about a month ago, he shot 79!!!

AND, he can still drive it past me (when I hit it solid, but very high, into a left to right crossing wind).

I've been seeing a social worker on a regular basis since early February.  She wanted to talk with dad, to make sure (or to see if) his perception of the story of my life and mine seemed to be in consonance.  So I made an appointment for him to talk with her on the phone.

Now, as a medicaid recipient, I can get free transportation (free to me, the state of Illinois medicaid fund pays a LOT of money to transport me) to the mental health site, which is in Berwyn.  SOMEHOW or another, the transportation got messed up (I have to phone in the request at least 48 hours in advance) and Ralph ended up driving me to the site.  I invited him to join me and Diane in the session.  He mostly talked (I was merely a GREEK CHORUS) for about 45 minutes before I shooed him out of the room, and then I looked at Diane, and damn near broke down into tears:  "That's the closest thing he's had to grief counseling since mom died."

It has been my contention that he SHOULD have grief counseling; who in the world is prepared to lose a spouse of 61 1/2 years, who was in good health on Tuesday evening, Wednesday morning, and then dead on Sunday?

Well, the transportation got screwed up again last week (could easily be my fault, I am SO doubtful as to be certain I did not) when I was going to have a buddy of mine come in, and have him tell her about the last 12 or so years that we have known each other (I lived with him at his mom and her husband's home in McHenry last July, before mom died, for about 15 days).  My buddy Steve's step father, however, flew back into Chicago and needed a ride home from O'Hare, so Steve couldn't make it.

And I didn't have a ride, so, the Ralph express was called into action.  And he was good enough (and comfortable enough) to go into Diane's office with me, and THIS time, she didn't talk to him about ME, she talked to him about mom, asking those brutally honest questions that really need to be addressed before you can begin to heal from the loss, but, she does it in such a non-threatening way, that dad, I have no doubt, was entirely unaware that he was having a therapy session.  I did kick him out after 35 minutes, this time (sheesh, I have my own issues) but I also did cry, from gratitude to this wonderful woman who has assessed the needs of our (perhaps perpetually, but only mildly) dysfunctional household most accurately, judges not, but gives us the opportunity to talk about our lives, to get stuff out of our chests, out of our guts, out of our minds, and bring them to the light of day, and the purification of fresh air.

She managed to ask "the big one" about the decision to pull mom from life support.  Dad replied, "when all the doctors and all the nurses tell you the same thing, that EVEN if she should live, she will never have the same quality of life, it is an easy decision to make."

Well, I was with mom when she had the stroke.  I dialed 9-1-1.  I administered mouth-to-mouth resuccitation.  I waited after the paramedics arrived, and it took them 25 minutes to spark her sufficiently back to life.  And while she was in the hospital, although her vital signs were good, she never regained consciousness.  Also, she had double pneumonia, and I knew that her lungs were not getting any air into them.  So, she was with VERY limited oxygen for 31 minutes.   Her brain had virtually no oxygen for 31 minutes.  She would never have regained her faculties for speech, for thought, for writing, for enjoying anything; she would have been vegetative, a thing both mom and dad had decided 20 years ago they did not want to have happen to them.

So, yes, it WAS an easy decision.  One they had addressed before.  Does dad miss mom?  Of course, every day.  But we both keep her alive in our hearts and in our minds.  We talk about her, we tell stories, we reminisce.

Marianne came back to Barrington to work on "Anne's Garden," the memorial garden to Anne (Mike Magliola donated $500 and another good family friend also donated the same amount, to be used for the creation of "Anne's Garden," which sits along the south side of the house, right across from "John's Garden" which mom so lovingly tended from 1988 until 2011).

It was an interesting project.  Dad got all nervous about it (what with his brother-in-law having donated a lot of money, what with Marianne having been tasked with the job of designing / redesigning it, what with it is another thing on a never ending series of check lists that needs to be done, what with dad not knowing jack or squat about gardens, and so, in the three week run up to Marianne's arrival, dad developed a new habit of distracting himself from watching the on-coming traffic on the roads, streets, and highways:  garden scoping).  It used to be that the only time we had to worry about a head on colission with Ralph driving was when we'd pass a golf course,  He'd invariably crane his neck to check the course out, steering ever so predictably into either the right hand lane, if the course was on the left, or the left hand lane if the course was on the right.l  But, there aren't THAT many golf courses around.

THERE ARE, however, many gardens around.  Most everybody has one, and some of them are simply magnificent, some are endearingly subtle, so, now dad, who has tasked the garden's creation out to Marianne is starting to think about what might be done, speculate on how much it might cost to do it, and begin worrying about a new unstarted project, over which he had virtually no control, no expertise, and a whole lot of uncertainty.  His golf game died and descended into hell.  It was painful to play with him.  He was so distracted.  And it took me a LONG time to figure out just what the issue was.  ACTUALLY, since I started out-driving him by lots of yards, I made the more convenient and satisfying assumption that now I was hitting the ball 60 yards father (it was actually more like 15-40 yards farther, mostly 15).  But, in retrospect, it was the garden; another unfinished project, hanging over his head, like the sword of Damascles.

