In the aftermath of the `underwear’ bomber incident, an increasing clamour of voices insist that the rest of the world should learn airport security from Israel, and El Al, its national airlines.

Their record is impressive, writes Christopher Walker. Global Traveller magazine has named El Al, the “world’s most secure airline” (`Air security: rest of world needs to learn from El Al,’ The First Post, 21 January 2010).

Their deterrents, both seen and unseen, are most effective. The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) provide updated specifications of weapons and explosives likely to be used by terrorists and militants. Security staff, often women, trained in psychological techniques begin questioning passengers as they approach the terminal. El Al terminals the world over, are patrolled by plain-clothes agents, fully armed police, and military personnel. Passenger names are checked at passport control with FBI, Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Scotland Yard, Shin Bet (Israel’s domestic security service), Interpol and French Deuxieme Bureau databases. To divert missiles, all aircrafts are fitted with Flight Guard Civil Aviation Missile Protection System. All bags are routinely put in a decompression chamber which simulates on-flight pressure needed to trigger explosives. Sky marshals, armed but often in plain-clothes, travel on flights. All these are routine matters.

As is its pro-Jewish racial profiling.

Human rights campaigners the world over may “object” to it, some may think it “shameless,” others may regard it as “blatant” but, Walker writes, its inclusion ensures “thoroughness.” After all, what is more important? Differential treatment toward some passengers? Or, risking the lives of all?

Absence of the Israeli-kind-of security in Britain’s recent measures, is likely to lead to failure. (Only) No-fly lists. (Only) Cancelling all flights between Britain and Yemen. (Only) Seamlessly tracking and disrupting all terrorist movements. (Only) Introducing full body scanners at all British airports. These are just “not enough,” says Walker. Nothing short of racial and religious profiling, and fitting aircrafts with anti-missile systems—will do.

Delia Lloyd is similarly enthusiastic about Israel, which has “pioneered” and “perfected” aviation security. A full-scale Israelification of US and UK airports is needed, and even though sheer numbers, costs of re-training employees make it daunting, we should start thinking of “moving towards the Israeli model.” (`Airport Security: Is Israel the Answer,’ Politics Daily, 1/08/10).

Not everyone agrees. As a reader comments on Lloyd’s piece: “No, Israel isn’t the answer, Israel is the problem. Why do you think we are the object of attacks? Because we prop up Israel, and behave like Israel.” [TAWNY JONES 5:58 AM, JAN 8, 2010; CHECKED AT 21:26, 24 JANUARY, HAS BEEN REMOVED]

Interestingly enough, the clamor for Israelification began soon after serious doubts and questions surfaced about what actually occurred at Schipol airport in Amsterdam.

But there are questions about other airports too. About private firms who were in charge of security. Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris (2001). Logan airport in Boston (2001). For the underground, as well. The London Underground (2005).

But more on Schipol first. In an earlier column (`Padded Underwear,’ 10 January 2010), I’d written that airport security in Amsterdam is contracted to an Israeli controlled company; the same company which developed the concept of security profiling.

http://www.securityinfowatch.com/files/imagecache/article_main/pictures/apparatus/TSA-millimeter-wave.jpg

http://z.about.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/V/6/3/Naked-Airport-Security.jpg

Newer information since: it’s called International Consultants on Targeted Security (not `ICTS Europe,’ a different company), and was established in 1982 by former agents of Israel’s internal Shin Bet security service and former El Al airline security agents. It is Netherlands-based and has two subsidiaries (I-SEC, and its daughter company P-I, or Pro-Check International). These provide security services consisting of consultation, instruction, training, inspection and supervision. Links between El Al security and Mossad (Israeli intelligence) are very close, according to Gordon Duff of Veteran Today, with “abundant cross-pollination of senior personnel back and forth.” ICTS’s senior management are all ex-Israeli security officials, many work for El Al security (e.g., retd Major General Amos Lapidot, an ICTS board member, had served as a commander of the Israeli Air Force).

Abdulmutallab’s father had gone to the US embassy in Nigeria, in November. His son, he said, was being influenced by “unidentified extremists,” and was planning to travel to Yemen (incidentally, Nigerian intelligence services are tied to, and trained by, Israel). Intelligence officials, said president Obama, had failed to “connect those dots.”

But being on a terrorist watchlist means (a) not being permitted to board a commercial airline

(b) being put under immediate surveillance. In Abdulmutallab’s case, not even his US visa was withdrawn. Well. Okay. It  could happen. It did. But what about security officers at Schipol? Despite his “age, name, illogical travel route, high-priced ticket purchased at the last minute, his boarding without luggage (only a carry on) and many other signs” they were not suspicious (Haaretz, 10 January 2010). Despite the fact that ICTS is renowned for using security measures “pioneered” in Israel: assessing the threat level of passengers based on name, age, nationality and behaviour during questioning.

The official account gradually began losing credibility. Kurt Haskell (American lawyer, passenger) recalled having seen a wealthy looking Indian man with Abdulmutallab at Schipol, (“an odd pair”). He heard the elder man tell the ticket agent, he doesn’t have a passport, he’s Sudanese, he needs to board the plane. “We do this all the time.” The agent suggested they go and talk to the manager. The next thing he knew, Abdulmutallab was on the same flight, trying to ignite explosives.

At first Dutch security insisted, Abdulmutallab had a passport. Later, it was revised: he did not have to “Go through normal passport checking procedures” but he did undergo “a security interview and check” (But if he did not have a passport, how could they have known that he had a valid US visa?) Haskell says, what is important is the presence of an apparently successful accomplice who can “skirt normal passport boarding procedures in Amsterdam.” Dutch security says there was no Indian man, but it has not released any video footage. “I have no doubt that if the video indicated that my account was wrong… [it] would have already swept over the entire world wide web.” As did video footage of the death of Iranian protestor Neda Agha-Soltan.

Another passenger, Richelle Keepman says, a man with a camcorder had calmly and without interruption filmed the entire incident (“he was standing up [when] we were supposed to be seated”). After the plane landed in Detroit, FBI agents arrived with sniffer dogs, handcuffed a younger Indian man, and took him away. Nothing has since been heard about him, or the person who video-recorded the foiled attempt. Interestingly enough, FBI’s account of what happened has changed 5 times, while Haskell’s remains unchanged.

Richard Reid, shoe bomber (22 December 2001): Reid attempted to board an El Al flight from Schipol to Tel Aviv six months before the attempted shoe bombing. El Al security identified him as a terrorist suspect (one-way ticket, cash payment) but instead of handing him over to Dutch security, they allowed him to board the plane so that his movements during his 5 days in Israel could be monitored by Shin Bet. Six months later, he tried to ignite his shoe on AA flight 63 from Paris to Miami. Israel had not informed British, American, French or any other security agency of their concerns about Reid. He later claimed that El Al had failed to detect the explosives in his shoes.

The name of the security company which allowed him to board the AA flight in Paris? ICTS.

London Bombings (7 July 2005): A series of successive and coordinated bomb attacks on 3 London Underground trains (and a double decker bus) killed 56 people. Calls for a full, independent inquiry dismissed by prime minister Tony Blair, a “ludicrous diversion.”

Security for London’s Underground train network was provided by Verint Systems (Israeli).

9/11 terror attacks (9 September 2001): ICTS sold services to all 3 airports—Logan International (Boston), Washington Dulles International, Newark International (New Jersey)—from which the four hijacked planes operated on 9/11, including security, sometimes through wholly-owned subsidiaries like Huntleigh USA Corporation. As a 9/11 researcher puts it, this means an Israeli company had “automatic inside access to all of the[se] airports…”

Hours before the House version of the first Patriot Act went to a vote, “technical corrections” were inserted making foreign security companies such as ICTS-International immune from lawsuits related to 9/11. The act was signed into law by president Bush on 26 October 2001.

No independent inquiry has been held on 9/11. According to Thomas Kean, chairman of the official 9/11 Commission, it was “set up to fail.” Pentagon, Federal Aviation Administration, and NORAD officials said things “just so far from the truth.”

And, `the Indian man’? Wayne Madsen, an ex-US navy lieutenant turned investigative journalist and blogger, thinks the attempted terrorist attack on the Detroit-bound plane was actually a false flag operation (covert operation, designed to deceive the public). That it was carried out by the “intelligence tripartite grouping of the CIA, Mossad, and India’s Research and Analysis Wing.”

To assume a RAW connection just because the man was Indian, is surely stretching it a bit too far? But then, I remember Israeli prime minister Netanyahu’s words, “Our ties with India don’t have any limitation…”

Published in New Age, 25 January 2010

“Our ties with India don’t have any limitation….” Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli prime minister (1997)

Ariel Sharon was the first Israeli prime minister to visit India. It was 2003, and the Financial Times, while reporting on the impending visit, had this to say: it is “one of the world’s most secretive relationships.” As for the reason of the visit: it was to be a “coming-out party” (`India and Israel Ready to Consummate Secret Affair,’ 4 September). The party, unfortunately, was cut short by two Palestinian suicide bombings in Jerusalem which killed 16 people.

Many more parties have been held since, but neither side has cared to shed any light on the nature of their relationship. It has remained a secret.

A status that has been vetted and certified by Mark Sofer, Israel’s ambassador to India. I quote his memorable words: “We do have a defence relationship with India, which is no secret. On the other hand, what is a secret is what is the defence relationship. And with all due respect the secret part of it will remain secret” (Outlook India, 18 February 2008).

