This is a sequel to an earlier film ‘Journeying with Mahasveta Devi’, and the second in the trilogy being made on the Magsasay Award winning writer-activist made by Drik India. The viewed and the viewer, the act and the response, form the basic pattern of this film and closes up further with both the inner-self and the outer-self of Mahasveta Devi.

The film has been selected in the international competitive section at Mumbai International Film Festival 2012.

One might think that a corporate media system would act independently of the state – there is no formal mechanism of control. But as the ingrained bias sampled above indicates, this often turns out not to be the case. With regard to human rights, for example, corporate media typically do not simply pick a subject and lavish it with attention. Rather, political power selects an issue, frames the coverage, and media corporations jump on the bandwagon.

Type a household name like ‘Halabja’ into the UK media database search engine Lexis-Nexis, for example, and it produces more than 1,800 references to Saddam Hussein’s 1988 gassing of Kurds. Similarly, the words ‘Srebrenica’ and ‘massacre’ generate nearly 3,000 hits. Both issues have been afforded vast, impassioned coverage.

In truth, for Western commentators, the importance of these horrors is most often rooted, not in the scale of suffering inflicted, but in their utility for justifying the West’s military interventions. Thus an editorial in the Independent observed of Libya:
‘Concern was real enough that a Srebrenica-style massacre could unfold in Benghazi, and the UK Government was right to insist that we would not allow this.’ (Leading article, ‘The mission that crept,’ Independent, July 29, 2011)

A Times editorial commented:
‘Without this early, though sensibly limited, intervention, there would have been a massacre in Benghazi on the scale of Srebrenica.’ (Leading article, ‘Death of a dictator,’ The Times, October 21, 2011)

Of course media concern for human rights could be sincere – journalists are human beings, after all, and human beings often do care about the killing of civilians. But then the record requires some explanation.

Consider the massacre of 53 Libyans at the hands of ‘rebel’ fighters in Sirte last October. The Daily Telegraph reported:
‘Human Rights Watch said 53 people appeared to have been shot dead in a hotel in the centre of the city when it was under the control of fighters from Misurata. The badly decomposed bodies, some with their hands bound behind their backs, were found in a garden of Hotel Mahari.’ (Ben Farmer, ‘Libya will be a “moderate” Muslim nation, country’s interim leader insists,’ Telegraph, October 25, 2011)

According to Lexis-Nexis, the word ‘Mahari’ generates a total of eight articles mentioning the massacre across the entire UK press, with one mention since October. Widening the search to ‘Sirte’ and ‘killing’ produces a few additional mentions.

Or consider the fate of the dark-skinned Tawergha people, former slaves brought to Libya in the 18th and 19th centuries. Until recently, some 31,000 of them lived in a coastal town, also named Tawergha, 250 km east of the capital Tripoli. The UN news agency IRIN reported the ethnic cleansing of the town by Nato-backed forces:
‘Their town sits empty – doors hanging open and homes burned; the sign leading to the city has been changed to New Misrata and its population told not to return.’

As for the people:
‘In an abandoned Turkish company compound on Airport Road in Tripoli, more than 1,500 displaced Tawergha spend their days brushing away flies and watching their children play with toy guns amid piles of rubbish.

‘Here, women and children have huddled around on the uncovered mattresses they sleep on, weeping. They arrived in early November after a physically and emotionally draining journey from Tawergha, having been displaced by armed men every time they settled somewhere new.

‘Every one told of a father, son or brother who is either dead or in jail…

‘[One] young woman told stories of Tawergha detainees receiving electric shocks, having cold water poured on them and being burned with cigarettes by the revolutionaries from Misrata who were holding them. “This is Abu Ghraib, not Libya!… We have done nothing wrong. If they continue to beat us and attack us for no reason, it will become a cycle,” she said.’

A rare, excellent mainstream article by Åsne Seierstad in The Times supplied additional details:
‘”Slaves,” says graffiti on a wall. On a road sign, the town’s name has been scribbled over. “Misrata,” it says now. The commander of the local victors, Ibrahim al-Halbous, had already said it: “Tawergha no longer exists, only Misrata.”’

The article continued:
‘”Brigade for cleansing of black slaves,” proclaims one scribbled message on a wall along the road to Misrata. “Hairdresser. Free haircut,” says another. Large sections of the town are in ruins after the battles.’

Seierstad found that Tawerghans were still not safe even in Tripoli:
‘Seven or eight people live in each room, in corridor after corridor, barrack after barrack.

‘But the construction site has no guards, and the avengers from Misrata can enter even here. They arrive at night. The men sleep fully clothed, ready to flee. Some nights earlier, an armed gang arrived at 2am. “You are all going to die,” they shouted. “Get out, black animals.”’ (Åsne Seierstad, ‘Four months ago, 30,000 people lived in this town. So where did they go?,’ The Times, December 3, 2011)

Last summer, the then Prime Minister of Libya’s National Transitional Council, Mahmoud Jibril, said:
‘When it comes to Tawergha, in my view, this is nobody’s business but the people of Misrata’s. This cannot be dealt with according to theories and textbooks about national reconciliation in South Africa, Ireland or Eastern Europe.’ (Seierstad, ibid.)

Using a different spelling, the Telegraph has so far supplied one sentence: ‘Tawarga has been forcibly emptied of residents by rebels and looted.’ (Richard Spencer; Ruth Sherlock; Rob Crilly, ‘Gaddafi’s son flees to Niger as rebels make more gains,’ Telegraph, September 12, 2011). The sentence doesn’t appear in the online version.

A Guardian article barely hinted at the ethnic cleansing, reporting merely that Tawarga’s ‘mostly black population fled in August when rebel forces captured it’. Chris Stephen described the ethnic cleansers’ attitude towards Tawargans as a ‘gripe’. Seumas Milne mentioned Tawerga in a single sentence.

According to Lexis-Nexis, the Independent has published two articles focusing on the atrocity – a substantial piece in September and a further 102 words in November, totalling 867 words.

Curiously, The Times has published the most significant mentions. In addition to Seierstad’s piece, Andrew Gilligan published a substantial report: ‘The ghost town where rebels took their revenge’ in September. (The Times, September 11, 2011)

A later article reported ‘The expulsion of the entire 30,000 population of Tawarga, a satellite town of Misrata…’ (Libya Tom, ‘Murder and rape campaign brings revenge to ghost town,’ The Times, September 29, 2011)

James Hider also commented briefly in October:
‘The town of Tawarga was accused by neighbouring Misrata of siding with Gaddafi’s forces, and is now all but deserted and largely ruined.’ (James Hider, ‘Where there was unifying hatred, now there is a vacuum,’ The Times, October 22, 2011)

Since Seierstad’s article on December 3, there have been no mentions in any UK newspaper of this clear case of ethnic cleansing by Western-backed forces. As ever, media outrage splutters and falls away when the West is implicated in a crime against humanity. And as ever, this could hardly contrast more starkly with the incandescent ‘Something must be done!’ outrage in response to the crimes of official enemies. Lexis-Nexis finds no mention of any British or American politician commenting on Tawergha’s fate, and finds no mentions in any editorials. Now imagine the coverage if Iran, or Syria, or North Korea had been responsible.

