Healthcare reform in the United States. Both the House and Senate versions of health insurance reform rest upon the following building blocks:

•Insurance reforms to protect consumers from insurance company worst-practices – like denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions, capping total coverage, and dropping or watering down coverage when you get sick and need it most
•Consumer protections that will restrict how much of your premium dollars insurance companies can spend on marketing, profits, and salaries
•Creation of a health exchange to increase consumer choice and guarantee coverage
•Affordable health options, with subsidies for working families and a hardship waiver
•Tax credits to help small businesses afford coverage
•Making preventive care completely free – with no co-payments or deductibles
•Lowering the cost of health care for our seniors
•Improving the quality and extending the life of Medicare
•Ensuring that reform is not only fully paid for, but actually significantly reduces the federal deficit

Obama hopes for healthcare success
--aljazeera--
Thursday, March 18, 2010
21:22 Mecca time, 18:22 GMT


The changes to the bill include expanding subsidies to make insurance more affordable [AFP]


Barack Obama, the US president, has postponed his trip to Indonesia and Australia in an attempt to push his historic healthcare reform bill through Congress. Obama had already delayed his departure by three days until Sunday morning in a bid to finally drive his most important domestic priority to broaden the country's national health care coverage through Congress.

"We greatly regret the delay of the trip," Robert Gibbs, a Whitehouse spokesman, told reporters, but he added the "passage of health insurance reform is of paramount importance and the president is determined to see this battle through".

Gibbs said the trip would likely be postponed until June. "I think the president in the calls and meetings he's having with individual leaders is making great progress," Gibbs said, adding Obama believed his place was to be in Washington "seeing this through".

Overhaul

House Democratic leaders finished work on the last changes to the overhaul on Thursday, which the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated would expand insurance coverage at a cost of $940 billion over 10 years and cut the deficit by $138 billion in the same period.

"It took some time but we are very pleased," Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, said after the meeting on Thursday.

"This is history, and this is progress," she told reporters of the overhaul, which would represent the biggest changes to the $2.5 trillion healthcare system in the last four decades.

At the White House, Obama said the healthcare bill, which has faced solid Republican opposition, represented "the most significant effort to reduce deficits since the Balanced Budget Act" of 1993.

After weeks of wrangling over the package to make the numbers come out favourably, House leaders presented the final changes to Democrats at a morning caucus and will post them online later on Thursday. The changes include expanding subsidies to make insurance more affordable and more state aid for the Medicaid program for the poor.

They also would eliminate a controversial Senate deal exempting Nebraska from paying for Medicaid expansion costs, close a "doughnut hole" in prescription drug coverage and change the threshold on a tax on high-cost "Cadillac" insurance plans.

"I don't think I'd call it a Cadillac tax now," Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said. "I'd call it a Rolls Royce."

The overhaul would extend coverage to 32 million uninsured Americans, the CBO estimated, and ban insurance practices like refusing coverage to those with pre-existing medical conditions.

US health bill 'will cut deficit'
2010/03/18 18:24:33 GMT
--bbc.co.uk--

The US Congressional Budget Office says the final version of the Democrats' healthcare plan will cut the federal deficit by $138bn over 10 years. The non-partisan body said the proposed legislation, which the House is expected to vote on at the weekend, would cost about $940bn over a decade. President Barack Obama said the bill represented the most significant effort to reduce the deficit since the 1990s. He has delayed a trip to Asia until June to help lobby wavering Democrats.

The reforms would deliver on Mr Obama's top domestic priority by providing insurance to some 30 million Americans who currently lack it. They would increase insurance coverage through tax credits for the middle class and expanding of the Medicaid programme for the poor. If approved, they would represent the biggest change in the US healthcare system since the creation in the 1960s of Medicare, the government-run scheme for Americans aged 65 or over.

Budget reconciliation

The House of Representatives and the Senate adopted different versions of the bill in November and December.

The usual procedure would be for two versions of legislation to be combined into a single bill for President Obama to sign into law. But after Senate Democrats lost the 60-seat majority required to defeat a filibuster by Republicans, Democratic leaders decided to use a controversial procedure to ensure the bill's passage.

Under the plan, the House will vote on a package of reconciliation "fixes" amending the Senate bill. The Senate will then be able to make changes in a separate bill using a procedure known as reconciliation, which allows budget provisions to be approved with 51 votes - rather than the 60 needed to overcome blocking tactics.

In a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the Congressional Budget Office said a revised Senate bill would provide coverage to 32 million uninsured people by 2016, bringing the total number of insured to 95% of eligible Americans.

The measures would continue to reduce the federal deficit in its second decade, although such projections were uncertain, it added. Democrats say the total savings over 20 years will be $1.2 trillion.

Mr Obama said the bill represented "the most significant effort to reduce deficits since the Balanced Budget Act in the 1990s", when President Bill Clinton put the federal budget on a path to surplus.

"This is but one virtue of a reform that will bring the accountability to the insurance industry and greater economic security to all Americans," he added. "I urge every member of Congress to consider this as they prepare for their important vote this weekend."

Later, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs announced that the president was postponing his trip to Indonesia and Australia until June so he could help Democrats rally last-minute support.

"The president believes right now the place for him to be is in Washington seeing this through," he said, adding that Mr Obama would apologise to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

He had already delayed his departure until Sunday, the earliest possible date for a vote. House Democratic leaders are expected to publish the final legislation later on Thursday. They have promised that lawmakers will be given 72 hours to review it before voting. Democratic leaders say they have not yet mustered the 216 votes they need for passage, but they are pressing ahead in the belief that they can get them.

Republicans are opposed to the proposed reforms, arguing they will give the government too much control over healthcare and be mainly paid for by higher taxes and cuts in Medicare.

House Republican leader John Boehner said they would "do everything that we can do to make sure this bill, never, ever, ever passes".

Washed Out, Belong

Labor On Dems Who Block Health Reform: We'll 'Take Them Out'
03- 9-10 03:54 PM
by Sam Stein
--TheHuffingtonPost--

As health care reform enters its do-or-die stage in Congress, union leaders on Tuesday began threatening that they will work to 'take out' Democratic lawmakers who vote against the bill.

In a set of fiery speeches outside a private health insurance lobby gathering on Tuesday, a group of prominent labor and progressive leaders excoriated industry executives, calling them everything from "dark titans" to "domestic enemies."

It was feisty rhetoric that riled up a crowd that organizers put at more than 5,000 who had gathered to demonstrate outside the America's Health Insurance Plans' annual summit in Washington D.C. But an even more compelling discussion was taking place, literally and figuratively, backstage.