What is one to make of that? That defence and intelligence co-operation, which includes sales of high tech weapons systems and mutual access to military facilities and training—is mere surface? What lies underneath then? Something which is so hidden, so momentous that His Excellency needed to utter the word `secret’ four times?

Whatever be the true nature of this `limitless’ relationship, it took time to develop, to mature. Full diplomatic relations were established in 1992, a good forty-two years after India had recognised the state of Israel. And, why?

Earlier, India had been supportive of anti-colonial struggles. It was one of the first non-Arab states to recognise Palestinian independence, to allow the setting-up of an embassy. There had been tactical reasons, too. To counter Pakistan’s influence in the Arab world. To safeguard its oil supplies. To ensure jobs for Indian migrants in Middle Eastern countries . Also, out of respect for its alliance and friendship with the Soviet Union. After all, those were the good old Cold War days and as a founder-member of the Non-Aligned Movement, India had maintained a self-respecting distance from US imperialism. But not everyone will agree, pointing instead to prime minister Indira Gandhi’s instructions to Rameshwar Nath Kao, founder of RAW (Research and Analysis Wing), way back in September 1968. Cultivate relations with Mossad, she had said. It’ll help monitor developments likely to threaten both nations.

Everyone agrees however that the Kargil war (May-July 1999) “cemented” the relationship between the two nations. Israel had leapt to India’s assistance. As Air Marshal PS Ahluwalia puts it, it had not been very easy to locate Pakistani intruders. They had merged into the stony terrain. Tel Aviv assisted with unmanned reconnaissance aircrafts. These UAVs, or drones, could not only fly longer i.e., 24 hours, but were able to “sense even simple movements on the ground.” The Israeli Heron and Searcher UAVs are now flown by the Indian Armed forces. It had also, reportedly, provided an emergency shipment of artillery shells to India, on credit.

These cementing steps were preceded by events which had caused alarm in New Delhi, had led to strategic re-assessments. Guerrilla warfare had begun in the state of Jammu and Kashmir in the late 1980s, this had coincided with the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan in the face of  the ISI-trained and CIA-sponsored mujahidin insurgency, the subsequent collapse of the USSR. New Delhi’s re-assessment of its relationship with America and Israel led to the discovery of convergences; these mirrored assessments arrived at in both Washington and Tel Aviv. Realignments followed soon, ones that were vigorously pursued by Indian and Jewish lobbies in the US.

To modernise its Soviet-era arsenal, India plans to spend $100 billion on defense over the next decade. Having overtaken Russia, Israel is now India’s No 1 supplier of arms and ammunitions; 50% of Israel’s defence exports are to India, which relies on Israel for 30% of its imports. Israel supplies a range of defence products, which include Barak missiles, assault rifles, night fighting devices, radar network, hi-tech warfare systems and information technology related equipment. The growing defence ties were expressed by India’s launching of Tecsar, an Israeli spy satellite (also known as Polaris), from Sriharikota launch site, in 2008. According to Israeli press reports, the satellite will improve Israel’s ability to monitor Iran’s military activities. In early November last year, the signing of a $1.1 billion contract was announced while India’s army chief General Deepak Kapoor was in Israel for high-level talks. The sale of Barak-8 systems, an upgraded tactical air defence system, is expected to be delivered to India by 2017. Since Kargil, India has bought $8 billion worth military hardware and software from Israel. Some of the defense contracts however, have been dogged by controversy surrounding alleged kickbacks (the name of a London based businessman cropped up in the Barak deal; the director of India’s Ordnance Factory Board was arrested with others, on corruption charges).

India’s army chief General Deepak Kapoor visited Israel November 2009 to complete $1.1 billion deal to purchase upgraded tactical air defense system, Barak – 8. © Alexz/militaryphotos.net

Militarisation, armament, as feminists argue, is deeply gendered. The Israeli armament company Rafael, unveiled an ad at the Aero-India show in Bangalore (2009) a dance and music video, Bollywood style, to woo the Indian defence establishment. The 3 mt 21 sec video shows a man, presumably Rafael (Israel) wooing a woman (India) singing a song, accompanied by dancing shokhis:

“We will never be apart, dinga-dinga, dinga-dee….” Israeli armament company Rafael displayed this Bollywood dance number-based marketing video at Aero India 2009 in Bangalore.

[Man] “We have been together for long…

Trusting friends and partners…

What more can I pledge to make our future strong?”
[Woman] “I need to feel safe and sheltered…

security and protection, commitment and perfection,

defence and dedication.”

[Chorus] Dinga-dinga, dinga-dinga, dinga-dee.

Some of the shots show missiles, part of the set design, around which the dancers gyrate their bodies. The phallic symbolism was surely not lost on India’s elite defence establishment.  A senior defence officer—probably distraught at India’s depiction as a helpless woman, in need of a manly man, one that goes against its image as an emerging superpower, one which India would like its less fortunate South Asian kin to revere—told the Times of India, the ad was “quite tacky.” Like a “C-grade Hindi movie song.” The Times was more sophisticated. Its headline said, the ad had “raised” Indian eyebrows.

Arms sales can be tracked, says Vijay Prasad. “But this counterterrorism relationship is very, very covert” Prasad’s suspicions reverberate when Richard Boucher, US assistant secretary of state—described as Obama administration’s point man for South Asia—says, India will be “a key stakeholder” in Obama’s so-called Af-Pak strategy. After all, “They’ve made an important contribution in Afghanistan—I think their total (contribution to the rehabilitation and reconstruction in Afghanistan) is up to about $1.2 billion. They’ve been very instrumental in key areas like training, civil service, and helping build Afghan institutions,” but “they will not do anything militarily or put boots on the ground” because of regional issues involved with Pakistan.

The left’s opposition to India’s `limitless’ relationship with Israel seems to have died down after the Mumbai attack in November 2008, India’s 9/11. A fact compounded by the electoral results last year, one of the biggest wins for the Indian National Congress, “no longer under the pressure of the left front”. The Mumbai attack has made it easier for sentiments about Israel-India’s similarities to be voiced: both are targeted by Islamist fundamentalists. In one case, Palestinians/Hamas, in the other, Pakistanis/jihadists.

But, Jeff Gates writes, as Afghanistan and Pakistan join other nations in being destabilised one cannot help but raise questions about how the crises which have wracked the sub-continent in recent years, were so “well-timed”: Benazir Bhutto’s murder, Musharraf’s departure, the terror attack in Mumbai which served to draw Pakistani forces away from the western tribal region. Incidents which served the tactical goals of both Muslim extremists and Jewish nationalists. Did Mossad have any role to play? asks Gates.

Israeli writer and peace activist Gideon Levy recently wrote, the time has come to send Israel for observation. Only psychiatrists can explain Israel’s behaviour. Its acts have no rational explanation. It suffers from a loss of touch with reality. Temporary or permanent insanity. Paranoia. Schizophrenia. Memory loss. Loss of judgment.

Maybe, not having `any limitation’ is not a good idea, after all. Maybe, there is still time for India to part company with Rafael. To retrieve its sense of judgment.

Published in New Age 18 January 2010

It seems that 23 year old Nigerian student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s underwear was padded with more than just a six inch long packet containing nearly 80 grams of a powdery substance known as PETN (chemical pentaerythritol tetranitrate). But I will turn to `deeper’ layers of padding later. First, what is generally known.

Abdulmutallab reportedly used a syringe to inject liquid into the packet which was sewn close to his groin, to set off the PETN, known to be a very powerful explosive belonging to the same chemical family as nitroglycerin. But popping noises, like firecrackers, alerted other passengers of Northwest flight 253 as the plane, which had taken off from Schipol airport in Amsterdam, was in its final descent toward Detroit.

Jasper Schuringa, a fellow passenger, described what happened, “He was holding the object which was on fire and smoke was coming out of it and I really had to pull it out of his hands because he kind of resisted and it was also kind of stuck in his underwear so I really had to rip the whole object out of his pants.” Schuringa grabbed the syringe which had partially melted, shook it to stop it from smoking, and threw it to the floor.

Passengers and crew members subdued Abdulmutallab. Using blankets and fire extinguishers, they put out the fire on his trouser legs, and a wall of the airplane. Had he been successful, the explosive would have blown a hole in the side of the airplane, causing it to crash.

It was 25 December, Christmas 2009.

The White House termed it an “attempted act of terrorism.” Abdulmutallab was soon discovered to have received training in Yemen “visiting various al Qaeda operatives including a notorious radical cleric.” US politicians, media, and experts quickly jumped into the fray calling for an expansion of the war on terror. President Barack Obama obliged by declaring that the US would strike anywhere to prevent another attack. These calls, as Mark LeVine points out, were unnecccesary since the US is already involved in Yemen, supervising attacks on militants there.

He was also discovered to have been a student of University College London, where he had enrolled in September 2005, to graduate with a degree in mechanical engineering in June 2007. Finger-wagging soon ensued: liberal colleges and universities in England were a `breeding ground’ for jihadists, they `groomed’ Islamic radicals etc. etc.  But no one, of course not, called for a US bomb attack on UK. Or on London. To make the world safer.

On December 29, the US put Abdulmutallab’s underwear on display.

