Mapping female emancipation
autonomous womanhood vs. dasi

By rahnuma ahmed

His comments made me stop in my tracks, I began re-thinking why I had proceeded as I had. I’d suffered nagging doubts about Part II after it had been published. May be, the discussion had been too academic, may be it had turned some readers off.

My brother, the one in London, had e-mailed me, saying among other things, ‘[I look for] what can you tell me that reveals a little more about the relationship [she] had with [her] work…[I read, to discover what], as people say, delivers that one ‘a-ha’ moment.

As I began working on Part II, I remembered something which I’d been told long ago by a faculty member at Sussex university just before her seminar began. ‘Oh, 90% of my presentation will be a preamble.’ ‘Preamble? You mean as in the constitution…?’ ‘Yes,’ she chuckled. ‘It’ll be about the purpose of my study, it’s philosophical underpinnings, how I steer and navigate myself through what has been written thus far on the subject…where I situate my own efforts.’

May be I could re-direct Saif’s comments toward myself, I thought, my relationship with this business of re-reading. It would help recap what I’d written in Part II. It would also help readers see where I situate my own efforts.

Re-reading Begum Rokeya for me, has involved taking stock of what has been written about her. Of critically thinking through what sense we have made of her life and struggles, her achievements, what we think she was up against and why. It has meant engaging with some thorny issues in feminist theory. And of course, it has inolved returning to Rokeya Rachanavali (1984), again and again.

Why does Rokeya matter? For me, this is the same as asking why does women’s emancipation matter? The answer should be obvious to my readers, I will not belabour the point.

What, however, I have been dissatisfied with for long, is the tradition vs. modern dichotomy which provides the lens through which social transformation is viewed, including the revolutionary changes to the situation of modern Bengali Muslim women which were initiated to a large extent, through Rokeya’s efforts. Both at the material level (establishing the Sakhawat Memorial School), and also, very crucially, in the realm of ideas. In the battle over ideas.

I’m in agreement with Lata Mani who has perspicaciously pointed out that the tradition vs. modern dichotomy colors our understanding of colonialism, that we are reduced to holding the view — with a great deal of stubbornness I might add — that colonial rule had, as she puts it, ‘positive consequences’ for certain aspects of women’s lives. That it had, if nothing else, positively influenced our ideas about women’s rights. I agree with Mani that such a stance leaves unproblematic what she, and other scholars of colonialism as well have insisted, namely, that the notions of ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ originated during the colonial period, in, and through, colonial discourses.

I regard the dichotomy as being part of the complex of colonial ‘other’-ing, which as Edward Said has informed us, helped to define Europe (or, the West): ‘European culture gained in strength and identity by setting itself off against the Orient as a sort of surrogate and even underground self.’ Being the ‘other’ means being an ‘object’ of study. Other-ness stamps its objects as ‘being passive, non-participating…above all, non-active, non-autonomous, non-sovereign with regard to oneself.’

The West’s self-definition, produced and re-produced through a vast plethora of material that ranges over a period of several hundred years, has asserted that the West is not only different to, but superior in comparison to all non-European cultures and peoples. This has become a part of the ‘common-sense’ of European society; it has also been accepted by large numbers of non-Europeans — its ‘others’ — who have, as Talal Asad has repeatedly stressed, either been coerced, or persuaded into accepting the West’s right to civilise us. It is an acceptance which, in my opinion, circumscribes our capacity and means to resist, even when the political purposes which Orientalist knowledge is put to, is very violent. Very destructive. Nakedly.

The death toll in Iraq of 650,000, calculated by the British medical journal Lancet’s researchers (2006), was challenged by many. Some scientists alleged that the numbers were ‘overstated’, that the methodology pursued was ‘fundamentally flawed.‘ But it is not irrelevant to point out that before the spurious ‘war on terror’ began, the number of Iraqi deaths resulting from economic sanctions was put at half a million. When the American secretary of state Madeleine Albright’s attention was drawn to this in an interview, ‘half a million children have died. I mean that’s more children than died in Hiroshima,’ she had acquiesced with the numbers when she replied, ‘the price is worth it.’ (May 12, 1996).

What I mean to say is this, colonialism then, and colonialism now, needs to be taken seriously by our scholars and researchers, by intellectuals and activists. Continuities need to be investigated; colonialism needs to be viewed not only as a system of economic exploitation (favored by Marxists), but in its totality. Which means temporally, spatially. It means its geographies and histories; it means investigating the complex and complicated inter-meshing of race, class and gender relations .

Taking it seriously means conducting honest, dispassionate and scupulous investigations, ones that will help prevent ‘blaming everything on the white man’ allegation, often used to rubbish all intellectual efforts to engage with colonial history, both here and elsewhere.

It might well require dismantling conceptual tools, such as, ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity.’ Letting go of assumptions dear to us, such as, at least it had ‘positive consequences’ for women, for ‘ideas of women’s rights.’ Complicating our notions of history that are straight and unilinear, that are only made possible by applying and re-applying ‘narratives of progressive modernization.’ Of not viewing feminism as an ‘imperialist conspiracy,’ overtones of this can be found in Badruddin Umar’s introduction to Nari Proshno Proshonge (edited, Dhaka: Srabon, 2003). Of critiquing, instead of re-circulating, as does Umar, labels such as ‘ugro naribadi’, which, if translated as ‘extremist feminists,’ dilutes its overtones of being ‘wild.’

It might also require ‘unpacking’ other dichotomies, religion vs. science, for one. Of discarding notions of ‘science’ as an unquestionable universal good, and attempting to learn instead from recent theoretical critiques, such as the one made by Dr Mae-Wan Ho (geneticist, bio-physicist), founder of Institute of Science in Society, a telling name (science ‘in’ society). Science, she says, is the dominant knowledge system of the west, but despite being the intellectual driving force behind globalisation, behind its instruments of destruction and oppression, it is not questioned. It might lead to discarding notions that ‘modern medicine’ is beneficial par excellence as opposed to all other ideas and practices of healing, dubbed ‘unscientific’, if not, ‘quackery’ by corporate-funded medical establishments. Here, and elsewhere.

It might also require unpacking the religion vs. secularism dichotomy, but I will not dwell on that now.

Re-thinking not only Begum Rokeya, but the whole ‘woman question’ on fundamentally new lines becomes even more urgent with the deluge of male sympathy for Hasan Sayeed Shumon, after he recently committed ‘suicide’ in his Dhaka prison hospital. His wife Rumana Manzoor, teacher of international relations, Dhaka University, was repeatedly battered by her husband, the last incident of assault took place in mid-June this year, when he gouged out her eyes and bit off the tip of her nose. As his ‘defence’, Sayeed raised allegations of an extra-marital relationship, a white lie if ever there was one; sympathy for Sayeed after his death has been expressed through a revival of those allegations. Baybhicharini (‘adultress’, with connotations of ‘whore’), scream male responders as they post comments on blogs and online newspaper sites. Seemingly diverse male voices converge in an attempt to shift the terms of public debate, from, as Nasrin Khandoker tells me, ‘violence against women’ (with accompanying emotions of sympathy for the woman), to ‘woman’s wayward sexuality’ (harsh censure for the victim, ‘she deserved what she got’).

In other words, as I had pointed out rather obliquely yesterday, the notion that it is women who are sexual beings, while men are not only sex-neutral, but sexually-neutral — that too, needs to be dismantled. Labelling men nor-poshu (animalistic men), when acts of violence against women have been publicly exposed, on and on, is too convenient, as Anu Muhammad has often reiterated. It is another expression of ‘other’-ing, of refusing to conceptually engage with the relations of control and domination exercised by human beings over animals.

Besides my brother Saif’s comments, I have received others as well, on both Parts I and II. A lovely, thoughtful response from Farida Majid (New York), and another from Seema Amin, a young woman who writes poetry in Dhaka, with a finely-calibrated sensitivity. Their questions and comments have helped sharpen my thoughts.

I choose to paraphrase what Farida wrote, and to pose it as a question, ‘was Rokeya class-ist?’ (I hope you will forgive me, Farida!).

No, Farida, I don’t think Rokeya was class-ist, or, that she discriminated against other social hierarchies and inequities. There are innumerable instances of that besides ‘Sultana’s Dream,’ where women live in an apparently class-less society. In her short story ‘Prem-rohossho’, one comes across Tahera, the central character, declaring, ‘I have loved those belonging to all religions, whether a Hindu, a Christian or a Muslim.’ Nor do I think that Rokeya was age-ist, for as Tahera continues, ‘I have loved balika [young girls], those older, those who are elderly – [women] of different ages.’ (Ogronthito Rokeya, edited by Avijit Sen, Kolkata: Noya Uddog, 1998).

I must now gather my thoughts and keep it brief as I am running out of time and space, and I intend to stick to my promise to both New Age, and my readers, to conclude this series today.

If one accepts that Rokeya’s ideological assault was aimed at socially powerful Muslims, at men and women belonging to the ashraf (noble, high-born, landed) class, and the increasing number of Bengali Muslims who were joining the ranks of the educated middle class — not the untold millions who were oppressed, who lacked the power and authority to change the destinies of women — then it is only logical to assume that the practices, ideas and values which she directed her biting satire against, must have been shareef ones. That Rokeya, was specifically targetting shareef patriarchy when she attacked the ideas and practices of seclusion. And, that seclusion among the shareef (and those who had aspirations to being regarded as shareef, this increases the numbers manifold) was a noble virtue, albeit a gendered one. Household space itself was gender-divided, there was a mardana (male living quarters), but women’s seclusion also meant that their physical mobility outside the home was restricted.

What strikes me when I read ‘Avarodhbasini’ (transl, In Seclusion, written 1928-30), is that Rokeya interchangeably uses the words dais (female slaves), chakranis (domestic servants), and poricharikas (maid), and also, what I cannot help but note is that only their role of ensuring shareef women’s seclusion, that no other domestic duties are mentioned (except for a brief mention of Altar ma pouring out water for obulations, oju). As such, they were the functionaries of the patriarchal order, they were the ones who opened the doors to palkis (palanquin) in the courtyards of shareef homes, slept on the floor beside the wife’s bed when the husband was away so that she would not be afraid, hurriedly held up a large piece of cloth beside the bed to maintain porda when thieves tunneled into the zenana quarters in the middle of the night, who chaperoned borkha-clad little girls as they got out of the cloth-covered bus and walked towards the entrance of Sakhawat Memorial School. Chakranis and dais stood low in the hierarchy within a shareef ghor, and when Rokeya, in ‘Streejatir Obonoti’ (1904) lashes out, are we dasis in this civilised twentieth-century world? I am inclined to think that, for it to resonate among shareef women, to give birth to a sense of dignity, one of the referents conveyed (for words, of course, have plural meanings), was that of a chakrani, the despised ‘other’. It is most unfortunate that the voices of chakranis, dasis are muted, at least, in terms of written and published works.

Seema has written, ‘Formidable (comme en francais). The way you unfold that it is not an epiphenomenon. Now I’m waiting for what it is — according to Begum Rokeya’ — in response to this I would say Seema, from my reading of Begum Rokeya, one would need to tackle the institution of marriage, of husband-hood, head-on. Rokeya repeatedly locates male domination in the institution of marriage, she personifies the husband (shami, korta) as ruler. One of its clearest expressions is to be found in Padmarag (novel) when Siddika/Joynab says, ‘If I were to forget all the neglect and insults that I have received and to return to my domestic life, then, grandmothers and grand-aunts will point out my instance in future to spirited young girls, they will say, ‘Hey, forget all your resolve and pride, look at Joynab, even after all that happened to her, she returned to a life of devoted service to her husband. And men will pronounce with tremendous arrogance, ‘However highly-educated, high-minded, spirited, great and noble a woman might be, she is bound to come back and fall at our our feet.’ I want to show everyone that married life is not the penultimate goal of womanhood, that leading a domestic life is not the meaning of life [for women].’

And significantly, Rokeya critiqued not only shareef marriages, but ones among other classes too, she included subaltern marriages, and those among the newly-emerging middle class. I do not know whether the change in nomenclature — for middle class women for many a decade have shown a preference for the English word, ‘husband’ instead of shami (owner) — has anything to do with Rokeya’s deconstruction of the term. To quote her, ‘When we lost our capacity to differentiate between freedom and servitude, between advancement and debasement, it is then that men became “bhusshami” (owner of land), “grihosshami” (owner of the homestead), and gradually, our “shami” (owner/husband).’ (Streejatir Obonoti, 1904).

Rokeya, I think, is too radical for even now.
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PIC:
Begum Rokeya (1880-1932)

Published in New Age, Wednesday, 14 December 2011
The first few paras have been re-written to depict my e-mail exchange, my doubts and methods, with greater complexity, more precision.

