Undisclosed Clouds Over Western Skies

`Owning’ the weather? PART VI

By Rahnuma Ahmed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Published in New Age 8 March 2010

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

`Owning’ the weather? PART V Katrina and Haiti

By Rahnuma Ahmed

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

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

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

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

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

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

Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). Electromagnetic Weapons.

The Revolution in Military Affairs and Conflicts Short of War

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Published in New Age 1 March 2010

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

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

By Rahnuma Ahmed

It all began with the Haiti earthquake.

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

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

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

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

Officially-speaking, earthquakes can be induced by:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Published in New Age, 23 February 2010

(more, next week)

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

`Owning’ the weather? Part III

By Rahnuma Ahmed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(more, next week)

Published in New Age, 15 February 2010

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

`Owning’ the weather? PART II

By Rahnuma Ahmed

“Technology will make available to the leaders of major nations, techniques for conducting secret warfare, of which only a bare minimum of the security forces need be appraised… techniques of weather modification could be employed to produce prolonged periods of drought or storm.”

–          Zbigniew Brzezinski, former US National Security advisor, Between Two Ages (1970)

Weather modification technology is being perfected by the US under the High Frequency Active Aural Research Program (HAARP). From the military point of view, it is, as I had written last week, citing Professor Michel Chossudovsky (editor, Centre for Research on Globalization and visiting professor of economics, University of Ottawa)—a weapon of mass destruction.

According to keen observers, HAARP has the ability to trigger floods and hurricanes. To produce, as Brzezinski forecasts above, “prolonged periods of drought or storm.” To set off, as former US secretary of defense William Cohen had said, earthquakes and volcanoes. He, of course, had blamed `others’ for plotting these acts of terror. The baddies. The enemies of civilisation. I quote in full: “Others [terrorists] are engaging even in an eco-type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves… So there are plenty of ingenious minds out there that are at work finding ways in which they can wreak terror upon other nations… It’s real, and that’s the reason why we have to intensify our [counterterrorism] efforts” (1997).

The US government presents HAARP to the public as a harmless programme. As scientific and academic research aimed at further advancing “our knowledge of the physical and electrical properties of the Earth’s ionosphere which can affect our military and civilian communication and navigation systems” . A view endlessly regurgitated in mainstream media by a host of administration officials, defence and security experts, journalists and writers. Any questioning of the government version, interestingly enough, is met with ridicule, is immediately dubbed a `conspiracy theory.’ There are nutters, one comes across scores of them spooking away on the web, as is only to be expected, but it’s interesting to see how serious and well-founded questioning of the official versions of events, whether 9/11, or HAARP, immediately get labelled as `conspiratorial.’ At how this catch-all phrase is continuously employed to block off any critical inquiry in the public domain about America’s rulers, and their ways of ruling. To provide an instance in the case of HAARP, `Strange new Air Force facility energizes ionosphere, fans conspiracy flames’ (Noah Shachtman, Wired magazine, 20 July 2009). A title that is complicit in the all-powerful Western myth: `others’ wreak terror. `Others’ possess WMDs.

And what if the West’s `others’ don’t? What if a western leader who took his country to war on make-believe grounds, is finally forced to admit it publicly? As was former British prime minister Tony Blair who testified before the Chilcot inquiry last week. Reverting to, what seemed to me, amazing English bedtime story-speak, Blair responded: but Saddam was still a “monster.” And therefore he had to be removed. The world had to be made “safer.” So what if in that process, 1,366,350 Iraqis died? Blair insisted, he had no “regrets.” Like the former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright. When pressed about the death of 567,000 Iraqi children due to the 1990s US sanctions, she responded, “We think the price is worth it.”