UNDERWEAR AND EXPLOSIVE PACKET

A grim-faced president―leading some analysts to comment, rather admiringly, that Obama was not a man known to “anger easily” —declared that there had been a deep failure of  national intelligence. That the government had enough information to thwart potential disaster but had failed to “connect those dots” (January 5, 2010). Although no new steps to improve the intelligence or security systems were announced, enhanced airport screening and a review of the US watch-list system was ordered. Dozens of names were added to the US’ 550,000 strong list of `suspected’ terrorists, they would be subjected to extra scrutiny before being allowed to enter the US; those on the 4,000 strong no-fly list were barred from boarding aircraft in or headed for the United States. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was instructed to give full-body, pat-down searches to US bound travellers from Yemen, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and 11 other countries. The transfer of Guantanamo prison detainees was suspended (about half of the near-200 currently detained are from Yemen). The US embassy in Yemen was closed down for several days.

According to the unclassified summary of the review into intelligence failures released by the White House, “The U.S. Government had sufficient information prior to the attempted December 25 attack to have potentially disrupted the AQAP plot—i.e., by identifying Mr. Abdulmutallab as a likely operative of AQAP [al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula] and potentially preventing him from boarding flight 253.” After all, as the review says, Abdulmutallab’s father, had met with US embassy officers on November 18, had expressed his concern that his son may have come under the influence of “unidentified extremists,” and planned to travel to Yemen. And what did those august officials do? They marked his file for a full investigation should he re-apply for a visa after his current one to the US expired in June 2010, and passed on this information to officials in Washington. Meanwhile the latter added his name to 550,000 suspected terrorist list, but not to the no-fly one, which meant no alarms were raised when he bought his one-way ticket to US using cash, checking in without any baggage.

Since the US ruling establishment consistently portrays itself as a hapless victim of irrational violence unleashed upon it by dark, evil and religious forces out there, public discussion in the US soon enough latched on to shrill cries of more security, to what LeVine has termed the “$30 billion underpants.” To a prevention strategy which means new technologies, added law enforcement and security personnel on and off planes, lost revenues for airline companies, more expensive plane tickets. And, of course, inevitably, to an expansion of the `war on terror.’

It turned to talk of X-ray backscatters which reveal chalk etching images, to Millimeter wave screening which reveal fuzzy photo negative images. Amid all the security paranoia and fear-mongering, one did come across traces of humor. A commentator on a blog wrote, “I figure I’ll just show up at the airport naked carrying a vial of Propofol so that I can knock myself out before the colonoscopy.” A CNN political strategist reportedly said on the radio that he’d be willing to allow the TSA to measure his penis before the flight to dispense with full body scans. This might work for white penises, not for `colored’ ones. Iris scannings of transit passengers deemed to be `Aliens’ by the US government are taken and re-taken at US airports. Has been so, post 9/11.

Other paddings have since emerged, hinting at something deeper. At dots that are `not’ meant to be connected.

It seems that Abdulmuttalab boarded the flight to Detroit without a passport. According to Kurt Haskell, a fellow passenger, a lawyer who worked for the US federal government for 6 years, a “wealthy-looking Indian man” accompanied Abdulmuttalab to the counter before boarding, saying that Abdulmuttalab needed to board the plane, that he didn’t have a passport, and was  from Sudan. Haskell remembers the incident because the two of them had looked “strange together,” and remembers Abdulmuttalab as there were very few black men on the flight. Dutch counter-terrorism authorities have dismissed the claim: “He had a passport and a valid visa for the United States and KLM had clearance on the passenger list to carry him to the US.” It remains to be seen whether FBI refutes the claim. And, as Alexia Parks  writes in The Huffington Post (January 6, 2010), if the plane had exploded over Detroit as planned, we would never have learned what Haskell had to say.  In response to Park’s piece, this is what a contributor wrote: any passenger coming in on a KLM flight from Nigeria at Schipol usually has to go through US Passport Control, a place where “They interview each passenger individually, and you HAVE to present a passport at the very beginning of the interview. They scan your passport and ask you a bunch of questions, then you go through a metal detector and have any carry-on items scanned.”

I remember having gone all the way to Bangkok four years ago, to get a Mexican visa, of getting my visa but not being allowed to board the flight at Bangkok airport because I didn’t have a Dutch visa, an absolute necessity for Bangladeshis. So what if I was only a transit passenger?

Gordon Duff, senior editor of Veterans Today (an American Military Veterans and Foreign Affairs journal), connects `other’ dots, more sinister ones : (1) The senior Muttalab, back in Nigeria, “ran the national arms industry (DICON) in partnership with Israel, in particular, the Mossad.” Muttalab, though a Muslim, was a close associate of Israel, which runs “everything in Nigeria, from arms production to counter-terrorism.” (2) The two al-Qaeda leaders released by Bush from Guantanamo, although two of the highest ranking known terrorists there, had been “released without a trial.” (3) According to the Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh, security forces had arrested a group of alleged Islamist militants linked to Israeli intelligence (BBC news report, 7 October 2008). (4) CBS News had learnt as early as August 2009 that the CIA had picked up information on a person dubbed “The Nigerian,” suspected of meeting with “terrorist elements” in Yemen. And (5) Airport security in Amsterdam is contracted to an Israeli controlled company which not only has the most sophisticated technologies, but is the one to have developed the concept of security profiling. There is no reason to think that al-Qaeda would be operating in Yemen without American or Saudi help, or, possibly, without direct material assistance from Israel, writes Duff, adding, the game seems to be falling apart.

If larger numbers of people are able to see the game for what it is, it can only mean that we are inching closer to a showdown.

Published in New Age 11 January, 2010

As more US troops surge into Afghanistan, as Predator drone attacks on Pakistan’s north-western villages increase, as news of operations by killing squads of US Special Forces on the Afghanistan side of the border intensifies, as yet another `front,’ a fifth one, opens up in the US-led war on terror, this time in Yemen—under the presidency of a Nobel Peace laureate—I return yet again to the day which supposedly re-wrote US history, which schematised history anew, into two distinct periods: Life Before, and Life After 9/11. How can I not? Unabated vengeance. More wars. To kill, loot and plunder….

That the prayers of those dubbed as representing the forces of `evil’ i.e., the “al Qaeda terrorists”—practitioners of a “fringe form of Islamic extremism” whose “directive commands them to kill Christians and Jews” (George Bush, September 21, 2001 )—were fulfilled on 9/11, seems to be obvious.

But the prayers of forces representing `good,’ that these too were met on 9/11, is not thought to be similarly obvious. Or, even if it is, it’s not similarly acknowledged. Not by western politicians. Nor by military leaders, defence analysts, security experts, writers, journalists—all those who speak in the name of the west. Who cling to the idea that it was a “surprise attack.” That it was carried out by “a collection of loosely affiliated terrorist organizations known as al Qaeda” who hate “our freedoms.” That it was an “act of war,” not only against the US, but against “civilization.” And that—since these terrorists number thousands and are spread in  “more than 60 countries”—America must declare war against “terror,” one which must be global, the likes of which have never ever been seen before. One that “begins with al Qaeda, but.. will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.”

And thus we see newer fronts open up as the niceties of awarding Barack Obama the Nobel peace prize are endlessly talked about in polite circles, ooh, what a sweet gentle hint, ooh these Norwegians are so subtle…

Wars, however, are not subtle. As for the forces of `good,’ unlike those deemed evil, these do not  belong to the fringes. Neither of the American state, nor of western civilisation. They occupy its centre. Which is possibly why `their’ having prospered due to 9/11, is a heretical idea.

But only in the west. Outside its bounds, in the rest of the world, people talk about it. Freely.

Accounting. Before and after

In a speech to Pentagon employees on September 10, 2001, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld disclosed that over $2,000,000,000,000 (yes, twelve zeroes) in Pentagon funds could not be accounted for. “According to some estimates,” he said, “we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions.”

His statement didn’t make world headlines the next day. The 9-11 attacks had reduced its colossal significance to dust. As it had, the Twin Towers. But news of Pentagon’s “financial disarray” has never been headlined in western mainstream media. Strange, considering its scale, its enormity. It’d have made many third world governments—often enough unhappy recipients of lectures on good governance, elimination of corruption, accountability—ecstatically happy. May be, that’s why. It’d have undermined the west’s moral authority and of course, you can’t allow the plebs to laugh at the emperor’s nakedness.

Almost $7 trillion has been adjusted in the Department of Defense’s (DOD) financial ledgers, said a report released by the inspector general of Pentagon in 2000, “to make them add up.” Of this amount, no “receipts” were available for $2.3 trillion (presumably the sum Rumsfeld mentioned) (Associated Press, 03.03.2000). An investigative report published a week before 9/11 cites an 8 page summary of the DOD’s deputy inspector general. To compile the required financial statements, it says, $4.4 trillion had to be “cooked”; of this amount $1.1 trillion couldn’t be supported by reliable information. Another $1 trillion, at the end of Bill Clinton’s last full year in office, “was simply gone and no one can be sure of when, where or to whom the money went” (Insight, 03.09.2001 Rumsfeld_Inherits_Financial_Mess[1].pdf ).

Rumsfeld had promised reforms which would help transfer billions of dollars from the “bloated” bureaucracy to the battlefield. But 9/11 happened the next day. Spurred by anthrax fears, Congress soon approved a $40 billion (this has nine zeroes) emergency measure; a year later, the national defense budget totalled $400 billion, biggest since the cold war. It didn’t include Iraq’s occupation costs, covered by a $35 billion supplemental bill. Interestingly enough, the budget was accompanied by a bill, Defence Transformation for the 21st Century, which significantly lessened congressional oversight on military spending (Guardian, 22 May 2003).