In a series of conversations with the Huffington Post, many of labor's leading voices pledged to launch a massive, arm-twisting effort to help persuade skeptical lawmakers to pass health care legislation into law. And in addition to their traditional ammunition -- from email campaigns to town hall events -- talk also centered on exacting electoral revenge against those who end up voting against reform.

"I hope this sends a message to Congress," Gerald McEntee, president of 1.6-million-member AFSCME, told the Huffington Post. "I think we have to demonstrate that we are not going to stand aside, that we are going to take them out if they don't help us at all."

In private, union officials seconded and applauded McEntee's aggression, saying that the labor community was buoyed by the reaction to Lt. Gov. Bill Halter's entrance into the Arkansas Senate Democratic primary. There was discussion of other unions following the AFL-CIO's lead in making independent investments in support of Halter's candidacy. And several aides enthusiastically pointed out that Sen. Blanche Lincoln's (D-Ark.) opposition to making changes to the health care bill through the use of reconciliation already seems to have softened since a primary challenger emerged.

"Isn't it amazing what happens when you get a little opposition?" one top union official asked with a smirk.

The take-on-the-Dems ethos didn't end with Arkansas. Other union leaders said they were exploring whether to invest in other potential primary battles or, by extension, sit out the elections of those Democrats who don't come through on reform. More immediately, some leaders threatened to essentially make life miserable for lawmakers who let the process draw out.

"We are going to be calling and calling members in the days ahead," Anna Burger, Secretary Treasurer of the SEIU and Chair of Change to Win, told the Huffington Post. "And if they leave before the recess and haven't done anything, they are going to get absolutely hounded at home."

"Accountability is very important," she added. "For too long, too many members have done one thing in D.C. and gone home and acted like they cared about the people in their states when they don't."

The threats, both veiled and unveiled, reflect the frustration of the labor community in the year-long course of crafting health care reform. As it stands now, officials aren't yet fully comfortable with health care reform's legislative language and remain in intense negotiations about making policy changes through reconciliation. But the community remains intensely invested in passage and appears willing to target members it traditionally supports. While union leaders on Tuesday made a big effort to castigate the insurance industry outside their meeting, in private they were knee-deep in the inside game of getting reform through Congress.

Update of Corporate Ruthlessness

Protestor Murdered: Corrie's sister in Israel
15:19 12/03/2010
By Akiva Eldar


This is Sarah Corrie Simpson's first visit to Israel. Her younger sister, Rachel Corrie, was killed by an Israel Defense Forces bulldozer in Gaza in 2003, at the age of 23. Now, the family is suing the state in the Haifa District Court.

"I'm glad the day is finally here, that the eyewitnesses are having a chance to talk in a court of law," she said in an interview with Haaretz on Thursday. "It's been seven long years."

The witnesses, who include Rachel's colleagues in the left-wing International Solidarity Movement, say Rachel climbed atop a mount of dirt to be sure the driver could see her, Simpson said. When he nevertheless kept coming at her, she tried to flee, but tripped and fell. "The bulldozer driver kept driving with the blade down, pushing the dirt over Rachel, and stopped when her body was under the cab."
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"My father served in the military in Vietnam and was responsible for bulldozer operations," Simpson added. "He said there is no way that what happened to Rachel would have happened on his watch."

She rejects the IDF's claim that the area was an active combat zone. The witnesses claim no shots were being fired, she said, so the army could have stopped the operation and removed the demonstrators. But in any case, she added, international law requires soldiers to try to protect civilians even in a war zone.

What brought Rachel, a girl from a good family in Washington state, to the town of Rafah, on the Gaza-Egypt border?

According to Simpson, the September 11, 2001 terror attacks pushed Rachel into political activism. She wanted "to find out what was going on in the world, especially in the Middle East." She studied Arabic and began meeting with peace activists, including former Israeli soldiers. She wanted to understand America's role in the Middle East.

Rachel was a pacifist and a pluralist, Simpson added, her views informed by growing up in a Christian family with Jewish, Sikh, Hindu and Muslim in-laws.

After Rachel's death, Simpson said, "our lives changed instantly." Her father quit his job, and she herself has devoted herself fully to the political and legal effort to force the IDF to take responsibility for Rachel's death. Her goal, she said, is to ensure "that something like this will never happen again to any civilian ... whether Israeli, Palestinian or internationals."

Though the Military Police investigated Rachel's death, neither the family nor the American authorities consider the probe credible.

"There are pieces of evidence we have never been given," Simpson said. For instance, out of about six hours of video, in color, with complete audio, the family received "14 minutes of tape, a grainy black copy, with incomplete audio."

Would you want to meet the bulldozer driver?

"Yes, I would. Ultimately, in order to have any kind of restorative healing process occur, I need to be able to hear directly from him what happened that day and how he feels about it. As well, I hope he would be able to hear and somehow understand the impact this has had on my life and the life of my family. A credible investigation is important ... but in the end, it is also important that my family and the man who killed Rachel look each other in the eyes. This would be the most difficult and painful thing I can imagine doing, but it's something I feel is extremely important. But I have no control over this, the Israeli government won't release his name."

Asked whether the family was getting support from the U.S. government, Simpson said it was a U.S. government official who first encouraged them to sue the Israeli government.

The family has met with many senior American officials, she added, and more than 70 congressmen signed a letter demanding a serious investigation.

Feds Let South Dakota Reservation Freeze
26 February 2010
--Workers Vanguard No. 953--


A fierce ice storm hit the impoverished Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota on January 20, cutting off electrical power for most of the 10,000 Native Americans there. The Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, its emergency fund of $175,000 already drained by earlier storms, was left virtually defenseless. Desperate families waited for days in the dark without food—some without water as well—before minimal relief finally began to arrive. With windchills reaching 20 degrees below zero, many were without power for up to several weeks. The tribe’s chairman, Joseph Brings Plenty, declared: “We could have had quite a few people perish in this.”

The plight of the South Dakota reservation has been particularly highlighted by MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, whose appeal to his viewers raised some $250,000 in relief funds in 48 hours. For their part, government relief agencies doled out aid with an eyedropper, recalling the racist indifference shown the largely black and poor population of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. On January 31, the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe declared a state of emergency and requested federal disaster relief funds, medical supplies and generators. The reservation was granted an insufficient number of emergency generators, forcing tribal leaders to beg for more. As for federal relief funds, what they mainly got was the runaround. A spokesman for the South Dakota Department of Public Safety announced—almost two weeks after the start of the crisis—that federal funds could not be allocated until the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) got around to surveying the situation. He stated, “It may be two or three weeks before FEMA can assess the damage.” Adding insult to injury, the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe was the first Native tribe to officially endorse Barack Obama for president.