Mapping female emancipation
autonomous womanhood vs. dasi

By rahnuma ahmed

In yesterday’s column, I had written that Bangladeshi scholars, researchers and intellectuals who have sought to understand and appreciate Begum Rokeya (1880-1932) have ignored issues of class and gender. Gender, too? you might well have wondered. Since Rokeya is a woman, how could any author who has written on Rokeya ignore the issue of gender?

Yes, gender as well, and to explain what I mean, I draw on an essay written by Marxist intellectual Farhad Mazhar, which, I hasten to add, is not about Rokeya but about Karl Marx’s theoretical attention to the question of women’s emancipation, ‘Narir Mukti o Shompotti: Itihash Bigyaner Moulik Obosthan Proshonge’, Women’s emancipation and property: The central position of scientific history (Proshongo: Nari Mukti Andolon, edited by Liakat Ali, Dhaka: Pothikrit Prokashoni, 1999).

In an otherwise brilliant essay, a couple of sentences by Mazhar in the opening paragraphs will surely not escape the attention of discerning scholars of women’s history. ‘Needless to say, the amount of work written by Karl Marx on ‘capital’ in no way equals the amount which he wrote on women. Women were not his subject. But does that mean that he lacked any original scientific thoughts on the issue of women? This is the central question that our essay engages with. In other words, our enquiry will be concerned with whether he did or did not have any original ideas on the issue of women, and that, whatever be the reason, these thoughts were not written down.’ (p. 80).

In this rendering, Marx, as you may have noted, appears to be sex-less. The presentation of men as being sex-neutral persona, whether deliberate or unconscious, has been theoretically critiqued by feminists for more than the last three decades. The issue, many argue, is not sexual difference (which is biological) but more precisely, the social organisation of sexual i.e., gender difference (what cultures make of biology; socially- constructed and learned differences). This is why, they add, much of history-writing, is his-story, one that excludes her’s. (Different strands of feminists have later argued that both sex and gender are socially constructed, that science too, is cultural, but I will not go into these issues).

Another point which I had raised in yesterday’s column, drawing on the Indian feminist historian Lata Mani’s study of sati, is the ‘colonialism had at least positive consequences for women’ approach to history-writing, one which Mani says, is basic to ‘even the most anti-imperialist’ of scholars and activists. This approach, she argues, occludes our vision, it fails to recognise that British colonial discourses had ‘privileged brahmanic scriptures as the key to Indian society’ (p. 114). That, it had posited tradition as being timeless and a structuring principle of Indian society, one that was enacted in the everyday lives of Indian people (p. 116). Mani insists that instead of approaching history as consisting of a ‘simplistic application of narratives of progressive modernization’ (p. 89), we should take colonial discourses on India seriously. Or else, we, as scholars, will replicate it through the analysis we undertake, and will end up lending our support to colonial rule. To not be complicit, we must be aware that ‘colonial discourses…[had] elaborated notions of modernity against their own conception of tradition’ (p. 116). That, colonial discourses had ‘contemporaneously produced’ both ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ (p. 116).

In my opinion, Bangladeshi scholars have uncritically empoyed the notions of ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ which has bogged down their intellectual efforts, marring what are, by all other considerations, meticulous and painstaking studies (‘labours of love’) on Rokeya. One of the best such instances is provided by Shamsul Alam who writes in his scene-setting description of the historical context within which Rokeya wrote, established Sakhawat Memorial School for girls, and struggled against those who denounced and villified her attempts to educate Muslim girls — ‘Just as there was no space within the decrepit fortresses of those who were conservative, similarly so, the restlessness of those who heralded the new [Young Bengal, the Derozians], of those who were progressive, was marked by their inability to provide directions to the path of true welfare. But admittedly, the conflict between the new and the old gradually led to the development of ideals of progress and welfare. A middle path of reconciliation developed through conflicts between those who were extremists [choromponthi], and those who were soft-ists [noromponthi]. A motivation for progress was introduced into Bangladesh’s stagnant society. Opportunities arose for offering new explanations and analyses of society, politics and religion.’ (Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain: Jiban O Shahittyakarma, Life and Literary Works of Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, Dhaka: Bangla Academy, 1989, p. 15).

Similar notions of ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ are manifested in one way or another in all the literature that I have read to date on Rokeya; written from different angles, they seemingly converge in their approach to history, the ‘application of narratives of progressive modernization’.

These notions also manifest themselves in work written by those belonging to the leftist political tradition. One can glimpse this in the accolades heaped on Rokeya by comrade Khalequzzaman, general secretary, Bangladesher Samajtantrik Dal (BSD), in his recently-published booklet on Rokeya. He writes, ‘Begum Rokeya — uncompromising, freedom-loving, social theorist, dedicated to the cause of education, extensive thinker, flag-bearer of post-Rammohun-[Ishwarchandra] Bidyasagar’s Indian renaissance, forerunner of the women’s movement, pioneer of women’s awakening — was born 130 years ago.’ (Begum Rokeya. Jibon, Shongram o Shikkha, Begum Rokeya. Her life, struggles and teachings, Samajtantrik Mahila Forum, Dhaka: Vanguard Prokashoni, 2011, p. 5).

In a section titled ‘Rokeya’s Consciousness of History’, while drawing on Friedrich Engels’ ideas on ‘the historical downfall of the female sex’, Khalequzzaman writes, ‘[the notion that women have been slaves of men from the outset of human society] is unhistorical…[as is the notion that] women are naturally inferior to men in their capabilities, intellect, and skills. Marx-Engels, through highlighting the redundancy of these unscientific explanations have demonstrated through their discussion of the evolution of human society, how women were not subjugated to men until the creation of class society and the establishment of private ownership over social property.’ (p. 28).

Much indebted as we are to Marx and Engels, to the latter particularly for having expressedly historicised women’s oppression, for having offered ‘the possibility of a materialistic explanation for women’s subordination and attempt[ed] to establish a relationship between the ownership of private property and the ideological subordination of women’ (Sayers, Evans and Redclift, eds., Engels Revisited. New Feminist Essays, London: Tavistock, 1987, p. 1), the idea that private property is the originary cause from which women’s subordination follows, that, it is, so to speak, an after-effect, has long been discarded by feminist scholars of both socialist and Marxist persuasions. Some have explicitly critiqued Marx and Engels for their ‘determinist tendency to theorize male domination as an epiphenomenon of class conflict.’ (Rhonda M. Williams, in M. Ferber and J. Nelson edited, Beyond Economic Man, 1993, p. 152).

At this point, it may not be entirely irrelevant to recollect the acute observation made by Shameem Akhtar, writer and editor then (film-maker now) well over two decades ago, ‘It is most unfortunate that leftists are making use of women’s demand for emancipation to further their organisational needs…the incorporation of women into their organisation is cosmetic…even though [left parties] propound many theories they have not yet been able to comprehend the untold significance of the issue [of women's emancipation].’ (‘Narimukti Andolon Chintay Bibhranti. Ekti Shamogrik Prekkhit,’ Confusion in the Women’s Movement for Emancipation. An Overview, see Liakat Ali’s edited book above, p. 30).

Over the last two decades or more, the sexual composition of the industrial workforce has radically changed as a result of garment manufacturing for global capital – at present, 85% of garment workers are women, the industry generates 80% of the country’s total export revenue — but whether that has led to commensurate changes in how left intellectuals and party activists comprehend class and gender issues, is open to debate.

I now want to turn to Begum Rokeya, and to the importance of historically locating the particularity of the patriarchal regime against which she fought, and the class-specific nature of Muslim femininity which she challenged.

If one doesn’t attempt such an exercise then we must assume by default that the creation of Bengali Muslim women’s identity in the first decades of the 20th century — one in which Rokeya played a central role — was foretold. One must assume that history is teleological. That the language of women’s emancipation was not distinctive, neither to class, nor to culture. That the creation of subjective identity was external to language. That a universal discourse on women’s emancipation ‘made sense’ to women, it helped to galvanise them into action. Or, that they were passive, that it was men anyway, who decided. But, as anthropologist Talal Asad notes in his discussion of class and domination: ‘The languages of class employed in nineteenth-century Britain are not replicated in twentieth-century Egypt. The assumption is made by many students of the Arab world (those writing in English or French as well as those writing in Arabic) that in both places we may identify an urban bourgeoisie, a nascent working class, a Lumpenproletariat, each displaying a recognisable class ideology – but such an assumption is profoundly mistaken. Historical languages constitute classes, they do not merely justify groups already in place according to universal economic structures.’ (Are There Histories of Peoples Without Europe, A review article, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 1987).

And it is these ideas that impel me to ask, what was the language that Rokeya crafted to create a new sense of collective identity? To make women see their oppression? To arouse in them a sense of dignity? What words did she use, what meanings did they convey, ones that would reverberate because they were a part of women’s lived experiences, women who led secluded lives, who were denied education? A language that would make what had thus far been regarded as natural, seem unnatural? What emotions did she appeal to?

Since Rokeya belonged to the shareef class, the uppermost strata in Muslim society
– landed Muslims, who, although in a period of transition with the decline of rentier income still enjoyed moral and social authority – she unleashed an ideological assault on governing norms, attacking both shareef masculinity and femininity, in her characteristically witty, intensely satirical and polemical manner.

To invoke a sense of pride and dignity among women who belonged to the class which governed social norms, but lacked social and political power, it was only natural for her to lash out, why are you dasis? Why are you enslaved?

Dear readers, as is often the case, I have ended up writing more than I had planned, I will definitely conclude tomorrow.

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Published in New Age, Tuesday, December 13, 2011
This is a brushed-up, typos corrected version.

Mapping female emancipation
autonomous womanhood vs. dasi

By rahnuma ahmed

‘Streejatir Obonoti’ (The downfall of the women-class), Begum Rokeya’s (1880-1932) seminal essay on the condition of women in colonial Bengal was published in the Bangla year 1311, i.e., in the Gregorian calendar year 1904. As such, it is an early piece of her written work, since the literary career of the first Bengali Muslim feminist, whose writings caused moral outrage and led to her villification, spanned thirty years. Her first essay was published in 1901, ‘Pipasha’ (Thirst), while she had presumably been working on her last, ‘Narir Odhikar’ (Women’s rights), the night before she died.

She passed away in the early hours of dawn on December 9, 1932; having worked till 11pm the night before, her incomplete essay lay beneath a paper weight on her writing table, only to be published much later (1957).

For reasons unknown to me, I can only speculate but I choose not to, questions of class and gender have been largely absent in the intellectual efforts of Bangladeshi researchers, scholars and intellectual-activists  –  this includes those who belong to the women’s movement, and also, those belonging to the left school of thought; these schools, of course, are not as mutually exclusive as they sound – who have sought to understand and appreciate Begum  Rokeya. They have thereby failed to historically locate the particularity of the patriarchal regime against which Rokeya fought, the class-specific nature of Muslim femininity which she challenged.  This, of course, should not be taken to mean that I’m suggesting that Begum Rokeya was only concerned with bettering the opportunities of women of her own class. Far from it.

A brilliant testament to this lies in her short story ‘Sultana’s Dream’ (1905), probably the first utopian fantasy in Indian literature. It was originally written in English, and later translated by Rokeya herself, albeit with slight modifications (see Salimullah Khan, Sroddhanjoli. ‘Begum Rokeya’r utopia,’ Kaler Kheya, Samakal, December 9, 2011). In my discussion below, I have followed the English version (Rokeya Rachanavali, edited by Abdul Kadir Dhaka: Bangla Academy, second edition, 1984 (1973)).

Sultana, the narrator of the short story, who had ‘dozed off’ while ‘thinking lazily of the condition of Indian womanhood’ suddenly finds a woman before her, who she takes to be her friend, Sister Sara; the latter invites her to come out, to take a look at her ‘garden’. This turns out to be a tour of Ladyland, a country where gender roles have been reversed, where class inequalities are absent, where religious differences do not matter.

Men, ‘wounded and tired’ from conducting wars, had been outwitted by women (‘by [the latter's] brain’), and had been shut ‘indoors.’ Confined to the mardana (secluded male quarters), to ‘their proper places, where they ought to be,’ men were kept busy in ‘mind[ing] babies, [in] cook[ing] and… do[ing] all sorts of domestic work.’

Women had been able to establish a distinct female realm and order in Ladyland because while men had busied themselves in fighting wars, women had engaged themselves in ‘scientific researches.’ These had led to ‘scientific discoveries’, which, though dubbed ‘a sentimental nightmare’ by the military officers then, helped women establish their own rule after they had outwitted the men. To secure the borders of their country. To live a life in harmony with nature. As the Queen of Ladyland, who greeted Sultana ‘cordially without any ceremony’ (and by the way, interestingly enough, the Queen was accompanied by her ‘four years old’ daughter) tells Sultana, ‘We dive deep into the ocean of knowledge and try to find out the precious gems, which nature has kept in store for us. We enjoy nature’s gifts as much as we can.’