Commentators sometimes lament the fact that the ‘mainstream’ media system is ‘controlled’ by profit-seeking corporations. It is not; it is made up of corporations. But that doesn’t tell the whole story. Media companies are key elements of a corporate system that utterly dominates politics. In reality, US-UK military interventions are state-corporate military interventions. It ought to come as no surprise that the corporate media propagandises on behalf of its own interventions and works hard to hide the ugly consequences from a public with the power to resist.

Life is not life without poetry. I’m talking about the license we give the world to touch us, change us, wound us, carry us away, lift us up, drag us down, save us, expose us, wrap us in warmth, strip us naked.

Uno, Enrique Santos Discépolo’s beloved tango, says, “Filled with hope, we seek the path our dreams have promised our desires. . . The struggle is hard, and it is long, but struggle anyway, and bleed for the faith that drives you on. Through the thorns we crawl, and in our thirst to give our love, we suffer and destroy until at last we see that we’ve no heart anymore — the price of a punishment we undergo, a kiss we never receive, a love that left us low. . . ”

When we live with poetry, we risk our heart, our feelings, our peace. We risk our mind, our skin, our bones.

The tango is the music of immigrants — Italians, Spaniards, Germans — who came to the area of the Río de la Plata in the late nineteenth century. They had left everything behind — it’s only natural that the tango is filled with nostalgia. But it’s not an unredeemed nostalgia; quite the contrary. It’s a nostalgia that is transfigured by an embrace, that finds harbor in the dialog of bodies. The music and lyrics of the tango are pure nostalgia, but the dance itself is all sensuality, presence, exchange. Redemption.

Nostalgia and sensuality need one another and nourish one another. It’s a virtuous circle: to overcome nostalgia one must declare the triumph of the senses, assert the concrete importance of the here and now. And afterward, the senses — when one is fully alive —become the source of nostalgia.

When I went to Buenos Aires for the first time, the tango shows seemed so false to me, the sensuality so exaggerated, the gestures so lacking all poetry that I thought the tango was dead. About that experience I wrote this:

“It’s raining, and it’s been raining since the moment I arrived. Abandonment is made of rain, of unceasing processions of rain, of unexpected seasons of rain, of narrow slits of sun through the rain. Abandonment is made of sad love affairs, of love affairs marked by silence, of love affairs that try to stay afloat despite all the rain. No, it’s not that all love affairs are sad, or that rain shapes our destiny. No, I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the fact that this long, profound abandonment is made of other, smaller abandonments, of words never spoken, of gestures of tenderness that were never born, of impossible embraces.”

Driven by the rain, nostalgia penetrated my bones. And then the tango took me by storm, so to speak — another sort of storm. I met Tito, a street poet, a vendor of wine and shoes, a loco who danced tango every night of his life. With him, I wandered through the Buenos Aires night. I discovered that the tango is alive in hidden, private places that the tourist never sees. It’s a world with its own laws. In the milongas — the places where people go to dance — the pimps and housewives, the lovers and the grandparents still together after all these years, the marginal males and the gay divorcees, the powerful and the nobodies, the young and those who can’t bear to grow old are all still to be found. All in the same place, playing their juxtaposed roles, actors in a delicious comedy that’s reinvented every night. They all laugh and pretend they aren’t dying. But when they step onto the dance floor, they do so with devotion, in silence, as though in that embrace their entire destiny were on the line.

Fernando Gavito, a friend of my friend Tito’s, was one of those devotees. Considered the greatest tango dancer in Buenos Aires, when he stepped onto the dance floor everyone that looked at him held their breath. His slow, deliberate movements challenged the law of gravity; they defied every notion of balance that one had ever entertained. I remember one night at the Club Gricel, shortly before his death. Mariana, his dancing partner, leaned against him, held up by nothing more than Gavito’s forehead and the tips of her own toes. It was an act of absolute surrender. The slightest error would have brought them both tumbling to the floor. That photograph has become, for me, the absolute definition of eros: I surrender to you with absolute certainty; you are my balance.

The most revealing definition of tango comes from the old men of the night: tango is embrace. More than music, more than the poetry of the old-time language of lunfardo, more than the constant flirting and the overwhelming presence of the senses, it is the embrace that expresses our humanity — more than any other thing we do. When we embrace one another we rescue one another from abandonment, we identify ourselves as members of our species. An embrace is a powerful, alchemical tool: it turns sadness into sweet. We are the species that embraces, that takes in, that touches, that swathes, that protects. The tango turns an embrace into human poetry.

When Marc Weide’s mother who was 65 was diagnosed with terminal cancer, she chose euthanasia. Here, we publish his shockingly frank diary of her final days

Monday February 11 2008

5.30pm: Dad is bent over the toilet bowl with a brush in his hand and a scowl on his face. I walk up to him. “Shall I give you a hand?” Dad begins to snicker, abandoning any attempt to make sense of the situation. We stand shoulder to shoulder with our backs to Mom, who paces around the patio with a newly fitted catheter in her hand.

The catheter has been put in by her nurse, Marianne to enable her doctor, who will be with us in half an hour, to give Mom a lethal injection. But instead of having a moment of peace with us, as Marianne suggested, Mom demands that we clean the toilets. Both upstairs and downstairs.

My brother, Maarten, is sitting on the edge of the bathtub, staring out of the bathroom window.

“Imagine,” he mutters. “Her last hour, spent like this.”

This is the Netherlands, where voluntary euthanasia is permitted, as well as physician-assisted suicide. This is the day my mother has chosen to die, and the toilets need to be spotless.

Three months earlier

I’m on a writer’s retreat in the UK, where I have been living for the past three years. I’m working on my novel when my mobile phone rings. The display shows it’s Maarten, calling from the Netherlands. Mom’s test results have come back.

“It’s secondary cancer in her lungs.” He pauses. “They think she’s got two to six months left.”

I phone Mom. She talks without interruption, barely taking breath, about quitting her job just two months before her retirement, about what might have happened if she had not had that innocent-looking polyp removed from her womb, about why the doctors had not investigated her lungs earlier.

The prognosis is she could live another year if she undergoes chemotherapy. But she won’t. “I’m not going to go bald,” she says. “I don’t ever want people saying, ‘How sad, that beautiful hair all gone.”

When I phone again, she sounds as if she doesn’t have time to talk.

“I’m arranging my cremation.”

“Oh … ”

“Yes, the text for the card, the location, the flowers, the coffin … I’m really busy.”

Dad, Maarten and I do not seem to be part of the equation.

Late January 2008

Dad phones. After two and a half months, Mom is deteriorating rapidly. She suffers from headaches, sickness and loss of coordination. She takes a fall while Dad is having a shower. When she has a shower, half the bathroom floor gets flooded.