In February 1998, in response to a report tabled by Mrs. Maj. Britt Theorin, Swedish MEP and longtime peace advocate on the “potential use of military-related resources for environmental strategies,” the European parliament’s committee on Environment, Security and Foreign Affairs called the HAARP project a matter of global concern because of “its far-reaching impact on the environment.” It passed a resolution calling for its “legal, ecological and ethical implications to be examined by an international independent body before any further research

HAARP’s array can beam up to 3.6 megawatts of energy into the sky. Photo Joao Canziani

Skeptics think, one billion watts is more likely.  See documentary on HAARP by Canada’s public broadcasting network CBC.

and testing” was conducted. It also expressed regrets at the “repeated refusal of the United States Administration to send anyone in person to give evidence to the public hearing [held by the committee in Brussels] or any subsequent meeting held by its competent committee into the environmental and public risks connected with the HAARP programme currently being funded in Alaska.” Despite all this, as an excellent documentary on HAARP made by CBC, Canada’s public broadcasting network points out, officials at HAARP still insist that “the project is nothing more sinister than a radio science research facility.”

The United Nations, on the other hand, inspite of a vast body of scientific knowledge, never includes in its climate change agenda the “issue of deliberate climatic manipulations for military use.” Even though, writes Chossudovsky, the UN 1977 Convention explicitly states that “military or any other hostile use of such techniques could have effects extremely harmful to human welfare,” a convention to which both US and Soviet Union were signatories. (Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques, United Nations, Geneva, 1977).

The issue of “weather warfare” or “environmental modification techniques” (ENMOD) is not, as Chossudovsky points out, raised either by governments or environmental action groups. Even though both Americans and Russians have developed capabilities to manipulate the World’s climate. The publicly shared consensus is that greenhous gas emissions constitute the “sole cause” of climate instability. But in reality, the manipulation of climate for military use is potentially “a greater threat to humanity” than CO2 emissions. Military analysts are silent, metereologists do not investigate the matter, while environmentalists keep harping on global warming and the Kyoto protocol. It is a situation which, by being “narrowly confined to greenhouse gases,” serves Washington’s strategic and defense objectives.

Another documentary on HAARP, made by the History Channel, says: “Electromagnetic weapons … pack an invisible wallop hundreds of times more powerful than the electrical current in a lightning bolt. One can blast enemy missiles out of the sky, another could be used to blind soldiers on the battlefield, still another to control an unruly crowd by burning the surface of their skin. If detonated over a large city, an electromagnetic weapon could destroy all electronics in seconds. They all use directed energy to create a powerful electromagnetic pulse.” And also, this: “Directed energy is such a powerful technology it could be used to heat the ionosphere to turn weather into a weapon of war. Imagine using a flood to destroy a city or tornadoes to decimate an approaching army in the desert. The military has spent a huge amount of time on weather modification as a concept for battle environments. If an electromagnetic pulse went off over a city, basically all the electronic things in your home would wink and go out, and they would be permanently destroyed.” (WantToKnow.info team website).

With president Obama proposing a $548.9 billlion outlay for defence, a budget that boosts the Defence department’s outlay by 3.4% over the 2010 enacted level, does the HAARP official site’s answer to the Frequently Asked Question, Can I Visit HAARP?  “The HAARP Research Station does not employ sufficient on-site staff… as a result, we hold an annual open house at which any and all are invited”—sound convincing? (italics mine).

Unconvinced too, is Louise Lindley, who runs the coffee shop and trading post in the village that is HAARP’s closest neighbour. In response to the question, You have been here since the beginning. What do you  think they are doing down there? she replies, “They tell us we’re up here doing research on HAARP, we’re studying the northern lights, you don’t study the northern lights for 25 years, come on.” (Jesse Ventura exposes HAARP conspiracy, truTV).

(more, next week).

First published in New Age on 8th February 2010

Tags: climate, HAARP, Rahnuma Ahmed, UN 1977 Convention, USA, War, weather

`Owning’ the weather? Part I

By Rahnuma Ahmed

“In 2025, US aerospace forces can “own the weather” by capitalizing on emerging technologies and focusing development of those technologies to war-fighting applications… weather-modification offers the war fighter a wide-range of possible options to defeat or coerce an adversary.”