Virtue reigns in Ladyland, it is ‘free from sin and harm.’ Sultana gazes in wonder and amazement at the streets which throng with bustling crowds but ‘not a single man [is] visible.’ The whole place looks like a ‘garden’, the ‘green grass’ beneath Sultana’s feet feels like a ‘soft carpet.’ No smoke emanates from the kitchens, there is ‘no sign of coal or fire’ because cooking, as Sister Sara explains, is done through stored ‘sun-heat.’ There are no ‘epidemic disease[s]‘, nor any ‘mosquito bites’ either. No deaths occur except those occasioned by ‘rare accident[s].’ Women scientists have been able to work out how to store water, how to generate electricity which helps till the fields, which provides the power for other ‘hard manual work’, and the energy required for ‘air-cars,’ which is the only means of transport. The confinement of men has meant that no crimes or sins are committed, and therefore, says Sister Sara, we have no need for policemen to find out ‘culprits,’ nor do we require magistrates ‘to try criminals cases.’

‘The tables’ in Ladyland ‘[have been] turned’, Sultana laughingly observes, as Sister Sara tells her why men have been confined to the mardana. Because it is men, who are, ‘or at least are capable of doing no end of mischief,’ who reigned supreme, who had been the ‘lord and master’ and had ‘taken to [themselves] all powers and privileges.’ They had shut women up in the zenana (secluded female quarters), despite women being ‘harmless’ and ‘innocent’.

In Ladyland, which has schools and universities for women, education is ‘spread far and wide among women.’ Early marriage has been stopped, women are not allowed to marry until they reach the age of twenty-one.

And what about men? At first, men had wanted to be free, says Sister Sara. Police commissioners and district magistrates had sent word to the Queen that although military officers ‘deserved to be imprisoned for their failure’, but since they themselves had never neglected their duties, they should not be ‘punished’ but ‘restored to their respective offices.’

The Queen had replied, they would be sent for ‘if their services were ever needed.’ But until such an occasion arose, ‘they should remain where they were.’ Men had since become  ‘accustomed to the purdah system and [had] ceased to grumble at their seclusion.’ They were now ‘dreaming sentimental dreams [of emancipation?] themselves.’

A close and longstanding familiarity with the literature on Begum Rokeya and her times, regardless of who is the author, whether male or female academics, or intellectuals belonging to the women’s movement and/or left movement, or those who are largely identified as progressives, leads me to think that a large part of the problem has to do with being guided — maybe glued to (?), is a better word – by overarching frameworks of tradition and modernity, to powerful dichotomies of religion vs. science (or, religion vs. secularism) which prevent us from problematising what we seek to understand, since we rely upon, and predictably enough, reproduce straight-forward and unilinear accounts of history. Unfortunately so, for the larger body of women  of a historical moment which happens to be most crucial, if not the most crucial moment in the birth of a woman-centred consciousness among modern Bengali Muslim women.

These frameworks and dichotomies are not un-related to the political and intellectual effects of colonial rule among the formerly colonised, ones that not only persist, but are maintained in, and perpetuated through, women’s history-writing, a situation which the Indian feminist historian Lata Mani expresses thus in the first para of her highly thoughtful article on sati, ‘even the most anti-imperialist amongst us has felt forced to acknowledge the ‘positive’ consequences of colonial rule for certain aspects of women’s lives, if not in terms of actual practice, at least at the level of ideas about ‘women’s rights.” (‘Contentious Traditions. The Debate on Sati in Colonial India,’ in Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid eds., Recasting Women. Essays in Colonial History, Delhi: Kali for Women, 1989).

But, as Mani’s own doctoral study reveals, the popular notion that the British were forced to declare sati illegal because of its barbarity — one which is also widely-held among the educated classes in Bangladesh — does not hold ground. Her historical examination reveals instead that the ‘horror of the burning of women’ was ‘a distinctly minor theme.’ That what we have accepted at face value for too long, the view that colonisation ‘brings with it a more positive reappraisal of the rights of women’ does not mean a ‘concern for women’, instead, it means that women then onwards became the ‘currency’ in which the colonisers asserted their authority, i.e., the legitimacy of colonial rule, one that was variedly confronted and negotiated by different sections of the indigenous elite (progressives, conservatives).

But, I digress. Actually, what concerns me is something else, when Rokeya opens her ‘Streejatir Obonoti’ with the lines, ‘Women-readers! Have you ever given thought to the matter of your downfall? What are we in this civilised twentieth-century world? Slaves [dasi, a female slave]! One hears that the slave trade has been abolished from the world, but has our slavery disappeared? No. Why are we slaves? there are reasons’ – who does she really refer to by slaves? To the estimated twelve million African people who were shipped to the Americas as slaves from the 16^th to the 19^th centuries?  Or, to domestic workers, chakranis (female servants), who worked and slaved in Muslim shareef (highborn, noble) homes. Differentiation is integral to the subjective construction of any identity, as feminists have argued, and, as I pore over Rokeya’s ‘Avarodhbasini’ (In Seclusion; written as a series of columns, 1928-30), it seems more likely that she was, in all possible likelihood, referring to chakranis. That, her invocations of freedom were drawn from characters who were ever-present in shareef gharanas in the numerous, women whose labour was integral to the privileges and comfort enjoyed by secluded Muslim women, and who, as is wont to be the case in such instances, were despised by the latter.

[concluding part to be published tomorrow]

This is a brushed-up, typos corrected version.

Published in New Age, Monday, December 12, 2011

The accused — former President of the United States George W. Bush and former United Kingdom Prime Minister Tony Blair — were tried in absentia at the tribunal’s hearings.

Their absence, presumably, was not due to lack of knowledge for the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission (KLWCC) had duly served them notice on charges of committing Crimes against Peace.

Established in 2008, the Commission had received complaints from Iraqi war victims and those who had been incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay (Gitmo for short, termed America’s ‘Gulag’ by many, a reference to forced labour camps in the former Soviet Union) after being illegally detained in Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2009.

Statutory declarations sworn by the victims were presented to the Commission; these were subjected to questioning to verify whether the facts and experiences claimed by the victims before, and during, detention were true.

The Commission conducted an extensive study and investigation for nearly two years, and finalised its report in May 2011.

The investigation revealed that none of the victims, neither those imprisoned at Gitmo, nor the Iraqis, had been charged for any actual offences. Neither had they been given access to legal representation. The due process of international law had not been complied with. All international conventions on human rights, on the dignity of captives had been suspended.

The invasion and occupation of Iraq by the combined forces of the US (148,000), UK (45,000), Australia (2,000) and Poland (194) resulted in the death of 1.4 million Iraqis. Countless others have undergone torture, and untold hardship. The international community has not paid any attention to the cries of these victims (‘complaints had already been filed at the International Criminal Court (ICC) against both Bush and Blair, but the ICC had refused prosecution‘).

KLWCC was established to ‘fill this void.’ To act as the people’s conscience by providing an avenue for victims of aggression and occupation to file their complaints.

Charges were framed by the Prosecution division of the Commission. The first charge was against Messrs Bush and Blair for committing Crimes against Peace.

The second charge is against 8 US citizens, for committing Crimes of Torture and War Crimes. It includes George W. Bush and other members of his administration, 2001-2008: Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Jay Bybee (assistant attorney general, infamous for signing the memo which approved the use of torture) and John Yoo (department of Justice official, author of the ‘torture’ memo) among others.

The first trial, a four-day hearing was held at the headquarters of the Al-Bukhary Foundation at Jalan Perdana, Kuala Lumpur, November 19-22, 2011.

The seven-member Tribunal was headed by retired Malaysian Federal Court judge Dato’ Abdul Kadir Sulaiman (member of the Council of Regency, state of Terengganu), and included other well-known and widely-respected figures.

The chief prosecutor was professor Gurdial S. Nijar, whose team included professor Francis Boyle, professor in law, Illinois, USA, and other lawyers.

Since the accused were not present at the hearing, nor had they appointed any counsel to represent them, the Tribunal appointed an amicus curiae (someone not a party to the case), to defend them; the defense team was headed by Jason Kay Kit Leon.

‘Sparks flew’ on the very first day of the hearing, says Cynthia McKinney (former US congresswoman, the Green party’s nominee for President).

Before the actual proceedings could begin, the defence counsel charged that Judge Niloufer Bhagwat would not be ‘fair’ as she had been one of the Judges at the Tokyo International Tribunal for War Crimes in Afghanistan (2004), and a prosecutor of George W. Bush at the People’s Tribunal on Iraq in Istanbul (2005).

In response, Francis Boyle argued that precedents exist at the International Court of Justice and the US Supreme Court, of judges rendering judgments ‘despite what might appear at first glance to be a conflict of interests.’ But Judge Bhagwat announced that she would recuse herself from Charge 1 deliberations; her decision was accepted and she left the Chambers. Judge Datuk Dr Zakaria Yatim too recused himself on objections made by the defence.

The defence’s next line of attack was that the Tribunal lacked the jurisdiction to consider the acts of the President and the Prime Minister. One anticipated by the prosecution which countered that, war crimes had been committed, that, by virtue of the Charter of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission it had jurisdiction to hear cases of war crimes. That, its proceedings were also inspired by previous precedents such as, the Tribunal on US War Crimes in Vietnam convened in Sweden and Denmark by philosophers Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre (1967), and the Tokyo Tribunal on Afghanistan.

Further, that international humanitarian law had developed in such a manner over the last fifty years so that ‘no head of state or nation can unilaterally renounce it.’ Nor, does the status of a head of state ‘constitute a defence.’

The Amicus Curiae entered a plea of not guilty on behalf of both the accused.

In his verdict, Chief judge Datuk Abdul Kadir Sulaiman stated, ‘the essence of legality is the principled, predictable, and consistent application of a single standard for the strong and the weak alike.’ But powerful states had selectively manipulated the law which undermined its legitimacy.

The invasion of Iraq was ‘an unlawful act of aggression and an international crime.’ It ‘cannot be justified under any reasonable interpretation of international law.’ The UN Security Council’s resolution 1441 ‘clearly does not authorise the use of military action to compel its compliance.’

Bush had contemplated attacking Iraq as far back as September 15, 2001, and had confided his intention to Blair – this is undisputable.  Both had directed air strikes against Iraq in 2002 without the sanction of the UN Security Council in order to weaken Iraq’s air defences, to prepare for the invasion of 2003. The Downing Street Memo (July 23, 2002) recorded a meeting between Blair and his intelligence officials. Blair had admitted this as much at the Chilcot inquiry on January 14, 2011 when he said that his attorney general Peter Goldsmith had advised him that a second Security Council resolution  was ‘necessary under international law to authorise the use of military force against Iraq.‘

What occurred in Iraq amounts to ‘mass murder.’ It also threatens the future of the UN and the international law of war. ‘The accused took the law into their own hands.’ They acted with ‘deceit and falsehood’, flagrantly violating the international law of war and peace.

Deceit and falsehoods were many for, Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Both Bush and Blair had admitted post-invasion that they knew intelligence reports on Iraq’s WMD were ‘unreliable.’

To bolster its arguments, the defence counsel mentioned Saddam Hussein’s brutality, his campaign of ethnic cleansing and use of chemical weapons against the Kurds and the Anfal campaign in 1988, but were unable to explain why US presidents Ronald Reagan and Bush senior had ‘sold Iraq chemical weapons and permitted their use.’

The defence also mentioned Al-Qaeda but there was ‘no credible evidence that Iraq had any connections with September 11, 2001 or with Al-Qaeda.’ Similarly, there was no evidence that Iraq was preparing ‘to invade or attack or threaten any nation.’

Iraq had been complying with UN inspections to disarm. The chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix had requested another 4 months, to which all UN Security Council members, except the US and UK, had agreed. In order to obtain a new resolution, the US had ‘forged documents to accuse Iraq of trying to purchase raw materials for WMD on the international market’, while the UK, in the absence of any substantial evidence ‘plagiarized from a student thesis and tried to pass off an out-of-date student essay as an authoritative intelligence report.’

The defence had argued that the situation in Iraq justified ‘humanitarian intervention.’ But official documents submitted by the defence were mostly from one agency of the US government, the US Agency for International Development (USAid), which, according to the the director of the Agency itself, was ‘filled with US undercover intelligence agents and propagandists.’

While the defence cited authority contending that the September 11 attacks demonstrated ‘a change in the nature of the threats confronting the international community’, the prosecution introduced evidence to show that Bush was planning an ‘invasion of Iraq as early as February 1998,’ that the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) mentioned the utility of a ‘new Pearl Harbor’ to galvanise public opinion. And, as the chief judge pointed out in his verdict, no evidence was introduced to establish a ‘planning or operational connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11 event’. On the contrary, it is quite probable that, as the prosecution had argued, 9/11 was used as a ‘pretext’ for the invasion of Iraq.