So, where did all those trillions go? In this age of euphemism, writes Kelly Patricia O’Meara, the government has its own words for “missing” money. Unsupported entries. Material-control weakness. Adjusted records. Unmatched disbursements. Abnormal balances. Unreconciled differences. Rumsfeld had his own explanation, too. It was because of “gridlock” and not “greed.” “We cannot share information from floor to floor in this building because it’s stored on dozens of technological systems that are inaccessible or incompatible.” DOD, it seems, has hundreds of computer systems which run varied accounts—health care, payroll, inventory,  ones that are not integrated.

Scoffing at what she terms the `computers don’t talk to each other’ explanation, Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, one of the few truly people’s representative in the US legislature says, when they tell us the money was lost, what it really means is that the money went some place, but they don’t want to tell us where it went.

Business analyst Joshua Daniels adds up the figures and points his fingers elsewhere. The entire US defense budgets from 1996 to 2001, says Daniels, add up to $1.6 trillion. To reach the $2.3 trillion figure, one would have to go further behind, to 1991. Now, its not possible, he says, that the Pentagon spent hundreds of billions and didn’t get a single receipt. Or, that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) failed to notice that the entire defense budget went missing for ten years. After all, soldiers and sailors were paid, tanks and missiles were bought etc. “The missing money wasn’t on the books to begin with. It couldn’t have been; it’s more money than we gave them.” Where could it have come from then? Only the Federal Reserve, says Daniels, has such colossal sums at its disposal, and we should be asking: who hired the Pentagon to do whatever they hired it to do? What are they paying for? Who is its target?

One may not know where the missing trillions went, but that the US military-industrial complex rewards those responsible for the (mis)deed is pretty clear. Comptroller Dov Zakheim (a signatory also to the Project for a New American Century) left Pentagon in March 2004 and joined Booz Allen Hamilton —the “most prestigious management firm in the world”(Time), which works on defense and homeland security matters—and is now vice-president there. Two former DOD officials, William J Lynn III (chief financial officer, 1997-2001) and Robert Hale (assistant secretary of the Air Force, Financial Management and Comptroller, 1994-2001) were brought back to the Pentagon by Obama, while president-elect, in January 2009, to the posts of deputy secretary of defense, and undersecretary of defense (comptroller), respectively. Hale had been working as chief lobbyist for Raytheon, a major American defense contractor.

Coincidentally, when the Pentagon was hit on 9/11, the “plane” hit an office of the Army where an investigation of the of the $2.3 trillion missing was taking place. The office lost 34 of its 45 employees, most of whom were civilian accountants, bookkeepers and budget analysts—officials who were reportedly working on the investigation. I will not go into the details of why believing the government’s account of what happened at the Pentagon on 9/11 is intellectually demeaning, but quickly quote Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski who writes, “the secretary of defense… in an unfortunate slip of the tongue referred to the aircraft that slammed into the Pentagon as a missile…”

After Christ. Atoning for the sins of others

To put the missing trillions of taxpayers money into perspective, O’Meara writes, it would have bought

(a)   nearly 14 million accounting degrees from any four year state college, estimating the cost at $20,000 per year. Or,

(b)   about $8 million single family houses costing $140,000 per home.

A far lesser sum, only US$22.6 billion per year, would provide access for all to improved water and sanitation services.

Another way of putting Pentagon’s missing trillions into perspective, one that I read somewhere on the internet, was: if Christ had spent a million dollars a day for two thousand years, by now he’d only have spent three-quarters of one trillion dollars.

He, of course, would have spent it differently.

“Curiouser and curiouser!” Cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English).

– Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland (1865)

It’s old news. So, why bother writing about it? Because recent research has come up with interesting explanations about why 9/11 `suicide’ hijackers could still be alive, even after all else in the World Trade Centre—concrete, glass and gypsum—had been pulverised into fine dust. The question of live suicide hijackers is one that the US government has refused to address. According to new research findings, all crucial government evidence which aims at proving that Islamic terrorist hijackers were responsible for 9/11 either lacks authentication, or, when placed alongside other evidence, are very clearly fabrications or forgeries.

The FBI’s list of nineteen 9/11 hijackers—complete with photos—a list which CNN had within  24 hours of the attack, was contested soon enough. By none other than the `suicided’ hijackers themselves. The very least they could have done was die in the plane crash (before burning in hell till eternity). But no. Some of them had the audacity to turn up. To claim that they were not hijackers. That they lived elsewhere. That they had not been on any of those domestic flights, had neither armed themselves with box-cutters, nor flown hijacked aeroplanes headlong into tall buildings. One of them even had the nerve to say that he had never been to the United States.

Did news reports such as these—’Suicide hijacker’ is an airline pilot alive and well in Jeddah’ (The Independent, 17 September 2001), `Hijack suspects alive and well’ (BBC World, 23 September 2001), `Revealed: the men with stolen identities’ (The Telegraph, 23 September 2001)—cause the FBI to alter its list? No. Its director Robert Mueller however, did admit that  the FBI case against these 19 named hijackers would never stand up in a court of law

The 9/11 Commission Report insists that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by “19 young Arabs acting at the behest of Islamist extremists headquartered in distant Afghanistan”

armed with small knives, box cutters, and cans of Mace or pepper spray. So does the US government, and all other western governments. The 19 young Arabs, we have been repeatedly told, were “al-Qaeda terrorists” who had hijacked four commercial passenger jet  airliners, had intentionally crashed two into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre in New York City, the third into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and the fourth into a field near Shanksville in rural Pennsylvania. None of the passengers, or crew members, or hijackers, survived the disaster.

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it,” said Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister for propaganda. For propaganda to be successful, he added, it must be confined to a few points, which must be repeated over and over again. As one reads comments such as these on the internet: `facts about the known hijackers and the video taped confession of Osama Bin Laden makes it clear beyond reasonable doubt that Al Qaeda planned and committed the crime.’ `Whether we know their correct names or not, all of those who were on the planes doing the actual hijacking are dead.’ `There is a strain of Islam that is bent on mass murder and they carried it out on 9/11...’one can easily see how America’s `war on terror’ propaganda campaign has been scripted on Goebbels’ lessons: al-Qaeda. Osama bin Laden. Arabs. Islam. Extremists. Terrorists. Repeated ad nauseum. So what if Osama is, in all likelihood, dead? Has been so, probably for the last nearly-eight years. So what if those accused of hijacking and crashing planes, of causing untold misery, suffering and death to many thousands, were probably not on the planes? Have these mind-boggling discrepancies, of dead people not being dead, forced the US government to agree to a new investigation of what actually happened on 9/11, an investigation which is independent, impartial and thorough? No. Neither Bush, nor Obama, whose rationale for extending the war beyond the borders of Afghanistan is to hunt down al-Qaeda, its extremist allies, and its leadership, namely, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri (March 27, 2009) .

The advantage of having al-Qaeda as the enemy, says independent researcher Jay Kolar, who has conducted research on the 9/11 hijackers, is that it lacks a `specific national identity.’  This enables the US military to extend its wars beyond national boundaries, to hunt its supra-national enemy in `multiple countries’ (`What we now know about the alleged 9-11 hijackers,’ in The Hidden History of 9-11-2001). Afghanistan. Iraq. Now Pakistan. Infinite wars. Endless profit for the US war machine. Never-ending cycles of death and destruction.

SEVEN OF THE NINETEEN 9/11 `SUICIDE’ HIJACKERS.THOUGH LATER FOUND TO BE ALIVE, THEY ARE STILL ON THE FBI LIST OF [DEAD] 9/11 HIJACKERS

Abdulaziz Alomari

Ahmed Alnami

Khalid Almihdhar

Mohamed Ata

Saeed Alghamdi

Wail Alshehri

Waleed Alshehri

Abdulrahman al-Omari, a Saudi Airlines pilot, who was “very much alive and living in Jeddah” was astonished to find himself accused not only of hijacking, but also, of being dead. Named by the US Department of Justice as a suicide hijacker of American Airlines flight 11, the first airliner to smash into the World Trade Centre, Al-Omari was reportedly “furious” and visited the US consulate in Jeddah demanding an explanation.

This made the FBI delete his name, to replace it with another name: Abdul Aziz al-Omari. But inconsiderately, Omari no 2 turned up too. Alive, and “furious.”  An engineer with Saudi Telecoms, he said he had been at his desk at the Saudi Telecommunications authority in Riyadh when the attacks took place. “The name [listed by the FBI] is my name and the birth date is the same as mine, but I am not the one who bombed the World Trade Center in New York” (Asharq Al-Awsat). Omari no 2 said his passport had been stolen while he was an electrical engineering student at Denver university in 1995, a theft which he had reported to the police. “I couldn’t believe it when the FBI put me on their list. They gave my name and my date of birth, but I am not a suicide bomber. I am here. I am alive. I have no idea how to fly a plane. I had nothing to do with this.”

Another hijacker from the FBI list, Captain Saeed Hussain Al-Ghamdi, turned up alive and `worried’ on September 18 after seeing his picture on CNN (Arab News). A Saudi citizen living in Tunisia for the last nine months, al-Ghamdi was a co-captain on Tunis Air. He had studied in Florida from 1998 to 1999 and suspected that his picture had been taken from the file of the aviation school in Florida.