Two days later, brain metastasis is confirmed. Mom is hospitalized and given drugs to repress the inflammation, but they will only remain effective for a week or two.

Friday January 25

Maarten picks me up from Schiphol airport in Amsterdam and we drive to meet Dad at the hospital. We all go upstairs together.

Mom is sitting by herself at a table near the window as we enter. She throws us a tearful smile. “My boys,” she says, as Maarten and I give her a hug. “To think that this all started in that bloody womb of mine … but I am glad I had it, to bear you two.”

The hospital staff all do a great job and Mom seems content with her care. After two hours with us, though, she becomes more demanding. She asks Dad to put things into her bag, then take them out again. She snaps when he can’t find her mobile phone.

When the palliative care coordinator, Carola, comes in to discuss the option of home care, I take Dad outside. “Dad, I’m wondering – here, Mom is in the capable hands of staff whose authority she accepts. At home, she’ll just try to be the boss.”

“Hmm. You may be right,” says Dad. We walk back, just as Mom is asking Carola whether home care really does not include vacuuming.

When I repeat my concerns to Maarten, though, he is adamant: “She ought to come home. It feels more natural if she dies there and I want to be around her for a bit. I don’t want to drive to this depressing hospital every day and leave her alone at night.”

And so the question is settled. The four of us will go home together on Monday.

Saturday January 26

In Dad’s study, I find a draft version of a mourning card saying “bye dear”. My name is on the card, along with my brother’s and Dad’s. These are meant to be our words, but I have had no part in writing them and I struggle with the bottom line: “We prefer not to receive telephone calls, visitors or flowers.”

Monday January 28

After arriving home with Mom, we struggle to share a harmonious moment. She asks again if we’ve thought about what we are going to say at her funeral. When I answer that I haven’t, Mom insists that time is short. I should look at her “expression of wish” statement – her wish to die. It needs editing. I go upstairs to the study.

The statement begins: “I, Mieneke Weide-Boelkes, am terminally ill.” It ends: “As soon as this medication loses its efficacy I request euthanasia.” Dad joins me and reassures me the text has genuinely been written by Mom.

I start editing. Then Mom calls from downstairs. “Weren’t you going to make dinner?!”

I go downstairs and start cooking with Maarten. Anything for a quiet life … because that is how it’s always been and now is not the time to change it.

When dinner is ready and I go to fetch Mom and Dad, I find them sitting in our bedroom with a man I have never seen before.

Mom introduces me to the doctor, Martin. He is holding the statement I have just edited, but all I can think is how he got in so quietly and why Mom and Dad have not bothered to let us know he is here.

Wednesday January 30

8.15am: Maarten has a run-in with Mom. He asks what on Earth she is doing with the Hoover at “stupid o’clock” in the morning. Mom does not appreciate being spoken to like that.

Things still simmer at breakfast. Mom finds fault with all the shopping we bought the previous day: the gouda cheese is too soft, the bread too sweet and why is there fruit juice in her fridge?

Monday February 4

We are just about to have lunch when Mom, who has been complaining about headaches this morning, gets up from the table. Tearfully, she shuffles to the kitchen sink. “I am so sick of it,” she says, “so sick.” She begins to make retching noises.

As Dad gets closer, Mom begins to thrash around. “It’s starting again!” she cries. “Call a doctor, quickly!”

Maarten manages to calm her down a little. Dad picks up the phone to call the doctor. Mom wants to go back to the table, but I take her upstairs to bed.

A moment later we hear feet shuffling down the stairs. The door opens and Mom appears. “I’m sort of OK now,” she says.

She has just sat down when the doctor arrives. As he sticks his head round the dining-room door and sees Mom sipping coffee, his face is all surprise.

So this is the moment Mom has specified: initial symptoms back; medication losing its effect.

The doctor says euthanasia can take place next week. Another doctor first needs to verify, though, that Mom cannot be cured, that her wish to die has been consistent, and that her suffering is unbearable.

Martin is convinced of the first two conditions but not of the third. If Mom is too energetic to stay in bed, then how is her suffering unbearable?

Mom puts her coffee down. “Well, I have to die anyway, don’t I?” Then she asks us what we think.

I interrupt: “It should be your own decision. None of us is to say anything.”

But Mom struggles to say she wants to die. Eventually I say, “I think what she finds unbearable is not so much her pain and sickness, but the fear of it getting worse and of losing control.”

When Martin is finally satisfied that Mom wants to end it, he agrees to contact the second doctor. He leaves with an empathetic nod to us all.

Thursday February 7

I wake up in the middle of the night. Mom is standing in our bedroom. She opens a drawer and takes something out. She shuffles items across the desk until she is pleased with their arrangement. Then she leaves, quietly closing the door behind her.

It is at least the third time she has been busy tidying up our room that I’ve seen this evening.

Mom’s youngest sister and her husband are visiting today. Everybody sits at the dining-room table with drinks and nibbles. Mom is giving an animated demonstration on how to polish silverware with her special gloves.

Then the secondary opinion doctor phones to say he will be with us in 10 minutes. There is a brief panic. Mom wants to change into her nightwear and get into bed before the doctor arrives, but we persuade her otherwise.

The doctor speaks privately with Mom in the dining room. After he leaves, Mom looks decisive. She says it was “a very good talk”, but does not give any further details.

Later, when the guests have gone, Dad tells me that the doctor asked him to leave the room. “Yes,” Mom interrupts, “the doctor had to ascertain if I was not being forced into euthanasia.”

Friday February 8

Doctor Martin is due to come in the afternoon to discuss further plans, but I do not see him. My brother has to fill me in over the phone because I am staying at a friend’s after a fight with Mom.

Over the last week or so, she has been complaining about my shoes and the damage they do to her floor and has been badgering me to buy a new pair at her preferred shop this weekend.

“Mom,” I say, “I was planning to stay with some friends this weekend.”

“Oh, were you!” she snaps. “And who has got more priority then, your friends or your terminally ill mother?”

I decide to go sooner rather than later. But Mom pursues me as I get my things. “Why don’t you stay with your friends next week, when I’m dead? You’ll have all the time in the world then!”

“I was planning to spend time here, with Dad.”

“Oh no you won’t,” she says. “When I’m dead, it’s just going to be your dad and me here. I don’t want you and Maarten around. And anyway, you don’t do diddly squat … ”

I lose my self-control. I shout and swear at her and storm off in a rage.

Later, at my friend Petra’s, I get a phone call from Maarten about the outcome of the doctor’s visit. Mom’s death has been scheduled for Monday February 11, at 6.15pm.

Sunday February 10

Mom’s sisters and their husbands are there for a last family dinner, together with Dad, Maarten and me – wearing my expensive new pair of shoes. Mom, even more energetic than the week before, decorates the table lavishly.

My uncles shake their heads with incomprehension. As Mom shows off her china plates, my aunts have distracted looks on their faces.