This crisis highlights the wretched poverty of Native Americans living on reservations like Cheyenne River, for whom disaster can be just one storm away. The statistics tell a shameful story of discrimination and neglect. Unemployment at the Cheyenne River Reservation is a staggering 80 percent. At the neighboring Standing Rock Reservation, which was also severely hit by the storm, per capita income is about $7,730 a year. Standing Rock’s average male life expectancy of 47 years is just two and a half years better than in Afghanistan!

This is part of the legacy of racist American capitalism’s bloody origins. Take the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). The BIA Web site touts that its mission is to “enhance the quality of life, to promote economic opportunity, and to carry out the responsibility to protect and improve the trust assets of American Indians, Indian tribes, and Alaska Natives.” This sick lie has long been the target of humor and anger, including the line “B.I.A., I’m not your Indian anymore” in the late Floyd Red Crow Westerman song “B.I.A.,” a hit during the period of Native American activism in the late 1960s and early ’70s.

U.S. capitalism was born in the genocidal extermination of Native Americans and the enslavement of black Africans. As we wrote in “Genocide ‘Made in USA’” (WV No. 581, 30 July 1993):

“From the governor of New Netherlands, who introduced scalping to North America as a means by which Indian-hunting bounty seekers could claim their payments, to the 1838 ‘Trail of Tears,’ where thousands died as the entire 14,000-strong Cherokee nation was force-marched from their home in Georgia to the barren Oklahoma plains, to the final massacre at Wounded Knee, South Dakota in 1890 when the U.S. Army assassinated 300 unarmed men, women and children—the westward march of U.S. capitalism was guided by the spirit of General Sheridan’s notorious remark: ‘There are no good Indians but dead Indians’.”

We dealt in depth with the oppression of Native Americans in the three-part series “Marxism & the American Indian Question” (Young Spartacus Nos. 27, 28 and 31; December 1974, January and April 1975), where in the second part we wrote: “With the destruction of aboriginal tribal society, Indians became social refuse and wards of the state. Although the federal government finally granted citizenship rights to Indians in 1924, the state maintains an essentially custodial relationship to the reservations, holding the land ‘in trust.’ Until the New Deal’s Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) of 1934, the reservations were ruled autocratically by the agents of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.”

Under the IRA, the government introduced limited self-rule on the reservations, creating a layer of Native bureaucrats. Later, it attempted to “free” Native Americans by terminating tribal status and thereby ending the federal assistance programs and tax exemptions, the economic margin upon which many survived. Through this, the capitalist class sought to rid itself of the burden of either developing the reservations or integrating Native Americans into bourgeois society and the labor force.

We fight to build a Leninist workers party, a tribune of the people that champions the rights of Native Americans. As we concluded in Young Spartacus No. 28:

“Capitalism confronts the Indians, who are cynically termed the ‘Vanishing American,’ only with the prospects of either oppressive urban lumpenization or the abominable reservation, with its squalor, cultural deprivation, high infant mortality, chronic alcoholism and rampant teenage suicide. Only the destruction of capitalism through proletarian revolution and the inauguration of the era of socialist development can insure the all-sided voluntary integration of the American Indian into society on the basis of the fullest equality and meet the special needs created by well over a century of injustice and oppression.”

Town Unites Against White Supremacist Group
March 9, 2010 - 10:14 AM | by: Dan Springer
--SPLCblog--FOXnews--

The Aryan Nations is looking for a new headquarters. But when the group targeted John Day, a small city in eastern Oregon, the residents banded together in opposition. John Day is a town of 1,900 in a county with only around 8,000 people. It's over 95 percent white, conservative and rural.

Paul Mullet, the leader of Aryan Nations 88, says he believes John Day's values fit with his group of Neo-Nazis. He's finding out he was wrong. The outcry was immediate following an article in the local newspaper, the Blue Mountain Eagle. The paper sponsored two informational meetings to inform local residents about the Aryan Nations beliefs and activities.

The town's response was immediate. The Grant County Human Rights Coalition was quickly formed and began passing out "No Hate" signs and green ribbons as a way to show solidarity. Restaurant owners said they would refuse to serve the Aryans and people promised they would not sell their land to the group.

The Aryan Nations has been based in northern Idaho since its founder, Richard Butler, moved there from California in 1974. The group has since been fractured and has been mostly underground since Butler's death in 2004. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which tracks hate groups, says there are at most 100 Aryan Nations members currently in the U.S. split between about a dozen groups.

Aryan Nations 88 is an offshoot of the original Aryan Nations and may have five members including its self-proclaimed leader, Paul Mullet.

Joe Roy of the SPLC says Mullet first came to his attention in 2000 when Mullet was passing out white supremacist literature in Minnesota. He moved to Idaho after Richard Butler's death. And now he says the group needs a new compound where they can build a school and create an all-white society.

But the people of John Day are determined to do everything within the law to keep that from happening. The town is already struggling. Two of the timber mills recently shut down leaving just one open. There used to be ten in operation. Unemployment is at 14 percent. The mayor says if the Aryans moved in that would be the final nail in the coffin for his city.

Jabberwocky
by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! and through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Arab MKs: Jews hanged by British mandate were terrorists
Last update - 21:31 09/03/2010
By Haaretz Service


Arab Knesset members Talab al-Sana (United Arab List-Ta'al) and Ahmed Tibi (United Arab List-Ta'al chairman) said Tuesday the Jewish revisionists hanged in the gallows by the British mandate before the establishment of the State of Israel were similar to Palestinian militants.

The Mks made their comments, disrupting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech commemorating the Jews hanged at the gallows by the British mandate before the establishment of the State of Israel.

"They [the Jewish revisionists] shot at Arab buses, and killed a minister," shouted Tibi during Netanyahu's speech. "Is killing a minister permitted? Are they heroes or terrorists?" Tibi asked.
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The Arab MK's also claimed that the Jewish revisionists who were hanged, also referred to as Olei Hagardom, were just like the Palestinian terrorists today.

"Terror is terror, whether it is perpetrated by Arabs or Jews," Al-Sana said.

Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin (Likud) excused the two MKs from the Knesset assembly after calling them to order three times.

"Every nation has a right to its own truth," Tibi said after leaving the Knesset assembly hall.

A policeman accused of fatally shooting 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos on trial January 20, 2010 in Amfissa 200km nortwest of Athens, Greece. The shooting of Alexis Grigoropoulos was a trigger for the roits in 2008. The trial was relocated from Athens because of security concerns, and Greece's Supreme Court has rejected bids by the teenager's family to move it back to the capital. Photos of recent riots courtest Cryptome.org:

Wake up,
Time has come to wake up,
For too long you have sat at home,
WAKE UP!