Other `discrepancies’ turned up—Adnan Bukhari, Amer Kamfar. Also, Ameer Bukhari, who it turned out, had died a year earlier (2000). FBI then replaced these hijackers with new names, interestingly enough, with more `Arab’ names, ones which had not been on the 9/11 airline flight manifests confiscated by the FBI after the 9/11 attacks (nor on the list of deceased passengers released later by the government):

Adnan Bukhari was replaced by Waleed al-Shehri

Ameer Bukhari was replaced by Wail al-Shehri

Amer Kamfar was replaced by Satam al-Suqami

But even the newly-replaced dead, all except Satam al-Suqami, kept rising. Waleed Al-Shehri, a Saudi national. In Casablanca. Ahmed al-Nami. In Riyadh. An administrative supervisor with Saudi Arabian Airlines, al-Nami said he had been “shocked” to see his name mentioned by the American Justice Department. “I had never even heard of Pennsylvania where the plane I was supposed to have hijacked.” Khalid Almihdhar was reported to be alive as well.

Eleven of the FBI-named finalists could not have been on those planes, says Kolar. Ten were still alive, another’s identity had been improvised by a double. Could it be that none of the alleged hijackers were on these planes? Kolar’s close scrutiny of government evidence leads him to conclude that most of the hijackers had doubles, not only that, pairs of them were doubled, their car rentals and itineraries were doubled. As was the 9/11 attack itself through the military war-game exercise (Vigilant Warrior, Vigilant Guardian), scheduled for, and held on September 9. Part of the exercise was the simulation of live-fly hijacking and this confused military officers. This pattern of doubling, writes Kolar, “together with evidence of patsies, cut-outs, national security overrides, protected hijacker activities, and of the hands of controller-moles pulling the strings from inside the government, all suggest the entire scenario was a covert US intelligence operation.” One that was “disguised as an outside enemy attack.”

Outside enemy attack? I guess, it’s true. The US is its own enemy.

Who else…, but Osama bin Laden?

He’s alive. Not only in the western imagination which needs an unlimited supply of bogeymen as its alter. To create and re-create myths of its innocence which serve to justify the waves of death and destruction that it wreaks on the `rest.’ In earlier times, to civilise savages and barbarians. And later, in the last couple of decades, to spread progress and democracy. As the Berlin wall tumbled down, the earlier bogeyman — the communist — was soon enough replaced by `blood-thirsty’ Islam, and its `jihadis’. The `rest’ of the world knows this.

But surely not only in the western imagination, surely he’s alive in a real-time sense too? After all, we see videos cropping up now and then showing us the bogeyman threatening vengeance on the west for killing `our people.’ The battle will continue until victory is acheived. Till then, believers will die for the cause.

Actually, ahem there is reason to believe that he’s ahem dead. Yes. For the last nearly-eight years.

Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive?

At least that’s what David Ray Griffin, professor of theology, political analyst and foremost in the 9/11 truth movement, thinks. In his Osama bin Laden; Dead or Alive, a little book that was published recently, he puts forth two types of evidence, objective evidence, and that based on testimonies.

Five objective facts are laid out to convince readers. First, the CIA had regularly intercepted messages between bin Laden and his people, but this stopped on December 13, 2001. No messages, no CIA interception. Second, a Pakistani daily published a report on December 26, 2001 which said, “A prominent official in the Afghan Taleban movement…stated…that he had himself attended the funeral of bin Laden and saw his face prior to burial.” Third, he suffered from kidney disease. In July 2001, he had been treated in the American Hospital in Dubai, and had later ordered two dialysis machines. According to a CBS news report, the night before 9/11, he was receiving kidney dialysis treatment in a hospital in Pakistan. Dr Griffin writes, on the basis of a video of bin Laden made in either late November or early December of 2001, Dr  Sanjay Gupta thinks that he was probably in the last stages of kidney failure.

The details of what Dr Gupta (CNN’s medical correspondent and a brain surgeon) said can be  found on the CNN website’s Health section. Pictures of bin Laden show a “sort of a frosting over of his features — his sort of grayness of beard, his paleness of skin, very gaunt sort of features.” Symptoms that are associated with chronic kidney failure, renal failure. Through the entire length of the video, says Dr Gupta, bin Laden did not move his arms. Not once his left arm; his right side, only a little. These speak of a stroke. If he was not receiving proper medical treatment, and this means not being separated from his dialysis machine (which requires electricity, clean water, a sterile environment), a kidney specialist, and a technician, “it’s unlikely that you’d survive beyond several days or a week at the most.”

According to a July 2002 CNN report, bin Laden’s bodyguards had been captured in February that year. If the bodyguards were captured “away from bin Laden,” argues Dr Griffin, it was very likely that the man himself was dead. The fifth reason is the $25 million reward announced by the US government since 2001, for any information that will lead to the capture or killing of bin Laden. It has produced no results “even though Pakistan has many desperately poor people.” As I read this I cannot help thinking, Enron, American economy in tatters, surely not because of poor people…? Anyway, to get back to the bin Laden story, the testimonial evidence which Dr Griffin advances is from people who are in a “position to know,” people like president Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, president Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, Iran-Contra figure Col Oliver North. It includes sources within Israeli intelligence who say that any new messages from bin Laden are “probably fabrications.” Whereas sources within Pakistani intelligence “confirm the death of…Osama bin Laden” and go on to add, “the reasons behind Washington’s hiding news on the death of Osama bin Laden to the desire of hawks of the American administration to use the issue of al-Qaida and international terrorism to invade Iraq.”

The `Fatty’ bin Laden Tape, and others

Some of the videos are obvious fakes. One of these is known as the Confession tape, in which bin Laden contradicts what he had said earlier, on four separate occassions, that he was not responsible for 9/11. In this, reportedly found by US troops in a house in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, while talking to a visiting sheikh bin Laden says that he had not only known about the 9/11 attacks but had personally overseen every detail.

1) Fatty bin Laden/Jalalabad video (being dated November 9 and released December 13).

2) Gaunt, tired and thin bin Laden, tape made between November 16 (on which occurred an event mentioned on the tape) and December 27 (the date on which the tape was released).

Osama has a much taller and narrower nose.

Osama has a less rounded brow ridge.

Osama is less well nourished.

Osama has lower and less full cheeks.

Osama’s forehead slopes back more.

Osama’s face is wider at the level of his eyes.

Dr Griffin lists even more differences, a black beard, not a grey one. A darker skin, and not bin Laden’s pale self. His slim, pianist fingers had turned short, stubby. More like those of a boxer. Although left-handed, he is seen writing a note with his right hand. Most telling however, are these words, “‘Due to my experience in this field, I was thinking that the explosion from the gas in the plane would melt the iron structure of the building and collapse the area where the plane hit and all the floors above it only. That is all we had hoped for.” But the real bin Laden, who has a civil engineering degree, would have known that a building fire cannot melt steel.

Did the American ruling class bother with such trivial details? But of course, not. Quoting US officials Washington Post said, the video “offers the most convincing evidence of a connection between Bin Laden and the September 11 attacks.” Whereas president Bush ecstatically crowed, “For those who see this tape, they realise that not only is he guilty of incredible murder, but he has no conscience and no soul.”

Another video, known as the “October Surprise” video appeared in end-October 2004, timed to help George Bush win the presidential election. This bin Laden, had turned secular. Where bin Laden’s own messages had been full of references to Allah and the Prophet Mohammad, the only Mohammad mentioned here was the 9/11 `terrorist’ Mohammad Atta.

While some critics of America’s imperial wars think that Dr Griffin’s question is irrelevant, that the “war policy makers in the US government can easily deal with a bin Laden death,” and can “find ways to justify their never ending war on terror” (Maher Osseiran), it is nonetheless true that bin Laden was called upon by president Barack Obama in his March 27 address, which announced the extension of the Afghanistan war beyond its borders:

“[A]l Qaeda and its allies – the terrorists who planned and supported the 9/11 attacks – are in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Multiple intelligence estimates have warned that al Qaeda is actively planning attacks on the U.S. homeland from its safe-haven in Pakistan. . . . [A]l Qaeda and its extremist allies have moved across the border to the remote areas of the Pakistani frontier. This almost certainly includes al Qaeda’s leadership: Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri.”

America, it seems, needs bin Laden more than he needs them. After all, the evidence presented seems to indicate he’s dead. Has been, for quite some time.

Published in New Age, December 21, 2009

As a New Age columnist, I was thinking of writing about the controversy surrounding the Tibet exhibition (Into Exile. Tibet 1949 – 2009, November 1-7) for my next column. My dear Maobadi friend, Tarek Chowdhury’s piece, which he was kind enough to forward me, had meanwhile been published in Samakal (`Tibboter odekha chobigulo onek kotha boley,’ November 13). Since some of our political concerns and perspectives are shared, since I benefited from his piece as I did from that of other writers who had trodden the path before me, who have extensively researched and written on China, Tibet and US imperialism, who have carefully built up their arguments and critiques based on a close scrutiny of facts and figures and have thereby helped deepen our understanding of imperialism, I drew on them. Unflinchingly. Unreservedly. Of course, I was careful to credit ideas as I went along (but not all. For instance, although I learned a lot from reading pieces by authors such as Michel Chossudovsky, F. William Engdahl and others, they were not named since I had not directly cited them. For an ex-academic like me, the space constraints of column-writing have been a learning experience).

In `Smoking Gun Abused for Smokescreen‘ (December 13) Tarek assumes that what I wrote in my column (‘China-US politics over exhibiting Tibet. In Dhaka,’ November 23) was a `response’ to his Samakal op-ed. But if I had felt obliged to pen a response, surely ‘I would have written it up as that, and sent it off to Samakal?