Whispering to Dad and me in the hallway, they struggle to understand why Mom is choosing to die the next day when she is bouncing around like a 40-year-old instead of a terminally ill 65-year-old. But there is also shock at her fixation on material objects and the little interest she shows in how the people around her actually feel.

Monday February 11

Again, I wake up early when Mom comes into the bedroom. It is disturbing to see her take the stones and shells from the windowsill and place them on the desk. She had only moved them on to the windowsill the previous morning.

Mom leaves and comes back again three times. After the last visit, I can hear she is hoisting the vacuum cleaner up to the attic. It is just after 6am.

It is the start of an increasingly mad day, during which Mom hoovers the whole house and does six loads of washing (one of which consists of a single white shirt). She scrapes all the woodwork on the outside of the house clear of moss and cleans the windows.

After breakfast, I find Dad fuming after Mom has given him grief for not ironing fast enough. I ask him if it helps to see her as a mental patient instead of his wife. He grumbles.

I think of what was said the night before, about Mom’s relative physical fitness and her obsession with material objects and cleanliness. I feel an increasing tension as the day progresses and I still don’t know whether it is going to be Mom’s last.

I overhear Mom’s conversation with the flower shop. After the crematorium confirms the date of her funeral, she phones to order flowers for her coffin. It is an hour and a half before the nurse comes to put the catheter into Mom’s hand.

6.15pm: The doctor arrives shortly after the scene with the toilets. Mom greets him, then disappears upstairs, saying, “Best let me potter for a bit.” Nobody sees her for another 20 minutes.

“Does it happen at all that people pull out at the last minute?” I ask.

“Yes,” Martin says. “Quite often I go home again and a new appointment is made. But in many cases the patient passes away between visits.”

When Mom comes back, listing things she has put in bags and boxes, Martin gently interrupts her: “Can I just ask you something? Is there still a lot you feel you need to do?”

“Yes,” she says, “I mean no. I’m just nervous.”

“I can always come back later if you are not ready,” says the doctor.

Mom sits down and listens to the doctor. Then she takes a deep breath and says, “OK. I am ready.”

At 7pm, with my father, brother and me around her bed as well as Martin, who has given her the injection, Mom goes to sleep.

Saturday February 16

People at funerals often say that the deceased would have approved of the ceremony. In my mother’s case, she had literally approved everything – the music, the flowers, the guest list and the restaurant we went to afterwards.

My main regret is that there were such clashes between us in the run-up to her death. Perhaps if we had challenged Mom more over the years, keeping her ever-increasing demands in check, we could have been at peace as a family, instead of at war over shoes and toilets, right to the bitter end.

We all need to be sensative to someone who is terminally Ill. Although it may be hard for all of us as we all will struggle in the end, both patient and family and friends, we need to honor the wishes of our loved one.

The only thing missing here was prayer and love abounding. I missed seeing any hugging or love being shown from either direction.

If you have a loved one who is terminal, you can never give them too many hugs or words of encouragement. Don’t be afraid to tell them you are committed to loving them until the very end, or you don’t know how you will live without them.

Anger is a natural feeling for both the terminally Ill and their friends and family. All feel they have been cheated and are looking for who to blame. Even when you don’t feel they deserve it, because of their behavior, continue to hug them, and encourage them. Sometimes they just need to be held and if they begin to cry just keep holding them in silence. You’re just being there for them will help!

By Arjun Janah

By Any Means Necessary?

By any means necessary!

That was a phrase used by Malcolm X, I believe, for which he was reviled.

But we see it in action here, as police check microphones to follow orders.

Ultimately, their orders are coming, not from their superiors in the police hierarchy,
but from those higher up in the feeding chain on which our society is based.

Free speech, demonstrations, including sit-downs and sit-ins, are fine, if in other countries
– or even here as long as they do not challenge the premises, authority and operation of
the feeding chain and its associated hierarchies.

By any means necessary? Those giving the cops their orders appear to believe in Malcolm
X’s dictum.

Note that guns were drawn and pointed by the police at regular intervals during the retreat.
After witnessing what they had just seen, many in the crowd were incensed. The police
saw that. This was a remarkably docile and disciplined crowd — of university students in
an almost rural campus (U.C. Davis, where the agriculture school used to be a major draw)
far from the turmoil of the big cities. But the situation could have deteriorated further, quickly.

I know that if I were there and seen sitting students sprayed at close quarters with burning
chemicals on their faces and then set upon and handcuffed with arms twisted behind their
backs, I might probably not have shown the restraint (or caution or wisdom) exhibited by
the onlooking students. There are such things as gut reactions beyond one’s control, at
least in my and I would hazard in many others’ cases. Guns can’t stop such things.

Guns have and will again be used — and people will die and be blamed for provoking their own
deaths — as the killings are justified and even celebrated by the brain-washed segments of our
population — brainwashed, by the way, by many decades of what amounts to censorship and
propaganda by the media to divide workers from workers.

Just yesterday afternoon, right after school ended and I stepped out to get a cup of coffee before
returning to the building to do the endless prep and other work there, I was harangued by an older
gentleman at a store right by the school. He insisted that a young person bloodied in a picture (on
the Daily News cover) of the OWS protest Thursday here in NY City — in reaction to their eviction
was being paid by Obama, the unions and the public workers, including teachers like me, all of whom
were socialists and parasites, with Obama being, in his words, one of those “nigger rich”. I told him
that though I was no supporter of Obama or of Clinton before him (whom he also reviled), who I thought
the real parasites were and who the true creators of wealth.

He was incensed and cursed me out as f****ing communist. This was a man who watched the TV news and
perhaps read newspapers. He quoted articles from the NY Times and the NY Post and recommended Fox
News to me. I suspect he might have heard about the newspaper articles on that channel. I had told him
that both papers were anti-union and anti-worker, with the Post only being more rabidly so.

This is what we are up against in this country — and, I suspect, in many others. Politicians — both
Tories and Labor, and no doubt the Liberals (who are not liberal in the sense used in this country)
used to bow down to Rupert Murdoch — until recently, when his spying obsession began
to interfere with, instead of support, his wheeling, dealing, blackmailing king-making one.

So now we have the systematic War on Workers, supported by other workers — as well as these
violent actions on protestors — even non-violent students staging a sit-down protest on their own
university campus.

Shades of Kent State or of Tien An Men Square?

This is America — or many another country, for that matter.

Arjun

By Ananya Dutta
The Hindu
Kolkata, November 15, 2011

Twenty-one-year-old Shankar Sarkar is both perturbed and fascinated by the surroundings he grew up in – a red light area in the city. Shankar’s discomfort resulted in him dropping out of school but his enchantment led him to click a series of photographs of his mother, eventually enabling him to find a niche for himself in professional photography.

On the occasion of Children’s Day, a three-day exhibition of photographs taken by two children from the margins was inaugurated here on Monday.

