… for the missing

From Groundviews

By Gypsy Bohemia

A solitary lamp perched on a desk top lights a room. A man scribbles feverishly on paper, hunched over the light as if he’s jealously guarding what little he has. His desk is cluttered with cartoons and drawings – some of a President, others of two small children. He holds down his paper with one hand and writes with the other, so violently that other loose papers and articles shuffle with his movements.

He is breathing hard, as if he’s run to his desk from sleep, taken by wild inspiration. He has forgotten to switch on the fan, and the heat of that December night hangs in the air, thickening like spoiling milk. Small explosions of sweat begin to burst from the pores of his forehead, drip darkly onto his fast-moving hand, and trickle onto the paper, blotting the ink. This frustrates him but he doesn’t stop to soak up the liquid, just writes on, faster.

His wife lies in bed in the next room. She is awake, some inexplicable worry vaulting the sleep away from her eyes whenever it threatens to close them. She watches the empty space next to her, willing her husband to come back to bed but knows he won’t. She wonders what he felt the need to write about in the middle of the night, leaping out of bed as if possessed. She was afraid he’d knock something over in the dark and wake the children, but that walk from bedroom to desk is so familiar that he doesn’t.

It is only when he feels that familiar cramping in his fingers that he pauses. He looks around the room, fighting to make out familiar shapes in the blackness outside his little circle of light. His house is modest and unadorned for the most part – the only exceptions are the sketches of his children that he has been drawing since they were born. Some have been framed; others lie strewn around the house – on bits of furniture, stuffed carelessly into vases by the children, folded within the pockets of well-worn wallets, dog-eared between the pages of story books.

He wiggles his fingers to give them a stretch and picks up one of the drawings on his desk. His little boy is growing up quickly and sometimes he feels like he’s missing it, so caught up is he in his work. Sometimes he sees print in his sleep. Sometimes he finds himself talking to his little ones about his work and has to stop mid-sentence, realizing they don’t understand most of what he’s saying. He shoots a guilty glance in the direction of his bedroom, knowing he woke his wife in his mad midnight rush to get to his desk. She worries for him, he knows. He doesn’t take enough time to relieve her of those worries, to comfort her. He resolves to, as soon as he finishes this article.

After this brief pause, he goes back to his article, crossing and re-crossing the lines, scribbling out careless mistakes, cursing his own pen which writes far slower than the thoughts run in his head. He longs for the computer at his office but knows it is too late to go there now and besides, to leave now would be to disrupt the flow of his writing. The flow in tonight’s case is a torrential storm of words, figures and damning evidence.

His wife gives up a losing battle and comes to the doorway of the bedroom, which is always open – just in case. She leans against the frame, appreciating the cool wood against her hot skin, and watches her husband as he works. She knows every telltale movement of his obsessive inspiration so well. Watching him from behind, he looks the same as he did when they first married. He would stop every now and then to shuffle through printed sheets of information and look up to stare unseeingly at some point on the wall, piecing parts of it together in his head. His back would periodically straighten and then fall into that characteristic hunch every time he was struck by something new that he simply had to write down. Even through the dull ache of worry in her stomach, she can’t help but smile.

She knows the value of what he does, but it isn’t the easiest thing to live with. The warnings, the childrens’ questions, her own engulfing fear. When they came with ropes and iron rods to take him away she expected that fear to kill her on the spot. It stuck in her throat and seemed to expand outwards, threatening to burst vocal chords already strained with soundless screams. There was an awful moment before he was dragged away, when she looked from her husband’s eyes, smoldering with helpless anger, to the terrified ones of her children. Seconds later, she caught sight of her own in a mirror and saw only naked panic. 4 pairs of eyes, a thousand different emotions. Darting urgently from one to the other, trying to comprehend, trying to rebel, trying to say goodbye. Moments later, he was gone and they were alone.

When he came back, she couldn’t believe it. She wildly kissed each purpling eye, each ugly bruise and held him tightly against her, not caring even as he cried out in pain when her arms circled sensitive, injured skin. She tried to make him swear never to put himself in danger again. For her. For their children. He refused. The truth is more important, he kept insisting, and his eyes suddenly became distant and withdrawn and she knew he was already thinking of something to write. At that moment she felt a mixture of searing frustration and aching love so strong, she almost choked.

Today, as she watches him write, she feels a similar emotion. She looks down the hall to her children’s shared room, listening in the stillness for any indication that they’re awake. Her little girl has been having nightmares of late. She never says what they’re about, but insists on crawling into bed with them for the rest of the night. She only falls asleep when her head is nestled safely against her father’s chest.

He’s been writing so hard and so long, he doesn’t notice she is standing behind him. Suddenly though, in a rare lapse of concentration, he feels the pressure of her stare on his back and the weight of her worry cloaking his skin – another layer of heat on an already hot night. He turns around and looks for her in the darkness, finding her barely visible in the shadows of their bedroom doorway.

“Come to bed” she says quietly and her eyes linger on him for a moment or two before she turns to go back inside.

He looks at his unfinished article for a moment, hesitating. Then he wonders how many times he will get to hold her after this article comes out. He lives under no illusions – they came before. They will come again.

He puts down his pen as if putting down a heavy weight. The truth can wait for a few hours, he thinks. The truth can wait until morning.

He gets up, switches off the lamp, and as the room dissolves into darkness around him, walks that familiar path back to bed.

Authors note: Journalist and cartoonist Prageeth Ekneligoda went missing on the 24th of December, days after writing several critical articles regarding election malpractices by the Government. He remains missing to this day. Like him, hordes of journalists have been arrested, abducted, jailed, tortured and murdered for reporting the truth and expressing dissenting views. Some have been returned to their families. Others, like Ekaneligoda, have simply vanished without a trace, leaving their families with the horror of not knowing whether to hope or grieve.

These attacks are not simply hits against the media. They are a direct violation of our rights: the right to know the truth of what is out there, the right to ask questions of those who should answer to us, and the right to simply have a different point of view.

For every voice that is silenced, more must shoulder their burden, wear their courage and take their place to end this cycle of insidious violence. This is my tribute, for The Missing.

Tags: creative writing, Extra Judicial Killings, Journalism, media, Sri Lanka

Ethnically Singular Nationalist Narratives

`Warring factions’ in the CHT

By Rahnuma Ahmed

In homage to Kalpana Chakma, who is marginal to the Bengali-dominated women’s movement in Bangladesh, which, regardless of its internal differences, is seamlessly united in its collective refusal to critically engage with the issues of ethnic domination and Bengali nationalism.

Also, to critically engage with the issue of imperial politics.

Kalpana was a leader of the Hill Women’s Federation. She was abducted, allegedly by a military officer, who was accompanied by other Bengalis, on the night of 11 June 1996. She was then a college student, aged 20-21.

Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League-led government (1996-2001) was forced to set up a committee to investigate her disappearance. It submitted a report which has never been made public. Sources close to the military, and this includes a Bangladeshi human rights organisation, insisted that she had eloped, with the very officer whom she had publicly accused of watching over and harassing her, a few days earlier. This story blended into another which was made to do the rounds: Kalpana had been seen in Tripura (India).

Thirteen years later, Kalpana still remains missing. She still remains marginal—as do all jumma women as jummas—to the women’s movement in Bangladesh which remains closely wedded to the dominant Bengali paradigm that unites the ruling and opposition parties, that is enshrined not only in the Constitution, but also in the hearts and minds of the state’s functionaries be they bureaucrats, petty officials, members of the law-enforcing agencies, or the military. `We won the nation, it is ours’ just about sums up the Bengali perspective on liberation, one that is historically inaccurate given the sacrifices of hill peoples and other ethnic peoples during 1971. An inaccuracy that does not detract the nation’s intellectuals, its poets and novelists, teachers and writers, playwrights and journalists from excluding `those’ ethnic others from the stories of courage which they weave and re-weave every December, every February and March, to connect us, to our collective past.