So, Marianne's first day here, dad took her all over, showing her the gardens he admired the most.

Second day, they broke soil.  It was fairly brutal.  Mom had these yucca plants that she loved (and dad hated).  Yucca plants will over take your garden, and these had succeeded in taking over the spot.  It was all weeds and over growth.  But, for ripping up over growth, and turning soil, well, Ralph has some skills in this arena, having done so for mom for many years.  The yucca had strong, thick, resistant root, about a foot below land level.  So, they dug, and the macheted, and cut.

Mom, watching all this from heaven above, decides to send a reminder to Marianne about how much she loved the yuccas, and so, Marianne gets attacked by tiny biting black ants (their bigger counterparts have been invading the home for the last 3 months; we squish, they continue to breed and conquer), and then comes into contact with the sole strand of poison ivy in the yard.  She is VERY much sensitive to poison ivy.  She gets it.  "Right mom, I know.  You love the yuccas.  We will leave the six on the ends, but these middle guys HAD to go!"

Marianne then goes to visit Gay and Mike (and my son Adam, who lives with his aunt and uncle).  Stays over night, then goes to a plant place.  Calls dad, tells him she is at the plant place.  Dad suggests she buy some plants.  "I already have, dad," she replies.

And then Marianne simply took over, a veritable force of nature.  She had no time to do itern training and supervise.  She just kicked Ralph out of the garden, relieved him of all digging, pulling, plant-learning responsibilities.  And she stuck at it, about 10 hours a day for the last 4 days.  We didn't rebuild the garden.  It was quite enough of a project to clean out and dig up and put down the peat and new top soil, plant the sun plants (Marianne had never had a sun garden before; having one now changed all her pre-conceived notions about which flowers should be planted), show off the garden to three of my best and dearest friends (one of them, a green thumb, and, while not quite a golfing buddy of dad's, at least a peer male, who also is THEIR household's DG (designated gardener) to give dad the advice, "Water the hell out of it."  And this dad doth do (or at least has been doing, most regularly).

I've lost (misplaced here in the computer room) our digital camera, but my sister Gay came out the other day and took some photos of the garden. When (and or if) these are made available to me (she DID promise to send me an e-mail), I will pass the photos along to you.

Marianne's efforts were well worth it.  We ended up with a much smaller scoped projected than original thoughts had indicated.  Everything always takes longer than you think.  It was the perfect plan; the perfect garden.  It is the perfect plan; it is the perfect garden.  And now I've had it re-inforced, that, LESS IS MORE!

We are blessed; blessed to have such wonderful friends, blessed to have our health (back, finally); blessed to have things which hold our interest; blessed by people who find the time to give of themselves; blessed with long time friends, who remember a lot of things, and know a lot about us.

Thank you for having been the blessing in Anne's life that you were; for being her good and very dear friend.  Thank you for making the time to take the time to write.  It is in those small (but oh so large) things that we do, to let those we know know how much we love them, and still care, and still carry them in our hearts, that we most delight the Lord.

May good health, peace, and blessings be upon you, and also upon all of them that you love, and also upon all of them that love you.

Mark (& Ralph) Ganzer

Capitalism as an historic system is five hundred or more years old, and the state was intimately involved in its formation and its ongoing preservation from the very beginning. But the state has been far more involved, if such a thing is possible, in the model of corporate capitalism that’s prevailed over the past 150 years. The corporate titans that dominate our economic and political life could hardly survive for a year without the continuing intervention of the state in the market to sustain them through subsidies and monopoly protections.

WEEKEND EDITION MAY 25-27, 2012

When the Teat Runs Dry

Why Corporate Capitalism is Unsustainable

by KEVIN CARSON

I’m not a Marxist, but I find a lot of Marx’s ideas useful. Old Karl certainly had a gift for turning a phrase. Nobody who could come up with something as Proudhonian as “the associated producers” could be all bad. One of his best in my opinion was that new productive forces eventually “become incompatible with their capitalist integument,” at which point “the integument is burst asunder.”

Another source of vivid imagery is the Preamble to the Constitution of the Industrial Workers of the World. Consider this:  ”… we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.”

These two phrases brilliantly describe the predicament of state-fostered corporate capitalism. Capitalism as an historic system is five hundred or more years old, and the state was intimately involved in its formation and its ongoing preservation from the very beginning. But the state has been far more involved, if such a thing is possible, in the model of corporate capitalism that’s prevailed over the past 150 years. The corporate titans that dominate our economic and political life could hardly survive for a year without the continuing intervention of the state in the market to sustain them through subsidies and monopoly protections.