“From the first time that I held a camera in my hand (a compact Yashica film camera that had to be shared by six boys from the slum), I have been taking pictures of my mother – scenes from her daily life,” says Shankar, adding that in this manner he has been “documenting” her life over the last ten years.

He says he would love to take pictures of others in the neighbourhood – he has known them for years. But when he steps out with his camera, “it invariably leads to a fight”. Sometimes he visits other red light areas in the city, for instance Sonagachi.

“They do not know me there, so I’m not interrupted, but the photographs can never be as candid as at home,” he says. Some of these photographs of his mother titled “facing one’s own” were shown at the Delhi Photo Festival last year.

Circumstances forced Firoza Khatoon to drop out of school and work as a domestic help. Five years ago she was introduced to photography during a nine-week workshop organised by an NGO, Save the Children. Her talent and enthusiasm were spotted and she was offered a chance to hone her skills at a leading photography agency in the city.

She was introduced to Henri Cartier Bresson, the master of candid photographs and a pioneer of street photography, and computers and Photoshop. Firoza, who was re-admitted to school and is presently studying in Class XI, wants to pursue her passion and become a professional photographer one day. “I may become a photographer for a newspaper or work in an agency; I just know I want to become a photographer,” she says.

Shankar is already working at an agency – he manages the photographic library, retouches pictures on Photoshop and is now learning graphic design at Drik India.

A nine-month internship in Bangladesh allowed him to save enough to buy his own professional camera. “I had to scrounge a bit, but I managed the Rs. 60,000 for my Nikon D 90,” he beams.
—————-

Shankar Sarkar worked at Drik in Dhaka under the Fredskorpset exchange programme.

Published on Saturday, September 24, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

by Claudia Lefko

We’ve been here before, confronting this question of children’s art, and why it creates such a stir. I wrote about it in May 2006 when Brandeis University cancelled an exhibit of Palestinian children’s art. This cancellation seems even more egregious because the museum in question is specifically a children’s museum.

Who objects to children’s art in a children’s art museum? And, what should we make of a children’s museum that allows the concerns of those constituents to censor the views of children, denying their right to expression? I’m talking about the Oakland Children’s Museum (MOCHA) and its decision to cancel the exhibit A Child’s View of Gaza, which was to have opened there this week, on September 24.

One can only conclude that those who have objected to this exhibit are troubled by the content. For whatever reason they want it buried, out of site and out of mind. They must be a powerful group. They succeeded in convincing the museum’s board to ignore its stated goal of “…advocating for the arts as an essential part of a strong, vital and diverse community”. And, they have put the museum in the uncomfortable position of denying Palestinian children their rights as guaranteed by Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC): the right of every child to express his or her views and to have those views given due consideration.

“The artist’s job is to be a witness to his time in history.” said the artist Robert Rauschenberg, and so it is with our young artists. Seeing, as we know, comes before words. A child looks and recognizes people, places and things before she or he can speak; “views” are developing from the moment of birth. So, imagine the views taken in during the long, wide-eyed hours of childhood in Palestine or in Baghdad on in Afghanistan. Imagine the tension, worry and preoccupation on the faces of the adults; imagine the looks on the faces of the of soldiers as they patrol the streets, or search homes. Imagine the hundreds upon hundreds of violent scenes that could and do play out in front of children living in war zones. This is their world. It surrounds them day in and day out. And oftentimes, they have not only no words, but no opportunity to tell us what they think and feel about this.

Taking crayon or pencil in hand, a child speaks out on his or her own behalf: this is me, my situation, this is what my life looks like. It isn’t easy for adults to bare witness to these stories. I’ve seen exhibits of children’s art from Hiroshima, from Spain during the Civil War, from Viet Nam, from Darfur, from the concentration camps in WWII and from Iraqi children. What we see in some of this art is the human cost of war, the terror and agony of being a child in an unpredictable, dangerous and violent world, a world gone inexplicably mad. A world where you are not safe, where even your parents cannot protect you.

This art is not about politics, it is about the human condition. If we cannot look at it, if it is too painful, it is because the world we have created, full of violence and conflict, is not one that is good for children. The famous 60’s poster with one giant flower said it all: War is Not Healthy for Children and Other Living Things.

We have a legal as well as a moral obligation to let Palestinian children, and all children express their views freely and to give those views our due consideration. If we are disturbed by children’s images from war zones, we should work on their behalf to create a better, more just and peaceful world , a world where children are truly valued and where their care, protection and overall well being is a social, economic and political priority. To do anything less is to deny the significance of children as the future of our planet.

Aldous Huxley wrote this, in his introduction to “They Still Draw Pictures! A collection of 60 drawings made by Spanish children during the war” (1938): The most that individual men and women of good will can do is to work on behalf of some general solution of the problem of large-scale violence and, meanwhile to succour those who, like the child artists of this exhibition, have been made the victims of the worlds collective crime and madness.

The museum, in canceling the exhibit has dealt yet another blow to children and their rights; surely a children’s museum, of all institutions, can do better than this.

To see examples from this exhibit: mocha.org

Claudia Lefko is the founding director (2001) of The Iraqi Children’s Art Exchange in Northampton MA. She is a long-time educator, activist and advocate for children.

9/11 again, responding to readers’

By rahnuma ahmed

My two-part series on 9/11 and the blowback paradigm has elicited considerable response from readers, not, I must add, in the pages of New Age but through e-mails, addressed to me personally (Part I, Does the `blowback’ paradigm explain 9/11? Truth-ers disagree, September 19, 2011; Concluding Part, September 20, 2011, New Age).

Varied responses.

I think you need to write another piece, to wrap up the whole thing. Digesting all the stuff, even if it was in two-parts was quite difficult. I’d like to chew on what you’ve written, and to know more. Is that possible?

I found two things very important and interesting, wrote another reader, a PhD student at an American campus. The American left’s phobia of conspiracy which leads to a psychology of denial, precluding the possibility that the American state is far more vicious than imagined by leading Left writers. And the other thing is what Parenti says of conspiracies, that they are `a component of the national security political system in the US, not deviations from it.’ It just opened my eyes.

Another doctoral student, she too, a Bangladeshi, wrote from a university campus in England. It clarifies the Leftists stand for me. I’d come across many scholars and students who are equally critical of American foreign policy but disagree with Chomsky’s analysis. I’d never understood why, it’s clear now. Congrats for clarifying how leading Left thinkers too, are wedded to a state-driven paradigm.

Chomsky’s acceptance of the official version and his gross generalisations about so-called conspiracy theorists, wrote another reader, makes me wonder how far left, dissident intellectuals are capable of raising questions about the nature of the state within which they lead their lives. It makes me wonder about the boundaries of Chomsky’s critical inquiries, about the social nature of his relationship to the American elite, which is part of the global elite. What I found most appealing in what you wrote is not so much the 9/11 Truth movement per se as how iconic left intellectuals resist paths seeking to discover the truth.

`There’s by now a small industry on the thesis that the administration had something to do with 9-11,’ says Chomsky.