Some Bengali women however, working in small groups and clusters, or, as individuals, also belonging to the women’s movement, have attempted, over the years, to re-imagine a nation-state that is inclusionary. In other words, to conceptually dismantle the dominant Bengali/ nationalist paradigm. To include Bangladesh’s ethnic `others,’ especially, the jummas of CHT, whose lives and cultures have been disrupted most violently, a disruption that feeds off the dominant Bengali/nationalist paradigm, that employs a clever line of reasoning (`If someone from Noakhali can settle in Rangpur, why can’t he go and live and work in the CHT? It’s one country, after all’) to cover-up for a concerted military campaign of occupation (killing paharis, settling Bengali civilians, land-grabbing etc) for over two and a half decades. These women attempted to connect the lives of Bengali women to pahari women by drawing on the shared experiences of both groups of women: living under military occupation (1971 for Bengali women, post-1975 for jumma women), being subjected to sexual harassment, and to rape. It was a time when Bengali feminist history-writing of ekattur was just beginning. When Bengali women were seeking to explore the meanings of shadhinota for the women of this land, when they sought to go beyond the Bengali masculinist inability to engage with women’s experiences of rape, and its trauma (beyond uttering platitudes. Which, they still do). Besides feminism, these women also drew on the ideas which symbolised the political spirit of that time—the movement for democracy against Ershad, the military dictator. These ideas, and the spirit in which it was embodied, had a long history. They had been nurtured when the people of East Pakistan had taken to the streets to protest against Ayub’s rule. Against Yahya’s government. Against all military regimes, everywhere.

But the world has changed since.

The Failure of Bengali Intellectuals

`Like the Shahid Minar, the Bangla Academy too, is one of the symbols of the language movement.’ I agree. Absolutely, I said.

I was one of the discussants on Manzur-e-Mowla’s paper, `Bangla Academy: Bhobisshote Jemon Dekhte Chai’ (Bangla Academy: As one wishes to see it in future), at a programme which was part of Bangla Academy’s month long  celebrations commemorating the language movement. It was the 26th of February this year.

What I had forgotten to add was that, at the other symbol of the language movement this year, i.e., at the Shahid Minar, at exactly the same time, no language movement celebrations were taking place. Instead, protestors—both Bengalis and Jummas, but also, other Bangladeshis too—had gathered to condemn the recurring incidents of ethnic violence in Baghaicchari, (Rangamati), and in Mohajonpara, Milanpur, Madhupur, Shatbaiyapara (Khagracchari) in February this year. I did not forget to add however, this year’s Ekushey February was reddened with pahari blood. It shames me.

The founders of Bangla Academy, Manzur-e-Mowla pointed out in his paper, had envisioned it as a research institute. This was one of the other sentences that I picked out, saying that I wanted to tease out its implications for me. By research I understand the production of new knowledge, but also, new ways of seeing that which one assumes to be already known. Both kinds of knowledge is generated by the efforts of researchers and writers, by the activities of intellectuals. The chiefly two-party political system which Bangladesh has come to enjoy since the overthrow of president Ershad, extends to the production of knowledge too. This is most unfortunate. The country may be independent but its intellectuals aren’t, the intellectuals either belong to the BNP, or to the AL, they frame what they think, what they say according to the dictates of the party that they belong to. In his presentation Manzur-e-Mowla had mentioned that the Fellows of Bangla Academy should not be those who had been opposed to the independence of Bangladesh. I fully agree, I would only like to push his observation a bit further. The Fellows of Bangla Academy should be truly independent, they should not be durbar intellectuals who bow and scrape before politicians, whose thinking follows the party political line.

I had said, I think that when we speak of these matters we should also take the help of theoretical discussions, such as, let’s say  the ideas of Edward Said who had said, there is an urgent need to keep two things separate, on the one hand, the practice and function of the intellectual, and on the other, politics. Combining intellectual practice and functions with political ambitions is dangerous. It is deadly. I added, and I think we can also benefit from Noam Chomsky’s theoretical ideas, to do with manufacturing consent. I think we should keep these in our head when we speak of the kind of Bangla Academy that we would like to see in future, so that we can examine and analyse the role of intellectuals here, also, to be able to ask intellectuals how they see their own roles, whether they see their own function as manufacturing consent for the rulers. What if this leads to betraying the dreams and aspirations of the common people? Surely, it is up to the intellectuals to caution people, and vested quarters against pocketing the independence struggle for corporate gains? Against turning the language movement into a purely Bengali event? Yes, we had fought for our mother tongue, and yes, it has achieved international recognition, but that is because people the world over are attached to their own mother tongue, and it is these attachment, these feelings that have led them to sympathise with us. That is why 21 February has won international recognition. But we must ask ourselves whether we have learnt to respect the spirit of the language movement, or whether the language movement, Bangla bhasha, and Bangali nationhood, which were once rallying cries against oppression, have become tools of oppression themselves. When the Shaotals of Bangladesh sing ora amar mukher bhasha kaira nite chaey (they want to snatch away our mother tongue), they mean `us’ Bengalis. Surely that is a matter of shame?

When Manzur-e-Mowla says, `Bangla Academy Bangladesher shob manusher protishthan,’ I wish I could agree with him. But it’s not true. It belongs only to the Bengalis, not to all. Not to Bangladeshis.

Later I caught myself thinking, but the Shahid Minar is. After all, that is where people had gathered to protest at the injustices against those who were left out of the national dream.

The challenges that lie ahead of Bangla Academy are greater. It remains to be seen whether Bengali intellectuals will rise up to meet the challenge.

`Warring factions,’ and imperial politics

I had written above, But the world has changed since.

The Chittagong Hill Tracts is often spoken of as a zone of ethnic conflict, with different warring factions:

- the Bangladesh government (led by whichever party happens to be in power)

- the Bangladesh military

- PCJSS (Parbotto Chottogram Jana Shanghati Samiti)

- UPDF (United Peoples Democratic Front)

- the Bengali settlers

conflicts which prevent the furthering of development agendas which will benefit all, especially its older inhabitants, the jummas. Which will assist in securing human rights for all. Will promote harmony, peace and justice. On the face of it, there is nothing with which any one in their right minds would disagree.

But what I find disconcerting is the inability to raise equally searching questions about those who represent CHT and its politics in such a manner. I was reading the European Union’s press statement regarding the recent incidents in the CHT and trying to remember whether I had seen them issue any statement about Guantanamo. Or Abu Ghuraib. Did they? Had they? Instead, if I remember correctly, most of these European nations had joined the US in the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, had opposed the will of their own people through doing so, hadn’t they?

But then, all the more reason, I cannot help but think, to put our own house in order. A Bangla Academy for all, a nation for all. And, this being the month of March, Bengali intellectuals could begin by re-writing their nationalist narratives. Making them inclusionary.

Published in New Age 8 March 2010

Tags: Bangla Academy, Chittagong Hill Tracts, European Union, Jumma, Kalpana Chakma, liberation movement, military rule, pahari

Undisclosed Clouds Over Western Skies

`Owning’ the weather? PART VI

By Rahnuma Ahmed

“Our goals are not to gain political control, monetary wealth nor military power, but rather to pray and to promote the welfare of all living beings and to preserve the world in a natural way… For many years there has been great fear and danger of World War Three…This is now a time to weigh the choices for our future. We do have a choice. If you, the nations of this Earth, create another great war, the Hopi believe we humans will burn ourselves to death with ashes.”

– Banyacya, Interpreter for Hopi Traditional Elders, in his address to the UN General Assembly in New York, International Year of the Indigenous People, December 10, 1992

The weaponisation of weather has led to the creation of new distinctions in our understanding of phenomena which was unhesitatingly termed natural, previously. Readers must have noted this, that some researchers and activists now distinguish `earth-quakes’ from `HAARP-quakes.’

A somewhat similar distinction has emerged in recent years as heated arguments occur over `contrails’ and `chemtrails.’ The controversy centres around the trails left by planes in the sky. Are these trails `contrails,’ short for condensation trails i.e., do these artificial clouds form because “water vapour condenses and freezes around small particles (aerosols) that exist in aircraft exhaust” (Science Directorate at National Space and Aeronautics Administration, NASA)? Or, are they, as investigative reporter and author William Thomas has insisted for over a decade, `chemtrails’ (`chem’ short for chemical)?

Chemtrails look like contrails, but are usually much thicker, and extend across the sky. They are laid down in varying patterns of Xs, grids, checker boards and parallel lines. Unlike contrails, they do not dissipate but open into fluffy formations which join together, forming a thin white or milky veil, or, a “fake cirrus-type cloud” which persists for hours.

`Strange’ contrails were first reported on 20 February 1999 by `concerned citizens’ of Long Island, New York who took photos. William Thomas, the first reporter to draw national attention to the issue, dubbed these `chemtrails.‘ These, he alleged, were caused by aerosol spraying by government aircrafts. Early sightings in the first quarter of 1999 were accompanied by reports of sudden and unexplained illness in local newspapers: “a wave of respiratory illnesses” (in Berlin, New Jersey), “everyone is coming down with something” (San Francisco), “a new bacteria” (Castle Rock, Colorado), “flu-type symptoms” (7 counties in Kentucky), “throat, lung, and upper respiratory ailments” (in Akron, Ohio), “totally packed” hospitals (in Chandler, Arizona).