The verdict states, ‘Yet it is still unsettled, what the events of September 11, 2011 are all about.’

The defence attempted to conclude its proceedings by evoking the ‘emotionalism of the September 11 tragedy.’ It ‘changed things’, argued the defence counsel. ‘Those of us old enough to have lived through it, who saw it, who could understand it at the time … we knew instantly that the world would forever be a different place. In our hearts, we knew things would never be the same.’ But regrettably, instead of ‘forgiving’ the  perpetrators of 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo happened. ‘We are fallible human beings. We make mistakes.’

At this point the Judges interjected that a better defense would have been ‘temporary insanity.’ When the Defense team began playing a video of the planes hitting the Twin Towers, professor Boyle termed it a ‘continuation of the Bush administration’s propaganda campaign against Iraq.’

Since the charges against the two accused were proven ‘beyond reasonable doubt’, they were found guilty. These crimes, as the African news agency Mathaba points out, carry the death sentence in many jurisdictions (Bush and Blair Accused, November 21, 2011).

When the defence levelled the charge against Judge Bhagwat’s impartiality, Judge Alfred Webre noted that, although appropriate notice had been served on George W. Bush, he had failed to appear at various people’s tribunals which sought justice for those who had become victims as a result of his Presidential decisions. However, since president Bush had not failed to appear at a Vancouver dinner at which he collected a US$150,000 speaking fee, ‘perhaps the Tribunal should have offered [him] a sizeable speaking fee in order to [ensure] his attendance at the Tribunal.’

In an interview to Press TV, Francis Boyle explained that Bush and Blair have been ‘found guilty under the same law as applied to the Nazis after the end of World War II.’  [0:40/2:33]  They are both ‘international criminals [who are] guilty of Nuremberg crimes against peace and they should be prosecuted by any state in the world that gets hold of them.’ ‘We will continue our efforts to bring Bush, Blair to justice and put them in jail.

Boyle, by the way, has recently offered pro bono services to any member of Congress who will introduce a bill of impeachment against incumbent president Barack Obama. Citing specific cases which make Obama eligible for impeachment – the murder of US citizens, the war against Libya – he stressed that Obama had ‘gone far beyond Bush.’ While Bush had tried to justify his preventive war policy (which did violate the standards set by the Nuremberg Tribunal) by saying it was for the national defense, ‘Obama simply declares that if a nation is violating his sense of “values,” it is fair game.’ Prof. Francis Boyle Offers To Draft Bill To Impeach Obama, EIRNS press release, November 1, 2011).

The Tribunal recommended that the KLWCC file a report with the International Court of Crime against both under the Nuremberg principles, including reports of genocide and crimes against humanity. That, the names of both be entered into the Register of War Criminals and be publicised. That, the KLWCC publicise the Tribunal’s findings to all nations who are signatories of the Rome Statue, so that they can be prosecuted if they enter the jurisdiction of these nations. And, that the KLWCC should suggest the passage of a resolution in the UN General Assembly to end Iraq’s occupation and to transfer sovereignty back to the Iraqi people.

But, since the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal does not have any ‘formal enforcement power, as professor Glenn Greenwald points out, what use was the Tribunal? Bush and Blair both ‘ignored’ the summons. Every serious political and media elite in the US would ‘scoff’ at the Tribunal, for, in their view, nothing could be more ‘fringe and ludicrous’ than punishing Bush and Blair as war criminals. So, why bother to hold it?

If the principles of Nuremberg (1945-1949) — the trial and punishment of the major war criminals of the European Axis for having committed Crimes against Peace (planning, waging a war of aggression), War Crimes (violation of the laws or customs of war such as, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war, wanton destruction of cities, towns, villages), and Crimes against Humanity (murder, enslavement, extermination, deportation) – serves a ‘useful purpose’, then, so too does the Malaysian tribunal.

While McKinney thinks that the best thing to come out of the Tribunal was the need for conducting an ‘independent investigation of 9/11.’ As a matter of fact, when the Defence counsel had raised the issue of 9/11, Judge Webre had suggested that the Tribunal should next move on to allegations about 9/11 being a false flag operation, that ‘expert witnesses should be brought to testify before the Tribunal about the truth of the Bush adminstration’s explanation of what happened on that [day].’

As Bengalis are wont to say, kaan tanle matha ashey. Pull at the ear, along comes the head.

PIC 2

Datuk Abdul Kadir Sulaiman (centre) heading the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal yesterday. The other judges are (from left) Tunku Sofiah Jewa, Alfred L. Webre, Salleh Buang, Zakaria Yatim, Niloufer Bhagwat and Shad Saleem Faruqi. – ROSDAN WAHID/New Straits Times http://www.nst.com.my/local/general/war-crime-hearing-against-bush-blair-begins-1.8353#ixzz1ehl3yetn

Published in New Age, Monday November 28, 2011

Conspiracy theory, or global power structure?

By rahnuma ahmed

Speculation about the Bilderberg Group runs rife at both ends of the political spectrum – ‘Bilderberg meetings are a corporate-globalist scheme planning to move the planet toward an oligarchic new world order.’ ‘The Republican Party (US) is secretly controlled by elitist intellectuals who are dominated by the Bilderberg Group, their internationalist policies will pave the way for world communism.’ ‘It is a secret cabal that runs the world.’ ‘Presidents and prime ministers are selected by the Bilderberg.’

It is secret. It is conspiratorial. It runs the world.

Thierry Meyssan of the Voltaire Network International, a web of non-aligned press groups dedicated to the analysis of international relations, blames ‘journalistic hacks’ (he names Alex Jones and Jim Tucker) for making millions of people around the world believe that the Bilderberg Group is not only a secret conspiratorial group that runs the world, but selects presidents and prime ministers so that they can execute the Group’s political and economic agenda (What you don’t know about the Bilderberg Group, May 9, 2011).

Whereas, the Bilderberger Conference is actually ‘nothing more than a  propaganda organisation to prop up and give legitimacy to NATO’ (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation).

But the comfort some readers may hastily derive from reading that it is ‘nothing more than a propaganda organisation’, that the Bilderberg Group is not — contrary to the idea developed by ‘creative journalists’ — working to forge a ‘secret World Government’, will hardly be sustained after reading what Meyssan goes on to write: ‘It is in fact much more serious and dangerous, because it is NATO which aims to be the secret World Government – guaranteeing the international status quo and maintaining U.S. influence.’

Meyssan claims to have been the only journalist who has had access to their archives, to all records for the period 1954-1966, many later day documents as well, in addition to having had the benefit of speaking to a former participant whom he had known for long. Unlike those journalists, who, he says, have helped to construct a stereotypical image of the Bilderberg – a secret cabal, new world order — popular in many western activist circles.

Meyssan argues that the idea of the Bilderberg Group conspiring to create ‘a mysterious future World Government’ is misleading. It serves to mask their true function and identity, i.e., lobbying for NATO’s interests which is served by setting up a secret world government to maintain the international status quo and US influence.

G. William Domhoff, professor of Psychology and Sociology at the University of California, author, Who Rules America. Power, Politics and Social Change (1967), Who Rules America Now? (1983), when asked about the difference between ‘conspiracism’ and criticism of the status quo based on ‘power structure research’, speaks of things worth dwelling on (New Internationalist, interview with Chip Berlet, September 2004).

Elites work hard to develop consensus and this can be studied in detail ‘through such publicly observable organizations as corporate boards and the policy-planning network’ which are ‘reported in the media in at least a halfway accurate manner.’ This is the opposite of ‘a small, secretive, illegitimate conspiracy because this large group called the power elite is known to the public’. It ‘clearly states its aims (profit, profit, and more profit, and less government), publishes its policy suggestions, and is seen as legitimate by a great majority of the public.’

For the last hundred years, elites in the United States and other democracies have agreed that the manner for settling issues on which they cannot arrive at a consensus is through elections, these are ‘also public and legitimate.’ They can be observed by researchers, campaign funds can be scrutinised, these are reported in the media. Rival elites have in effect agreed to not be violent and war with each other, the last time the American elites did so was during the bloody Civil War. Historically speaking, elites have come to ‘settlements’ or ‘pacts’ that lead to elections, but this, says Domhoff, is not ‘through conspiring…but through sitting down to talk in frustration and exhaustion, usually after fighting each other to a draw over decades.’

Plotting and planning to advance one’s own interest is something we all do in everyday life, he says. Governments discuss and plan about issues which their populace know nothing about, these are often discovered by the media or elite opponents, leading sometimes to prosecutions. But these are not conspiracies. The problem with conspiracy theorists is that they take these ‘everyday machinations as evidence for some grand conspiracy at the societal and historical levels.’

Contrary to conspiracy theories, power structure research studies ‘visible institutions, take[s] most of what elites say as statements of their values and intentions, and recognize[s] that elites sometimes have to compromise, and sometimes lose.’  Conspiracists allege ‘behind the scenes groups.’ They think that everything elites say is a ‘trick’. Conspiracy theories can never be falsified (‘Its proponents always find a way to claim the elite really won’). Conspiracism is a disaster for progressive people, says Domhoff, because it leads to ‘cynicism’ and ‘convoluted thinking’. To hopelessness, even though conspirators are denounced.

I think Domhoff’s words help contextualise what the British Labour politician Denis Healey, secretary of state for defence (1964-1970), chancellor of the exchequer (1974-1979), a member of the Bilderberg Steering Committee for 30 years, said when asked about the Bilderberg:

‘To say we were striving for a one-world government is exaggerated, but not wholly unfair. Those of us in Bilderberg felt we couldn’t go on forever fighting one another for nothing and killing people and rendering millions homeless. So we felt that a single community throughout the world would be a good thing… Bilderberg is a way of bringing together politicians, industrialists, financiers and journalists. Politics should involve people who aren’t politicians. We make a point of getting along younger politicians who are obviously rising, to bring them together with financiers and industrialists who offer them wise words. It increases the chance of having a sensible global policy.’ (Jon Ronson, Who pulls the strings? (part 2), The Guardian, 10 March 2001).

It should be obvious that ‘those of us in Bilderberg’ excludes the working class. The marginalised. People of the Third World. In other words, the majority of the world’s people. Innumerable numbers killed. Millions made homeless.

The original intention of the Bilderberg Group was ‘to link governments and economies in Europe and North America amid the Cold War.’ Top European elites worked with American elites in the 1950s to form the Group in ‘an effort to bring together the most influential people from both sides of the Atlantic to advance the cause of ‘Atlanticism’ and ‘globalism” (Andrew Gavin Marshall, Bilderberg 2011: The Rockefeller World Order and the ‘High Priests of Globalization’,  Global Research, June 16, 2011).

A bringing together that Daniel Estulin, who has investigated and researched the Group for nearly two decades (author, The True Story of the Bilderberg Club, new edition 2009), calls, the creation of ‘an Aristocracy of purpose between Europe and the United States.’  (Stephen Lendman, A Review of Daniel Estulin’s Book, Global Research, June 1, 2009). http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13808 To reach consensus to rule the world on matters of policy, economics, and overall strategy. NATO was essential to implement these plans, to ensure ‘perpetual war and nuclear blackmail’ as, and when, necessary. And, ‘to proceed to loot the planet, achieve fabulous wealth and power, and crush all challengers’ in order to maintain and perpetuate their wealth and power.

The first Bilderberg meeting, held in 1954, was financed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Its European founders included Joseph Retinger, political aide to general Sikorski, and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands. The latter had been a member of the Nazi Party until 1934; he had also worked for the German industrial giant, I. G. Farben, the maker of Zyklon B, the gas used in concentration camps to exterminate Jews. The American founders of the Bilderberg Group included billionaire David Rockefeller, Dean Rusk (top official with the Council on Foreign Relations, the CFR, Rusk was also the head of the Rockefeller Foundation), Joseph Johnson (another CFR leader, then head of the Carnegie Endowment), and John J. McCloy (another top CFR leader, chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank, also, chairman of the Board of the Ford Foundation).

It is no mere coincidence, writes Andrew Marshall,  that the major American foundations were so ‘pivotal’ in the origins of the Group.

Retinger’s main aim, says Daniel Estulin, was to unite the world in peace. ‘His peace dividend was to be under the control of supranational, powerful organisations. He believed that such organisations would be immune from short-term ideological conflicts erupting between governments. To Retinger, it was insignificant what dominated the economic ideology of a country. He believed these differences could be brought into line by powerful multinational organisations dictating and applying powerful economic and military policies, thereby creating a union and a bond between the nations.’ (Interview by Geoff Matthews, Kingston Eye Opener November-December 2005).

Prince Bernhard, maintains Estulin, was the ‘poster boy,’ a pretty face and facade.