To speak of the 9/11 Truth movement thus, says Barrie Zwicker, is a familiar put-down. `Small industry’ often implies a `cottage industry,’ it conjures images of a `tiny minority of energetically mistaken individuals’ some of whom may be making money off it, thereby portraying their motive as `disreputable.’

In reality, raising doubts about the official version has hardly proven to be beneficial. Retired news anchor, Dan Rather, says “there was a time in South Africa that people would put flaming tires around peoples’ necks if they dissented. And in some ways the fear is that you will be necklaced here, you will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck. Now it is that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions…. And again, I am humbled to say, I do not except myself from this criticism. ..What we are talking about here — whether one wants to recognise it or not, or call it by its proper name or not — is a form of self-censorship.”

Reporters do not report `their own insights’ or `contrary evaluations’ of the official 9/11 story, says Karen Kwiatkowski, retired Air Force colonel. Questioning the government story about 9/11 is similar to questioning the `very foundations of our entire modern belief system regarding our government, our country, and our way of life.’ It is far more serious than being labeled a `disgruntled conspiracy nut,’ or an `anti-government traitor,’ or even being sidelined or marginalized within an academic, government service, or literary career. Pressures to remain silent come from advertisers and the media, adds Dan Rather.

I read this in a piece by William Woodward, psychology professor at New Hampshire university. He should know, for when news of his membership of 9/11 Scholars for Truth became known, New Hampshire’s governor denounced his views for being `crazy and offensive’, while a spokeswoman for the governor said it raised questions about his `competence’ (The Boston Globe, September 10, 2006).More intimidating was a request from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) to the NH’s board of trustees to `investigate’ him. The request, writes Woodward, was instigated by vice president Dick Cheney’s wife Lynn. University authorities, to their credit, stated that no `complaints have been registered by students or colleagues,’ that he had operated within the boundaries of academic freedom. But sensing that his colleages’ funding could be jeopardised, Woodward stopped writing on 9/11 for a while (Kevin Barrett, William Woodward takes 9/11 Truth movement to India, November 2007).

Did the Bush administration have something to do with 9/11? Chomsky says, `There’s a weak thesis that is possible though extremely unlikely in my opinion, and a strong thesis that is close to inconceivable. The weak thesis is that they knew about it and didn’t try to stop it. The strong thesis is that they were actually involved. The evidence for either thesis is, in my opinion, based on a failure to understand properly what evidence is.’

Lynn Margulis, university of Massachussets professor, recipient of the National Medal of Science, America’s highest honor for scientific achievement (1999), author of over 130 scientific works and numerous books, would disagree.

According to NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology), World Trade Centre Building 7  — a 47 storey skyscraper, the third building to collapse but not hit by a plane — `collapsed due to uncontrollable office fires.’ [10:54] Not due to explosives.  Did they look for explosives? No. [10:28]

`So the preconceived notion of NIST is that there is no evidence for explosives and so there is no point in looking, that is the most uncientific thing you could possibly think of, not to look because you don’t expect to find evidence, and in fact, the evidence is overwhelming. They state these conclusions for which there is virtually no evidence and then they ignore conclusions that can be drawn from the evidence’ (Architects and Engineers, Solving the Mystery of WTC7, video released on the tenth anniversary of 9/11 [10:35]).

The official story, says the distinguished professor, is `contradictory, incomplete and unbelievable.’ It is `the most successful and most perverse publicity stunt in the history of public relations.’ And adds, `Whoever is responsible for bringing to grizzly fruition this new false-flag operation, which has been used to justify the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as unprecedented assaults on research, education, and civil liberties, must be perversely proud of their efficient handiwork.  Certainly, 19 young Arab men and a man in a cave 7,000 miles away, no matter the level of their anger, could not have masterminded and carried out 9/11: the most effective television commercial in the history of Western civilization’ (University  of Masachussets  Professor calls for New 9/11 Investigation, August 26, 2007).

Not only do members of the Left, but those among ultra-Left as well, writes Jack Straw, have problems with the idea that 9/11 was an `inside job.’ As Ward Churchill, native American scholar puts it, `it suggests that brown people are not capable of such feats and gives all the credit to the white man, another master race fantasy’ (Global Research, May 6, 2005).

But, as Straw points out, by endorsing these attacks as blows against the empire i.e., blowback theory, Churchill in effect, endorses the official story. Which architects and structural engineers claim, is not true. Is contradictory, incomplete and unbelievable.

According to NIST, the failure occurred at column 79 on level 12. `They’re talking about a single column collapse or failure that resulted in a total collapse or failure of the building’ says forensic fire protection engineer Scott Grainger. [6:32] But, as he and Michael Donly, a structural engineer, point out, `all of the columns needed to be severed at the same time in order for the structure to fall the way we saw.’ [6:14] It’s `impossible,’ says Kamal Obeid, also a structural engineer, for a local failure (at one of the columns) could not drag the whole building down. [6:44]

`The symmetry is the smoking gun,’ says Kathy McGrade, metallurgical engineer [6:22]. The destruction of the evidence was a `criminal act’, insists structural engineer Ronald Brookman. [11:13] `It was already being carted away and destroyed when the FEMA investigators got there about a month after September 11.’ To which professor Margulis adds, you can’t do science when you are deprived of evidence and your hypothesis is the least valid instead of the most likely, and the most likely hypothesis in the case of Building 7 wasn’t even mentioned. This is not science.’ [11:27]

When asked, why is it difficult for intellectuals like Chomsky and Cockburn, who are already skeptical of the actions of the US government, to ask disturbing questions about deeper things? [0:01] professor David Ray Griffin, widely-accepted leader of the 9/11 Truth movement replied, they and George Monbiot, assume, wrongly so, that the truth movement is a leftist organisation. [1:13]

This is a hardly the case, former members of the Reagan administration such as Paul Craig Roberts has endorsed my books, many of the members of the movement are conservatives, which is why they are so upset with the administration. Because it is going against all basic conservative principles (the rule of law, low taxes, limited regulation etc). Many don’t want to look at the empirical evidence, more powerful than wishful thinking, you believe what you wish to be the case, is fearful thinking. You will not believe what you fear to be the truth. `I mean how many people have simply told me, I simply refuse to believe what you are saying because I don’t want to live in a country like that.’ [2:46] Griffin added, I don’t criticise Chomsky, he’s a great hero of mine. I’m still hopeful that he’ll wake up on this issue one of these days.

Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism in which she exposes how corporations profit from catastrophic events, while governments are able to further their agenda of `disaster capitalism,’ while conceding that she wouldn’t put anything past `these people’ thinks `we’re taking away all this energy that could be going toward other issues that are so important now.’