A former Raytheon Missile Systems engineering technician “positively identified” two of the aircrafts most often involved in aerial spraying incidents, Boeing KC-135, Boeing KC-10, both used by the US Air Force for air-to-air re-fueling. When most of the KC-135s were grounded for repair and maintenance, wrote Thomas, chemtrail sightings dropped, only to pick up after the aircrafts resumed flying. The US government, he says, is purposely spraying something in attempts to modify the weather, an allegation that is denied by the government.

Increasing numbers of people and activist social networks, both physical and virtual (i.e., on the internet) are convinced that the US government, and other western ones too, are spraying the skies. Some term it an “aerosol weapon.” They argue that its deployment—for purposes other than dusting, cloud seeding, or aerial firefighting within national borders, to further common goals—constitutes an “aerial crime.” Close watchers of chemtrails allege that spraying steadily increased throughout the 1980s; since 1998, it is conducted on a nearly daily basis with an average of 1 “clear” day per week; most areas in the US, Canada, England and Europe have been sprayed intensely, including areas which have no commercial flight paths overhead. In recent years, they claim, chemtrail spraying has been extended to Australia, Mexico, South Africa, Bahamas, Puerto Rico and Croatia.

“The air we breathe,” writes Amy Worthington, is laden with “asbestos-sized synthetic fibers and toxic metals, including barium salts, aluminum, and reportedly, radioactive thorium” (Chemtrails: aerosol and electromagnetic weapons in the age of nuclear war, Global Research, 1 June 2004). Particles and polymers which are spewed into the atmosphere “bypass lung filters and enter the blood stream” causing radical changes in the endocrine and nervous systems (may trigger high blood pressure, cause heart attack). These give rise to increased asthma, allergy and serious skin lesions (including itchy skin with crawling, biting sensations, white granules from skin and hair follicles, chronic fatigue, fibrous material coming from skin, a disease dubbed as `Morgellons’ by its sufferers).

Like other accounts that challenge the US government’s version of reality, `chemtrail theory’ has been dubbed a conspiracy theory—a pseudoscience, the work of nutters, rightwingers, feverish speculators—by mainstream media, and by ruling class’ ideologues. These include government officials, experts and scientists. Also, website and blog-owners. Of course, not all ideologues are equally dismissive and slanderous; some seem good-hearted but atrociously naive. I come across a blogger who provides evidence of chemtrail-like cloud formations from scanned images of clouds from a 1905 book. He insists, like many others, that it is increased jet flights which lead to grids in the sky.

But I am not persuaded. Chemtrail debunkers rest their case—bolstered no doubt by evidence—on the unvoiced assumption that until the US government admits to spraying in the skies, it isn’t true. It can’t be true. They choose to forget the 1977 Senate hearings. Between 1949-1969, 239 populated areas had been contaminated with biological agents. They forget the 1994 Rockefeller report. Hundreds of thousands of American military personnel had been subjected to secret biological experiments over the last 60 years. They seem blinded by their unwavering  belief in science, in scientific findings as neutral and impartial. Not politically-driven (unlike social science, of course). Nor corporate-motivated. Not even as climategate unfolds exposing climate science (as practised), and global warming theory, to be a sham. To be the “greatest scientific fraud in this history of mankind.” But that’s next week’s story. Back to chemtrail.

Why should aerosol be released into the atmosphere over America? Dr Stephen D McKay, who has researched on this for 6 years, thinks that it is aimed at setting up an electrical and chemical environment that supports radio frequency (RF) ducting from point A to point B for the RFMP/VTRPE warfare system. It enables the system to work over land masses, to visually see the battlefield terrain in 3-dimensions (3-D) on a TV screen. The Radio Frequency Mission Planner/Variable Terrain Radio Parabolic Equation is the US Navy’s most secretive programme. The mixture of barium salts in the atmosphere, by supporting moisture, lends itself to another project, a weather control project, which utilises Nikola Tesla’s concepts of radio frequency radiation (HAARP). A. C. Griffith, a whistle-blower, earlier associated with CIA operations, who had enjoyed top secret clearance, says the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Environmental Quality “have been told to keep their nose out” of the aerosol programme. When it comes to air quality and aerosol, they are instructed to talk about the “ozone level” instead. “The pilots probably do not know what they are doing, the crews that put it there they have no idea what it was for. We believe that it was sold to governments as global warming fix.”

Banyacya, the last of four Hopi messengers selected by Hopi Elders in 1948 to deliver an urgent prophetic message to all people, had suffered 7 years of federal imprisonment for having refused to register for WW II. “No Hopis or other original native peoples should be forced to go to war against another people and land. It invites even greater destruction.” While addressing the UN General Assembly, he had said, As children of Mother Earth, we should clean up this mess before it’s too late. The nations of the world must be stopped from moving towards self-destruction.

The skies had been clear the night before. The evening after his presentation, a strong winter storm, with hurricane-force wind gusts, lashed New York City. Tidewaters rose, there were “transportation shutdowns, power failures, and extensive flooding” including the lower subfloors of the UN building. UN personnel were asked to go home. Banyacya, in a meeting with UN representatives and other native peoples, spontaneously called on all to form a great circle—the circle of unity—and to pray. No further storm damage occurred. Soon the storm itself abated.

Did the world’s leaders listen to the Hopi prophecy? Did American leaders—the nation with the most capable military, the highest defence budget, the largest number of military bases etc etc—listen to the Hopis, who are, to them nothing more than a defeated nation? And, of all things, to a prophecy? Obviously not. But not because they thought, as you might expect, that the paranormal belongs to the realm of occultism and voodooo. After all, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) had investigated paranormal phenomena during the Cold World to search ways of how it might give the Americans a military edge over the Soviets. The leaders didn’t listen because it’d have dampened political control, monetary wealth, military power…

And what lies ahead? If one messes with Mother Nature, said the Hopi Elders, nothing short of self-destruction.

Published in New Age 8 March 2010

Tags: A. C. Griffin, Banyacya, biological agents, chemtrails, Conspiracy Theory, contrails, ozone level, Rahnuma Ahmed, William Thomas

A Tribute to Our Forgotten Sisters

Majeda, Jarina, Farida and Many other Garment Workers




By Saydia Gulrukh

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, New York City, March 25, 1911

Whoever saw the hellish fire at 33 Washington Place,
A terrible tragedy, something quite new,
Can never forget it, And everyone knows many lives were lost.
They were incinerated, In a factory 10 stories high.
There were horrible screams from the onlookers,
Those who were burned alive
And those who choked in the smoke.

(Yehuda Horvitz wrote and sung this song to the tune of a Jewish prayer to commemorate the deaths of Jewish women in the Triangle Fire)

In many ways, the Triangle Shirtwaist Company was just another sweatshop factory in the heart of Manhattan. It was located on the top three floors of the ten-story Asch Building just at the end of Washington Square. All that characterizes a sweatshop – low wages, excessively long hours, and unsanitary and dangerous working conditions – was part of its factory policy. Most of the several hundred Triangle employees were young women.  Many among them were recently-arrived Italian or Jewish immigrants.

On March 25, 1911, as the hours of the clock approached the closing time, a fire broke out on the top floors of the Asch Building. Flames leapt from discarded rags between the first and second rows of cutting tables.  The fire spread everywhere, as several men continued to fling water at the fire.  In the thickening smoke, a shipping clerk dragged a hose in the stairwell into the rapidly heating room, but nothing came out.  Terrified and screaming girls tried to climb down the narrow fire escape.  Some girls trapped on the ninth floor jumped through the window (Leon Stein, Out of the Sweat Shop, 1977). By the time the fire was over, 146 women garment worker had died. The next two days were marked with the horror and grief of families and comrades desperately trying to identify their dear ones from the bodies burned to bare bones.

In 1909, when women garment workers started to organize and called for a strike demanding better pay, safe working environment, Triangle Shirtwaist was one of the factories which agreed to only a partial settlement. One of the demands that was not met in this settlement was the demand for adequate fire escapes (Meredith Tax, The Uprising Thirty Thousands, 1994). These deaths, horrifyingly cruel, agitated the members of International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU). Many thousands joined the funeral procession, they mourned the lives lost, and demanded the safety for workers.

Two weeks after the fire, a grand jury indicted Triangle Shirtwaist owners Isaac Harris and Max Blanck on charges of manslaughter. Three years after the fire, on March 11, 1914, twenty-three individual civil suits against the owner of the Asch Building were settled.  The average recovery was $75 per life lost. Calls for justice continued to grow, thirty-six new laws reforming the state labor code were enacted between 1911 and 1914, those who survived the fire were left to live, and relive, those agonizing moments.