You Must Watch This

Iraqi Elections

Gender Equality And Millennium Development Goals
African Development Bank
--allafrica.com--


Gender equality is fundamental for achieving economic growth and poverty reduction in Africa. It is essential for reaching the Millennium Development Goals as well. Most African countries are signatories to international and regional commitments to gender equality promoting more equally allocated work, education, resources, and control.

Yet, for most women, access to and control over income, productive assets and decision-making power remains elusive, even as they contribute the lion's share of productive and reproductive labor. Better primary education enrolments and health care services have been undercut in many cases by the HIV/AIDS pandemic; conflicts and fragilities on the continent have exposed women increasingly to gender-based violence, and climate change is weakening the ability of rural populations to subsist. Many women and children are working harder to grow food and collect water and firewood.

Redressing gender inequality must empower women and men. Economic empowerment requires that more women receive secondary and tertiary educations, that they be trained in science and technology to enhance their chances of finding jobs. Access to credit is essential: the availability of micro-credit has encouraged small-scale income-generation, but graduating to small and medium-sized entrepreneurship remains fraught with problems. Many poor rural men are also subjected to social pressure to drop out of school to work before having acquired sufficient skills; some, like women, also face difficulties in accessing credit.

Gender inequalities, which are deeply entrenched in cultural attitudes, values and practices, become institutionalized in laws, regulations and policies. Gender inequalities are neither natural nor static; practices and laws evolve. As women's roles change, therefore, men and boys must define new and better-adjusted roles, and need support to do so.

Achieving gender equality benefits girls and boys, women and men. When boys and girls are encouraged to stay in school and achieve, family incomes have a better chance of increasing, fertility rates go down, and healthier behaviors take hold. When men and women share responsibilities for decision-making, family budgets benefit all family members. The redress of gender inequalities is a precondition for sustainable growth in Africa. It requires the commitment of all.

The African Development Bank has long recognized gender equality as fundamental for sustainable development. In 1990, the Bank created a 'Women in Development Unit'. As it became clear that to reduce poverty, gender needed to be mainstreamed in all Bank operations, a Gender Policy and Action Plan were later adopted to ensure a systemic approach to integrating gender equality goals into Bank work and in Regional Member Countries. More gender specialists have joined Bank operations teams.

In 2008, the Gender, Climate Change and Sustainable Development Unit was created to support Task Managers to integrate gender equality considerations effectively into their projects, using, among other tools, Gender Checklists and Country Gender Profiles.

Today, gender equality and women's economic empowerment are central to the Bank's vision and strategies. Achieving these goals would ensure a sustained poverty reduction in the continent.

Filibuster, the problem of.
Possible solution for current healthcare reform lull..
Lesson for stubborn politician.

The three-fifths version of the cloture rule does not apply to motions to end filibusters relating to Senate Rule changes. In order to invoke cloture to end debate over changing the Senate Rules, the original version of the rule (two-thirds of those Senators "present and voting") still applies. First established 1917. U.S. Senate voted to limit filibusters by adopting the cloture rule.

The procedure for "invoking cloture," or ending a filibuster, is as follows:

A minimum of sixteen senators must sign a petition for cloture.

The petition may be presented by interrupting another Senator's speech.

The clerk reads the petition.
The cloture petition is ignored for one full day during which the Senate is sitting (If the petition is filed on a Friday, it is ignored until Monday, assuming that the Senate did not sit on Saturday or Sunday.)

On the second calendar day during which the Senate sits after the presentation of the petition, after the Senate has been sitting for one hour, a "quorum call" is undertaken to ensure that a majority of the Senators are present.

The President of the Senate or President pro tempore presents the petition.

The Senate votes on the petition; three-fifths of the whole number of Senators (sixty with no vacancies) is the required majority; however, when cloture is invoked on a question of changing the rules of the Senate, two-thirds of the Senators voting (not necessarily two-thirds of all Senators) is the requisite majority.

After cloture has been invoked, the following restrictions apply:

No more than thirty hours of debate may occur.

No Senator may speak for more than one hour.

No amendments may be moved unless they were filed on the day in between the
presentation of the petition and the actual cloture vote.

All amendments must be relevant to the debate.

Certain procedural motions are not permissible.

The presiding officer gains additional power in controlling debate.

No other matters may be considered until the question upon which cloture was invoked is disposed of.

The ability to invoke cloture was last attained by a US political party in the 111th Congress.

The new version of the cloture rule, which has remained in place since 1975, makes it considerably easier for the Senate majority to invoke cloture. This has considerably strengthened the power of the majority, and allowed it to pass many bills that would otherwise have been filibustered. (The Democratic Party had held a two-thirds majority in the 89th Congress of 1965, but regional divisions among Democrats meant that many filibusters were invoked by Southern Democrats against civil rights bills supported by the Northern wing of the party.) Some senators wanted to reduce it to a simple majority (51 out of 100) but this was rejected, as it would greatly diminish the ability of the minority to check the majority.

U.S. Enriches Companies Defying Its Policy on Iran
March 6, 2010
By JO BECKER and RON NIXON
--nytimes--

The federal government has awarded more than $107 billion in contract payments, grants and other benefits over the past decade to foreign and multinational American companies while they were doing business in Iran, despite Washington’s efforts to discourage investment there, records show.

That includes nearly $15 billion paid to companies that defied American sanctions law by making large investments that helped Iran develop its vast oil and gas reserves.

For years, the United States has been pressing other nations to join its efforts to squeeze the Iranian economy, in hopes of reining in Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. Now, with the nuclear standoff hardening and Iran rebuffing American diplomatic outreach, the Obama administration is trying to win a tough new round of United Nations sanctions.

But a New York Times analysis of federal records, company reports and other documents shows that both the Obama and Bush administrations have sent mixed messages to the corporate world when it comes to doing business in Iran, rewarding companies whose commercial interests conflict with American security goals.

Many of those companies are enmeshed in the most vital elements of Iran’s economy. More than two-thirds of the government money went to companies doing business in Iran’s energy industry — a huge source of revenue for the Iranian government and a stronghold of the increasingly powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, a primary focus of the Obama administration’s proposed sanctions because it oversees Iran’s nuclear and missile programs.

Other companies are involved in auto manufacturing and distribution, another important sector of the Iranian economy with links to the Revolutionary Guards. One supplied container ship motors to IRISL, a government-owned shipping line that was subsequently blacklisted by the United States for concealing military cargo.