I wrote as a columnist, not as Drik’s spokesperson. I have never done thus, because I do not see myself in that role. Neither, I think, do my readers (nor Shahidul Alam, or anyone else at Drik for that matter, but that’s beside the point). Secondly, I do not think my task is to pass judgment (`we don’t see Rahnuma draw any judgement about the SFT—the real ‘area of contention’ between us’). Not on SFT (Students for a Free Tibet), nor on anything else. That work, I think, is best left to judges. As a writer, I work towards contributing in, and in opening up further, spaces of critical thinking. Hence, I map out fields of debate, I position myself within the debate, often bringing into the discussion issues which have escaped the attention of other writers (in this case, `neat fit,’ Guantanamo, which I will go into later). I constantly seek to clarify why I think and believe what I do, as I do. Readers are intelligent people; in my view, they are both capable of, and also free to, reach their own conclusions which may, or may not, be in agreement with mine. To try and persuade, yes. To argue, yes. To pass judgment, no.

And hence, what I wrote in my column was obviously framed by my concerns (which would not have been the case if I was writing a `response’). After briefly describing what had happened (a visit by Chinese embassy officials, followed by Bangladesh intelligence, eventually a lock-up of Drik’s premises by the police), I wrote about what Tarek had written in his Samakal piece: the SFT, its funding sources, his suspicion about the timing of the exhibition, CIA funding of the Tibet movement through NED (National Endowment for Democracy). I then drew on the work of others who have researched on the SFT/NED/CIA nexus to elaborate on Tarek’s argument, and to offer my readers additional evidence: NED’s Reagan-ite origins, the roles of the (present) Dalai Lama’s brothers in the Tibet resistance movement during the 1950s in which the CIA had been active, had trained guerrilla units etc. etc.

After this, I broached the issue of cultural and political activism, seeking Shahidul’s response: an `opportunity to see rare photos,’ `we have faced pressure before,’ even `progressive institutions’ have wanted us to practise `self-censorship’; this I juxtaposed with Barker’s argument, namely, that progressive activists, both Tibetan and foreign, should first and foremost cast a critical eye over the `antidemocratic’ funders of Tibetan groups, or else, a progressive solution to the Tibetan problem, a `more thoroughgoing democratisation of [Tibetan] social life’ will not be generated. But Shahidul had said that Drik was not above criticism, that it was welcomed, and I expected readers to remember that. For me, the obvious implication of what he’d said was, whether Drik’s decision to co-host the exhibition was right or wrong should be a matter of public debate. It would give Drik the opportunity of critically appraising itself.

As for what I had written, it’s implication was much sharper. If formulated as a question it would stand thus: should Drik, as a progressive institution, have agreed to partner an exhibition with the Bangladeshi chapter of SFT, since the latter (the parent organisation) receives funding from NED, which now does what was covertly done by the CIA 25 years ago, even though the exhibition gives members of the public an opportunity to see a collection of rare photographs? This clearly was a matter for public debate (not a matter of my passing a `judgment’). I was certain that intelligent people/readers would clearly see what I was driving at.

I then returned to Barker’s argument. I wanted to tease it out further, not to minimise the importance of what he had said, but because I think (as probably Barker and many others do too) that there is no `neat fit’ between the different movements for freedom that different activists may, and do, simultaneously support. In other words, there is no `single’ list of freedom movements that will satisfy everyone critical of US imperialism. To illustrate my point, I drew on Mairead Corrigan Maguire, the Irish Nobel Peace laureate, who is a strong defender of both the Palestinian, and the Tibetan, cause. I pointed to the recently-launched `Thank You Tibet!’ campaign to which Mairead belongs, which extends support to His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the people of Tibet, claiming that they are a “model for all of us.”

In `Smoking Gun,’ Tarek points out that I had failed to mention Maguire’s connection to ICT (she’s a member of the International Campaign for Tibet’s International Counsel of Advisors). Also, that she’s an advisor to the Points of Peace Foundation (a media and human rights foundation located in Norway with “a mandate to support Nobel Peace Prize Laureates in urgent need of media, dialogue and communication assistance in their home countries and internationally”), and the founder of Voice of Tibet radio station (a PPF project aided by NED; the radio station, from what I gather, was founded by three Norwegian NGOs and not Maguire, as Tarek states, but it’s a slight error which is not crucial to our discussion). However, these additional  facts provided by Tarek, only serves to substantiate my point that there is `no neat fit.’ Does Maguire’s support for the Dalai Lama, her ICT membership, and being a PPF advisor weaken her credibility as a progressive activist? Does it imply that she is, let’s say, not genuinely concerned with promoting freedom and democracy in Tibet, or elsewhere, like Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq? Even though Maguire has strongly criticised Israel, “an allegedly democratic country with a sham justice system,”  and the Bush administration for “increasing nuclearism, ongoing wars, and the ignoring of international treaties and laws“ in articles published in CounterPunch, USA’s best known left newsletter (which has also published articles critical of “anti-Chinese frenzy in the West, pursued in the guise of pro-Tibetan… human rights activism,” John V. Whitbeck)? (CounterPunch has published articles critical of CIA, US imperialism, too countless to mention).

Maguire’s support for the Dalai Lama, interestingly enough, does not appear to have prevented US immigration officials from detaining and harassing her at Houston airport (May 2009). `They questioned me about my nonviolent protests in USA against the Afghanistan invasion and Iraqi war.’ She added, ‘They insisted I must tick the box in the Immigration form admitting to criminal activities.’ Detained for two hours, grilled, fingerprinted, photographed, then grilled again, Maguire was released only after the Nobel Women’s Initiative, an organisation she helped found, raised a hue and cry.

There are `strings attached’ to Maguire’s `compassion for Tibet,’ says Tarek. I am not clear what he means by this phrase, and much less so, by this sentence which follows soon after, `True beauty of any actor can only be judged when the audience gets the chance to take a glance at the greenroom’ — except that it seems to imply that something sinister lies behind Maguire’s activism. If Tarek means that support for the Tibetan cause is per se suspect, then what is one to make of Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s recent decision to pull out of a peace conference meeting linked to the 2010 Football World Cup because the South African government had denied Dalai Lama a visa? (Reportedly, as a result of Chinese pressure). Further, what is one to make of Archbishop Tutu’s statement on behalf of Nobel Peace Prize Laureates, human rights leaders and concerned individuals which tells the Dalai Lama, “we stand with you. You define non-violence and compassion and goodness.” How does one view this? As naivete on the Archbishop’s part, because he does not seem to be aware of the Dalai Lama administration’s acknowledgement (1998) that it had annually received $1.7 million in the 1960’s from the CIA, spent partly on paying for guerrilla operations against the Chinese, a fact which critics say, puts His Holiness’ commitment to non-violence, as being a public face? Or, should we be looking for a `strings attached’ answer? Or do we interpret it to mean that Archbishop Tutu’s opposition to apartheid and/or his subsequent defence of human rights and  commitment to campaigning for the oppressed is not genuine, but a mere rhetorical device? Or, do we re-think some of the issues, while reminding ourselves in the process that premier Chou-en-Lai had lent his support to the Pakistani military dictatorship in 1971 when it had unleashed a genocidal campaign against the people of east Pakistan because it was in communist China’s national interest?

Tarek writes, “Mistakenly she has equated Parenti’s strong criticism of China of ‘dazzling 8 percent economic growth rate’ (does this apply to pre-1978 period or when HH fled to India?) with the China which ‘stood up’ in October 1949 under the leadership of Mao and misled her readers grossly by misrepresenting Parenti’s views.”

What I wrote was: “One area of contention [with Tarek] is an old one, centering on whether Tibet is better or worse off, under Chinese communism. As Michael Parenti, severely critical of the Hollywood `Shangri-La’ myth puts it, old Tibet, in reality, was not a Paradise Lost. But if Tibet’s future is to be positioned somewhere within China’s emerging free market paradise—with its deepening gulf between rich and poor, the risk of losing jobs, being beaten and imprisoned if workers try to form unions in corporate dominated “business zones,” the pollution resulting from billions of tons of industrial emissions and untreated human waste dumped into its rivers and lakes—the old Tibet, he says, may start looking better than it actually was.”

Now, if I were to list out the different periods and their characteristics that are packed together in this passage, this is how it would look:

1. Old Tibet/pre-Communism, was not Shangri-la/paradise lost

2  New Tibet=part of Communist China:

(a) earlier/pre free-market paradise

(b) present/emerging free-market paradise: deepening gulf between rich and poor, risk of losing jobs in corporate-owned zones, pollution, untreated human waste

As should be obvious to intelligent people/readers who know that chairman Mao was not an advocate of free market enterprise — even to in-attentive readers because of  the word `emerging’ — the sentence incorporates the assumption that the deepening gulf between rich and poor, risk of losing jobs in corporate-owned zones, pollution, untreated human waste etc. etc. — was unbeknownst in the New Tibet which precedes the present pre free-market paradise, in other words, it was unknown in Mao’s China.

Tarek further writes, “To make her public response to my views and questions…” which seems to imply that my `private’ response to his `Tibboter odekha chobigulo..’ (Samakal had published its own slashed-down version) had been very different. But this is how I had responded privately:

2009/11/9 Rahnuma Ahmed (translated to English)

Dear Tarek

Many thanks for writing this article, and for selecting me to be the first reader. My chief comments are:

(a) the issue of China-Tibet-US politics, and its analysis from a geo-strategic perspective, is undoubtedly interesting, and important. But when this perspective is utilised to analyse the politics of culture, it is necessary to be extra-cautious, since our conceptual tools have been developed to analyse geo-strategic politics, on the assumption that it is primary.