Garib and Garib Sweater Factory, Gazipur, February 25, 2010

21 killed at Garib and Garib Factory, Gazipur, 2010

62 killed at KTS Garments, Chittagong, 2006

23 killed at Shan Knitting, Narayanganj, 2005

23 killed at Chowdhury Knitwear, Narsingdi, 2004

23 killed at Macro Sweater, Dhaka, 2000

12 killed at Globe Knitting, Dhaka, 2000

24 killed at Shanghai Apparels, Dhaka, 1997

20 killed at Jahanara Fashion, Narayanganj, 1997

22 killed at Lusaka Garments, Dhaka, 1996

32 killed at Saraka Garments, Dhaka, 1990

(Source: The Daily Star, March 1, 2010)

It was a little after 9 o’clock at night, workers were finishing their shift. Some were still working, Abdul Mannan of the Garib and Garib factory’s sampling section was among them. He was working on the second floor when he first saw the flame and breathed smoke. It was coming from the first floor. A short circuit had occurred near a large stock of flammable acrylic sweaters, which produced thick and extremely toxic smoke and quickly transformed the factory into a ‘gas chamber’ (Bdnews24.com, Feb26, 2010). Zarina, Farida, Majeda, Sahara, Majida, Rahima, Shantana, Momtaz, Rasheda, Shahinur, Rawshan, Jahanar, Rina and Sufia were on the sixth floor as the monstrous fire swallowed the building.  The main power was immediately turned off. In the pitch dark, workers, both men and women, ran up stairs to escape, but blazing fires and toxic smoke followed them.

Within half an hour, ambulances and firefighters had circled the building, they started their rescue mission but came across dead bodies only: Kashem, Badal, Alamgir, Mainul and Pradeep, bodies which lay haphazardly in the stairway, there were many others. The events that followed were rather routine. After hours of effort, the fire-fighters tamed the unruly fire.  The Fire Brigade authorities, BGMEA and the government formed three different probe committees to investigate the cause of fire (Daily Star, Feb 27, 2010). In a ‘sympathetic’ gesture, the authority bore the cost of the burials and kept the factory closed for four days to mourn the deceased workers.  The BGMEA ‘expressed sorrow at the death of the workers and announced Tk 2 lakh as compensation for each worker’ (New Age, Feb 26, 2010). Labor organizations and left-alliances protested, demanding better compensation, and immediate punishment of those responsible.  They continue to protest, to hold meetings in Muktangon, in Shahid Minar, in Gazipur too, protests which barely manage to prevent us from forgetting about them. Perhaps through taming the fire, the fire-fighters had also tamed the sparks of our anger, anger at the deaths, anger at exploitative and unjust practices in the garments industry.

Collectively Resisting Our Amnesia

The hundred years which separates these two tragedies in the history of the garments industry, incidents that are strikingly similar, also coincides with the international women’s movement which has turned a hundred year’s old. By placing these two stories side by side, I don’t intend to undermine the struggles and achievements of our movement, to argue that ‘nothing has changed.’ My interest lies in the differences in our response to the two tragedies.

People gathered in thousands to cordon the dead bodies of Triangle factory workers, to hold the hands of hysterically grieving relatives and friends. The ILGWU proposed an official day of mourning. The grief-stricken city gathered in churches, synagogues, and finally, in the streets. In 1911, the funeral procession turned into an ocean of grief as countless numbers of people joined in, while the dead bodies of Zarina, Majeda and Farida were sent in separate ambulances to their village, and the only people who joined in that final journey, besides their family members, were the police. We do not join in their funeral procession in the thousands, we do not take over the street to mourn the lives of these women who had slaved their youth away for the much celebrated, and steady increase in the nation’s GDP. As I read Yehuda Horvitz songs written to commemorate the lives of the women killed in the Triangle fire, I look for songs sung celebrating the lives lost here. What I find is a statistical rhyme, an incomprehensive list of the numbers of workers killed in garments factory fires in the last decade. The thought of garments factories being ‘gas-chambers’ horrifies us  as long as the news remains fresh, and soon enough, we manage to find ways of returning to the national narrative, working in the garments sector is a stepping stone to women’s empowerment. Images of blazing fires rapidly disappear, stories of Rasheda, Shahinur, Rawshan choking to death are conveniently forgotten. In 1911, many women in the funeral procession in New York city had carried placards which said “we mourn our loss; we demand real progress in workers protection.” In 2010, we do not mourn our loss. We read of our loss in the newspapers.

There has been much talk of corporate greed and sweatshops, many editorials have been written protesting the criminal indifference of factory owners. Locally and globally, every year thousands of pages are written analyzing the sweatshop economy and the feminization of the global labor force. Perhaps, it’s time to analyze our deadly indifference. On international women’s day, a true tribute to Rahima, Shantana, Momtaz and many other sisters whose names will soon be lost in the statistical crowd, can be offered by resisting our own collective amnesia.

Saydia Gulrukh is a PhD student at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, USA

and a faculty member of Pathshala, The South Asian Media Academy

Published in New Age, 8 March 2010

Tags: exploitation, factory, fire, Garment, labour, Law, Safety, sweatshop, work, worker

My Sister’s Language

His eyes flitted forward and back, and having surveyed the scene for possible danger, it stopped. The head stooped, and that was how he stayed. Crouched on the floor of a bus full of Bangalis, the Pahari (hill person) amongst us, was living in occupied land. Keeping out of trouble was his best chance for survival.

It was only when the uniformed men with guns boarded the bus and prodded him that he raised his eyes. Scared, tired, hurt, angry eyes. But he knew enough to not express his anger. Meekly he obeyed the commands. His humiliation was also ours, but we did not complain. We were tourists in our own land, but the constitutional guarantees enshrined in our laws, while not fully respected anywhere, was particularly absent here. As well-connected Bangalis, we were far more safe than he was. But the rules of occupation are never generous, and they had guns. They left. We breathed more easily. He continued his journey with his head bowed. I took no photographs.

Walking through Rangamati as Bangali tourists was a disconcerting feeling. Many of the Bangalis here were also poor. Displaced from their homes in far away places, they had been dumped here with promises of a happy life. Left to fend for themselves, they joined the power chain well above the Paharis, but very low down all the same.

At the top of the chain was the military. Then the wealthy Bangalis, the ones who made the deals, then came the Paharis who had sided with the government. The Bangali settlers (the poor ones anyway), were quite a bit further down. The Paharis never dared to reach for the rungs of that ladder.

Rangamati was still a beautiful place. The homes buried beneath the lake when the Kaptai Dam was built, the tropical rain forests that had been destroyed, the hill people who were forced to leave their ancestral land, were things that never made it to our history books. The Hill Tracts featured in the picturesque postcards and tourism ministry books and the well rehearsed cultural programmes in the government Tribal Centre.

Occasional photographers from the lowlands came to discover the ‘authentic tribal lifestyle’. A bare chest woman bathing by a waterfall, backlit women with children strapped on their backs, a wrinkled old woman smoking a pipe and other photographic trophies were potential award winners.

As anticipated, the tiktikis (lit: geckos, local term for government spies, generally members of ‘Special Branch’) soon found us. They followed us everywhere. Asked stupid questions. Made notes. Questioned the people we had spoken to or visited. We consciously stayed away from friends. No point in getting them into trouble.

At a later visit, Drik’s printer Nasir and I had gone to Bandorban. Amongst the photographs I’d taken on that trip was this one of a mother weaving. Perhaps I was repeating what the trophy hunters had done, but the poster above the window, part of a UNICEF blindness prevention campaign, had words that seemed poignant. “hai re kopal mondo, chokh thakite ondho’.  (oh what irony we find, we have eyes but are blind.)

My eyes had shown me the military operations in the hill tracts. The deer being taken to the major’s home. The all Bangali military. The timber being taken to the military camp. While we did see Paharis, carrying loads, and doing odd jobs, most of the shop owners were Bangali settlers. It was Bangalis who had access to the government. They who obtained the local contracts. Menial labour was generally, all that Paharis could aspire to.

Kalpana Chakma’s abduction followed (12th June 1996). Friends got arrested. Some were released, but killed upon release. The violence continued, more murders, more rape, more displacement.