This system is reaching its limits of sustainability. Here are some reasons why:

1) The monopolies on which it depends are increasingly unenforceable. Especially “intellectual property.”

1a) Copyright-based industry has already lost the fight to end file-sharing.

1b) Industrial patents are only enforceable when oligopoly industry, oligopoly retail chains reduce transaction cost of enforcement — unenforceable against neighborhood garage factories using pirated CAD/CAM files.

2) Cheap production tools and soil-efficient horticulture are

2a) increasing competition from self-employment

2b) reducing profitable investment opportunities for surplus capital and destroying direct rate of profit (DROP)

3) State-subsidized production inputs leads to geometrically increasing demand for those inputs, outstripping the state’s ability to supply and driving it into chronic fiscal crisis. For centuries the state has provided large-scale capitalist agribusiness with privileged access to land stolen from the laboring classes. For 150 years, it has subsidized inputs like railroads, airports and highways for long-distance shipping, and irrigation water for factory farming. But as any student of Microecon 101 could tell you, subsidizing something means more and more of it gets consumed. So you get agribusiness that’s inefficient in its use of land and water, and industry that achieves false economies of scale by producing for artificially large market areas. Each year it takes a larger government subsidy to keep this business model profitable.

4) Worsening tendencies toward overaccumulation and stagnation increase the amount of chronic deficit spending necessary for Keynesian aggregate demand management, also worsening the fiscal crisis. The state has built a massive military-industrial complex and created entire other industries at state expense to absorb excess investment capital and overcome the system’s tendency toward surplus production and surplus capital, and sustained larger and larger deficits, just to prevent the collapse that otherwise would have already occurred.

In short, capitalism depends on ever-growing amounts of state intervention in the market for its survival, and the system is hitting the point where the teat runs dry.

The result is a system in which governments and corporations are increasingly hollowed out. And meanwhile, growing up within this corporate capitalist “integument,” things like open source software and culture, open-source industrial design, permaculture and low-overhead garage micromanufacturing eat the corporate-state economy alive. An ever-growing share of labor and production are disappearing into relocalized resilient economies, self-employment, worker cooperatives and the informal and household economy. In the end, they will skeletonize the corporate dinosaurs like a swarm of piranha.

Kevin Carson is a research associate at the Center for a Stateless Society. his written work includes Studies in Mutualist Political Economy, Organization Theory: An Individualist Anarchist Perspective, and The Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-Overhead Manifesto, all of which are freely available online.

Bankers and Forgiveness

The Gentle Law for the One Percent

Bankers and Forgiveness

by ANN ROBERTSON and BILL LEUMER

When homeowners have fallen behind in their mortgage payments, whether because of a job loss or because the interest rates just shot up, the bankers have responded coldly. Led by their economic interests, they set their robo-signers working overtime on foreclosures, forcing millions of people out of their homes. Back during the height of this current economic crisis, when Congress considered passing legislation that would have allowed judges to lower home loans in order to prevent these foreclosures, the banks lobbied furiously and killed the legislation.

But when the bankers themselves commit their own transgressions — not innocent and unavoidable transgressions like not paying back a loan because you lost your job thanks to the bankers’ recession — but actually breaking the law, the government not only forgives them, it virtually becomes an accomplice in their crimes.

Robo-signing, for example, is a crime. It occurred when bank employees signed thousands of documents, claiming they were accurate, without bothering to verify their claim. Yet no one went to jail.

In a recent New York Times article, Jesse Eisinger pointed out that the JPMorgan scandal has raised an array of questions:

 “What did Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan’s chief executive, and Doug Braunstein, the chief financial officer, know, and when did they know it? Were the bank’s first-quarter earnings accurate? Were top JPMorgan officials misleading when they discussed the chief investment office’s investments? … The first question on everyone’s mind should be whether any existing laws were broken.” (May 17, 2012).

However, Eisinger was quick to point out in relation to the last question: “That it hasn’t been asked shows how little true accountability there has been since the financial crisis. No top-tier banker has gone to prison for the many bank failures, the deceptive sales practices or the misrepresentations of the books.”

The laws for the 1 percent are treated by the government as if they were humble requests — nothing to be seriously enforced if the 1 percent decline to accept. The laws for the 99 percent are brutally enforced, not to mention the prevalent police brutality that occurs without any legal justification.

Back in 2011, Gretchen Morgenson and Louise Story, in another New York Times article (July 7, 2011), reported federal prosecutors adopted a gentler code for bankers:

“Federal prosecutors officially adopted new guidelines about charging corporations with crimes — a softer approach that, longtime white-collar lawyers and former federal prosecutors say, helps explain the dearth of criminal cases despite a raft of inquiries into the financial crisis. … The guidelines left open a possibility other than guilty or not guilty, giving leniency often if companies investigated and reported their own wrongdoing. In return, the government could enter into agreements to delay or cancel the prosecution if the companies promised to change their behavior.”