(b) I have felt that you view politics and political struggles conspiratorially, this diminishes the significance of your piece, for instance, you seem to view people as conspirators. To push my point further, I have felt that you did not subject the Chinese government/state to the same critical eye as you did the US and Tibet/Dalai Lama.

(c) while it is true that the US and China are opposed forces, that their political systems and ideologies are different etc., I do find their alliance in some areas — and here I am not  talking of trade relations — very interesting. For instance, the recent Uighur/Guantanamo incident. And it is incidents such as these which remind me that it is no longer possible to view China from a 1960s perspective, as a beacon of light amidst darkness. If one sticks to the dichotomy that China is `good’ and the US is `evil’ — one has to turn a blind eye to too many things, I believe this will hinder our attempts to understand the state as a historical phenomenon.

We will/must continue to argue and debate. lal salam/r

And toward the end of my column, I spoke of the Uighur/Guantanamo incident, of how Chinese interrogators had gone to Guantanamo and grilled Uighurs (a Muslim minority from the autonomous region Xinjiang, in western China), how they had been actively assisted by US military personnel to soften them up. But in hindsight, it is my second point, about a conspiratorial view of politics, that now seems almost-prophetic. Even though, I must admit, it doesn’t answer why Tarek has chosen to ignore the long response which I posted on Shahidul’s blog (December 4) in response to  questions and comments on my column `Exhibiting Tibet.’ I had forwarded him the link, he himself had posted two comments after mine. Probably, an acknowledgement would have made writing `Smoking Gun,’ with all its allegations and accusations, difficult.

When Tarek writes, “Personally, I won’t be surprised to see the SFTBD’s Bangladeshi national director (it has quite a corporate style organisational structure), the young devoted lady who ‘breathes her time equally between Dharamshala … and Bangladesh’ rewarded soon by some heavyweight promoter for her superb service” (italics mine), his gaze is undoubtedly male. It is directed at male readers, written to incite their curiosity on gendered lines.

May be if Tarek had been less melodramatic, less into `actors,’ `greenrooms,’ `make-up,’ `choreography,’ `media event,’ `orchestrated propaganda,’ `dress rehearsals,’ `TV shows,’ `anchors,’ he would have digressed less. May be if he had steered clear of metaphors that have become associated with an imperial mentalite — Condoleeza Rice’s declaration, “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud” —  he would not have barked up the wrong tree. Maybe, if he had been less `judgment’-al, he could have meaningfully contributed to the debate.

But who knows?

Published in New Age, December 20, 2009

Piloting a drone requires much less talent or experience than piloting a real plane. It is more like doing well in ‘a video game’

If Smedley Butler was living, he’d probably have agreed with Peter Ustinov the playwright, who said recently, ‘Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.’

And what about those who decide? Those who push the bigger joystick? In Shakespeare’s plays, says Stephen Greenblatt, the ruler serves as a model and a test case. ‘If his actions go unpunished, then, to paraphrase Dostoevsky, everything is permitted.’

Has everything already become permitted? For, as Macbeth had said, ‘I am in blood; stepp’d insofar that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as to go o’er.’

First published in New Age on 7th December 2009

Writer and translator Tarek Omar Chowdhury, a committed Maobadi and a dear friend, was deeply worried. `Of course I do not support what happened, although I must admit I look at it  differently.’ He was referring to the government’s pressure to close down ‘Into Exile – Tibet 1949 – 2009,′ an exhibition organised by the Bangladeshi chapter of Students for a Free Tibet (SFT), in partnership with Drik, November 1 – 7. `I express my solidarity,’ said his e-mail.

At first it had been the cultural counsellor from the Chinese embassy in Dhaka. Turning up at Drik he told Shahidul Alam, its managing director, “We would like you to cancel the Tibet exhibition.” Tibet was a part of China. If the exhibition was held, the relationship between Bangladesh and China would be affected. Drik, he was politely told, was an independent gallery. They did not have the right to tell Drik what it could, or could not show. But other visits and phone calls soon began: Bangladeshi government officials, police, special branch, members of parliament. Using either intimidation or persuasion, they basically conveyed the same message. The show must be cancelled. Later, the police insisted that Drik needed official permission but were unable to produce any written document. On the 1st afternoon, police in riot gear entered Drik’s premises and locked it up. A symbolic opening, inaugurated by professor Muzaffer Ahmed, was held on the street outside. Having registered its indignation, Drik decided to close down the exhibition the next day as a mark of protest.

Policemen encircle Professor Muzaffer Ahmad, chairman of the Bangladesh chapter of Transparency International, as he went to Drik Gallery in the capital Dhaka to open an exhibition titled ‘Into Exile – Tibet 1949–2009’ on November 1. — New Age photo

I am thinking of writing about it, said Tarek. But of course, you must, I said. His piece, `Tibboter odekha chobigulo onek kotha boley’ appeared in Samakal, 13 November. While highly critical of government interference and heavy-handedness, Tarek voiced suspicion about the SFT and its funding sources, whether the opening was timed to coincide with Dalai Lama’s Arunachal visit, to draw media attention, to villify China by portraying it as an occupying force in Tibet. The US government, more particularly the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), wrote Tarek, has directly funded the Tibet movement from 1956 to 1972, and later, indirectly, through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), an organisation best described in the words of its first acting president, Allen Weinstein, “A lot of what we [the NED] do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”

What Tarek has written is amply supported in research conducted by many academicians and scholars. The NED was established in 1984 with both Republican and Democratic party’s support during president Reagan’s administration to “foster the infrastructure of democracy – the system of a free press, unions, political parties, universities” around the world. Created by an act of Congress, it is funded primarily through annual allocations from the Congress. It operates through four core institutes: the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDIIA), the International Republican Institute (IRI), the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS), and the Center for International Private Enterprise. The latter, CIPE, has in recent years awarded a grant to the Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and more recently, it has supported an initiative undertaken by the Bangladesh Enterprise Institute (BEI). But I will write about that some other day. To return to Tibet and CIA connections: NED-funded organisations include SFT, which was founded in 1994 in New York. Together with five other organisations, the SFT in January 2008 proclaimed “the start of a ‘Tibetan people’s uprising” and co-founded a  temporary office in charge of coordination and financing. Other published sources document how, in the USA, “the American Society for a Free Asia, a CIA front, energetically publicized the cause of Tibetan resistance, with the Dalai Lama’s eldest brother, Thubtan Norbu, playing an active role in that group. The Dalai Lama’s second-eldest brother, Gyalo Thondup, established an intelligence operation with the CIA in 1951 [although CIA aid was only formally established in 1956]. He later upgraded it into a CIA-trained guerrilla unit whose recruits parachuted back into Tibet.” (Michael Barker, “Democratic Imperialism” ).

So, I asked Shahidul, what made you agree to co-hosting this exhibition? I thought it would be an interesting one, he replied. The public would have the opportunity to see rare photos. And I did tell the embassy officials that we would be happy to show a Chinese exhibition, if the quality was right. Our point is to open up the debate. And it’s nothing new, we have faced pressure before. From the British Council in Dhaka over the European Currency Unfolds show. From Bangladesh government officials over some images of 1971. And then, Dhaka’s Alliance Francaise had backed out from sponsoring my exhibition which was critical of Ershad’s military rule. So did the Art College. Intimidation, fear, exhortations to self-censorship—that too, by progressive institutions—these are not new. But of course, he added, this does not mean that we should not critically appraise ourselves. We are not above criticism. I invite it.

My attention turned to something Barker had written. NED’s funding issue, he says, is clearly problematic for Tibetan (or foreign) activists campaigning for Tibetan freedom. Progressive activists should first and foremost cast a critical eye over the antidemocratic funders of Tibetan groups. Only then can progressive solutions for restoring democratic governance to Tibet be generated by concerned activists. Or else, he says, we get what William I Robinson terms polyarchy, or “low-intensity democracy” which mitigates the “social and political tensions produced by elite-based and undemocratic status quos” and suppresses “popular and mass aspirations for more thoroughgoing democratisation of social life in the twenty-first century international order.” As I read, I was reminded of Mairead Corrigan Maguire, who received the Nobel Peace prize (1976) in recognition of her determined attempts to peacefully resolve the troubles in Northern Ireland. Maguire had gone to Israel in 2004 to welcome  Mordechai Vanunu, on his release from prison after serving an 18-year prison sentence for disclosing Israel’s nuclear secrets.  She was hit by a rubber-coated bullet in 2007, while participating in a protest against the construction of Israel’s security fence outside the Arab settlement of Bil’in. She was taken into custody by the Israeli military this year for being on board a small ferry carrying humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. Recently (October 2009), Mairead was one of three Nobel Peace laureates to launch a major `Thank You Tibet!’ Campaign to commemorate Tibetan peoples 50 years in exile. The Campaign statement extends support to “His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the people of Tibet.” It says, “They are a model for all of us: despite the attack on their people and the displacement of their culture they preach and practice compassion and respect for the dignity of every person.”. Compassion and respect for all? Some may not agree. Recently (October 2009), when asked about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, His Holiness had replied, “I think too early to say.”

To return to Tarek. I did tell him, I don’t agree with everything that you say. One area of contention is an old one, centering on whether Tibet is better or worse off, under Chinese communism. As Michael Parenti, severely critical of the Hollywood `Shangri-La’ myth puts it, old Tibet, in reality, was not a Paradise Lost. But if Tibet’s future is to be positioned somewhere within China’s emerging free market paradise—with its deepening gulf between rich and poor, the risk of losing jobs, being beaten and imprisoned if workers try to form unions in corporate dominated “business zones,” the pollution resulting from billions of tons of industrial emissions and untreated human waste dumped into its rivers and lakes—the old Tibet, he says, may start looking better than it actually was.