Beyond $102 billion in United States government contract payments since 2000 — to do everything from building military housing to providing platinum to the United States Mint — the companies and their subsidiaries have reaped a variety of benefits. They include nearly $4.5 billion in loans and loan guarantees from the Export-Import Bank, a federal agency that underwrites the export of American goods and services, and more than $500 million in grants for work that includes cancer research and the turning of agricultural byproducts into fuel.

In addition, oil and gas companies that have done business in Iran have over the years won lucrative drilling leases for close to 14 million acres of offshore and onshore federal land.

In recent months, a number of companies have decided to pull out of Iran, because of a combination of pressure by the United States and other Western governments, “terrorism free” divestment campaigns by shareholders and the difficulty of doing business with Iran’s government. And several oil and gas companies are holding off on new investment, waiting to see what shape new sanctions may assume.

The Obama administration points to that record, saying that it has successfully pressed allied governments and even reached out directly to corporate officials to dissuade investment in Iran, particularly in the energy industry. In addition, an American effort over many years to persuade banks to leave the country has isolated Iran from much of the international financial system, making it more difficult to do deals there.

“We are very aggressive, using a range of tools,” said Denis McDonough, chief of staff to the National Security Council.

The government can, and does, bar American companies from most types of trade with Iran, under a broad embargo that has been in place since the 1990s. But as The Times’s analysis illustrates, multiple administrations have struggled diplomatically, politically and practically to exert American authority over companies outside the embargo’s reach — foreign companies and the foreign subsidiaries of American ones.

Indeed, of the 74 companies The Times identified as doing business with both the United States government and Iran, 49 continue to do business there with no announced plans to leave.

One of the government’s most powerful tools, at least on paper, to influence the behavior of companies beyond the jurisdiction of the embargo is the Iran Sanctions Act, devised to punish foreign companies that invest more than $20 million in a given year to develop Iran’s oil and gas fields. But in the 14 years since the law was passed, the government has never enforced it, in part for fear of angering America’s allies.

That has given rise to situations like the one involving the South Korean engineering giant Daelim Industrial, which in 2007 won a $700 million contract to upgrade an Iranian oil refinery.

According to the Congressional Research Service, the deal appeared to violate the Iran Sanctions Act, meaning Daelim could have faced a range of punishments, including denial of federal contracts. That is because the law covers not only direct investments, such as the purchase of shares and deals that yield royalties, but also contracts similar to Daelim’s to manage oil and gas development projects.

But in 2009 the United States Army awarded the company a $111 million contract to build housing in a military base in South Korea. Just months later, Daelim, which disputes that its contracts violated the letter of the law, announced a new $600 million deal to help develop the South Pars gas field in Iran.

Now, though, frustration over Iran’s intransigence has spawned a growing, if still piecemeal, movement to more effectively use the power of the government purse to turn companies away from investing there.

Nineteen states — including New York, California and Florida — have rules that bar or discourage their pension funds from investing in companies that do certain types of business in Iran. Congress is considering legislation that would have the federal government follow suit, by mandating that companies that invest in Iran’s energy industry be denied federal contracts. The provision is modeled on an existing law dealing with war-torn Sudan.

Obama administration officials, while indicating that they were open to the idea, called it only one variable in a complex equation. Right now, the president’s priority is on breaking down Chinese resistance to the new United Nations sanctions, which apply across borders and are aimed squarely at entities that support Iran’s nuclear program.

But Representative Ron Klein, a Florida Democrat who wrote the contracting provision moving through Congress with the help of a lobbying group called United Against Nuclear Iran, said it offered a way forward with or without international agreement.

“We need to send a strong message to corporations that we’re not going to continue to allow them to economically enable the Iranian government to continue to do what they have been doing,” Mr. Klein said.

An Unused Tool

Sending a strong message was Congress’s intention when it passed the Iran Sanctions Act in 1996.

The law gives the president a menu of possible punishments he can choose to levy against offending companies. Not only do they risk losing federal contracts, but they can also be prevented from receiving Export-Import Bank loans, obtaining American bank loans over $10 million in a given year, exporting their goods to the United States, purchasing licensed American military technology and, in the case of financial firms, serving as a primary dealer in United States government bonds or as a repository for government funds.

Congress is now considering expanding its purview to a broader array of energy-related activities, including selling gasoline to Iran, which despite its vast oil and gas reserves has antiquated refineries that leave it heavily dependent on imports.

From the beginning, though, the law proved difficult to enforce.

European allies howled that it constituted an improper attempt to apply American law in other countries. Exercising an option to waive the law in the name of national security, the Clinton administration in 1998 declined to penalize the first violator — a consortium led by the French oil company TotalFina, now known as Total.

The administration also indicated that it would waive future penalties against European companies, winning in return tougher European export controls on technology that Iran could convert to military use.

Stuart E. Eizenstat, who as the deputy Treasury secretary handled those negotiations, said the law let Iran “exploit divisions between the U.S. and our European allies.”

Waiving it, though, was followed by additional investments in Iran — and more government largesse for the companies making them.

In 1999, for instance, Royal Dutch Shell signed an $800 million deal to develop two Iranian oil fields. Since then, Shell has won federal contract payments and grants totaling more than $11 billion, mostly for providing fuel to the American military, as well as $200 million in Export-Import loan guarantee and drilling rights to federal lands, records show.

Shell has a second Iranian development deal pending, but officials say they are awaiting the results of a feasibility study. In the meantime, the company continues to receive payments from Iran for its 1999 investment and sells gasoline and lubricants there.

Records show Shell is one of seven companies that challenged the Iran Sanctions Act and received federal benefits.

John R. Bolton, who dealt with Iran as an under secretary of state and United Nations ambassador in the Bush administration, said failing to enforce the law by punishing such companies both sent “a signal to the Iranians that we’re not serious” and undercut Washington’s credibility when it did threaten action.

Mr. Bolton recalled what happened in 2004 when he suggested to the Japanese ambassador that Japan’s state-controlled oil exploration company, Inpex, might be penalized for a $2 billion investment in the Azadegan field in Iran. “The Japanese ambassador said, ‘Well, that’s interesting. How come you’ve never sanctioned a European Union company?’ ” Mr. Bolton recounted.

Inpex was never penalized, though several years later it decided to reduce its stake in the Iranian project. And to Mr. Bolton’s chagrin, the Bush administration did not act on reports about other such investments, neither waiving the law nor penalizing violators.

Recently, after 50 lawmakers from both parties complained to President Obama about the lack of enforcement and sent him a list of companies that apparently violated the law, the State Department announced a preliminary investigation. Officials said that they were looking at 27 deals, and that while some appeared to have been “carefully constructed” to get around the letter of the law, they had identified a number of problematic cases and were focusing on companies still active in Iran.