On 2^nd December 1997 the newly elected Awami League (1996) signed the ‘Peace Treaty’ with Jana Samhati Samiti (JSS). This had led to divisions amongst the hill people. Many felt that the core concepts of:

1.            Autonomy for the Chittagong Hill Tracts.

2.            Withdrawal of the Bangali settlers.

3.            Demilitarization of the Chittagong Hill Tracts.

were being compromised. Others were more pragmatic. Even those who questioned the signing of the treaty by JSS, despite their demands not having been met, recognise that peace in CHT is the ultimate goal, and that the land disputes that resulted from the government aided settlement of Bangalis was the core cause of the conflict.

The sole purpose of a nation’s military is to protect the sovereignty of all of its citizens, not to suppress them. The need to protect a nation’s borders cannot justify the forced eviction of people from their ancestral land. The disregard for even the commitments made, exposed the government’s lack of sincerity to the peace deal. Imperfect though it may be, for those clinging to the flimsiest of promises, the treaty still held hope.

The irony of the military and the settlers – in the second term of the Awami League – choosing the month of February, to remind the Paharis of how brutal they could be, was not lost on the survivors of the massacre. Salauddin, Jabbar, Barkat, Rafiq and Salam had died in 1952 to protect our mother tongue. In February 2010 many Pahari names joined the list of people who died for their mother tongue. But these different sounding names would never make it to that official list.

These were names that probably didn’t exist anyway. Without rights to land, citizenship and protection of the state, they were second class citizens at best, fugitives to be hunted, raped and killed at worst.

matri bhasha (mother tongue), has a very different meaning when your mother is Pahari. Kalpana, I failed you as a brother, when they abducted you. I failed you as a friend, when they killed your brothers Mantosh, Samar, Shukesh and Rupan. I fail you now as a citizen, when my military and my government burn your villages, murder your families, take away your land. I fail you all as a human being, when you are prevented from laying flowers at the Shahid Minar in your village home. amar bhaier rokte rangano, ekushey february. ami ki bhulite pari. This month, red with your warm blood. I cannot, will not, must not, ever forget.

Shahidul Alam

Dhaka

28^th February 2010

A story in Croatia with similar concerns:

Tags: abduction, Army, Bangali, Chittagong Hill Tracts, Death, ethnic cleansing, forest, Hill People, Indigenous, killing, land, Migration, Military, politics, rape, settlers, Violence

`Owning’ the weather? PART V Katrina and Haiti

By Rahnuma Ahmed

The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present—and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

– Dwight D. Eisenhower, US President (1953-61), and five-star general in US army

Jerry E Smith thinks there is a “scientific-technological elite” in the US. Precisely the kind of elite which Eisenhower had spoken of in his farewell address to the nation, nearly half a century ago (17 January 1961). One to which, not only American public policies, but global ones too, have become captive.

Smith, a writer, editor and activist for over three decades, is the author of Weather Warfare: The Military’s Plan to Draft Mother Nature (2006), and HAARP. The Ultimate Weapon of the Conspiracy (1998).

In a conference organised by Adventures Unlimited titled, `HAARP and the ultimate weapon of the conspiracy,’ Smith speaks of war and how changing weaponries through human history have impacted on the way war is fought: “Whenever you change the way fundamentally that war is fought, it’s called Revolution in Military Affairs, an RMA, and I believe we are in the 7th or 8th one in recorded history. The invention of gunpowder or the realisation that gunpowder could be used in warfare, created an RMA. The development of bows and arrows created an RMA and so forth. We stand now on a new RMA, in fact right after the fall of the Soviet Union, RMA was the hot topic in military intelligentsia circles. The war college circles and so forth were cranking out a large number of papers on this subject. One of the aspects of this that I find most disturbing, we went from weapons that could target individuals, swords, bows, guns, to weapons that could target groups of individuals, Greek fire, artillery. [We then went] to weapons that could target whole battlefields, i.e., the chemical weapons. And then we went on to those that could target whole cultures, whole ethnicities, i.e., the biological weapons; the atomic weapons are somewhat in-between. Now we are at the point where with the electromagnetic weapons we can target the whole planet. We can target whole continents, whole hemispheres.

“The guys at the Strategic Studies Institute who wrote this paper, titled:

Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). Electromagnetic Weapons.

The Revolution in Military Affairs and Conflicts Short of War

came up with a very interesting realisation… that the kinds of technologies we were developing, the kinds of weapons they were working on, were contrary to American morals and beliefs. And so, what was their contention, what did they say? [Did they say] Oh my gosh, this is immoral, we can’t do this? No. [Instead] they said, how do we change America, so that America will be willing to accept us playing with these toys. This is the tail wagging the dog. And this is that aspect [which I find most disturbing], we are being fed a world of disinformation on a continuing basis, because the military planners are re-designing our thinking to let them go forward in playing with these toys.”

As I watch and transcribe Smith’s lecture on You Tube, I think, so, is the `war on terror’ part of this re-design? Listening to Smith talking of `disinformation’ leads me to musing about why a scientist as brilliant as Nikola Tesla, is so unknown. Tesla, after all, had not only invented fluorescent lighting, the Tesla induction motor, the `Tesla’ coil (still used in radio, TV sets, other electronic equipment), the alternating current (AC) electrical supply system, 3-phase electricity, but also the modern radio (no, not Marconi). Further, he is said to have invented a particle beam weapon, which some call a “peace ray,” while others, a “death ray” . In theory, it was capable of generating an intense, targeted beam of energy and sending it across great distances to demolish warplanes, foreign armies. He is also said to have invented a doomsday device which could disrupt all communication systems on Earth, an idea long kept secret by the US government.

Most probably, I think, it was because of his invention of `free energy.’ If this line of research had been pursued, writes Ken Adachi on the basis of Dr Peter Lindemann’s meticulous research, “Unlimited electricity could be made available anywhere and at any time, by merely pushing a rod into the ground and turning on the electrical appliance.” (The Free Energy Secrets of Cold Electricity, lecture, 2000).

Free energy, derived from nature. For all. But surely initiating that kind of a revolution wouldn’t have appealed to the scientific-technological elite, would it?

Climate and weather are two different things, says Smith. Climate is what one expects, while weather is what one gets. Mainstream science recognises that human beings have the ability to alter the weather intentionally, only on a limited scale, and unintentionally, on a vastly larger scale. But the fact is, says Smith, “what can be done intentionally is far greater than what the mainstream is willing to or able to admit.”  And there are, as Smith points out, a lot of intentional players around: academic, commercial and military. Who have a lot of intended objectives: financial, militaristic and political. To be acheived irrespective of the human costs involved. But no, actually, from the perspective of the scientific-technological elite, it is this wondrous humanity that is the problem. After all, as former American secretary of state Henry Kissinger had put it, the world’s population needs to be decreased by 50 percent. Population increases, he had asserted, harm US national security interests.  (He too had received the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1973).

In Weather Warfare, Smith provides instances of “earthquakes on demand”: (a) the development of a “tsunami bomb” during World War II (revealed in documents recently declassified by the New Zealand government) (b) Project Faultless, which had caused a massive earthquake in the Nevada desert after a high yield atom bomb was intentionally detonated on a fault line. Smith also provides evidence of human initiation of several major quakes, and the 2004 Christmas tsunami, with “scalar” or other electromagnetic waves.

“There was nothing natural about the disaster that befell New Orleans in Katrina’s aftermath,” writes James Ridgeway (Mother Jones, 28 August 2009). Four years later, “confronted with images of corpses floating in the blackened floodwaters or baking in the sun on abandoned highways,” it increasingly becomes clear that what had taken place in this devastated American city was “no less than a war” where the victims were treated as enemies of the state. Their only crime was being black. Being poor.

“Every 30 or 40 minutes someone was dying,” recollects Marc Creswell, an Acadian medic. The company sent in outside doctors and nurses. FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) rejected the help. “When the doctors asked why they couldn’t help these critically ill people lying there unattended, the FEMA people kept saying, ‘You’re not federalized.’ ” I scan through headlines reporting FEMA failures, in the major media:

FEMA refuses hundreds of personnel, dozens of vehicles – Chicago Tribune, 9/2/05
FEMA won’t let Red Cross deliver food – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/3/05
FEMA fails to utilize Navy ship with 600-bed hospital on board – Chicago Tribune, 9/4/05
FEMA turns away state-of-the-art mobile hospital from Univ. of North Carolina – CNN, 9/5/05

FEMA won’t accept Amtrak’s help in evacuations – Financial Times, 9/5/05

FEMA turns back Wal-Mart supply trucks – New York Times, 9/6/05

FEMA prevents Coast Guard from delivering diesel fuel – New York Times, 9/6/05
FEMA blocks 500-boat citizen flotilla from delivering aid – News Sentinel, 9/8/05

FEMA asks media not to take pictures of dead – Washington Post, 9/8/05
FEMA turns back German government plane loaded with 15 tons of food – Spiegel, 9/12/05
While civilian aid for victims was made scarce, private security forces already had boots on the ground. As Jeremy Scahill reported in The Nation, Blackwater (re-named Xe) had set up an HQ in downtown New Orleans. Members of this private militia company were armed, and operated, as in Iraq: automatic rifles, guns strapped to legs, pockets overflowing with ammo, driving around in SUVs and unmarked cars with no license plates. When asked one of them replied: We’re on contract with the Department of Homeland Security. We can make arrests and use lethal force if we deem it necessary.