The Bilderberg is the world’s ‘most exclusive club’, no one can buy their way in. Only the Group’s Steering Committee decides who to invite. According to the Committee’s rules:  ‘the invited guests must come alone; no wives, girlfriends, husbands or boyfriends. Personal assistants (meaning security, bodyguards, CIA or other secret service protectors) cannot attend the conference and must eat in a separate hall. (Also) The guests are explicitly forbidden from giving interviews to journalists’ or reveal anything that goes on in meetings. The overall security, aimed at not letting outsiders intrude, is provided by host governments. Membership consists of those who attend annually — ‘around 80 of the world’s most powerful’ — and others, who are invited occasionally because they are knowledgeable or involved in topics that are relevant. ‘Those most valued are asked back, and some first-timers are chosen for their possible later usefulness.’  The membership represents a ‘who’s who of world power elites, mostly from America, Canada, and Western Europe with familiar names like David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Bill Clinton, Gordon Brown, Angela Merkel, Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, Lloyd Blankfein, George Soros, Donald Rumsfeld, Rupert Murdoch, other heads of state, influential senators, congressmen and parliamentarians, Pentagon and NATO brass, members of European royalty, selected media figures, and invited others – some quietly by some accounts like Barack Obama and many of his top officials.’

I looked up Bilderberg’s official website and discovered that since its inception in 1954, the number of annual meetings held till now total 59: in NATO member countries: United States 9, Canada  5, France 5, W. Germany/FRG 5, United Kingdom 5, Italy 4, Turkey 3, Belgium 2, Denmark 2, Greece 2, Spain  2. Netherlands 1, Norway 1, Portugal 1. And, in non-NATO countries: Switzerland 5, Sweden 4, Austria 2, Finland 1.

(Bilderberg meetings were held twice a year in 1955 and 1957, none in 1976).

In the more-than-half a century since the ‘most powerful men in the world’ had met in Oosterbeek, Netherlands in 1954 to ‘debate the future of the world’, the Bilderberg Group has become, ‘a shadow world government’, says Estulin. One that seeks to supplant individual nation-state sovereignty with an all-powerful global government, corporate controlled, and check-mated by military enforcement. Highly undemocratic, to say the least.

The unification of Europe is an important part of the globalisation/global power structure’s  story. As the head of Fiat Giovanni Agnelli put it, ‘European integration is our goal and where the politicians have failed, we, the old world elite, intend to succeed.’ Corroborated by George McGhee, former US ambassador to Germany, who said, ‘the Treaty of Rome, which brought the Common Market into being was nurtured at the Bilderberg meetings.’

It is a story which deserves to be told separately, in great detail, which means I cannot conclude today as promised. Hopefully, New Age will oblige.

[Concluding part to be published tomorrow]

Published in New Age, Tuesday, November 22, 2011

This is a brushed-up, typos-corrected version

Introducing the Bilderberg Club

Last year, when I’d asked Nurul Kabir if he knew that America’s central bank, the Federal Reserve,  was privately-owned (New Age, November 14, 2011),  I’d slipped in a mention of the Bilderberg Club as well. Have you heard of it? No, he replied.

The same reply from another journalist friend, who works for one of the largest-circulation Bangla newspapers, when I met him recently. ‘The Bilderberg Club, does that ring a bell?’ ‘Uh-uh,’ accompanied by a puzzled look on his face.

Not surprising given that the Club, also known as the Bilderberg Group, has been excessively secretive about its existence. In the more than fifty years of their meetings, writes investigative journalist Daniel Estulin — who has relentlessly hunted their secret meeting places for nearly the last two decades, has gained access to insider information of what goes on ‘behind closed doors,’ has photographed those who have attended their annual conferences, and divulged it all in his book The True Story of the Bilderberg Club (2007) — the ‘press has never been allowed to attend, no statements have ever been released on the attendees’ conclusions, nor has any agenda for a Bilderberg meeting been made public.’

Estulin writes in the introduction to the opening paragraph of his book, ‘In 1954, the most powerful men in the world met for the first time under the auspices of the Dutch royal crown and the Rockefeller family at the luxurious Hotel Bilderberg in the small Dutch town of Oosterbeck. For an entire weekend, they debated the future of the world. When it was over, they decided to meet once every year to exchange ideas and analyze international affairs. They named themselves the Bilderberg Group. Since then, they have gathered yearly in a luxurious hotel somewhere in the world to try to decide the future of humanity. Among the select members of this club are Bill Clinton, Paul Wolfowitz, Henry Kissinger, David Rockefeller, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Tony Blair and many other heads of government, businessmen, politicians, bankers and journalists from all over the world.’

But investigations carried out by the alternative media – accompanied by a rising distrust in mainstream western media – fuelled by activist protests, and by anti-Bilderberg politicians, has increased public curiosity and alarm in recent years. Decades of secrecy have given way. The lid secured by the ‘media blackout’ has popped open.

Last year the Bilderberg finally admitted its existence for the first time. An official website was created, but although the information offered is paltry (mostly on membership, its Steering Committee, and its conference), this too, would not have been forthcoming, says Andrew Gavin Marshall, if alternative media coverage and protests had not occurred (RT interview, June 9, 2011).

One such protest was recently voiced by Gerald Batten, member of the European Parliament, at Strasbourg on September 12, ‘The Commission have recently replied to my written question confirming that commissioners [Joaquin] Almunia [vice-president of the European Commission] and [Neelie] Kroes [vice-president of the European Commission] attended the Bilderberg meeting in St Moritz in June [2011]. The Commission cannot tell me the details of what was discussed but they assure me that the Bilderberg meetings do not take decisions. If Bilderberg meetings are just talking shops why do the most important and powerful figures from around the world including George Osborne the Chancellor of the Exchequer bother to attend? And what other summit of world leaders in politics, finance and business would go completely unreported in the mainstream media such as the BBC? It is important not to reach the conclusion that the non-reporting of these events is anything other than a conspiracy between the organisers and the media. It merely confirms the belief of many that the hidden agenda and purpose of the Bilderberg group is to bring about undemocratic world government. Its a disgrace that the European Commission is colluding in that.’ (Vigilant Citizen, September 21, 2011).

The online BBC news magazine did feature an article, but it is regarded by Bilderberg watchers as being a ‘disinformation’ piece. Blogger Vigilant Citizen points out, in the BBC’s article titled ‘Bilderberg mystery: Why do people believe in cabals?’ (June 8, 2011) the labels ‘conspiracy theorist’ and ‘anti-semitism’ are repeatedly used. Those who question Bilderberg are associated with the Hamas, with David Icke’s ‘reptilian shape-shifters.’ They are presented as being believers in ‘wacky cabals’ who have psychological problems, who don’t even ‘trust their neighbours’ let alone trust the government (and are to boot, irrational, unscientific and prone to fantasising).

But, as Keelan Balderson points out, wouldn’t it have been more appropriate for the BBC, famed for ‘world-renowned journalists’, to get its reporters on the ground? To get them to do some reporting? (WideShut, June 11, 2011).  The UK press was ‘deadly silent’ over this year’s Bilderberg conference except for blog reports on the back pages of The Guardian’s website.

The world-renowned BBC journalists, I think, could possibly have chosen to raise questions about why, at Bilderberg’s Baden meeting (Germany) in 1991, David Rockefeller had said: ‘We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.’

If one were to take Rockefeller at his word, would one then be mistaken to assume that the media greats who participated ever so ‘discreetly’ for ‘almost forty years’, did so as members of the ‘cabal’?

But is there an academic blackout too, one that parallels the media blackout, for, I’d asked three other friends as well, one, a former academic with a masters from the Fletcher School of International Affairs, Tufts university, USA. ‘What’s it called, B-i-l-d-e-r-berg? No, I’ve never come across it.’ Neither had another, who teaches international relations at Dhaka university, and has a doctorate degree from a western university. Nor the third, an economics professor, kind enough to congratulate me on the Fed Reserve column. I’d been unable to resist asking him whether he knew of the Bilderberg Group, only to hear a crisp `no.’

But why? What is taught, and not-taught, at our universities, but hey no, I correct myself, maybe I should be asking what is taught, and not-taught, at American universities, since much of the curriculum design and reading materials here, is imported from the US (the UK too, but I’ll come to the Bilderberg Group and British academia later). I turn to the American educational system, keen to find out the influence of foundations.

The combined challenges facing capitalists at the turn of the 20^th century was to ‘undermine socialism’ and meet the ‘new technological needs of capitalism.’ Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, two of the most powerful capitalists of the day established giant philanthropic foundations ‘designed to impose order on the chaotic universe of American higher education.’ By the end of the third decade, the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundation had in essence achieved the ‘standardisation of American universities and colleges.’ Educational gifts received an all time high of 79% of overall philanthropy in the US. The Ford Foundation was established later (1936). Under the veneer of ‘social responsibility’, they worked combinedly to use the wealth and power derived from enormous surpluses produced in the economy to ‘affect and control the direction of society.‘ (Michael Barker, On Corporate Power. Who Owns American Universities? Ceasefire, September 15, 2011).

In the 1950s, ‘philanthropic’ donations to universities gave way to ‘corporate’ donations when a law existing in many states which decreed that it was illegal for corporations, not individual persons, to give money to universities and colleges, was overturned by a Superior Court judge.

Shortly after this decision, the General Education Board, the Sloan Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation and the Ford Foundation ‘cooperated to build what swiftly emerged as the leading corporate fund-raising and research organization for higher education’, CFAE, or the Council for Financial Aid to Education.’

Later re-named the Council for Aid to Education (CAE), its board of trustees includes a mix of ‘foundation and business elites’, with two members connected to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), thrown in as well.

As America’s fortunes changed, as the United States became the ‘dominant hegemonic power in the world’ after World War II, the education of its technocratic and political elite was re-aligned accordingly, as befitted its new global role, one in which America had to be transformed from an ‘isolationist’ society to a ‘globalist’ society. The Rockefeller Foundation’s role in this regard was ‘central.’ (An Education for Empire: The Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Ford Foundations in the Construction of Knowledge, October 18, 2011).

But how does the ‘influence’ of these foundations work out at the ground-level? How is control exercised? Is ‘control’ an appropriate term at all to characterise the relationship between the funders and what is taught in the higher education institutions? Maybe not, I think, as I come across a perceptive comment of Harold Laski’s, a British political theorist and economist, made in 1930: ‘[T]he foundations do not control, simply because, in the simple and direct sense of the word, there is no need for them to do so. They have only to indicate the immediate direction of their minds for the whole university world to discover that it always meant to gravitate swiftly to that angle of the intellectual compass.’

Whole university worlds here too, gravitating toward a particular angle of the intellectual compass determined elsewhere? What good is the ‘autonomy’ then that public universities had fought for so hard during the liberation struggle, and achieved, post-1971, in the form of parliamentary acts?

I turn to the UK, to an article by Michael Peters, sociologist at Leeds university, which is still regarded as one of the best pieces on the Bilderberg. Peters raises the question, ‘why [are] certain topics rather than others…deemed worthy of investigation[?]‘ Part of the problem, he says, is a conceptual one that afflicts British academics in general who, despite the tradition of empiricism, treat ‘political power by means of abstract concepts’ instead of empirical information concerning the ‘actions of determinate individuals and groups.’ Part of the problem has to do with Marxist academics who assume that ‘the capitalist class is always divided into competing fractions,’ that these fractions have ‘no mechanisms for co-ordination other than the state.’ But, there is the larger problem of academic silence. Of some topics not being investigated. 

Not even by academics who, says Peters, flatteringly view themselves as ‘critical’ intellectuals, ‘independent from or even determinedly opposed to the established systems of power in society, willing to face personal or professional risks in the pursuit of truth.’

These academics, says Peters, are better described as ‘lambs.’

Published in New Age, Monday, November 21, 2011

By rahnuma ahmed

It is not only the American corporate media which keeps the lid on the Federal Reserve System — since, contrary to what most  Americans believe, it is `not federal’, has `no reserve’, is `not even a bank’ but actually a banking cartel which serves and furthers the interests of the wealthiest men in the world – American universities too play their role. As Stephen Lendman points out, his MBA curriculum 46 years ago, had `left out the most important parts of the story and never hinted at anything sinister about how the banking system works in fact’ (The Federal Reserve, Z Magazine, June 29, 2006).

A similar situation seemingly prevails in the UK, for, when I asked a relative who teaches business and finance at a British university about who owns the Bank of England, I was told, its nationalised. Its a public organisation wholly-owned by the government.  Corroborating the official storyline secured in place by the powers-that-be, reflected in the Bank’s website:  ’As a public organisation, wholly-owned by Government, and with a significant public policy role, the Bank is accountable to Parliament.’