– Col Tamzy J. House et. al., Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025

`Owning’ the weather? You must be thinking, What a preposterous idea!

Apparently not, for those who wrote the report from which I’ve quoted above (August 1996). It was a study commissioned by the chief of staff of the US Air Force to examine the “concepts, capabilities, and technologies the United States will require to remain the dominant air and space force in the future.” One which was reviewed by security and policy review authorities, and cleared for public release.

As I read the report, I cannot help but wonder at what is contained in those documents which have not been revealed to the public, ones that are classified. Neither can I help but marvel at the devotion and hard work that has gone into imagining, drawing-up and detailing such a scheme of mass murder. At the colossal criminality involved. An issue that the authors hurriedly traverse—”[weather-modification techniques] offers a dilemma,” it is a “controversial issue,” “some segments of society” are reluctant—lest they have any second thoughts, lest they develop any moral qualms over the matter.

Of course, as is only to be expected, all the necessary disclaimers are there. The views expressed are those of the authors. They do not reflect the official policy or position of the US Air Force. Or, the Department of Defense. Least of all, the US government. Representations of future scenarios are fictional. Any similarity to real people, to real events, why, to reality itself—is unintentional.

Weather modification, write the authors, has “tremendous military capabilities” (see table). Rainfall can be enhanced to flood the enemy’s lines of communication. To reduce the effectivity of precision guided missiles (PGM). Rainfall can be prevented too. To deny the enemy access to fresh water. To induce drought and wreck food cultivation. Fogs and clouds can be generated, or removed. Friendly forces merit generation, to enhance their ability to conceal themselves. While enemy forces shall suffer from fog/cloud removal, to deny concealment. To smoke ‘em out?

To develop an integrated weather-modification system, technological advancements are necessary in five areas: (1) advanced nonlinear modeling techniques (2) computational capability (3) information gathering and transmission (4) a global sensor array, and (5) weather intervention techniques. Some of these “intervention tools” already exist, we are told. Others may be developed. May be refined. For future use. To develop and refine technologies of mass murder….?

Current weather-modification technologies which will mature over the next 30 years, will—in all likelihood—become “a part of national security policy with both domestic and international applications.” A policy that could be pursued at “various levels”: NATO. UN. Coalition. And, if the national security strategy in 2025 includes weather-modification, “its use in our national military strategy will naturally follow.” Its benefit? It’ll “deter and counter potential adversaries.” It’s “appropriate application… can provide battlespace dominance to a degree never before imagined.” The executive summary ends on this ominous note: “The technology is there, waiting for us to pull it all together;” in 2025 we can “Own the Weather.”

————————————————————————————————

The current military and civilian worldwide weather data network will evolve and expand to become a Global Weather Network (GWN). One which will be a super high-speed, expanded bandwidth, communication network by 2025. By then, weather-prediction models will prove to be “highly accurate in stringent measurement trials against empirical data.” And the “brains” of these models? “Advanced software and hardware capabilities which can rapidly ingest trillions of environmental data points, merge them into usable data bases, process the data through the weather prediction models, and disseminate the weather information over the GWN in near-real-time” (see Figure).

Although “extreme and controversial” examples of weather modification, such as, the creation of made-to-order weather, large-scale climate modification, creation and/or control (or “steering”) of severe storms, etc. were researched, “technical obstacles preventing their application appear insurmountable within 30 years.” And therefore, the authors write, these are only mentioned briefly.

Close observers are inclined to disagree. Weather warfare, they think, has already started.

“What are the underlying causes of extreme weather instability, which has ravaged every major region of the World in the course of the last few years?” writes professor Michel Chossudovsky, one of the keenest analysts.