More recently, Gretchen Morgenson has reported that a prominent Wall Street analyst and others suspect that “insider trading can and does occur regularly at many Wall Street firms. In their view it has become institutionalized…. Those in the know can get rich before the rest of us know what happened.” (The New York Times, May 20, 2012).

And this failure of the Securities and Exchange Commission (S.E.C.) to prosecute these cases comes on the heels of its spectacular failure to indict Bernard Madoff, even after being presented with overwhelming evidence of his guilt.

Although the financial industry is the recipient of the bulk of the government mercy, perhaps because it is responsible for the bulk of the crimes, the corporate world in general is a lucrative beneficiary. In the wake of the recent Wal-Mart Mexican bribery scandal, The New York Times (April 27, 2012), reported that, even though bribery of foreign officials is a crime, if past practice is any indication, no one will be prosecuted.

The prominent example of past practice mentioned in the article was Tyson Foods. After listing a series of crimes committed by Tyson executives, the article concluded:

“It’s axiomatic that people, not corporations, commit crimes. So what happened to the Tyson executives involved? Not only did the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission take no action against them, but the executives involved weren’t even named.” (The New York Times, April 27, 2012).

Why is the government so intent on pursuing a double standard when it comes to enforcing the law on the 1 percent and on the rest of us? In part this mundane corruption is due to the cozy relation that has been cultivated between the politicians and the corporate world. If a politician or regulator plays the game and pleases the corporations, they can look forward to a financially rewarding career in the private sector after they leave office. Politicians, for example, routinely become lobbyists.

The corruption is also due to this fact: “At least two-thirds of the U.S. senators drafting new financial regulations hold stock in banks or other companies affected by the legislation, such as Citigroup Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co., disclosure statements show.” (Bloomberg, June 16, 2010).

But the final explanation is that politicians have acquired the automatic habit of prostrating themselves before those with vast sums of money. And this is one more of the many toxic byproducts of the growing inequality in wealth: a sense of community is increasingly destroyed, along with the moral values that hold it together. We are left with two opposing classes that inhabit two opposing worlds, and their clash is inevitable.

Ann Robertson is a Lecturer at San Francisco State University and a member of the California Faculty Association.

Bill Leumer is a member of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Local 853 (ret.). Both are writers for Workers Action and may be reached at sanfrancisco@workerscompass.org.

THE concept of education and knowledge has changed over the years. It is not just communication technology with the accompanying information explosion that has triggered this change. Also responsible is the phenomenon of specialisation that encourages people to know more and more about less and less. Hence the trend towards continuing and life long education. But this education is generally highly focused. This can pose a challenge in an age when the range of knowledge is becoming wider and to be effective one needs to adopt a holistic approach. It pays if you are a jack of all trade and also a master of one.

Broadening the mind – as a life-long process

Posted on December 7, 2011 by Raza Jaffri | 

Tasneem Siddiqui, retired director of SKAA, (left) speaks at a critical discourse session. SEF's MD, Prof Anita Ghulam Ali, is presiding. Photo by Sadaf Zuberi

By-Zubeida Mustafa

THE concept of education and knowledge has changed over the years. It is not just communication technology with the accompanying information explosion that has triggered this change. Also responsible is the phenomenon of specialisation that encourages people to know more and more about less and less. Hence the trend towards continuing and life long education. But this education is generally highly focused. This can pose a challenge in an age when the range of knowledge is becoming wider and to be effective one needs to adopt a holistic approach. It pays if you are a jack of all trade and also a master of one.

Small wonder then that organisations are now trying to expose their staff to knowledge and education of issues that may not be directly concerned with their area of work. I remember when I visited London in 2003 as the guest of the British government, one of the items on my programme was a visit to the British Foreign and Commonwealth Relations Office. It was Thursday afternoon and the occasion was the weekly lecture hour. A member from the House of Lords was the speaker and he discussed with his audience – a number of senior and junior diplomats – the question whether the British democracy was genuinely democratic. One could ask why should those ambassadors and foreign policy experts worry about the quality of their country’s democracy. But to a discerning mind it is clear that a diplomat who doesn’t understand the domestic politics of his own country is hardly qualified to represent his government abroad.

Seen against this backdrop, I find the “Critical Discourse” (CD) sessions launched by the Sindh Education Foundation an excellent and innovative idea. Describing it as a capacity building measure to strengthen its human resource, SEF says the CD is designed to “create an environment of continuous learning for the growth and development of its employees and stakeholders”. The brainchild of Prof Anita Ghulam Ali, the managing director of the SEF, and Aziz Kabani, the director, the Critical Discourse is an on-going process that was started in early 2011. Marked with remarkable diversity, each session has an audience of about 75 comprising mostly SEF’s staff from all departments, with a few guests also invited.