Competing Interests

Among the companies on the list Congress sent to the State Department is the Brazilian state-controlled energy conglomerate Petrobras, which last year received a $2 billion Export-Import Bank loan to develop an oil reserve off the coast of Rio de Janeiro. The loan offers a case study in the competing interests officials must confront when it comes to the Iran Sanctions Act.

Despite repeated American entreaties, Petrobras had previously invested $100 million to explore Iran’s offshore oil prospects in the Persian Gulf.

But the Export-Import Bank loan could help create American jobs, since Petrobras would use the money to buy goods and services from American companies. Perhaps more important, it could help develop a source of oil outside the Middle East.

After The Times inquired about the loan, bank officials said that they asked for and received a letter of assurance from Petrobras that it had finished its work in Iran. A senior White House official, in a Nov. 13 e-mail message, said that while it was the administration’s policy to warn companies against such investments, “Brazil is an important U.S. trading partner and our discussions with them are ongoing.”

But if the administration hoped that the loan would bring Brazil in line with its objectives in Iran, it would soon prove mistaken.

On Nov. 23, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, visited Brazil, and the two countries agreed to share technical expertise on energy projects. Iranian officials said they might offer Petrobras additional incentives for further investment.

The visit infuriated American officials, who felt it undercut efforts to press Iran on its nuclear program while lending international legitimacy to the Iranian president. Brazil’s relationship with Iran has also complicated American maneuvering at the United Nations, where Brazil holds a rotating seat on the Security Council. Just last week, Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, restated his opposition to the administration’s sanctions proposal, warning, “It is not prudent to push Iran against a wall.”

Carter Lawson, the Export-Import Bank’s deputy general counsel, acknowledged that Mr. Ahmadinejad’s visit was “problematic for us, and it raised our antenna.” He said that since December the bank had been operating under a new budget rule requiring borrowers to certify that they had no continuing operations in Iran’s energy industry, and was carefully monitoring Petrobras’s activities.

In the meantime, Petrobras’s Tehran office remains open. And Diogo Almeida, the acting economic attaché at the Brazilian Embassy in Iran, said that while Petrobras was currently assessing how much it could invest in Iran, given the huge discovery off Rio de Janeiro, company officials were in active discussions with the Iranian government and were interested in pursuing new business.

Opportunities for Profit

For all the American rules and focus, there is still plenty of room for companies to profit in crucial areas of Iran’s economy without fear of reprisal or loss of United States government business.

Auto companies doing business in Iran, for instance, received $7.3 billion in federal contracts over the past 10 years. Among them was Mazda, whose cars in Iran are assembled by a company called the Bahman Group. A 45 percent share in Bahman is held by the Sepah Cooperative Foundation, a large investment fund linked to the Revolutionary Guards, according to Iranian news accounts and a 2009 RAND Corporation report prepared for the Defense Department.

A Mazda spokesman declined to comment, saying the company was unaware of the links.

Even companies based in the United States, including some of the biggest federal contractors, can invest in Iran through foreign subsidiaries run independently by non-Americans.

Honeywell, the aviation and aerospace company, has received nearly $13 billion in federal contracts since 2005. That year it acquired Universal Oil Products, whose British subsidiary is working on a project to expand gasoline production at the Arak refinery in Iran. Universal recently received a $25 million federal grant for a clean-energy project in Hawaii.

In a statement, Honeywell said it had told the State Department in January that while it was fulfilling its Arak contract, it would not undertake new projects in Iran.

Ingersoll Rand, another American company with foreign subsidiaries, says it is evaluating its “minor” business in Iran in light of the political climate. But for now, according to a spokesman, Paul Dickard, it continues to sell air-compression systems with a “wide variety of applications,” including in the oil and gas industries and in nuclear power plants.

Senator Byron L. Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, tried to close the foreign subsidiary loophole after a furor erupted in 2004 over Halliburton, former Vice President Dick Cheney’s old company, which had used a Cayman Islands subsidiary to sell oil-field services to Iran. But he said he was unable to overcome business opposition.

William A. Reinsch, president of the National Foreign Trade Council, lobbied against Mr. Dorgan’s bill and has opposed other unilateral sanctions. He argues that their futility can be seen in the intransigence of the Iranian government and the way American oil companies have simply been replaced by foreign competitors. Moreover, many foreign companies with business interests in Iran are also large American employers; deny them federal contracts and other benefits, Mr. Reinsch said, “and it’s those workers who will pay the price.”

But Hans Sandberg, senior vice president of Atlas Copco, which is based in Sweden, offered a different perspective. Atlas Copco’s sales of mining and construction equipment to Iran are dwarfed by its American business, including military contracts. If forced to choose, he said: “It would be no problem. We wouldn’t trade with Iran.”

Eric Owles contributed reporting.

The "Settlers" and "Aborigines" of the Chittagong Hill Tract
by Habib Siddiqui
(Saturday, March 6, 2010)
--mediamonitor.net--

"The genocidal campaign by the Buddhist king led to a mass scale forced eviction and exodus of hundreds of thousands of people of Arakan to the nearby territories of British India, esp. to Chittagong and CHT districts of today's Bangladesh. Nearly a hundred thousand people, mostly Muslims, were killed by the Burmese extermination campaign. The Mahamuni statue of Buddha itself was stolen away from the Arakan. Many Muslims were taken as slaves and forced to live elsewhere, e.g., in places like the Karen State of Burma."