Klein has elaborated: I write only about what I can prove. I can prove that this administration invaded Iraq based on lies, illegally, that act by all respectable accounts has led to the deaths of more than a million Iraqis. And I don’t understand why that is not enough to impeach Bush?  [1:56]

Similar thoughts echoed by Howard Zinn, author of the best-selling and influential A People’s History of the United States. Investigating 9/11 would `divert our energy from a real inquiry. A real inquiry is in what way has American foreign policy inflamed and antagonised people all over the world to the point of creating terrorists. That’s the question which should be investigated and the other question about the conspiracy, who knew about, who didn’t do anything about it, that to me is a dead end, it’s a diversion and I think it leads us away from what we should be doing.’ [6:09]

A line of reasoning many truth-ers find incredible given Zinn’s insistence in setting historical records straight, by researching on the role of the labour movement in USA, American imperialism in Latin America and around the world, the violence of American culture, and so on (Richard C. Cook, Global Research, May 4, 2009).

But it is a comment, one made by no else than Chomsky, which has given rise to the greatest incredulity. `Even if [inside job] were true, which is extremely unlikely, who cares? I mean, it doesn’t have any significance.’

As one truth-er put it,  if the town where I live had a serial killer who had killed 9 people in our community, if someone came up and said, it’s been 9 years now, let bygones be bygones, the whole community would be appalled. Here we are talking about some peple who killed roughly 3,000 people and we are supposed to say who cares? If it’s an inside job, if they fooled the mass media, and the universities, and they fooled the political parties, and they fooled some of our best intellectuals, our best thinkers, even people who think of themselves as dissidents, the implications are enormous. If they did it once, why can’t they do it again? Where are they going to stop? Perhaps there’s a series of these events, perhaps it might happen any day now, and oh guess what, it’s going to have Iran’s footprints on it so I guess we better bomb Iran [3:45].

The `most effective television commercial in the history of Western civilization’ has created deep cleavages among scientists, scholars and activists in America and

elsewhere as they contest what is truth. Its significance. Its practical implications. Against the backdrop of ever-expanding imperial wars, of conquest and looting, of death and destruction.

Published in New Age, Monday, September 26, 2011

PART I

Does the `blowback’ paradigm explain 9/11?
Truth-ers disagree

By rahnuma ahmed

In last week’s column, `9/11, growing disbelief at US govt’s account a decade later’ (New Age, September 12, 2011),  I’d wanted to write about the `blowback’ paradigm, as well.

But, after having written about retired general Wesley Clark’s revelations about the Bush administration’s decision to `take out’ seven countries in five years, former deputy assistant secretary of defense colonel Ronald D. Ray’s assertion that the official story of 9/11 is that of `the dog that doesn’t hunt,’ former deputy assistant secretary of state Dr. Stephen Pieczenik’s allegation that the War on Terror is an `orchestrated type of war,’ that the pilot who crashed his plane into the Pentagon must have been a trained military pilot, a `sleeper’, i.e., an agent who is trained to kill and is activated many years later¬—after all this, there wasn’t much space left for talking about the Toronto Hearings, let alone, the `blowback’ paradigm.

A body of internationally-reputed experts and academics, discontented with the US government’s official investigation of 9/11, organised and held the International Hearings on the events of 9/11, on the tenth anniversary of the Twin Tower attacks (8-11 September 2011). Seriously flawed. It fails to describe what happened. Who did what, and why.

I had been in two minds. Slipping in a brief mention of the blowback paradigm, I felt, would not make much sense to many readers.

But the blowback paradigm, I hasten to add, is not the only 9/11 paradigm. There’s an official one, the `fanatic Muslims’ one. Nineteen of them planned 9/11, they used boxcutters and mace to hijack the flights, they had no other help but that provided by Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Despite warnings and predictions made by investigators and terror experts, both domestic and foreign, the US government did not `acquire or synthesize sufficient intelligence prior to September 11 to prevent the attacks’ (Nicholas Levin, `What is your HOP level?’, April 1, 2004). But there’s more to this theory. The 9/11 attacks could occur only because the US is a free society. The wretched hijackers took advantage of that.

Closely tagged to the `fanatic Muslim’ hijackers theory is the `incompetence’ theory. According to this, the failure to prevent, or defend, America against 9/11 was due to `incompetence or criminal negligence’ on the part of the White House, and US intelligence agencies, FBI, CIA, NSA etc. It was not, however, due to `malicious intent or foreknowledge…of US government operatives,’ which is downright `unthinkable’. What is needed, is an investigation which identifies and clears up the `failures.’ This is the line taken by the `Kean Commission’, known after Thomas Kean, former New Jersey governor, who chaired the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (set up in 2002); also known as the `9/11 Commission’. These failures, signals the Kean Commission, will be found only at the `middle and lower levels.’

Linked closely to these two theories is the `Saudi/Taliban double cross theory’ which takes the line that the role of `fundamentalist Saudis in high places’ in financing al-Qaeda is actually much greater than revealed. But why was it kept secret? Because of the Bush family’s close business ties to bin Laden’s family. This is why the 9/11 inquiries were obstructed: as a `favor to [Bush family’s] Saudi clients’; also, because if the truth were to come out it would make the Bushies `look bad.’ This line, writes Levis, is taken by BBC reporter Greg Palast, and filmmaker Michael Moore (Fahrenheit 9/11).

A related variant of the above theories is the `Taliban/oil pipeline’ one, which goes somewhat like this: Bush & Co. had conveniently ignored the possibility of an attack, had lowered bin Laden investigations to facilitate `ongoing pipeline negotiations with the Taliban,’ one taken by Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, Forbidden Truth: US-Taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy and the Failed Hunt for bin Laden (2002).

Then there’s the Neo-cons/`rogue factions’ theory, which propounds that Bush & Co. were `blindsided by super right-wing elements’ within the US military/intelligence complex, who `effectively attempted or even succeeded in staging a coup.’ According to Levis, this line is taken by Lyndon LaRouche, Thiery Miessan and others. There’s a `Bush suckered’ theory as well. His administration was suckered into the events. By who? Iraq, Israel, Pakistan, China, Russia, German Nazis, singly or in combination. It is usually propounded by lone crusaders.

There’s a cluster of theories which can be umbrella’d under Letting It Happen (LIH), with its own set of variants: Letting It Happen On Purpose (LIHOP), Letting It Happen On Purpose Plus (LIHOP+), Making It Happen On Purpose (MIHOP).

According to the core theory, i.e., Letting It Happen, also termed, `Wishing for Pearl Harbor’ theory, Bush & Co. looked the other way, expecting, hoping an attack would happen so that they could `push through’ their Project for A New American Century (PNAC)/Christian Nation/Plunder Program `wholesale’, this included the already-planned invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. `[But Bush & Co.] did not directly facilitate the attacks, or incriminate themselves’, they just let them happen; this is held by the Democratic Underground.

The LIHOP theory holds that Bush & Co. and/or other elements in the US government, secret services or the establishment knew in advance that the attacks were going to happen, they `worked to ensure that it would happen.’ This insider help included the Air Force standdown, inactions expressed thus, `we were only holding a wargame and it was subverted by evildoers.’