But this account – unfailingly subscribed to by most Brits, `You ask the question, Who Owns The Bank Of England? to one thousand Britons, and I kid you not, all of them will say that it is owned by the Government’ (The Tap Blog, February 27, 2010) – glosses over actualities. For instance, the setting up of  a wholly owned subsidiary called Bank of Nominees Limited (BOEN), a private limited company, by the Bank of England in 1977, which was granted an exemption from disclosing its shareholders. ‘It was considered undesirable that the disclosure requirements should apply to certain categories of shareholders.’ This exemption is separate to the fact that the Bank of England is also protected by its Royal Charter status, and the Official Secrets Act. To put it briefly, members of the British public are ‘not allowed to know who the shareholders are who own the company which carries out Central Banking in the UK.’

Obviously, the public’s access to such basic information in the mother of parliamentary democracies, is `undesirable.’ What was it George Orwell had said? All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

There are other powerful banks as well, these include the Bank of Japan, and the European Central Bank (consisting of the 12 European countries which adopted the singe euro currency in 1999). But the mother of these powerful central banks which serve and further the interests of the wealthiest men in the world, is a little-known bank — ‘a bank never heard of’ — the Bank of International Settlements (BIS). Founded in 1930, based in Basle, Switzerland, it is `the central banker to its member central banks.’ The BIS and the dominant central banks, writes Lendman, wield their influence in a `cartel-like alliance with each other to assure they all benefit more than they otherwise would without such a cozy arrangement’ (The Federal Reserve, June 29, 2006).

The `concentration of financial power into the hands of a small group of powerful banking and investment firms on Wall Street’ through the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 (G. Edward Griffin, author of The Creature From Jekyll Island, interview, April 2, 2004) was preceded by longer term historical changes which ‘switched’ money from wealth to debt. As monetary researchers at Discover the Secret of Our Money System blog explain, the real issue is not gold and silver vs. paper, commodity money vs. fiat money. The real issue is wealth money vs. debt money. It is honesty vs. fraud. A close look at the trail of United States money reveals how previous notions and practices of gold and silver commodity money which was `put into circulation as a wealth to the people, by the people’ was later replaced by ones of `monetized debt, put into circulation by the banks, as interest bearing debts to the people, for the personal profit of bankowners.’ These, are current.

Gold and silver had worked earlier, say Byron Dale, Gregory Soderberg and Thomas Hedin,  because people had produced the gold and silver, a raw resource of the earth, through their labour. It was a wealth to `ourselves’, the people, it was spent into circulation as a benefit to all of society, there was no debt attached to it. But, it was not the depositing of gold and silver coins at the Treasury for the sake of convenience, in lieu of Treasury notes (paper money), that signalled the shift because there was still `good, honest, wealth money with no debt, no excessive profit, nor excessive purchasing power to anyone.’

It was the depositing of gold and silver coins in a fractional reserve bank, which clinched the switch: `The bank held the coins as a reserve and expanded the money supply by making new loans equal to 10 times the face value of the coins deposited.’ Wealth switched to debt, as all new money was formed not by creating wealth, but by creating debt.

What might have seemed a good idea to many at the outset, leading to all round benefits, banks get more profits, people get quicker and easier loans, more capital is available for commerce, for production, increasingly turns into a nightmare as `sooner or later, more and more people can not make their loan repayments.’ As increasingly, what Thomas Jefferson foresaw — when banks are allowed to control the issuance of their currency the American people are gradually deprived of all property, until their children one day wake up homeless — becomes a reality.

Another Founding Father, James Madison, a main draftor of the US Constitution, had  called bankers ‘Money Changers,’ a reference to the Bible which says Jesus twice drove the Money Changers from the Temple in Jerusalem two thousand years ago. ‘History records that the Money Changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance.’

The US Congress and the President’s agreement to privatise the nation’s money system, says Lendman, to relinquish what should have remained the government’s exclusive power led to the creation of the Federal Reserve System, an all-powerful privately owned banking cartel which has the right to print money in any amount, to control its supply and price. To ‘benefit hugely by loaning it out for a profit including to the government itself that must pay interest on the money it should never have to if it simply printed its own.’

The Federal Reserve Act was possibly, and still is, illegal as Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution – the inviolable law of the land — states that the Congress shall have the power to coin (create) money and regulate the value thereof. The US Supreme Court in 1935 ruled that the Congress `cannot constitutionally delegate its power to another group or body.’

The American public is harmed in several ways because of the Fed, points out Lendman. Through the invisible tax of inflation: newly-created money entering the system dilutes the purchasing power, it reduces the value of dollars already present. The dollar’s weakness since 2002 is possibly the result of excessive printing to fund the Bush administration’s `endless wars and reckless tax cuts for the rich.’ Through the banking cartel’s practice of usury, its power to artificially move rates up or down to any level it chooses.  Through the taxes the public must pay, `to cover the interest on the huge national debt’, well over $8.4 trillion, which has accumulated from the money the Fed printed and loaned to the government. Through the cartel getting the public to bail out the system with more of its tax dollars. Through — contrary to what the public had been fed (pun intended) about the Fed, that it would stabilise the economy, smooth out the business cycle, maintain sustainable growth, keep prices steady, benefit all – the crashes since its creation in 1913, `with them in charge’ are: 1921, 1929, the Great Depression years, recessions of 1953, 1957, 1969, 1975, 1981, 1990 and 2001.

The manner in which the Fed and European central banks operate to impoverish their own people, bears parallels to how the World Bank and the IMF does to `the rest’, but that is another story.

Controversy over whether the United States official gold reserves (over 4,500 metric tons) actually exist in the United States Bullion Depository, widely known as Fort Knox, or have been spirited away, have raged over the past decades. Edith Roosevelt, the grand-daughter of president Theodore Roosevelt is often quoted by many, ‘Allegations of missing gold from our Fort Knox vaults are being widely discussed in European circles. But what is puzzling is that the Administration is not hastening to demonstrate conclusively that there is no cause for concern over our gold treasure – if indeed it is in a position to do so.’

These concerns were revived in 2009 when rumours spread virally of tungsten i.e., fake gold bars of Fort Knox origin, having been discovered in Hong Kong. Informed sources say, hours after the scam was identified, Chinese officials caught the perpetrators. And reportedly uncovered, during the Clinton administration ‘between 1.3 and 1.5 million 400 oz tungsten blanks were allegedly manufactured by a very high-end, sophisticated refiner in the USA [more than 16 thousand metric tonnes].  Subsequently, 640,000 of these tungsten blanks received their gold plating and WERE shipped to Ft. Knox and remain there to this day.’ Stock market analyst Robert Prechter claims to know people who have ‘copies of the original shipping docs with dates and exact weights of ‘tungsten’ bars shipped to Ft. Knox’ (Market Oracle, November 12, 2009).

The Fort Knox gold story got murkier middle of this year, when rumors circulated that a report prepared by the Federal Security Service for the Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin says, the former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was charged and jailed for sex crimes in the US on May 14 because he had discovered that all of the gold held at Fort Knox was `missing and/or unaccounted’ for. This was reported in the EU Times, May 31, 2011 (nothing to do with the European Union by the way, the online publication does not enjoy credibility with many, according to wiki_rational, it is ‘xenophobic,’ ‘anti-semitic,’ ‘racist’), and I have no means at my disposal of verifying whether the Federal Security Service had actually reported any such thing to the Russian prime minister. However, other news items reported in the feature are verifiably true. That Putin had posted a defense of Strauss-Kahn on the Kremlin’s official website, alleging that he was the victim of a US conspiracy, ‘It’s hard for me to evaluate the hidden political motives but I cannot believe that it looks the way it was initially introduced. It doesn’t sit right in my head.’ That Ron Paul, a top Congressman and 2012 Republican presidential candidate (of Libertarian views) is worried that the Fort Knox gold is gone. That, when directly asked by reporters, he had replied, ‘I think it is a possibility.’

With the US Treasury’s debt to China having reached the $1.2 trillion mark, with the largest creditor of the world’s superpower having advised the latter to ‘live within its means’ (Huffington Post, August 6, 2011), the US targets China in classic warfare fashion: encirclement, seige, more or less clandestine support for internal disorder (Global Research, November 18, 2010).

As sounds of `End the Fed‘ voiced by Occupy Wall Street-ers reverberate across the world, as I ponder Madison’s Biblical reference to the Money Changers, I come across a recent interview of Eric Walberg, author, Post-modern Imperialism. Walberg, who dislikes slots and -isms, who makes use of Marx, who describes himself as being `a freelance monotheist’ (Eric Walberg and Jonathan Reynolds, Global Research, November 10, 2011), suggests something with which I would like to end my two-part series:

‘The Judaic prophets, followed by Jesus and Muhammad, and the nineteenth century secular prophet of revolution Marx, rejected usury and interest, as representing ill-gotten gain, with good reason. Marx condemned this mode of extraction of surplus as the highest form of fetishism, based on private property and exploitation of labor. They all rejected this exploitation on a moral basis as unjust, insisting that morality be embedded in the economy, a principle which was abandoned when capitalism took hold. While Judaism and Christianity adapted, Islam did not.

‘Interest, and today’s money based on US military might alone, are the root cause not only of the current world financial crisis, but, as a corollary to Rothschild’s dictum ['Give me control of a nations money supply and I care not who makes its laws']… and Clausewitz’s dictum [Politics is the womb in which war develops], the primary instrument facilitating (and benefiting from) the wars in the Middle East and Central Asia, and the world political crisis.’

Whether believers and secularists can unite to fight this battle, is anyone’s guess.

Published in New Age, Tuesday, November 15, 2011

By rahnuma ahmed

“I know you are very busy, but you must make time. I have something very important to tell you,” I insisted.

Later, sitting in Nurul Kabir’s office, I asked, did you know that the American Federal Reserve Bank is privately-owned?

Wha-at? No! How?

I spilled the beans: the Fed (as its known for short), America’s central bank, is actually not a central bank, its not government-owned, its actually a banking cartel, the American government doesn’t create, doesn’t print money, this banking cartel does it, and the US government is indebted to it, and Americans are taxed to pay off the interest to this cartel, and the interest is just huge, a staggering amount in trillions of dollars, talk of shudkhors (usurers), its an unbelievable scam, American people generally don’t know about it, the media doesn’t talk about it, it’s a huge big cover-up… I went on excitedly till I ran out of words.

A long pause, then I reeled off the names of some leftists, friends we have in common, and asked Kabir, do you think our anti-imperialist friends, very critical of American capitalism, and for good reasons too, know this? The real story?

No, came the immediate reply. Since I didn’t, I’m sure they don’t either. Oooh, how conceited, I yelped, as I took a long sip of tea, which had gone cold as I gabbled. We laughed, and I moved on to describe how I had come across this extraordinary tale.

It was last year, when I had been researching for my `Weaponisation of Weather’ series (Parts I-IX, New Age, February 1, 2010 to April 1, 2010).

I hadn’t gotten around to writing about this most macabre of oddities — a privately-owned central bank — earlier, but as I do so now, I think, what better time than when the Occupy Wall Street Movement spreads across America, when we are reminded by bloggers and activists, that Wall Street and the Federal Reserve System are but two sides of the same coin (`Occupy Wall Street and Occupy the Fed Are Two Sides of the Same Coin’ by Washington’s Blog, October 10, 2011). When slogans are raised, to `End the Fed’.

One of the best books on the Federal Reserve System is by G. Edward Griffin, author of The Creature From Jekyll Island (1994), who says he deliberately chose the title to `catch people’s attention and make them wonder’ whether it was `a sequel to Jurassic Park’ (Interview with G. Edward Griffin, by Victor Thorn and Lisa Guliani, Wing spotlight, April 2, 2004).

But Jekyll Island is a real island, off the coast of Georgia, not the former Soviet Union’s Georgia, but the United States’ southeastern state of Georgia, the `last of the orginal Thirteen Colonies’ which, as American history books inform us, was restored to the Union, in July 1870.

The Federal Reserve System was created on that island in 1910. Under conditions of `extreme secrecy.’ It was this, and the fact that it was not created in Washington, D.C., in `some kind of a committee room’ which you would expect believing it to be `a government agency of some kind’ that made Griffin suspicious. ‘I realized that this was strange.’

To add fuel to fire, Griffin came to learn that in those days the island was privately owned by a small group of billionaires from New York City, people like J. P. Morgan, William Rockefeller, and their business associates. It was a private social club called The Jekyll Island Club, where the families of these very wealthy people went to spend the cold winter months, away from New York, to beautiful cottages, still well-preserved.

`I can assure you,’ says Griffin, `that very few wars of history were plotted under greater conditions of secrecy than this meeting…when something’s done in secret, there’s usually something to hide.’

Why this extreme secrecy? What were they trying to hide from public view? To understand that, one needs to get an idea of the historical context. The Federal Reserve, goes on Griffin, was offered to the voters in 1913, the year it was actually passed into law, as a solution to a problem. In those days,  Americans were deeply concerned about the `concentration of financial power into the hands of a small group of powerful banking and investment firms on Wall Street.’  Such conglomerations were referred to as the `money trust,’ squarely condemned in editorials.