He continues, “Hurricanes and tropical storms have ravaged the Caribbean. Central Asia and the Middle East are afflicted by drought. West Africa is facing the biggest swarm of locusts in more than a decade. Four destructive hurricanes and a tropical rain storm Alex, Ivan, Frances, Charley and Jeanne have occurred in a sequence, within a short period of time. Unprecedented in hurricane history in the Caribbean, the island of Grenada was completely devastated: 37 people died and roughly two-thirds of the island’s 100,000 inhabitants have been left homeless; in Haiti, more than two thousand people have died and tens of thousands are homeless. The Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Cuba, the Bahamas and Florida have also been devastated. In the US, the damage in several Southern states including Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and the Carolinas is the highest in US history.”

While global warming is undoubtedly an important factor, writes Chossudovsky, it does not fully account for these extreme and unusual weather patterns.

In the 5 years since he wrote “The Ultimate Weapon of Mass Destruction: “Owning the Weather” for Military Use” (Global Research, September 2004), many more natural disasters have occurred: the Asian tsunami which hit 14 countries; Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand most severly, killing nearly 230,000 (December 2004). Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Louisiana, 1,836 people lost their lives (August 2005). Great Sichuan earthquake in China, 68,000 died (May 2008). The recent earthquake in Haiti, 200,000 estimated dead (January 2010).

Both the Americans and the Russians have developed capabilities, says Chossudovsky, to “manipulate the World’s climate.”

In a 1997 article of The Wall Street Journal (Nov 13), Chen May Yee wrote about a memorandum of understanding to be signed soon between a Russian and a Malaysian company to create a hurricane that would create torrential rains, one that would be directed close enough to clear the smoke without actually coming on land to create a devastation. In an earlier piece The Wall Street Journal had reported that a Russian company, Elate Intelligent Technologies Inc., advertising under the slogan `Weather Made to Order’—sold weather control equipment. Elate is capable of fine tuning weather patterns over a 200 square mile area, for as little as $200 per day. Hurricane Andrew, which had occurred a year earlier and had caused damage worth $30 billion could have been turned into “a wimpy little squall,” according to Igor Pirogoff, a director of Elate. Doesn’t this mean that hurricane Katrina too, could have been diverted?

As I research on the internet, I come across another news item: “Entering a thunderstorm 10 miles off West Palm Beach, a B-57 Canberra jet bomber chartered for one million dollars releases some 9,000 pounds of improved Dyn-O-Gel capable of 10-times stronger water absorption. Miami’s Channel 5’s weather radar shows the huge thunderhead losing moisture. Within seconds, the buildup vanished as one side of the cloud collapsed “like an avalanche”, according to a chase plane cameraman.” (Sun-Sentinel July 20/01).

As a weapon of war, the use of weather modification techniques was publicly described much earlier. On 20 March 1974, by the Pentagon. A 7 year cloud seeding effort in Vietnam and Cambodia, costing $21.6 million, had been initiated to increase rainfall in target areas, thereby “causing landslides and making unpaved roads muddy, hindering the movement of supplies.”  That US forces had suffered a drastic defeat in Vietnam, and forced to leave in 1975, is now part of history.

At present, other countries, probably China and North Korea, are feverishly working to catch up. Early snow covered Beijing last November. According to the Chinese state media, it was the result of Chinese metereologists’ efforts to “make rain by injecting special chemicals into clouds,” a technique that often gets results (Agence France-Presse, 1 November 2009).

According to Chossudovsky, weather-modification technology is being perfected in the US under the High-frequency Active Aural Research Program (HAARP), part of the (“Star Wars”) Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI). Recent scientific evidence suggests that HAARP is fully operational. That it has the ability of potentially triggering floods, droughts, hurricanes and earthquakes. That it is—from the military standpoint—a weapon of mass destruction…

(more, next week)

First Published in New Age on 1st February 2010

Tags: climate, control, Rahnuma Ahmed, science, technology, USA, War, weather

The West’s Immortal `Terrorist’

By Rahnuma Ahmed

Who else…, but Osama bin Laden?