And the US government’s response to the earthquake in Haiti, on Jan 12 this year? A massive deployment of military hardware and personnel. Nine to ten thousand troops, including 2000 marines. Overall humanitarian operation led by the Pentagon. Dominant decision making role entrusted to US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM). The US, as the French cooperation minister remarked before being quickly shushed-up, seemed to be `occupying’ rather than helping Haiti. But why on earth would the US want to occupy a poor, impoverished nation like Haiti?

Haiti, according to recent revelations, has oil reserves which in comparison to Venezuela’s are like an Olympic swimming pool is to a glass of water. The US, according to Haitian scholar Dr. Georges Michel, has known of Haiti’s oil and natural gas reserves since 1908. After completing their explorations in the 1950s, they locked up what had been discovered, as “strategic reserves for the US.” To be tapped only when Middle Eastern oil becomes less available. Other Haitian scholars add, not only oil, but also Haiti’s strategic position, cheap labor, deep water ports, mineral resources (iridium, gold, copper, uranium, diamond, gas reserves, zyconium deposits), lands, waterfronts, offshore resources for privatization or the exclusive use of the world’s wealthy oligarchs and US big oil monopolies.

As I come across news reports, the Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez says the US was playing God by testing weapon that caused Haiti quake (Russia TV), I cannot help but trace parallels in the US government’s response to the disasters in Katrina and Haiti. The former seems to have been a dress rehearsal for the latter. Re-designing our thinking. The project of domination, as Eisenhower had put it.

Published in New Age 1 March 2010

Tags: HAARP, Haiti, Jerry E Smith RMA climate, Katrina, Nikola Tesla, Rahnuma Ahmed, USA, War, weather

Where Three Dreams Cross

By Rosa Maria Falvo

Spanning 150 years of photography from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, this ambitious survey of historic and contemporary works includes over 400 images by 82 artists. Using ’shared culture’ as a parameter, it is the first comprehensive vision of South Asia to be presented in the West; these images are not ‘about’ the region and there are no European perspectives to be seen. Indeed, those looking for a text driven, ethnographic narrative of an ex-colonial world will sadly be missing the point.

Installed in a bastion of Western art – London’s Whitechapel Gallery – 63 years after Indian Independence and the subsequent dissolution of the British Raj, this show aspires to explore its topography with decidedly indigenous eyes. Of course, politics is inherent in picture making – our ‘ways of seeing’ and the context in which we see them pose fundamental issues. Refreshingly, this is a case of self-discovery, a kind of meditative picturing of a collective self and its geographical truths, where the ‘other’ is observing from within.

Images like Mohammad Ali Salim’s Worker’s at a city construction site… (Bangladesh, 1980) and Mohammad Arif Ali’s Rainy Days Image of Lahore (Pakistan, 2008) are not invested in archetypal victims or street urchins. While they do not ignore the pain or the facts, they offer a purposeful and frequently hopeful alternative to the media driven images of death and destruction, which have arguably desensitised audiences on the ‘outside’. The curators have set out to question and even defy our received notions of the Subcontinent, presenting a sort of counter-colonial response to the official Western history of photography. They are asking us to celebrate South Asia’s contribution, beginning in India in 1850, and in this sense the show becomes a pioneering catalyst, inspired by the gaps.

The curatorial line wants to trace the finer social and creative turning points inherent in each body of work. Sunil Gupta references a particular instance in how transsexuals are depicted in the context of the historic “fluidity of sexuality in India”, previously outlawed under colonial law. While homogenisation is an obvious danger, he is quick to remind us that “culture cannot be partitioned”, and the power of photography to engage contemporary audiences is such that ‘Westerners’ are likely to notice the similarities between these nations, while ‘South Asians’ are necessarily sensitive to their differences. But the landscape is shifting, as ‘majority world‘ issues are increasingly addressed by those who understand them most and can no longer be ignored. More representations of the internal structures of hitherto ‘foreign’ realities will eventually balance out those one-dimensional visions of systems, symptoms, and conflicts. If there is a trend in the emergence of ‘indigenous photographers’ it is that they are able to achieve an intimacy with their subjects which enhances their humanity. For me it is this authenticity of image making that carries the editorial eloquence of its subject matter.

Paradoxically, despite its thriving art market, photography as a discipline is still emerging in India. And in Pakistan interest in this medium by a new generation of artists is a promising but recent phenomenon. Bangladesh has led the way with an established international festival – Chobi Mela – and Dhaka’s dynamic Drik gallery (Sanskrit for vision) which has represented local professionals for more than 20 years.

This show is arranged in five thematic sections, which inevitably blend into and across national stories: the portrait, the performance, the family, the street, and the body politic.

Legendary photographers from Bangladesh, such as Amanul Huq and Nasir Ali Mamun are presented alongside their present-day counterparts, such as Abir Abdullah, Shumon Ahmed, and Shahidul Alam.

There are works from the early 19th century from the renowned Alkazi Collection in Delhi, the Abhishek Poddar Collection in Bangalore, and the White Star Archive in Karachi, and many previously unseen works from family archives, galleries, and established contemporary artists. We see hand-painted images of courtesans and families by anonymous photographers in the very first Indian-run studios, journalistic depictions of key political events (Rashid Talukder’s Sheikh Mujibur Rahman returns to his homeland… in 1972 and Benazir Bhutto’s arrival at Karachi airport in 1988), and cutting edge reconfigurations of the built up environment (Farida Batool’s “Nai Reesan Shehr Lahore Diyan” 2006, and Rashid Rana’s Twins 2007). As virtual co-protagonists in the unfolding of these stories, viewers are left to provide their own social critiques.

Fantastic circus acts (Saibal Das’s Matinee Show 2001) and glamorous Bollywood stars (Dev Anand and Meena Kumari in the 1950s) capture portraits within portraits, reinforcing photography’s ability to empower the object of its gaze. Here is a region reconstructing its own image, touching on castes and sexuality as naturally as geopolitics and environmental disasters. It is not the ‘otherness’ we need to consider, but rather our willingness to become re-acquainted with what we have presumed to know.

Echoing the literary musing of one of the curators, Radhika Singh, who titled the show on a line from T.S Eliot’s Ash Wednesday (1930) – “This is the time of tension between dying and birth; The place of solitude where three dreams cross…” – I can’t help recalling William Blake’s Letter to Revd Dr Trusler (1799) – “As a man is, so he sees. As the eye is formed, such are its powers”. Packaging imagery and argument is always problematic, but this show’s self-assured and celebratory tones manage to amaze both aesthetically and intellectually. As if the collective lens were refocused on the circulation of discourse and the forging of transnational connections between people across time. It’s a pity this exhibition is not, at least at this stage, travelling to places like Birmingham or Leicester, where the fields of vision from within contemporary Britain would no doubt offer even richer educational perspectives.

Rosa Maria Falvo

Independent writer and curator, with a focus on Asian contemporary art. She is the Asia-Pacific Publications and Projects Consultant for Skira International Publishing in Milan.

First published in Nafas Art Magazine a project of the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations (ifa, Germany)

Tags: exhibition, history, London, Photography, South Asia, Whitechapel

`Owning’ the weather? PART IV: More on HAARP

By Rahnuma Ahmed

It all began with the Haiti earthquake.

I must write about it, I thought. Soon after I began researching, I came across HAARP. And then, across a 1996 report for the US Air Force which looked forward to the idea of `owning the weather’ by 2025. Through capitalising on emerging technologies and focusing development of those technologies to war-fighting applications.., so it read.

Readers know the rest. I have already written three instalments, with several more to follow. The more I read, the more I uncover connections. More stories need to be told, I tell myself.

When I began writing this series—one which promises to be longer than the one on Pakistan, `The Unfolding Crisis in Pakistan,’ 4 parts, New Age, 11-19 May 2009—I had not been able to foresee the number of pieces I’d be writing. Now, midway through the series, I’ve become worried about the absence of sub-titles as it might make it difficult for readers to trace what lies in individual pieces. Hence I backtrack, I want to give Part I a sub-title, `Laying the Groundwork,’ to Part II, `Weather Warfare,’ and to Part III, `HAARP and weaponising the ionosphere.’ The sub-title of today’s instalment, Part IV, is `More on HAARP.’