Warned by men considered its founding fathers as well, for, Thomas Jefferson had said, ‘I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow the banks to control the issuance of their currency, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property, until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered’ (from native Americans whom they genocided, but lets leave that aside for the moment).

People were aware that too much power was concentrated into the hands of a few people, and were demanding legislation to `break the grip of the money trust.’ The Federal Reserve Act was offered as a solution to this problem. The first thing that those who attended the meeting were trying to hide was that the Federal Reserve System was written by the Money Trust, that the `fox was building[ing] the hen-house and install[ing] the security system.’

Those who attended the meeting were the `epitome of the money trust.’ They were literally the `wealthiest men in the world.’ According to estimates provided by writers of the time, `these people either controlled directly or indirectly through the banking firms that they represented, approximately one-fourth of the wealth of the entire world.’

Those present at the meeting represented the J. P. Morgan dynasty, the Rockefeller dynasty, Kuhn Loeb & Company, the Rothschilds from Europe, and the Warburgs from Germany and the Netherlands. They created the Federal Reserve System, ‘supposedly, to break the grip of the money trust.’

The extremely secretive meeting, and the consequent agreement, marked a major change. Prior to that, these financial elites were `spilling blood all over the battlefield in New York and Paris and London’ as they struggled for dominance in world markets. But, at the turn of the century, they decided that `since they were at the top of the heap, they didn’t want anymore competition.’ They decided to share the market instead, as `they were looking for new ways’ and settled on forming monopolies and cartels, to go into joint ventures with competing firms so that they would no longer need to compete on price or markets, patents and processes.

The Federal Reserve is a cartel, its a banking cartel `no different than the banana cartel, the oil cartel, or any other.’ Its a banking cartel which means its a partnership between the government and the private banks. The Federal Reserve, as a banking cartel, went into partnership with the federal government because `only governments can enforce the cartel agreements.’ Without the government’s agreement in a cartel, `there’s no way for the cartel members to make sure that the other members stick with the agreement.’

Paul Warburg, born in Germany and a naturalised American citizen, a front man for the Rothschild family, `masterminded’ the Federal Reserve, having had more experience with the central banking mechanism.

The legislation was `shepherded through a carefully prepared Congressional Conference Committee’ which was scheduled to meet between 1:30-4:30 am, `when most members of Congress were asleep’ on December 22, 1913 (Stephen Lendman, The Federal Reserve, June 29, 2006). The Act was voted on the next day, when many members had left for Christmas holidays. Those who had stayed behind, hadn’t had the time to read it, or to learn of its contents. It was signed into law by president Woodrow Wilson who later admitted ‘I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is now controlled by its system of credit. We are no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and by vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men’ (1919).

It is commonly believed that the Federal Reserve System is a `function of government.’ That, it is subject to its control. It is often referred to as `a quasi-governmental, decentralised central bank. All false, says Lendman.

In reality it is ‘a privately held and operated cartel made to look like the government is in charge.’ Being headquartered in Washington, in a formidable and impressive-looking building, is part of the `subterfuge.’ The Fed is composed of a Board of Governors in Washington and 12 regional banks in major cities; it includes many and various member banks including all national banks, which are required to be part of the Fed system. The Federal Reserve began operation in November 1914, a year after the Congressional Act, and was `mandated by law to have the greatest power of any institution in the country – the power to create and control the nation’s money supply.’

The Federal Reserve Banks of each region, according to the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, are owned by the member banks in it. More subterfuge, as these Fed banks are `privately owned corporations that make a great effort to hide the fact that they, in fact, own what the public largely thinks is part of the public treasury and government.’

The American public, writes Lendman, would be upset if they knew that the Fed Reserve has, like any other business, stockholders who are paid 6% risk free interest every year on their equity holdings. More so, if they knew that some of the owners are powerful foreign investors from the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Italy.

In 1913, the five primary forces were the Morgans, Rockefellers, Rothschilds, Warburgs and Kuhn-Loeb. When asked, which are the dominant forces in the banking industry now, people who really pull the strings of the rest of the world, Griffin replied, `pretty much the same except for one shift.’ In 1913, J. P. Morgan, or the House of Morgans, was the dominant banking force in the United States. Morgan was probably an agent of the Rothschilds, the latter had a `very strong, very effective tactic of doing business through other organizations that were thought to be independent,’ largely due to European anti-Semitism. Being Jewish, they had discovered that if they wanted to gain dominance in a market that was anti-Semitic, they couldn’t do it directly. So, they would work through agents who were `thought to be independent’, in some cases, ones who were though to be anti-Semitic, like J. P. Morgan. But today, the `dominant banking force’ in the US is the Rockefellers. The Rothschilds are still very powerful, but `continue to operate behind the scenes’ (more subterfuge?). `They like the public to think that they’re just a bunch of playboys and they dabble in the markets.’

Concluding part to be published tomorrow.

Published in New Age, Monday, November 14, 2011

By rahnuma ahmed

On hearing news of the Libyan leader colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s death, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton gleefully proclaimed — while paraphrasing the words of the Roman emperor Julius Caesar, Vini, vidi, vici, `I came, I saw, I conquered’ — `We came, we saw, he died.’

These words, uttered in-between formal television interviews which were being recorded in Kabul, has been likened by some to the shouts of `Allahu Akbar’ which accompanied the actions of a large group of rebels, armed and directed by NATO, thousands of miles away in Sirte. The rebels beat, shoved, pushed and dragged a disoriented and bloodied Gaddafi, allegedly sodomised him, before shooting him to death.

I do not know whether drawing parallels between the US secretary of state’s response `We came, we saw, he died’ to the shouts of `God is great’ by NATO’s rebel forces, is appropriate, is justified.

What I do know however, is that secretary of state Clinton had called for the killing of Gaddafi while addressing Libyan students and others in a town-hall style gathering in Tripoli, “We hope he can be captured or killed soon” (Hillary Clinton details new aid package to Libya, The Guardian, October 18). But not even a whisper of outrage, not in The Guardian or in other western news outlets, unlike that which had followed the Iranian leader Khomeini’s call for the death of novelist Salman Rushdie, author, The Satanic Verses, in 1989.

What I also know, as I’m sure you do too, is that Gaddafi’s `death’ (read, murder) has been hailed by world leaders. Britain was “proud” of the role she had played in helping anti-Gaddafi forces in liberating the country, said prime minister David Cameron. The day marked “an historic transition for Libya,” said Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general. The American president Barack Obama termed it a “momentous day” in the history of Libya as the “dark shadow of tyranny has been lifted.” While the European Union president Herman Van Rompuy and Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso said in a joint statement, Gaddafi’s death “marks the end of an era of despotism” (Sky News, October 20).

What some may not recall however, is that Washington’s arch enemy, the jihadists are working together with NATO in Libya, that “former” al-Qaeda affiliated brigades constitute the backbone of the “pro-democracy” rebellion. (NATO bombings, al-Qaeda and the Arab spring, New Age, October 3, 2011).

A fact that exposes the US-led war on terror against “jihadist Islam” for being what it is, an utter fabrication. One that is repeatedly manufactured by the mainstream western media; demonstrated yet again in the manner in which it reported the Libyan transitional leader’s recent declaration that Sharia law will become the “main source” of legislation in Libya, that Qaddafi-era legal restrictions on polygamous marriage will be done away with. How to explain this “sizable step backward” since polygamy in Gaddafi’s Libya was “limited and rare for decades”? The New York Times, while noting that the news is “unsettling” for Libyan women and its “allies abroad,” resolved its predicament by informing readers that Libya’s new leader Abdel-Jalil is known for his “piety.” (Hinting at an end to a curb on polygamy, interim Libyan leader stirs anger, October 29).

What occurred in Libya is patterned on a model, says Adrian Salbuchi, Argentinian author, financial analyst and founder of the Argentine Second Republic Movement. “First they target a country by calling it a rogue state; then they support local terrorists and call them freedom fighters; then they bring death and destruction upon civilians and they call it UN sanctions. Then they spread lies and call it the International Community’s opinion expressed by the Western media. Then they invade and control the country and call it liberation and finally they steal appetizing oil and call it foreign investment and reconstruction.” (Russia Today, October 21).

Hillary Clinton’s `We came, we saw, he died’ is a message to the world, says Salbuchi, about how the new world order actually works.

In any country, he says, and this includes Libya, there is always half of the country which is against its ongoing government. Does this mean we should invade Greece because of the way the government is handling the protests? Or, as a poster commented on a website, invade Britain? Because “its head of state is not elected.”

Ronald Reagan, while US president, had labelled Gaddafi the “mad dog” of the Middle East, but Bulent Gokay, professor of international relations and editor of Global Faultlines insists, if there is any mad dog in Libya now, it is the US/NATO supported “rebel force” who “brutally assaulted, tortured and murdered Gaddafi with two bullets to the head and one to the chest. After that, they splayed his body on the hood of a car – pulling his hair and banging his head before dragging his body into the street, kicking him like a football and displaying his corpse in a shopping centre meat locker” (The murder of Kaddafi by lynch mob and a dark start to `new’ Libya, October 27).

An absolute violation of Geneva Conventions as historian Vijay Prasad and many others remind us: “Prisoners of war must at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity” (The Third Geneva Convention, article 13). They are entitled, in all circumstances, to respect. For “their persons, their honour, their family rights, their religious convictions and practices, and their manners and customs.” They should be humanely treated, protected especially against all acts of violence or threats and against insults and public curiosity (Fourth Geneva Convention, article 27). (Gaddafi, from beginning to end, Counterpunch, October 21-23).

Allegations of Libyan rebel forces having violated the Geneva Conventions have become yet more grave, as latest news indicates that a truce and surrender had been worked out between some rebel leaders and Gaddafi’s entourage. That Gaddafi’s convoy of 70 vehicles was heading west, reportedly with white flags atop some of the vehicles. That it was not engaging in fire with rebel or NATO forces. Why else would the convoy leave in broad daylight, except so that the white flags be visible to all? “If Qaddafi wanted to make a break for it, he would have done so at night with headlights out” (Wayne Madsen, America’s Death Pornography Culture: Celebrating brutal deaths of Qaddafi and Saddam, October 29, 2011). And one must bear in mind that NATO Special Forces, consisting of mercenaries, paramilitaries and gunmen, were already operating within the rebellion. Covertly. They were on the ground (Michel Chossudovsky, NATO boots on Libyan ground to protect oil interests? Press TV, September 5).

The French president Nicolas Sarkozy had reason to want Gaddafi dead, for, as the latter’s son Saif al-Islam outed in March this year, Libya had helped finance Sarkozy’s successful election campaign in 2007. Saif had threatened to reveal details of bank transfers (The Guardian, March 16). It was probably fitting then, that it was a French Mirage-2000 which fired the warning shot at Gaddafi’s fleeing convoy, as acknowledged by the French defence minister.

Gaddafi’s execution has “backfired.” NATO’s disinformation attempts to pass off Gaddafi’s execution as being not-an-execution, as Gaddafi having been killed in “crossfire,” by a “stray bullet,” has failed. But it is now increasingly clear, writes professor Campbell, that the manner in which he was killed was aimed at “humiliating” him. Under international law and the Geneva Conventions Hillary Clinton could be held to account for her statements in Tripoli on 18 October when she called for Gaddafi’s capture or killing. “Security planners and military strategists of the Obama Whitehouse are now cowering in shame on the fallout from the failure of the Libyan quagmire.” At the exposure of American military and imperial logic’s bankruptcy (Horace Campbell, The execution of Gaddafi and the attempted humiliation of Africa, Pambazuka News, October 27).

An attempt at extrication is now being sought with Libya’s new rulers vowing that Gaddafi’s killers will be brought to trial.

The manner in which he was killed was aimed at `humiliating’ him. True, and, most brutally. For, according to Global Post’s frame by frame analysis of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s capture, obtained from a rebel fighter who had recorded the moment, another sodomised him as he was being dragged away from the drainpipe where he had taken cover. According to the website’s correspondent Tracey Shelton, the instrument was possibly a knife from the end of a machine gun, which Libyans call a Bicketti, or some kind of stick.

The “hyperdissemination of digital culture” made these images go global, presumably, before the NATO chain of command could intervene. Could confiscate them, could ensure that they remain unseen.

Unseen like photographs of Abu Ghraib’s prisoners, including video footage, involving rape, and even death, which have been shown only to members of the US Congress, but not made publicly available (Nicholas Mirzoeff, Invisible empire: visual culture, embodied spectacle, and Abu Ghraib, Radical History Review, spring 2006).

Mirzoeff writes, sustaining America’s place as the leading nation within empire depends on the doubled performance of feminised consumers and masculine soldiers of all genders.