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

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

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

Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive?

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

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

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

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

The `Fatty’ bin Laden Tape, and others

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

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

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

Osama has a much taller and narrower nose.

Osama has a less rounded brow ridge.

Osama is less well nourished.

Osama has lower and less full cheeks.

Osama’s forehead slopes back more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Published in New Age, December 21, 2009

Tags: 9/11, Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda, David Ray Griffin, dead, Maher Osseiran, Obama, Osama bin Laden, Pakistan, Rahnuma Ahmed, terrorist, USA, war on terror

IMPERIAL COWARDICE: Remote control killing in Pakistan

by Rahnuma Ahmed

WAR is, said Major General Smedley Butler, twice-recipient of the Medal of Honour (1914, 1915), ‘a racket’. He had seen it from close(st) quarters and had turned into an outspoken critic of the US military-industrial complex. Describing what his life’s efforts had been devoted to, he wrote: ‘I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents’ (War is a Racket, 1935).

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

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

If passions do not rage to transform hostilities into outright war, ‘false flag’ operations may be staged. The Japanese did not ‘sneakily’ attack Pearl Harbour. Their encryption codes had been broken and Washington knew what was going to happen. But the US president decided to withhold the information from his commanders at Pearl Harbour. One hundred and sixty-three American soldiers were killed, 396 wounded, 6 tank landing ships sank. Why? Roosevelt, so the story goes, wanted a piece of the war pie.

More recently, Iraq’s WMD myth was manufactured, packaged and presented. Aided by the Clinton administration’s deliberate sabotaging of UN weapons inspection in Iraq, it created the predictable western outrage needed to justify George Bush’s invasion of Iraq.The September 11 Twin Tower attacks have been dubbed the ‘New’ Pearl Harbour by the leader of the 9/11 Truth Movement, David Ray Griffin. The questions raised by the movement which remain unanswered in the government appointed committee report, speak of, at its best, the criminal negligence of the Bush administration; at its worst, complicity.

Obama’s expansion of push button execution
IN HIS recent West Point speech, US president Barack Obama announced his decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, to fight al-Qaeda which had attacked the US on September 11th (in the words of Bush, it was a ‘faceless’ and ‘cowardly’ act), and is now operating in the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan. (Even though al-Qaeda’s members are now, according to James Jones, his national security adviser, as few as 100).

What Obama did not mention was another decision that was taken to ‘parallel’ the troop surge in Afghanistan: an expansion in the CIA-led killer drone campaign in Pakistan. An act which will lead to more drone strikes against militants. More US spies in Pakistan. An increased CIA budget for its operations. And thereby, more of what critics term, ‘push-button’ executions. A state of affairs where the US administration is, Guantanamo-style, judge, jury, executioner – all in one. These executions, or targeted assassinations, or extrajudicial killings are not executions, or targeted assassinations, or extrajudicial killings. The war on terror has changed all that. Terrorists are no longer criminals. They are combatants. Killing them is part of warfare. And the globe is the battlefield.

In a recent New Yorker magazine article and in several interviews, Jane Mayer who has extensively researched on Predator drones informs us, there are two drone programmes, one is part of the US military-run programme, the other, is run by the CIA. The former, she says, is carried out transparently. There are after-action reports, there is a chain of command. But the CIA’s drone campaign is a ‘secret targeted-killing program’, one that is executed in places where the US is not at war. ‘It’s a whole new frontier in the use of force.’ We don’t know, she says, who is on the target list? How do you get on the list? Can you get off the list? Who makes the list? And, eerily, Where is the battlefield? Where does the battlefield end?