`Knowing in advance and working to ensure that it would happen’, is raised a notch above by Letting It Happen On Purpose Plus (LIHOP+, or Full LIHOP) theorists, who are of the opinion that a `genuine’ terrorist plot was exploited. `Why leave something so important in the hands of amateurs?’ The dream of Islamist extremists of crashbombing planes into American targets was `subverted and…steered to fruition by masterminds within the US power elite.’ The terrorist group of hijackers was infiltrated and helped, `possibly even replacing them or steering the planes (or drones) by remote control, or doing whatever else was thought necessary.’

Advocates of Making It Happen On Purpose (MIHOP) think that there were no hijackers. That the whole thing had been planned years before 2001, that it was finally executed as an inside job by elements within the US intelligence apparatus and Bush & Co., that this included false-flag excuses i.e., a covert operation designed to deceive the public by laying the blame for the attack on the enemy. A famous historical instance is the Reichstag fire of 1933 when the German parliament building was set on fire by the Nazis in order to lay the blame on the communists, and to garner public support for crushing them. That patsies (fall guy) were used, or a fully fake list of hijackers (`9/11 suicide hijackers risen from the dead,’ New Age, December 28, 2009). That the planes were flown by remote control or replaced by drones. That wargames mimicking the 9/11 attacks were deliberately planned, and held, to confuse the majority of the military. To provide an alibi, a back-up story.

MIHOP is also dubbed `Northwoods 2001’, in rememberance of the original Northwoods operation (1962), a false flag plan, which had the written approval of the Chairman and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. According to the plan, innocent people would be shot on American streets; boats carrying Cuban refugees would be sunk on the high seas; a wave of violent terrorism would be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami, and elsewhere. `People would be framed for bombings they did not commit; planes would be hijacked. Using phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro,’ to give the Joint Chief chair Lemnitzer and his cabal `the excuse, as well as the public and international backing, they needed to launch their war’ against Cuba.  The memo was ordered destroyed and erased but a single copy survived in an archive, which was declassified in the mid-1990s; ABC’s investigative reporter James Bamford investigated the incident and wrote about it in Body of Secrets (2001). Initially, the book’s publication was blocked by the the Reagan administration.

Another framework which describes and explains the events of 9/11 is known as the New World Order (NWO) approach, subscribed to by professor Michel Chossudovsky, Chaim Kupferberg and Don Paul. According to this, writes Levis, the master plotters are not just `elements within the US’ but the global ruling elite. A hardcore faction within the elite decides to orchestrate an incident to allow them to gain greater control of the world, to allow `their proxies to seize key resources, reshape the world, drop the democratic facades and transition to corporate feudalism.’ De-populating the world, in other words, slaughtering huge numbers of people, is one of the likely goals. `The Bush mob are lower-order handmaidens, who may not have been privy to details in advance.’

Remember, president Bush had continued reading `The Pet Goat’ story to a classroom of second-graders (Emma E. Booker Elementary School, Sarasota, Florida), and had begun a 20 minute pre-planned photo op, fifteen minutes after it was clear that the US was under attack? According to the official storyline, Bush was informed by his aide Andy Card while reading to schoolkids (not earlier, which a detailed scrutiny of the timeline suggests to researchers), but Bush, the president of the most-powerful nation on earth, was neither whisked away by the secret service after the attack, proclaimed to be the `worst terrorist attack ever on American soil’. Nor did he, as Commander-in-Chief, feel obliged to ask Card any additional questions after being informed of the attack. Nor did he issue any shootdown order for the Air Force. Nor did he ask if the photo op should be cut short. Instead, he just sat and read aloud the Goat Story.

The stage is now set for writing about the blowback theory, adhered to by left, liberals and progressives, and why the 9/11 Truth movement, known as the Truth-ers in brief, are critical of it.

[Concluding Part, to be published tomorrow]

Published in New Age, Monday, September 19, 2011.

By Babui / Arjun

He lived as an exile, by himself, all alone,
Far from his country, his family, his home.

And he was a loner — lacked warmth in his heart.
Of company, friendship, he knew not the art.

He lived in a city — in millions, but one,
In the city, where fortunes are lost and are won.

But even in cities, the caring heart beats.
And he was befriended by strangers on streets.

******

To the likes of the stranger, we’re wary and distant,
And yet, that may change, in the space of an instant.

The face of the stranger is shuttered and cold,
And who can observe it but those who are bold?

There are some, who are lonesome — or driven by lust;
And they, at a stranger, their gazes may thrust.

There are some, who’re not used to the city-folk’s way;
And so, at the stranger, their gazes can stray.

There are some, who have lived in the city for long;
And yet, they are innocents, still don’t belong.

And each of the ones I have listed he met,
And others unlisted — we safely may bet.

******

For the nature of humans is social — and so
We reach out to others — though others say no.

The child, she is curious, and yet she’s afraid.
She looks at the stranger, though nothing is said.

She sees in a stranger both angel and devil,
A bounty most precious — and whispers of evil.

And the parent that guards her is wary as well.
How many, the tales that the TV shows tell!

For though, in a village, the children have trust,
In the midst of the city, precaution’s a must.

No different, we, than the cats and the kittens.
For novelty scares as novelty beckons.

******

So back to the exile, abandoned awhile,
The one, who but rarely could manage a smile.

He lived by himself, did his shopping and went
Back to his refuge, increasingly bent.

And when he was aged and he hardly could see,
At crossings, he’d stand and conspicuous be.

And in less than a minute (though sometimes in more),
Along would come one, who our faith would restore.

And every such “angel” would help him across,
And leave him to carry on further with cross.

And some would have issue with term that I use.
Can one, who does duty, the others excuse?

******

But judge them not harshly, the ones who passed by,
And left him to stand there. And ask not for why.

But be like that exile. Be grateful, that some
Do still have the heart, when beckoned, to come.

And those, who had leisure and watched him for years,
They saw how he managed, despite all their fears.

For he was befriended, when all could be lost,
By strangers who helped him, and often at cost.

Strange are the ways of the world that we’re in.
We note not the virtues. We notice the sin.

And strange are the twists and the turns of the world.
A moment — and deep in the abyss we’re hurled.

******

For now he’s been taken to live in a “home”
That’s wrongly so named — and he lies there alone.

And yet, there are workers and residents there,
Who help him, his troubles with patience to bear.

And troubles are many, neglect is but one.
So easy to lose, what with labor was won!

Yet surely, without all the help he receives,
From those who give freely, his living would cease.

There are actions of kindness, with little return,
Save for the knowledge of serving, in turn.

And these are the acts, as we struggle to cope,
That say, “Where there’s heart, you have reason to hope.”

******

He once was an exile, by himself, all alone,
Far from his country, his family, his home.

And still, he’s a loner — the warmth in his heart
Is rarely expressed — as he knows not the art.

And yet, in the midst of the city of dangers,
He still is befriended, by those who were strangers.

On the kindness of strangers, he lives out his years.
They share in his joys and they share in his tears.

2011 August 21st, Sun.
Brooklyn