Seven discourses have been held so far since February 2011. The speakers were people who excel in their fields and have made a contribution that is widely recognised. Be it Fahmida Riaz who was the head of the Urdu Dictionary Board at the time she came as the guest speaker or Dr Kaiser Bengali, the adviser to Sindh’s chief minister, the speakers made a contribution towards enhancing the intellectual capacity of the SEF audience. They had their own unique point of view — with Riaz recounting her experiences as a working woman and Bengali elucidating the role of the social sectors in development. Others like Tasneem Siddiqui, a bureaucrat who retired as director of the Sindh Katchi Abadis Authority, amply demonstrated that a paradigm shift can be brought about by committed people even while they are working as government servants. By focusing on the need for establishing symbiotic relationships between the government and the private sector for community engagement, Tasneem Siddiqui emphasised the importance of minimising dependency on foreign aid.

Fatima Surraiya Bajia, novelist and playwright, who has strong views on education and culture in Pakistan, was a speaker in November. Earlier Khurram Ali Shafique, a writer and researcher who has benefited newspaper readers with his wealth of knowledge, shed light on Iqbal, Shakespeare and Abdul Latif Bhitai.. The SEF’s move to invite such speakers, which also included the former chief of the Higher Education Commission, Dr Atta-ur-Rahman, and Agha Saleem, a Sindhi language novelist and playwright, to speak to its staff and expose its workers to a wide range of progressive views testifies to the open-mindedness and confidence of the SEF bosses.

In this context, another unusual move undertaken by the Foundation was to translate into Urdu and Sindhi the code of conduct its employees are expected to observe. This code elucidates the provisions of the Sexual Harassment Act 2010. This is an educative move and should enlighten the staff of the SEF about the law and thus create a congenial working atmosphere at work.

These are positive moves that should be emulated by others as well. One only feels that the frequency of the CD sessions should be increased. That is necessary to create and sustain the momentum for intellectual change which is the underlying goal of this exercise.

Carl Sagan, America’s well-known astronomer, astrophysicist, and science communicator told Bible Belt Americans: “Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us — then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls.”

Science at the grass roots

Posted on January 18, 2012 by Raza Jaffri 

By Zubeida Mustafa

IN an article ‘Neutrinos and Angels’ he wrote for a national daily, Prof Pervez Hoodbhoy, one of Pakistan’s leading scientists, quotes the late Carl Sagan, America’s well-known astronomer, astrophysicist, and science communicator.

Sagan told Bible Belt Americans: “Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonise about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us — then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls.”

These habits of thought Dr Hoodbhoy describes as the “cancerous growth of claptrap masquerading as science”. He further advises Pakistanis “to listen again, and yet again to” Sagan. How right he is.

I would, however, add that we should also draw some lessons from social scientists — Dr Akhtar Hameed Khan comes to mind immediately — who go a step further to analyse the basic causes of such evils and suggest feasible solutions. This is important because to root out superstitions and this ‘claptrap’ one must eliminate the factors that are creating the conditions in which they thrive.

Why do the likes of our televangelists with their bizarre pontifications on science and religion find popular acceptance in our society? The fact is that a socio-economic environment has been created in the country, courtesy the concerted and organised efforts of the right-wing religious parties that operate in a very organised manner at all levels, especially in educational institutions and the mosques.

Take education, the first safeguard against fanaticism and irrationality. It has been neglected woefully by all governments leaving the field open to the right to indoctrinate the masses and manipulate public thinking.

The biggest tragedy has been our failure to address primary education in the public sector. In fact most of our problems can be traced to this failure. It is what is drilled into a child’s head at a young age that determines his mindset as an adult. If a science culture had been created in our schools, things would have been different. Show a child the germination of a seed or let him toy around with the tuning fork and his curiosity will compel him to seek answers to the questions that crowd his mind.

If there are schools which take education seriously and understand the importance of teaching science correctly, they are in a minuscule minority. Beside their high fees make them beyond the reach of the majority. Then can we really hold the people responsible for their lack of education and for falling into the trap of the pseudo scientists? I would not blame Shan, a teenager from a katchi abadi, for telling me that we do not fall off the earth which is rotating because “Allah wills it so”. That is science for him. But after I talked to him about the law of gravity in simple language that he could understand, he was so fascinated that he wanted to know more. And Shan is only one of the 60 per cent of our population that subsists on less than two dollars a day.

With the rot going so deep, what corrective measures can be taken now? Several generations of teachers are products of a system that promotes rote learning in students and is afraid to teach them to think critically. They have never outgrown the naivety so cultivated. The religious parties aspiring for power, the preachers posing as fake scientists and the media vying for cheap popularity and ads have exploited the ignorance of the masses.

A number of students who have entered universities and professional colleges think no differently. As adults armed with a little knowledge (that has proverbially been pronounced a dangerous thing), they pose a threat to rational thinking as well as to peace and stability. A lot of violence can be traced to them.