Earthquakes, as Jason Jeffrey points out in a piece in New Dawn, a journal of alternative news and information, are not only natural, i.e., those caused by the movement of tectonic plates over the Earth’s mantle, but can also be the result of human effort.

Officially-speaking, earthquakes can be induced by:

(a) fluid injection into the Earth. For instance, Rocky Mountain Arsenal, a chemical weapons manufacturing centre operated by the US Army in Colorado where a deep injection well had been constructed for testing purposes; the periods and amounts of injected waste coincided with the frequency and magnitude of quakes in the Denver area, 1962-65

(b) fluid extraction from the Earth e.g., at certain geothermal power plants

(c) mining or quarrying for e.g., removal of natural gas from subsurface deposits, such as, in northern Netherlands where 10 quakes have occurred since gas drilling began in 1986

(d) nuclear testing e.g., the detonation of a 50 megaton bomb code-named Ivan in the Soviet Union in 1961; it produced a seismic shock so powerful that it was measurable even on its third passage around the Earth, and

(e) the construction of dams and reservoirs for e.g., the 128 meter high Kariba dam in Zambia; since its construction the Kariba reservoir, which is located in a tectonically active area, has caused numerous earthquakes, 20 of them larger than 5 on the Richter scale.

Earthquakes can also be induced, as part of weather warfare. According to critics of HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program), the physics of HAARP and the political agenda behind the programme suggest that weather and earthquake manipulation is “both possible and likely.”

But its defenders, disagree. The amount of energy at the project’s disposal is “miniscule compared to the colossal energies dumped into the atmosphere by solar radiation and thunderstorms.” Ionospheric heating cannot be performed while the sun illuminates the ionosphere. There is “no serious scientific evidence” to support the accusation (or, others equally “exotic”) that the 2003 North America blackout had been caused by HAARP. Supporters further say, aeronomers and space-physicists, who have “a solid understanding of the accusations levelled against HAARP” reject the criticisms as “utter nonsense.” As they do Dr Nick Begich Jr.’s book, Angels Don’t Play HAARP (1995), which, I read in a website, is distributed and privately “ridiculed”. HAARP enthusiasts add, the scientific community does not feel called upon to defend the programme since those who do so lack a “sufficient understanding of science to criticize HAARP competently.”

As I crawl through various websites, I muse to myself, if teacher, author, activist, executive director of the Lay Institute of Technology Inc., Dr Nick Begich Jr.,  who has a doctorate in traditional medicine (also, is the son of a US Congressman) can be subjected to “ridicule” for daring to criticise HAARP, how can I, and others like me, venture to discuss high tech weapons of weather warfare, we, who are not scientists?

But, I think, surely a social science background provides one with the intellectual resources to raise questions from the other end, to seek answers which will aid in gaining a more total understanding of things: such as, who are these HAARP supporters—these scientists with a solid understanding—in a social sense? What economic backgrounds do they come from, what networks of power are they embedded in? I may not understand science, but surely, I understand politics? At least, sufficiently, to know that when questions such as those that are being raised about HAARP and weather warfare are dismissed straightaway and labelled “exotic” by solid scientists—without taking the politics, both past and present, of the military-industrial complex (or, military-industrial-media-entertainment complex, as recent analysts say) that the US has become—it is, by the standards of solid social science, strange. It is suspect. Like others who are close observers of contemporary politics, I know that it is important to delve not only into history but also into the philosophy of science, into issues of epistemology and ethics, into the culture of science (a rapidly-burgeoning field within anthropology). And of course, being interested in the culture of science would also mean being interested in issues to do with hierarchies within the scientific profession. The ideologies of scientific practice. The politics of research funding. And in matters such as these, as international relations theorist Steve Smith reminds us, the stakes are “high.” Those who swim outside “safe waters” risk more than simply the judgment that their theories are wrong. Their entire ethical or moral stance may be ridiculed. Or, seen as dangerous. (Interestingly enough, Dr Nick Begich Jr’s Wikipedia Biography has been deleted).

Nikola Tesla, it is said, is one of the 20th century’s greatest scientists. But Tesla had never gained the recognition that he deserved, not even to this day, because his scientific breakthroughs were considered to be too sensitive by corporate and government forces. Fascinated with the power of resonance, Tesla had built mechanical vibrators to test their powers. Once, in his Manhattan lab, he attached a powerful little vibrator driven by compressed air to a steel pillar, and went out on some work. “A violent quaking built up, shaking down plaster, bursting plumbing, cracking windows, and breaking heavy machinery off its anchorages.” It seems that Tesla had set off a small earthquake, and soon, his building started to quake. When the police broke into his lab they found him  smashing his own device with a sledge hammer. It was the only way he could promptly stop it.

Tesla’s “experiments in transmitting mechanical vibrations through the Earth… were roughly described by the scientists as a sort of controlled earthquake” (‘Tesla’s Controlled Earthquakes,’ New York American , July 11, 1935). An article published in Specula magazine described an incredibly profound phenomenon that could be produced within the Earth, as the ‘Tesla Effect’ (January 1978). Tesla himself, it is said, expressed grave concerns about the effects of this technology. Once it begins vibrating within the Earth, it is the type of thing which could easily get out of control. His worry was that it could actually cause the Earth to vibrate to pieces.

The key technology behind HAARP is the brainchild of American physicist Bernard J Eastlund (1938-2007); the major inspiration for Eastlund’s ionospheric heater was Tesla as is stated in his patent, “Method and Apparatus for Altering a Region in the Earth’s Atmosphere, Ionosphere; and/or Magnetosphere” (U.S. Patent # 4,686,605), which was sealed for a year under a government Secrecy Order.

Published in New Age, 23 February 2010

(more, next week)

Tags: Bernard Eastlund, climate, HAARP, Nikola Tesla, Rahnuma Ahmed, USA, War, weather

`Owning’ the weather? Part III

By Rahnuma Ahmed

“Primarily the work is aimed at giving the US Navy and the other armed forces, if they should care to use it, the capability of modifying the environment, to their own advantage, or to the disadvantage of an enemy. We regard the weather as a weapon. Anything one can use his way is a weapon and the weather is as good a one as any” (emphasis added).

– Admiral Pier Saint-Amand, Naval Ordinance Laboratory in China Lake, California (conducted research on cloud seeding; applied in Vietnam, Cambodia). Quoted in US Senate, Subcommittee on Oceans and International Environment, 26 July 1972.

“If the Americans cannot stop such hostile weather from devastating their own country, it will be naive to think they can play God to control the nature. By writing about controlling weather, Rahnuma Ahmed is giving Americans supernatural powers they cannot even dream of,” thus concluded Mahmood Elahi in his letter, published in New Age on 10 February 2010.

A serious allegation, indeed. It is my act of writing that is to blame, it is this which makes Americans powerful… In earlier times, those who delivered bad news were beheaded. I should surely consider myself fortunate.

But I couldn’t help thinking, all those days and weeks spent in researching, in poring over official reports, cross-checking news items, watching videos, transcripting—all in vain. There was no need to engage, neither with what key US policy-makers and high-up administration officials have written or said, such as, Zbigniew Brzezinski and William Cohen. Nor with the European parliament’s concerns over HAARP. Nor the evidence advanced by a host of keen observers including reputable academics like Michel Chossudovsky.

But before responding to Mr Elahi’s comments I would like to thank him for having read my piece, for having taken the trouble to comment. Acknowledging this, before pointing out areas of disagreement, is important.

Elahi writes, blizzards, floods and hurricanes—the likes of some have never been seen before—have caused devastation in the US this year. Interestingly enough, this observation matches what Chossudovsky says when he writes, extreme and unusual weather patterns have ravaged not only the US, but every major region of the world over the last couple of years (`Owning’ the Weather?, Part 1, February 1, 2010). Based on a close and careful scrutiny of evidence, Chossudovsky goes on to argue that both the US and Russia have developed capabilities to `manipulate the World’s climate.’ That weather warfare, in all probability, has already started. That although global warming is important, it is highly unlikely that it is the one and only cause for these disturbances.

Elahi assumes that I am writing about `control’ rather than `ownership’ (the two are separate concepts); from this mistaken assumption, he quickly dismisses the possibility that weather modification techniques exist. If they did, surely the Americans would have deployed them to prevent devastation in Washington DC, California, Nevada, Dakota, and southern California? Controlling nature is an act of God; for me to think otherwise—that human beings have devised techniques to control weather—is nothing short of naivete.