The other point has to do with recent news reports of the presence of Chinese interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who had gone to grill Uighurs (a Muslim minority from the autonomous region Xinjiang, in western China). Chinese officials were actively assisted by US military personnel to soften up the Uighurs for interrogation: sleep deprivation, freezing temperatures, isolation, holding up their head by the hair and beard so that Chinese officials could take facial photographs. According to them, it was “their lowest point” at Guantanamo. This active assistance was extended, while Washington reportedly continues to support secessionist movements in Xinjiang by supporting several Islamist organizations through CIA-ISI (Pakistani military intelligence) liaison.

Another friend, a keen political analyst, predicted that the US officialdom stationed in Dhaka would soon enough overcome its prolonged misgivings about Drik, as expressed in an e-mail from the USIA director John Kincannon, `Given what I’m reading in Meghbarta and your apparent active opposition to President Clinton’s visit to Bangladesh, it seems odd that you would expect USIS would have much interest in cooperating with Drik on anything’ (March 16, 2000). My friend was right. An invitation extended by the US ambassador himself arrived, sooner than predicted, for Shahidul.

Published in New Age 23rd November 2009.

Further analysis by Omar Tarek Chowdhury

HC judgments on sexual harassment

rahnuma ahmed

The High Court’s verdict was a `revolution’ said Salma Ali, president of Bangladesh Jatiya Mahila Ainjibi Samity (BNWLA)

In response to a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by the BNWLA, the High Court ruled on May 14 that any kind of physical, mental or sexual harassment of women, girls and children at their workplaces, educational institutions and at other public places, including roads, was a criminal offence, punishable by fine and/or imprisonment. The ruling detailed sexual misdemeanour as `any kind of provocation through phone calls or e-mail, lewd gestures, showing of pornography, lurid stares, physical contact or molestation, stalking, vulgar sounds or any display of a derogatory nature.’ The HC Bench directed the government to make a law on the basis of its guidelines; until that happened, it’s guidelines would enjoy the status of law.

On May 17, `another’ revolution took place. The same bench, of Justices Syed Mahmud Hossain and Quamrul Islam Siddiqui, in response to a writ, declared that the decision of the Jahangirnagar University authorities to exonerate Drama and Dramatics chairperson, Sanwar Hossain Sani from charges of sexual harassment and, to suspend six students (which includes four women complainants) for allegedly assaulting him, was `illegal.’ It directed the JU authorities to hold a fresh enquiry . The new one, according to the verdict, should be conducted by `neutral persons.’ It should accord with the HC’s recent guidelines. The writ petition, represented by barrister Sara Hossain and advocate Ruhul Quddus Babu, was jointly filed by Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK), Nijera Kori, Karmojibi Nari, professor Serajul Islam Choudhury, and journalist Kamal Lohani.

The complaints were not proven `beyond any doubt,’ there was no `hard evidence’ — that is what the JU Syndicate had said when clearing Sanwar Hossain of all charges in September 2008. Dismissing this, the HC Bench ruled that the standard of ‘beyond a[ny] reasonable doubt’ could not be applied to allegations of sexual harassment. A slap in the face of the JU authorities? Of the members of the Final Enquiry Committee, the Syndicate, and the university teachers association (JUTA) which had expressed `relief’ at the Syndicate’s decision and had advocated that `indisciplined’ students (and not a teacher who had sexually harassed women students) be punished? Beyond any reasonable doubt.

Of course, we are happy, thrilled, and excited at the HC’s recognition, at its validation of our long-standing demands and struggles. That unwelcome sexual attention is, well, just what it is. Unwelcome. Period. And as Fawzia Karim, the petitioner’s counsel, had argued in court, the absence of a law against sexual harassment, `rampant’ in Bangladesh, means that victims can not file accusations against the offendors.

But our moment of happiness is also overcast with feelings of grief and loss. We have not forgotten our sisters, those who were either killed for having rejected declarations of love, or took their own lives at the humiliation suffered. Simi Banu, art student, taunted and harassed by local mastaans, committed suicide in 2001. Mohima Khatun, raped, killed herself in 2002. Shahinoor, a garment worker, raped, threw herself under a train, in 2003. Biva Rani Singha, a college student, kidnapped and raped for a week in 2003, later became mentally unbalanced. Farzana Afrin Rumi, a college student, hanged herself when a local group of thugs barged into her house to kidnap her, in 2003. Alpina, a class four student, killed herself after being assaulted in front of her mother, in 2003 (Farzana Rahman Shampa). Chameli Tripura, nine years old, was raped and killed in Ramgarh, CHT, in 2008. And many, many more. Killed. Committed suicide. Became mentally ill. Acid disfigurement. Humiliation. No, we have not forgotten our sisters. Nor have we forgotten sub-Inspector Bashar who went to Simi’s house and insulted her parents. He advised them to control `her’ movements. He filed a general diary (GD) against her, instead of her harassers. Nor have we forgotten countless police officers who have repeatedly refused to register complaints made by women and their family members, distraught and angry, seeking safety and protection through legal means.

It was, after all, a bloody revolution.

Will things change? Krishnokoli, a young singer and cultural activist, doesn’t think so. Mere court verdicts are not enough. The political structure of the country needs to be altered first (New Age, May 15).  I understand and sympathise with her misgivings as I turn to look at neighbouring India, at the famous Vishaka judgment (Vishaka and others vs State of Rajasthan and others, Supreme Court, 1997), which is known to have informed our own HC judgment. The Vishaka PIL arose out of the gang rape of Bhanwari Devi, a member of a group of women called sathins, trained by the local government to do house-to-house social work at the village level, in exchange of honorariums. Bhanwari Devi, as part of a government campaign against child marriage, had tried to prevent the marriage of a one year old girl. The family, who happened to be high caste, were outraged at Bhanwari’s audacity. Five men, including the girl’s father, gang-raped her in her husband’s presence. The village authorities, the local police and doctors teamed-up with the rapists: police were reluctant to record her statement, two government doctors refused to examine her. When she finally took her case to the state criminal court, the accused were acquitted. The judge declared that it was not `credible.’ Upper caste men would surely not stoop as low as raping a lower caste woman? The humiliation and violation of the court process, says Naina Kapur, a New Delhi-based lawyer, led her to initiate the Vishaka petition. She, like many others, was frustrated by the criminal justice system’s inability to provide tangible remedies, restore the dignity of the victim, address systemic issues, and to create social change (Avani Mehta Sood, 2006).

The Vishaka PIL has made a significant impression upon the public, says Sood, because it has led to the establishment of systems of legal accountability. It has created tremendous awareness and open acknowledgement of sexual harassment. The judgment has had a huge impact on universities and large workplaces. Women now know that there is a law, and as a human rights lawyer put it, “It makes a big difference to people harassing women as well, to know that they can be called upon it.” Awareness created by the Vishaka decision has also led to many more cases being filed by women victims, at the HC level. However, it has not yet been enacted (The Protection of Women Against Sexual Harassment at the Workplace Bill 2007), and the SC guidelines continue to be the law. Very few complaints comittees have been set up. Service rules have not been amended. The judgment has been flouted by both public and private employers. Social activists have claimed that the guidelines were too general, it did not cover the entire gamut of workplace relationships (for e.g., doctor molesting his patient). The unorganised sector does not fall under the ambit of the Bill. Investigations carried out by the inquiry committees have too often been bound by red-tape, leading to long drawn out cases, and thereby, delaying punishment for the harasser, and adding to the victim’s trauma. But continued activism has led to two significant interim orders being issued by the Supreme Court. One of these asks professional bodies (for e.g. the UGC) what steps they have taken to implement the Vishaka guidelines, while the other, clarifies that the investigation and report of the investigation committee is to be deemed final. Committees have also been directed to submit annual reports of complaints and actions taken, to the government.

By highlighting the problem of sexual harassment, the Vishaka judgment has simultaneously opened up questions and dilemmas over separating sexual harassment from, and its close intermeshing with, other forms of gender-based discrimination/harassment at workplaces (Kalpana Kannabiran and Vasanth Kannabiran 2002). As the authors say, the separation between professional victimisation and sexual harassment is never absolute. And there are other things too. Sometimes sexual harassment can become a weapon of retaliation for progressive dalit men who face offensive and discriminatory behaviour from upper caste and upper class, articulate women classmates and colleagues. Where systemic forms of discrimination and inequality run deep, where the legal system, in its entirety, overwhelmingly promotes unjust hierarchies, are changes possible? Or, to pose Caribbean-American writer, poet and activist, Audre Lordes’ words as a question: can the master’s house be dismantled with the master’s tools?

Not, in its entirety, no. But as I write this, it is also important to acknowledge the difference that it is bound to make at Jahangirnagar, to the lives of six young women and men-students, whose suspension will have to be withdrawn by the JU authorities. The difference that the second HC judgment will make to the lives of four young women complainants who had, against overwhelming odds, protested. Whose dignity — with the help of a new inquiry committtee composed of neutral persons, working in accordance with guidelines set by the HC — will be restored.

Laws, fortunately or unfortunately, are part of the political process. And, revolutions need to be created, and re-created. Again, and yet again.

Published in New Age 25 May 2009