Mercifully, the majority that does not go to universities generally abjures physical force. At the most it seeks relief in rituals and amulets as a panacea for the evils that plague our society. If in the process people manage to achieve their desired goal — even if by pure coincidence — it is enough to reinforce their faith in their strategy. Who can deny that the poor are overwhelmed with crises demanding corrective measures such as disease, joblessness, hunger and oppression by the powerful? Since the state does not help, they seek their own remedies.

The fact is that the majority of our people have no control over their own lives. The state does not offer its citizen facilities for good education for his children, healthcare for his family, protection from criminals, social justice and economic security.

Poverty denies a person the luxury of choice.

The solution lies in promoting mass education that actually reaches the people at the grassroots. It would also help if the secular-liberals would participate in this process to neutralise the claptrap of the right. Focused informal interventions in schools could help create a culture of science. For this the help of the teachers will be needed.

The non-governmental sector is now trying to do just that. Every school system worth its salt has a teachers’ training centre attached. Some guidance from the scientists should help. They could show teachers how to popularise science in schools. It would also be an interesting experiment to have scientists themselves visiting schools — where the children of the common man study — to talk to them about the wonders of science.

DECEMBER 10 was human rights day. That was the day 63 years ago when the UN General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which was hailed as the international magna carta. Much to their chagrin, people soon discovered that governments pay lip service to good causes as long as their freedom of action is not restricted severely. In many cases they have managed to get round obligations by not actually implementing on the ground what they have promised on paper.

Reminder of their rights

Posted on December 14, 2011 by Raza Jaffri 

By Zubeida Mustafa

DECEMBER 10 was human rights day. That was the day 63 years ago when the UN General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which was hailed as the international magna carta.

Much to their chagrin, people soon discovered that governments pay lip service to good causes as long as their freedom of action is not restricted severely. In many cases they have managed to get round obligations by not actually implementing on the ground what they have promised on paper.

Unsurprisingly, it took the world body more than 18 years to frame the two covenants which gave teeth to the 1948 declaration. Another decade was to elapse before the covenants came into force in 1976. Today, seven treaties constitute the core human rights instruments and a number of bodies monitor their implementation.

Yet the human rights situation worldwide is not much better than before. Power rather than laws continues to determine what rights people are to enjoy.

It is, therefore, good that the concept of human rights has caught the popular imagination all over the world. NGOs, official bodies and rights activists have been observing Dec 10 as the day to remind those who wield power that we no longer live in unregulated authoritarian societies where might is right and no voice of protest is raised when human rights abuse takes place. Press conferences, vigils, protest marches and seminars are the usual form these reminders have taken.

One, however, has to admit that of late these observances have assumed a rhetorical nature especially in Pakistan where human rights hold no respect even though the government has willingly assumed further obligations. In 2008, Islamabad signed two covenants on political and economic rights. They were ratified in 2010. Last year, by virtue of the 18th Amendment the government constitutionally recognised the right to education of every citizen.

In the cacophony on Dec 10 this year, a public response of cynical indifference to the events would not have surprised anyone. What came as a bolt from the blue was an international poster exhibition where the deafening silence of 100 posters on the right to education spoke out louder than all the slogans ever raised for human rights. It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. The story of a hundred thousand words conveyed by the exhibits at the Karachi Arts Council came — or should have come — as a jolt to the nation’s collective conscience.

Brought to town by artist and activist Khuda Bux Abro, with cooperation from the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, the poster exhibition was significant in another way. Its theme was the right to education on which not enough has been said or done in Pakistan to create a change.

According to the shocking figures released by the government when announcing the ‘education emergency’ (is it over? we no longer hear of it), 25 million children in the country are out of school. This was a theme which resonated with many who worry about our education failures. It certainly needed to be driven home and thank you Abro for taking up the challenge and conveying such a powerful message.

The brainchild of a Paris-based NGO, 4tomorrow, ‘Poster for Tomorrow’ seeks “to encourage people, both in and outside the design community, to make posters to stimulate debate on issues that affect us all”. It has already had two such contests in which 4,000 posters from 81 countries were received and 70 exhibitions were hosted in five continents. Abro was a member of the international jury that shortlisted 400 posters out of the 2,780 received this year, The 100 finalists were selected by another panel of judges.

Abro plans taking the posters all over the city and to places in Sindh. He is focusing on the art community, but the posters should also be viewed by the ‘non-artists’. One may say that as is commonly the case such messages only reach the already converted who also have the means to protect their own rights.

To make an impact at the popular level, the text of every poster (this is the minimal) could be translated into local languages and the printout be attached to them. It is important that such activities be made inclusive by resorting freely to translations.

That would create a wider appeal. Awareness after all is the weapon people need to fight for their right to education. Some messages would also help the already educated. One poster showed a book with its title ‘Mass Construction Weapon’. Yet another pointedly read, ‘Being educated does not make you better or special. It just makes you responsible for the education of others’.

How well it has been said that we as the educated citizens of Pakistan also have a duty to repay our country.