The subject of minorities is a very touchy one in any country, especially in nation-states where a national heritage or culture or identity (often dictated by the majority population) defines the characteristic of the state. Such modern concepts of states get complicated if there are other minorities that live in the state, each claiming to be a separate “nation” by virtue of its religion, language, culture, etc.
Bangladesh has about 12% religious minorities, including approximately 10% Hindus, the remainders being Buddhists, Christians, agnostics, atheists and animists. Roughly one percent of the population lives in the high hills, e.g., Jayintia, Garo Hills and Chittagong Hill Tract (CHT) districts. Historically the Bengal delta was husbanded by people who resorted to wet cultivation while the people in the hills, who were outside tax collection from ruling authorities, resorted to dry cultivation for their staple food. In the olden days of the Mughal rulers the authority of the state sometimes ended where the hills began. As we all know it was the marauding attacks from the Maghs (Arakanese Buddhists) and Portuguese pirates, which were sponsored by the Buddhist Kings of Arakan, that led to Shaista Khan's campaign to re-conquest Chittagong and its hilly districts, ensuring these territories' sovereignty within the Mughal rule. His campaign stopped shy of the present-day Arakan that demarcated itself from Bangladesh by the Naaf River. During the subsequent Nawabi rule of Bengal and British Raj the territorial boundary remained the same, i.e., both those districts remained integral to Bengal and outside Buddhist rules of Arakan, Burma and Tripura.
Unlike the Mughal and Muslim Sultanates of Bengal, the British Raj (esp. during the Company era) was more interested about collection of revenue and had little concern about the goodwill of the local people and their legitimate grievances whether or not such taxes were burdensome. It was their heavy handedness that led to the horrible famine of 1769-1773 (corresponding to Bangla Year 1176-1180, and more commonly therefore known as “Chiatturer monontor”) killing some 15 million people of Bengal (that included Bihar and Orissa). One in every three person perished in that great famine.
During the British Raj a more drastic and concerted effort was taken to reclaim hilly areas under taxation. In order to increase revenue collection, the Raj created local tribal chiefs in the Hilly districts, Rajas, who would ensure payment of such revenues. For the planes, it had by the 19th century already instituted a similar scheme of collecting revenues from the zamindars (not to be forgotten in this context the Sunset Law), who essentially became the enforcer of collecting such revenues in the form of money or kind (e.g., paddy) from the raiyats - peasants, and petty merchants. That is, the role of the zamindars was similar to a revenue collector in modern times.
The CHT districts with their deep forests, much like many other hilly parts of pre-modern era India, often became refuges to rebels and revenue- and tax-evaders who would settle (without its true connotation) there to escape from being hunted down by the ruling authority. In 1784 in the nearby Arakan there was a massive genocidal campaign that was steward-headed by the racist Buddhist king of Burma -- Bodaw Paya -- who had invaded the independent state. Arakan - the land of poets Alaol and Dawlat Kazi - had a significant population of Muslims (commonly known as the Rohingya people) who had lived in the other side of the Naaf River for centuries. [As shown elsewhere by this author, the origin of the Rohingya people of Arakan pre-dates the settlement of the Tibeto-Burman people there.]. The genocidal campaign by the Buddhist king led to a mass scale forced eviction and exodus of hundreds of thousands of people of Arakan to the nearby territories of British India, esp. to Chittagong and CHT districts of today's Bangladesh. Nearly a hundred thousand people, mostly Muslims, were killed by the Burmese extermination campaign. The Mahamuni statue of Buddha itself was stolen away from the Arakan. Many Muslims were taken as slaves and forced to live elsewhere, e.g., in places like the Karen State of Burma.
Those Rohingya Muslims who were able to save themselves from Burmese annexation of Arakan, like many Magh Arakanese, settled mostly in the Chittagong and CHT districts. The Muslim refugees and their descendants that had lived and settled in those places came to be known by the local name Ruhis, depicting their Rohingya/Arakan origin. During the Anglo-Burmese War of 1824-26, Arakan and subsequently the vast territories of Burma came under the British Rule. The exiled Rohingya/Ruhi Muslims and Maghs of Arakan, and their descendants, were allowed and encouraged to resettle in those territories south of the Naaf River. While many did return, others remained behind in Chittagong and CHT districts. The British policy and the subsequent process of return of the Arakanese exiles, esp. the hard-working wet cultivating Rohingya people, facilitated the cultivation of vast territories within Burma, which had hitherto remained barren and uncultivable. This enriched the coffer of the British Government through collection of revenues and taxes. Many descendants of the exiled Rohingyas (or Ruhis of Chittagong) would also become seasonal laborers in Arakan.
Today, the bulk of the ethnic minorities that live in the Chittagong Hill Tract districts are the descendants of those fleeing refugees from Arakan who fled the territory during Bodaw Paya's extermination campaign. They are our Chakma and Marma people. (There are two other ethnic minority groups living in the CHT - the Kukis and the Tripuras. The former are also known as the Chins in Burma and Mizo in India; while the latter lives mostly in the Tripura state of India.) [1] Their history to the territory cannot be traced with any authenticity before that historical event of 1784. This does not mean that there was no migration of people over the hills; in fact, there was migration in those days of porous borders where geography was not often attached with politics, state and administration. Like any nomadic people, the hilly people had no permanent settlement to the territory - they moved to and fro between porous borders of today's Bangladesh, Tripura (India) and Burma. Their migration from outside, much like the Ruhis of Chittagong and CHT, cannot be traced before 1784.
Since the British rule of the territories dating back to 1826, many Bengali Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims have moved to the CHT for a plethora of reasons, including administrative jobs, logging, trade and commerce, a trend that was to continue well unto the Bangladesh period with development of industrial infrastructure there.
After the emergence of Pakistan in 1947, the CHT was made part of East Pakistan. During the War of Liberation, its Raja (Tridib Roy) openly aligned itself with the Pakistan regime, thus leaving a strong sense of betrayal and mistrust between the local Bengali or Chittagonian people and the Hilly people. During the war of liberation and in the post-liberation era, many Bengalis were kidnapped and killed by the extremist elements of the Hilly people. [A close relative of mine was one such casualty who was kidnapped and later presumably killed, never to be found later.] Crimes of this nature continued unabated making the territory unsafe and insecure. Outside the towns, there was virtually no functioning of the government. The territory became impassable and unlivable for most Chittagonian and Bengali speaking people. They would be kidnapped, and often times killed, even when ransom money had been paid to the kidnappers.
The so-called Shanti Bahini comprising of armed hilly bandits and extremists demanded autonomy and they were aided and armed by anti-Bangladeshi forces from outside. With the assassination of Bangabandhu Sk. Mujib, as the political scene changed drastically inside Bangladesh, the Shanti Bahini had a new sponsor - India - to destabilize the country. This led to tense situation between the government of Bangladesh and the Hilly people, leading to the deployment of the BDR and Army. The era of instability persisted during the military-supported governments of Zia and Ershad when hundreds of soldiers and officers died fighting against the criminal hilly terrorists.