If careful research is countered with an incredulous disbelief based on common-sensical thinking, surely Americans, surely God… what else can I do but point out how some had insisted, many moons ago, if God had intended people to fly, He would surely have given them wings. But later, as we all know, aeroplanes were invented. People did fly. They still do. As for the `surely Americans’ argument, the idea that Americans are undivided, that both rulers and ruled work in concert for their common good… well, even stalwart supporters of the US regime have recently struggled exceedingly hard to maintain this myth. The federal bailout of Wall Street—according to Troubled Asset Relief Program estimates, $23.7 trillion—has led to immiseration and impoverishment of the majority, and to multi-million dollar bonuses for (failed)/bank executives. Surely `the’ Americans could have acted to prevent their country’s economic ruin?

But I am not done with God. Not yet. HAARP watchers and analysts are persuaded that the idea that (only) God can control nature, provides the perfect cover for HAARP. In this context, some even cite former American secretary of state Henry Kissinger’s assertion, expressed in policy documents: “depopulation” should be the highest in US foreign policy priorities towards third world countries. Population increases harm US “national security” interests; they need to be decreased by 50%. “Progress… must be made,” Kissinger asserts, in Bangladesh and in 12 other countries where “population moderation” must be assisted (National Security Study Memorandum 200: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests, 1974).

To persuade skeptics, HAARP watchers argue: if what the former US secretary of defence William Cohen had said was true, that eco-terrorists can alter the climate, that they can remotely set off earthquakes and volcanoes through the use of electromagnetic waves, it is difficult to believe that the American government, more so, the American military has stayed away from developing these techniques. The US armed forces, in the words of Admiral Pier Saint-Amand quoted above, regards “the weather as a weapon.”

The idea of weaponising weather was enabled through patenting technology invented by Bernard Eastlund, a physicist, in the 1980s, of which has been said, “when eventually disclosed, [it] will render many of Albert Einstein’s innovations obsolete.” Eastlund’s patents have been sealed under a US Secrecy Order. His discovery involves beaming High Frequency (HF) and Extremely High Frequency (EHF) waves, of extremely high power, directly at a point on the ionosphere which becomes heated as a result of the accumulating electrical energy. One might think of it as “cooking” the ionosphere.

How does HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program) work? The most easily understood explanation that I have come across, developed for lay persons, describes it thus: The site, officially located in Gakona, Alaska, consists of a collection of antennae, arranged in a computer-controlled grid, known as a “phased array” which has the ability to focus radio signals in a precise direction, without turning the antennae. The phased array is not a radar but it uses some of the same extremely high frequencies (EHF) to focus a powerful radio beam to specific locations in the Earth’s ionosphere. The latter is a highly charged layer of atmosphere (particles or `ions’) about 60 miles above surface which reflects short wave radio waves. EHF waves are much shorter than short waves, they are said to propagate along the “line of sight,” retaining their strength over long distances, much like the antenna of a satellite TV dish, which as we know needs to be pointed in the direction of the satellite. (http://www.viewzone.com/haarp11.html)

At the Gakona site, High Frequency transmitting antenna are located in environmentally protected domes. Thousands of antennae focus billions of watt into a pencil thin stream that is steered by computers and aimed at the sky. The following three phases, helps to describe how weather is modified to turn into a weapon of warfare:

1. 1. Heating Radio waves cause the ionosphere to increase in height and to be better able to absorb and store the energy. A small area of the ionosphere is heated with HF radio waves. Bilions of watts heat the ionosphere to form a bubble
   2. Random pulsing The bubble accumulates and amplifies enormous energy. Phased array systems like the one that is operational in Alaska are computer controlled and focus their powerful radio beams on the atmosphere over the target area.
   3. Discharge This energy is discharged in a nuclear sized explosion on earth. Within minutes a nuclear size explosion can be snapped to earth with no radiation danger. A minimum of twelve installations in carefully chosen locations around the world will give the system the potential to attack anywhere and anytime without any warning.

According to some scientists, the reckless use of these power levels in our natural shield— the ionosphere—could be cataclysmic. Dr. Nick Begich and Jeane Manning, authors of The Military’s Pandora’s Box, quote one such scientist Paul Schaefer who says, “Unless we desire the death of our planet we must end the production of unstable particles which are generating the earth’s fever. A first priority to prevent this disaster would be to shut down all nuclear power plants and end the testing of atomic weapons, electronic warfare and ‘Star Wars’.”

But what does the US (and presumably, also the Russian) military do? It builds its biggest ionospheric heater in Gakona, to deliberately create more instabilities in the ionosphere. After all, anything one can use his way is a weapon. Even if it leads to the death of the planet.

(more, next week)

Published in New Age, 15 February 2010

Tags: climate, HAARP, ionosphere, Rahnuma Ahmed, USA, War, weather

12 Roses in Balqis’s Hair

By Nizar Qabbani (1923-1998)

I knew that she would be killed
and she knew that I would be killed
both prophecies came true
she fell, like a butterfly, beneath the rubble of (the Age of Ignorance)
and I fell … between the fangs of an age
that devoured poems
the eyes of women and the rose of freedom

I knew that she would be killed
she was beautiful in an age that was ugly
pure in an age that was contaminated
noble in the age of hoodlums
She was a rare pearl
amidst the piles of artificial pearls
a unique woman amidst the stacks of artificial women

I knew that she would be killed
because her eyes were clear as two emerald rivers
and her hair was long as a mawwal of Baghdad
the nerves of this homeland
cannot bear the density of green
cannot bear the sight of a million palm trees
gathering in Balqis’s eyes.

I knew that she would be killed
for the compass of her pride was greater than the compass of the Peninsula
Her heritage did not permit her
to live in the age of decadence
her luminary nature
did not permit her to live in the dark

In the intensity of her pride
she believed that the earth was too small for her
so she packed her suitcases
and withdrew on tiptoes without telling a soul…

She was not afraid that the homeland would kill her
but she was afraid that the homeland
would kill itself

Like a cloud laden with poetry
she rained over my notebooks
wine…honey…and sparrows
red rubies
and sprinkled across my feelings
sails…and birds
and jasmine moons
After her departure
the age of thirst began
the age of water came to an end

I always felt that she was leaving
In her eyes, there were always sails
being made for departure
airplanes crouching on her lashes
preparing to take off..
In her hand bag-ever since I married her -
there was a passport… and an airplane ticket
visas to enter countries she had never visited
When I used to ask her
And why do you have all these documents in your handbag?
She would answer:
because I have a date with a rainbow

After they handed me her handbag
which they found under the rubble
and I saw her passport
the airplane ticket
the entry visas
I knew that I had not married Balquis Al-Rawi
but had married a rainbow…

When a beautiful women dies
the earth loses its balance
the moon declares mourning for a hundred years
and poetry becomes unemployed

Balqis Al-Rawi
Balqis Al-Rawi
Balqis Al-Rawi
I used to love the cadence of her name
hold on to its ring
I used to fear attaching my name to it
in case I muddied the waters of the lake
and disfigured the beauty of the symphony

It was not for this woman to live any longer
not did she wish to live any longer
she is akin to the candles and lanterns and like the poetic moment she
needs to explode before the last line……

Nizar Qabbani (1923-1998) was born in Damascus into a prominent family, and began his professional life as a diplomat as well as a poet. A period in Spain brought him to a deep awareness of the historical links between Andalucía and its vanished Arab masters – he felt himself at home in this place haunted by ‘black pearls’ from Damascus. His sister’s suicide over a forced marriage was another turning point in his conscious embrace of the feminine cause. He began life as playboy, but ended up in a very different place, giving voice to the voiceless women who live behind the gates, both figurative and literal, of Arab homes. His awe at the beauty and strength of women – mother, sister, wife and lover – or just ordinary village girl, is expressed over and over again, and his love and tenderness for all of them is a tribute paid in words of myrrh and jasmine. There is a strong sense of place in many of his poems, conjuring up his beloved home town, perhaps all the stronger for the pain of exile. So he often evokes his ’spiced childhood’ in Damascus:

Its beds of lilac, boxwood and cherry-plum,
the fountain’s blue eye that looked at the house,
and the jasmine creeping on the bedroom’s shoulder..

At the heart of his work stands the figure of Balqis Al-Rawi, his beloved second wife, who was killed in a terrorist bombing in Beirut. His ‘Twelve Roses in Balqis’s Hair’ is a lament to stand beside that of Orpheus, as eloquent a thing as ever was wrung from the suffering heart of man.