It is wrong to condemn the underprivileged as having no intelligence. I took with me to the exhibition Nadia, a Grade 3 student from Behbud School which is doing a fine job educating children who cannot afford the high fees of upscale schools. I translated the text of the posters for her. I asked her to draw her own poster.

She sent me her drawing the next day. It may not have been the most elegant piece of art. But the message was poignant. A drawing of children in the classroom carried the caption in Urdu, ‘Education is light’. Juxtaposed beside it was a picture of children at work. The caption said, ‘Children are being robbed of their right’.

Educating the Educators

I was trying to read this column which I had clipped from some newspaper, from 

somewhere, and scanned at my computer.  The date of the article was 27, April, 

2012.  I have NO idea, utterly no idea what newspaper I had read that would have 

cause me to cut and scan this brilliant and insightful bit of writing.  All praise to Allah 

for His kind and beneficent ways which ultimately guide my feet (and fingers, and 

eyes, and ears) to the places they must be to meet the people they must meet, who 

have so much to teach me; so much to show me; and it all devolves pretty much to 

this:  Everything I ever needed to know, I learned in kindergarten.

I shall say this but once: Zubeida Mustafa is as fine a commentator, writer, reporter, as 

Rehka Basu, whom I consider to be America's leading newspaper reporter (although 

she continues, or perhaps it is her employer, the Des Moines Register, that continues 

to hide her out publishing a twice-weekly opinion column that will end up containing 

so many relevant facts that she does not even have to argue the morality of her 

stances (which are in fact QUITE biased, in favor of the weak ones who are being 

taken advantage of by the stronger ones).  I can offer no writer higher praise than 

this.  I am hooked, and will be a regular reader, all the rest of my days.  My promise.   

Mark Raymond Ganzer, blogger

Educating the Educators

May 23, 2012 by Zubeida Mustafa

THE commodification of education is going full steam ahead. Not only is education being recognised as a good to be sold, its sales strategies are also being discussed. Any good sells better if it has a brand name that has a popular appeal, we are told. Forget what Naomi Klein writes in No Logo There.

Faisal Bari’s article in these pages ‘Expanding school systems’ (April 27, 2012) came as an eye-opener. In the article, the writer appears to have written off the public school system altogether. Undoubtedly it has reached the lowest ebb and can sink no further. But does that justify an approach that apparently consigns the common man to the bottom of the heap and absolves the government of all responsibility in the matter of educating Pakistani children, Article 25-A of the constitution notwithstanding?

As long as the for-profit educationists can make money, the article turns a blind eye to the government’s blatant neglect of education. This failure provides more space to the private schools by increasing the public demand for them in the absence of an alternative. Where are the children of the lower middle-class families and the poor to go when government schools are dysfunctional and private high-fee schools are unaffordable for them?

The writer identifies the major constraint faced by “private providers, even in this middle-fee range” on their ability to expand — their “lack of access to finance”. Hence the franchised schools are presented as a model to cater to what he bills as the “fastest-growing markets in the country, the lower middle- to middle-fee market”. The fees for this category range from Rs1,000 to Rs2,500 per month and according to him they will open new avenues for the education of the lower middle class.

Bari specifically recommends the Beaconhouse School System’s franchised schools called the Educators as a model for the expansion of education in the country. He confirms that in this niche in the school market the franchise operator uses the advantage offered by the economies of scale to keep advertising issues, curriculum development and teacher training under centralised control.

This approach has offered many positive gains to new entrants who are handicapped by their lack of experience and the absence of a reputation that is a crowd-puller. They receive a neat package with an established brand name. This allows them to rapidly enhance enrolment. By distributing financial investment among different investors the franchise operator can expand the school network quite fast.

On paper this sounds great. We need to look into what is actually happening on the ground. The network has expanded phenomenally since the first school was set up in 2002. Today there are 306 Educators all over the country imparting education to 104,000 children. However, their proclaimed aim of “providing quality, affordable English-medium education for all” may meet with scepticism.

For one, I would not buy the claim that education imparted through the English medium is necessarily ‘quality’ education. It can also be asked if the criterion of affordability is really being met. Schools that I visited mostly told me that the majority of their children came from families with incomes of Rs20-25,000. There is an ongoing argument over fees between the school managements and parents.

The fees are fixed by the franchise operator and they vary from area to area. For instance, the Clifton area charges about Rs2,500. Korangi is allowed Rs2,100 per child in the secondary school. This is tightly regulated and schools enjoy little autonomy though the franchise operators admit that they find it difficult to exercise controls on the academic operation. Yet they ensure that no liberties are taken in financial operations.

The initial franchise fee which was Rs1.5m has now jumped to Rs1.8m. The agreement is for 10 years. The Educators from the early years are required to pay Rs200 per child admitted per annum as admission fee to the franchise operator. Under the revised rates, the school pays Rs1,000 per child admitted which is said to include the charges for the Student Indemnity Plan.  (This is described as ensuring “the continuity of a student’s education in case of the demise of a working parent”).