After the overthrow of the military dictatorship, the situation improved somewhat, especially with the signing of peace treaty in 1997 under the first Hasina administration which stipulated total and firm loyalty towards the country’s sovereignty and integrity for upholding the political, social, cultural, educational and economic rights of all the people living in the hilly region. Unfortunately because of its demography and geography, the region continued to see infiltration of arms from outside, which inevitably have gone to forces that are destabilizing the region. Thus, even to this day, criminal hilly gangs who are opposed to the peace treaty and armed by anti-Bangladeshi governments and NGOs continue to harass the local police, BDR and military outposts, and kidnap and kill Bengali-speaking population, including members of the local and foreign NGOs that work on various projects aiming to improve the economic and social condition there.
In the last two decades, the CHT has also seen the incursion of narcotics and harmful drugs from Burma and India. Outside drug-traffickers, the territory has also become a natural hideout for many refugees and secessionist groups from Burma that are opposed to the SPDC oligarchy. As noted elsewhere, some of the Arakan National Congress (ANC) member parties are terrorist organizations (e.g., ALP) and are heavily involved in drug trafficking. [2] It is worth noting that ANC is a racist, chauvinist, ultranationalist Rakhaine organization that opposes to Rohingya human rights. In the past they have carried armed excursions from the CHT against the hated SPDC regime ruling in Burma.
In recent years some NGOs have emerged with ulterior motives that are at odds with aspirations of the people and territorial integrity of Bangladesh. No place offers them a better venue than the Hilly Districts where a sizable number of ethnic minorities live. They want withdrawal of Bangladesh Army that has preserved the territorial integrity. They want enactment of fascist ghettoization laws that would confine a particular ethnic or religious group into living in enclaves or reserves. They want forced removal of Bengali Muslims and Hindus from the hilly districts. It goes without saying that such demands are unrealistic and are sure recipes for dismemberment of Bangladesh. Their anti-Bangladesh activities are also bolstered by some human rights activists with foreign affiliations whose agenda includes weakening the sovereignty of Bangladesh. Not to be forgotten in this context are also some local players that are opposed to the current government. The latest unrest in the CHT may well fall into their scheme to destabilize the government.
As Bangladesh government renews its pledge for harmony, territorial integrity and stability, it cannot afford to appear weak against forces that threaten its very existence. Any measure that offers exclusion over inclusion, ghettoization over pluralism, discrimination over equal opportunity is undesirable and must be avoided.
As hinted earlier, economics has been a key driver shaping the demography within our planet. And Bangladesh (whose GDP owes much to the foreign remittance of her economic labors working overseas) with scarcity of land is no exception to that grand rule. In the post-liberation period, with the sharp growth of job opportunities within the hilly districts, some Bangladeshis have settled into the CHT. Many hilly people likewise have found jobs in the planes of Bangladesh, away from their traditional homes in the hills. This is quite natural for a country whose constitution allows for pursuit of freedom of movement, employment, economic prosperity and happiness for all. With a high fertility rate among Bengalis and Ruhis, it is no accident that they are a majority in some Hilly districts today.
The Hilly people are aware of these trends and have immensely benefited from the overall economic prosperity of the region. Most of them are against the extremists within their community. They also understand that they are the best protectors and preservers of their language and heritage, something that is becoming rather difficult for small minorities in a global economy of our time. In that balancing act between preserving cultural heritages and ripping the benefits of economic prosperity they would be better advised to follow the American/Canadian Amish example as opposed to that of the Native Americans living in the Indian reservations. [3]
In closing, to qualify as an aborigine a member of an indigenous people must exist in a land before invasion or colonization by another race. More stringent definitions require that the aborigines have resided in a place from time immemorial; i.e., they are the true sons and daughters of the soil. [4] From this definition, the Koori, Murri, Noongar, Ngunnawal, Anangu, Yamatji, Nunga and other aboriginals in Australia, the Maori of New Zealand, the Uyghurs of Xinjiang Autonomous Region in China, the Chechens in Chechnya of Russia; the Siberian Tatars, Khanty, Mansi, Nenets and Selkup people of Siberia in Russia; the Native Indians of the USA and Canada, Eskimos of Canada and few other races in Central and South America are the true aborigines (or more correctly, aboriginals) of our world.
It is not difficult to understand why the British anthropologist T.H. Lewin (1839-1916) did not consider the tribal people living in CHT as aborigines. [5] The brief analysis above also confirms that view. Thus, the Mongoloid-featured hilly people are as much settlers to the CHT as are the Chittagonians/Ruhis and other Bangladeshis living there. Calling these latter people “settlers” while calling the Mongoloid featured Hilly people as the “adibashis” or aborigines would be false and insincere! Simply put: all the people living in the CHT are the adhibashis (residents) there.
Notes:
[1]. A Kuki website claims: “There are eleven ethnic multi-lingual minorities in the greater CHTs. They are Bawm, Pangkhua, Lushai, Khumi, Mro, Khyang, Chakma, Marma and Tripura. They have been divided in to three groups. The Bawm, Pangkhua, Lushai, Khumi and Mro, Khyang are Kuki-Chin or Kuki group. The Tripura, Riang are Tripura group and the Chakma, Marma, Tonchangya, Chak are Arakanese group. These groups differ from each other in terms of languages, customs, religious belief and patterns of social organization. The population of the hill people in the CHT is divided into as many as 3 groups who the numerically superior ones are Arakanese group and the second are the Tripura group. The Kuki group are the third in numerical strength. According to Prof. Bessaignet, among the Arakanese group, the Marma came in the CHT leaving the plain areas in 1826. The Tripura came in the CHT from the Tripura state of India. Kuki group, are called themselves as Tlangmi or hill people (they are Bawm, Pangkhua, Lushai, Khumi, Mro, Khyang). They are known as Chin in Burma and Mizo in India. The Kuki group linguistically and culturally differed from other valley-living people or Jumma (Arakanese and Tripura groups). They belong to the Kuki-Chin branch of the Tibeto-burman language family. They are unbriddled freedom nation. They live on the ridge of hills. They even used to choose different habitats for themselves for living from the early days of their community-life. So British administrator Captain T.H.Lewin designates them as ‘Tongtha’ (child of hill). According to Dr. Shelly - The Bengali movement into the CHT date back to the 17th century when braving the natural disadvantages, a small number of Bengal’s made their abodes in the inhospitable terrain of the region on an invitation of the Chakma chief.”
[2]. http://tinyurl.com/yaozwew
[3]. For American reservations, see, e.g., http://tinyurl.com/yaz3kd2 and http://tinyurl.com/y93u7mr. For life as an Amish, see, e.g., http://tinyurl.com/6kc9v5 and http://tinyurl.com/pjqj3
[4]. See, e.g., http://tinyurl.com/yekg826, and the article by A. M. Serajuddin – The Chakma Tribe of the Chittagong Hill Tracts in the 18th Century, Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, No. 1 (1984), pp. 90-98, http://tinyurl.com/yda95aj.
[5]. According to T. H. Lewin (1839-1916), British ethnologist and anthropologist, the Chakmas and Mongoloid people of CHT are not aborigines. His famous book is: Wild Races of the Eastern Frontier of India, http://tinyurl.com/yenzfyr; http://tinyurl.com/yeuohev.

Source:

by courtesy & © 2010 Habib Siddiqui