How better to humiliate Gaddafi than by sodomising him, thereby rendering him defenceless. At the absolute mercy of his captors. Incapable of defending even the orifices of his own body.

America’s quest for asserting “full spectrum dominance” has led to the emergence of new imperial masculinities, “masculine soldiers of all genders” (Hillary Clinton, Condoleeza Rice, to name two of the “second sex”). It has also created the conditions for the construction of new native masculinities. In the hierarchy of nations in the new global world order, they are imperialised and must remain so, but it is a subjection rendered pleasurable by performing “masculinity” on other, native, men.

By rahnuma ahmed

Ma, my soul feels parched. It quivers like a kite.
(`ma, amar attay pani nai, atta ghuddir moto khali orey’)
— Masud Hossain of Purbashinda village, Tangail, one among eight be-headed
in Saudia Arabia on October 7, 2011.

Chopped off in a clean stroke, his head rolled away. His body slumped, it hit the ground.

He had been made to kneel, to wait. A parched soul, quivering inside.

Alongwith seven other young men — Suman from Kishoreganj, Mamun, Suman and Shafiq from Tangail, Faruque from Comilla, Abul and Matiar from Faridpur — Masud was found guilty of murdering Hussain Saeed, an Egyptian security guard in April 2007. They’d allegedly been apprehended stealing cable from a warehouse. All eight were sentenced to death, the following year.

Faruk, the eldest among five sons, worked as a tractor-driver before going to Saudi Arabia as a cleaner. He was a very good boy, said Daudkandi’s union chairman. Twenty-seven year old Suman of Kishoreganj went when he was only 18, earnings sent back had not yet freed the mortgaged family land. My cousin and a muktijoddha union porishod member have been feeding us for the last six months, said his father. Abul too, had gone as a cleaner. His wife left him after he was convicted, say press reports, to re-marry (Kalerkantho, October 10, 2011).

Mamun rang his mother on the day he was executed. Take care, ma. Don’t cry for me. Don’t forget to take your medicine. I’ll call you later. False promises, made by a loving son.

What does it take to carry on a normal conversation with one’s closest ones, when death beckons impassively? To not betray, not even the slightest trace of the soul’s quiver?

I watched one of the be-headings on Youtube, twice. Each time, I cried. Who was it, I wondered. Shafiq? Abul? Maybe Matiar…?

Blue-tinted image, a distant kneeling figure, head bowed down. The executioner running toward his victim, sword held high. Over, in a matter of seconds. Life, over. Would a mother be able to tell if the be-headed victim was her son? Mothers can, they say. Or maybe, it wouldn’t matter. A shared grief. As one mother put it, what kind of justice is this? Eight mothers made bereft for one man killed. It’s a slaughterer’s country (‘jollader desh’).

Not all could have been guilty, some were framed, said fathers, brothers. We tried real hard, we went to Dhaka hundreds of times, we even held a press conference there. We went to the foreign ministry. To the expatriates welfare and employment ministry. We begged, we pleaded. I even met with Fakhruddin Ahmed during the caretaker era. We hired a lawyer in Saudia Arabia. We’ve been made penniless. We were even willing to pay the blood money.

Shafiqul had told his cousin, `I get scared when Friday comes.’ Abul rang his brother-in-law on Thursday afternoon, our heads have been shaved. Please pray for us. And please feed five orphans.

We weren’t told when the executions would take place. We learnt afterwards, only through media reports. Let us at least have the dead bodies. Let us bury them decently. In our midst.

Waves of shock and horror, of revulsion have swept the nation. Questions raised about whether government leaders, whether officials and the Bangladesh embassy in Saudi Arabia had done enough. Questions too, about the judicial process. Was it a fair trial? Were international standards followed? Since court proceedings are in Arabic, did the defendants understand what was going on? Were they adequately represented? Was confession made under duress?

The punishment was not illogical, says the foreign secretary. We may not agree with the penalty awarded but one cannot disagree with the fact that they were executed `upon completion of a judicial process’ (The Daily Star, October 16, 2011).
The International Business Times notes, it is unlikely that Bangladeshi officials will `do much to pressure the Saudis’ since an estimated 2 million workers send their cash remittances home, `important to the nation’s impoverished economy’ (October 10, 2011).

The president had appealed to the Saudi monarch, only to be informed that a pardon was the Egyptian family’s privilege, not his. They refused; even the offer of blood money, claimed government sources. But I remember coming across a press report somewhere which had claimed otherwise, blood money of one crore taka.

The president’s appeal for clemency was a mere formality, he just affixed his signature to a form-like-letter, said Syed Abul Maksud, writer and columnist, as he protested outside the Saudi embassy in Dhaka. Our citizens don’t go there to beg, they contribute hard labour. If it had been the son of an industrialist or a minister, would the government have been equally indifferent? And how dare the Saudi ambassador in Dhaka say that a whole village can be executed for the death of one man? How utterly immoral (Kalerkantho, October 13, 2011).

Others have been quick to add, if a Bangladeshi citizen commits a crime while abroad, since he is subject to the laws of the land, he must be tried. We are not against the rule of law. We are only raising questions about the judicial process in Saudi Arabia, how it is skewed against foreignors who are poor migrants, who lack power and influence. Against the nature of the execution. Against public be-heading. It is gross. People are downloading scenes of the execution, they’re watching it, it must be distressing for the families. It is so utterly barbaric! Downright medieval!

There were exceptions. Readers of Naya Diganta online commented, this is exactly how criminals should be punished (Saudi Arobey 8 Bangladeshir shirocched, October 9, 2011). Killers should not be pardoned (see, `Presidential clemency. But will the people forgive the president?’ New Age, July 25, 2011). It is because [Jashimuddin] Maniks are not punished that Porimols are born (see, `We are with you Viqarunnisa!,’ New Age, July 19, 2011). Western propaganda nourishes feelings of inferiority, what about the so-called war on terror which bombs to death hundreds of thousands in order to conquer other nation’s resources?

What I find missing in these accounts, in either set of accounts if one may phrase it thus, is a sense of history. A concrete sense of history. Is the western periodisation of history
– ancient, medieval, modern — universally valid?

But first, a few words for readers who may scoff at the idea of `the’ [west], who are likely to accuse me of homogenising and generalising. Is there such a thing as `the’ West? Who better to turn to than Talal Asad, who, while agreeing that the West is `spatially discontinuous and internally diverse’ — in other words, there isn’t an integrated Western culture, or a fixed Western identity, or a single Western way of thinking – problematises the West as `a singular collective identity [which] defines itself in terms of a unique historicity in contrast to all others.’ A historicity that `shifts from place to place – Greece, Rome, Latin Christendom, the Americas – until it embraces the world.’ (Genealogies of Religion, 1993).

And, when progressive Bangladeshi intellectuals speak of contemporary Saudi Arabia as being ‘medieval’ are they not universalising the particular (as western powers, including its historians, do)? For, wasn’t the medieval period different for Muslims? Weren’t they leading the world from the 9th to the 14th centuries in their pursuit of knowledge? Wasn’t the Islamic world the most scientifically advanced region of the globe, simultaneously contributing to philosophy and literature, by drawing on Aristotle’s philosophy, Ptolemy’s geography, Hippocrates’ medicine? On Persian and Indian works on astronomy and mathematics? Didn’t post-Renaissance scholars build on the contributions of Muslim scholars made centuries earlier? As is evident in the carry-over of many Arabic-based words in the English scientific vocabulary because western scientists were unfamiliar with the subject-matter, such as algebra, chemistry, atlas, monsoon, pancreas, colon etc. etc.

By referring to Saudi public be-headings as being [universally] medieval, and not, say, [westernly] medieval, are not Bangladeshi progressive intellectuals locating modern Saudi Arabia into Europe’s medieval past, thereby making the former appear unchanging? As being resistant to history, and thereby, outside of history? Which incidentally, happens to be beneficial to contemporary western powers.

I get the same sense of history-lessness from those who counter the human rights-based liberal discourses, both within and outside the pages of Naya Diganta. How can contemporary Western imperialism — bombs, raining death on Muslim women and children, conquering Muslim majority countries, not to `spread democracy’ but to gain control over its natural resources — be spoken of without acknowledging Saudi Arabia’s role as a chief US ally? Without, once again, turning to history to critically understand and appreciate the concrete processes through which Saudi Arabia became wealthy? Of how the Saudi monarch’s adoption of the official title, the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques – worded as `an expression of his deep sense of responsibility toward Islam‘ — distracts our attention away from the believing Saudi/Arab ruling class’ deep-seated racism toward us believing non-Arab/others?

History which tells us that the House of Saud’s (modern) rule was consolidated through its willing supplication to imperial oil interests in the early 1930s. That the British helped Abd al Aziz’s army drive the falling Ottoman empire’s forces out of eastern Arabia in 1913. That the formation of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932 was massively aided by the discovery of oil in the late 1920s, by huge royalties from imperialist oil companies which gave the Al Saud family the decisive financial edge over its rivals (Sam Manuel, Saudi Arabia: fruit of imperialist carve-up of region, June 16, 2003).
History which tells us that the giant American oil conglomerate Aramco was in charge of exploration and production in the 1930s. That they built a racist order in Dhahran and other company campsites, one that has been termed the `Jim Crow system’, whereby `white American executives pursued a purposeful, planned project of discrimination and forced segregation’ contrary to the Aramco myth: the company has dedicated itself to developing the kingdom, to uplifting Arab workers and training them to take over the running of the oil industry (Robert Vitalis, America’s Kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier, 2007). In reality, Aramco instituted the `racial caste system’ which operated in the American south between 1877 and the mid-60s. At its heart, was the racial wage, `all firms paid miners, drillers, and other skilled and unskilled labor different wages according to race.’ The labour control regime was buttressed by a full panoply of Jim Crow institutions: segregated housing, differential access to services, degradation and humiliation of white supremacist thought. Not surprising, as the Jim Crow system must not be understood as `a series of rigid anti-Black laws’ but, as a `[modern] way of life.‘
And more recent histories, of the ’60s and the ’70s, which inform us of shifts in the practices of recruiting workers, away from Saudi citizens to migrants from the Middle East: Palestinians, Yemenis and Egyptians (nearly 75%), because radical and left-wing organisations – who were opposed to Aramco, to the Saudi monarchy, who demanded greater national control over oil — had organised strikes and demonstrations during the ’50s and ’60s. These were heavily repressed (through modern means) `in collaboration with American and British advice’ (interview with Adam Hanieh, author, Capitalism and Class in the Gulf Arab States, by Paul Jay of The Real News Network, May 19, 2011).
Histories which help us understand further shifts, which occurred in the ’70s, ’80s, and particularly in the ’90s. Away from Arab migrant labour — the Saudi monarchy’s show of solidarity with the Palestinians ended, they were `too radical’ — toward workers from South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Philippines) who now form nearly 75% of the labour force.
But although the demographic features of the workforce has changed, the Jim Crow system hasn’t. `The vast pool of migrant workers…are often, if not always treated little better than modern slaves and dogs.’

How can one criticise the war on terror but not acknowledge Saudi Arabia’s role as a chief US ally, or else, how can we understand why Saudi Arabia recently sent its (well-equipped, modern) troops to Bahrain? Or, why the UAE has hired Eric Prince, formerly, Blackwater, to create a (modern) private army? Why else, but to put down internal revolt.

Unless one acknowledges the Kingdom’s imperial ties, we are likely to forget that the operatives of the CIA and the French Foreign Legion had suddenly converted to Islam in end November 1979. How else could they have entered Mecca (forbidden to `kafirs’) and provided assistance to the Saudi monarchy to quell the two week long seige of the Grand Mosque by mahdist i.e., millenarian insurgents? The CIA’s plans to gas out the jihadists had backfired, knocking out the Saudi forces instead. `The French Foreign Legion then came to the rescue, pumping gas through specially bored holes before overpowering the rebels.’ (John R. Bradley, review of The Seige of Mecca by Yaroslav Trofimov, Financial Times, January 5, 2008). Nearly, a thousand people had died.

Both accounts, drawing on particular versions of history — the liberal Western Enlightenment version, and the Saudi Kingdom as the practitioners of authentic Islam/the guardians of the faith version — hide more than they reveal. In both, be-heading is de-contextualised from the tangled web of racism and imperial power, enabling its objectification: constructing for one, essential `barbarism’, for the other, `authentic’ Islam.

I pray for my Egyptian and Bangladeshi brothers. May their souls rest in peace.

Tags
Identity Bangladesh, Death, Exploitation, Human rights, Law, Photography, Politics, Poverty, Rahnuma Ahmed, USA

Published in New Age, Monday, 24 October 2011

Magic Movement organised a mock execution of 8 publicly executed Bangladeshis in Saudi Arabia, outside the National Museum in Shahbagh, Dhaka on October 15, 2011. © Monirul Alam

http://monirul.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/monl8356.jpg