However, the school which told me about this said its claim on behalf of one of its students was turned down on technical grounds. Apart from the admission fee, the operator recovers 7.5 per cent royalty per annum on the gross income (pre-tax) of the school. According to a former teacher with the Educators, the training provided to the teachers has to be paid for and mostly it is recovered from the teachers’ salaries.

After this there is not much to be said about who is gaining what, and who is losing what. A big question mark looms over the affordability of the schools for the low-income classes.

One can also ask, where will the children of the vast majority go? They are the children of the lesser gods who live under the poverty line — that is who earn two dollars or less per head per day (an average family income of Rs35,000 per month). The Education Emergency declared by the government in 2011 stated that 25 million children in Pakistan remain out of school.

What is to become of them?

The only feasible solution is that those who have already earned hefty amounts from their existing franchises should now start thinking about how to share their profits with the less privileged.

www.zubeidamustafa.com

Bringing It All Back Home: Occupied Chicago is America's New Normal

Bringing It All Back Home: Occupied Chicago is America's New Normal

Written by Chris Floyd

Monday, 21 May 2012 16:12

Gary Younge and Bernard Harcourt have good pieces in the Guardian about the "new normal" of America's militarized society, as exemplified by armed occupation of Chicago by a staggering array of "security" forces. Younge notes the bitter irony of the word "security" in a city where the poor are being subjected to ever-increasing levels of violence both from private predators and public "protectors": The dissonance between the global pretensions of the summit this weekend and the local realities of Chicago could not be more striking. Nato claims its purpose is to secure peace through security; in much of Chicago neither exists. … The murder rate in Chicago in the first three months of this year increased by more than 50% compared with the same period last year, giving it almost twice the murder rate of New York. And the manner in which the city is policed gives many as great a reason to fear those charged with protecting them as the criminals. By the end of July last year police were shooting people at the rate of six a month and killing one person a fortnight. This violence, be it at the hands of the state or gangs, is both compounded and underpinned by racial and economic disadvantage. The poorer the neighbourhood the more violent, the wealthier the safer. This is no coincidence. Much like the Nato summit – and the G8 summit that preceded it – the system is set up not to spread wealth but to preserve and protect it, not to relieve chaos but to contain and punish it. Younge then gives us a few of the local fruits of this global system: Chicago illustrates how the developing world is everywhere, not least in the heart of the developed. The mortality rate for black infants in the city is on a par with the West Bank; black life expectancy in Illinois is just below Egypt and just above Uzbekistan. More than a quarter of Chicagoans have no health insurance, one in five black male Chicagoans are unemployed and one in three live in poverty. Latinos do not fare much better. Harcourt, meanwhile, focuses on the mechanics of the lockdown imposed on Chicago: As one commentator suggests, Chicagoans are experiencing the "New Military Urbanism in Nato-Occupied Chicago". The extensive nature of these security measures (as reported by the US secret service), road closures and pedestrian restrictions included dozens of road closures (at least 7.5 miles of closed roads, by my calculation) … Eight-foot tall, anti-scale security fencing went up all over that perimeter and downtown, including Grant Park; and the Chicago police – as well as myriad other federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, such as the FBI and the US secret service – were out in force on riot-geared horses, bikes, and patrols – batons at the ready. Philadelphia Police Department is sending over reinforcements to help out; Chicago has also asked for recruits from police departments in Milwaukee and Charlotte-Mecklenburg, NC. Meanwhile, F-16 warplanes "screamed through the skies as part of a pre-summit defense exercise" and helicopters hovered incessantly. …. Plus, the Chicago Police Department will be deploying its two, new, expensive long-range acoustic device (LRAD) sound cannons – which it bought at $20,000 a pop. These are the type of devices that were used by the Pittsburgh police to deliver high-pitched alarm tones during the G20 summit meeting there in 2009. Then, there is the "secret suburban Chicago" police control center where "officials from more than 40 different agencies sit side by side with a giant central screen before them," as reported by the Chicago Sun Times. From the multi-agency command center, all different types of federal, state and local law enforcement can "view live video feeds from security cameras that are already up and running throughout the city". Harcourt makes the telling point that Mayor Rahm Emanuel denied numerous protest permits and imposed other restrictions on the grounds that the expression of free speech by demonstrators would cause "inconveniences to traffic and ordinary businesses" -- this, after closing off more than seven square miles of the city's commercial area himself. He makes the even more telling point that these hyper-draconian measures will, in many cases, stay in place once the power-players have finished their meaningless jaw-flapping and returned to their well-wadded entrenchments at home: Third, and finally, all of this is, sadly, here to stay. Nato will come and go, but the new anti-protest laws, the new riot-gear, the two LRAD sound cannons, and all the normalization of this police state … that will be with us for a long time.