President Obama had promised ‘change’, and there has been change in the drone attacks. In its first ten months his administration carried out as many drone attacks as did the Bush administration in its last three years. Drone strikes are a new hot favourite in US ruling circles for not ‘risking a single American soldier on the ground’ (Reuters), and less collateral damage than from an F-16. CIA director Leon E Panetta has called them ‘the only game in town.’ But reliable information on casualties is difficult to assess since the Zardari government does not allow anyone, neither journalists, nor aid groups into the area. According to a recently released New America study, ‘Since 2006, our analysis indicates, 82 U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan have killed between 750 and 1,000 people. Among them were about 20 leaders of Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and allied groups, all of whom have been killed since January 2008.’ The rest of those killed? Footsoldiers in the militant organisations, or civilians.

Piloting a drone requires much less talent or experience than piloting a real plane. It is more like doing well in ‘a video game’, and is work that has been outsourced by the CIA to civilians, to those who are not even US government employees. While sitting at CIA headquarters in Langley (Virginia), a drone pilot can view and hone in on a target tens of thousands of miles away. Someone like, for instance, Baitullah Mehsud, the Taliban leader in Pakistan, who was killed in a drone assassination on August 5th this year. Live video feed captured by the infrared camera of an undetected Predator drone hovering two miles away had relayed close-up footage of Mehsud reclining on the rooftop of his father-in-law’s house, in Zanghara (South Waziristan), on a hot summer night. The CIA remotely launched two Hellfire missiles from the Predator. ‘After the dust cloud dissipated, all that remained of Mehsud was a detached torso. Eleven others died: his wife, his father-in-law, his mother-in-law, a lieutenant, and seven bodyguards.’

But Mehsud — targeted and assassinated to elicit the Zardari government’s support for these incursions into Pakistan’s sovereignty — had not been an easy shoot. Mayer tells us, success came only after 16 strikes had been carried out over a period of 14 months, killing a total of 538 persons, of whom 200-300 were bystanders.

But who cares for native deaths? The less the (American) body bags, the less the (American) blood spilled, the more likely the public acceptance of war. As for the drone pilots, as former congressperson for New York, James Walsh (R) had said ecstatically, it allows them to be ‘literally fighting a war in Iraq and at the end of their shift be playing with their kids in Camillus.’
And, why not? Who says ‘gangster capitalism’ contradicts with Western family values?

‘Everything is permitted’

HONOUR and war are said to be inseparable.

I think, no longer. Virtual war is cowardly. For, as John Berger reminds us, there has never been a war in which disparity—the inequality of firepower—has been greater. On the one hand, satellite surveillance night and day, B52s, Tomahawk missiles, cluster bombs, shells with depleted uranium, computerised weapons. And increasingly, one sees the American dream materialise, a ‘no-contact war’. On the other, sandbags, elderly men brandishing the pistols of their youth, wearing torn shirts and sneakers, armed with a few Kalashnikovs.
What courage does the American warrior show through pushing his joystick while sitting in Langley? Should not the Medal of Honour be disbanded? Or better still, re-named Medal of Cowardice? For remote-control killings? Killings best-described in George Bush’s words, as ‘faceless’ acts?

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

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

First published in New Age on 7th December 2009

Tags: Al Quaeda, Bush, Death, drones, Obama, Pakistan, politics, Rahnuma Ahmed, Taliban, US, Violence, War

China-US Politics over Exhibiting Tibet. In Dhaka

By Rahnuma Ahmed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Published in New Age 23rd November 2009.

Further analysis by Omar Tarek Chowdhury

Tags: Bangladesh, BEI, china, CIA, democracy, exhibition, exile, NED, Photography, politics, Rahnuma Ahmed, tibet, USA

RAB’s Photo Sessions and the Visual Construction of Criminality

By Rahnuma Ahmed

The title of my column is somewhat misleading, I think it’s best to state that right away. Intrigued by the press briefings that RAB (Rapid Action Battalion) offices hold every so often where `criminals’ are displayed alongwith crime artefacts laid out on long rows of tables—guns, machettes, grenade-making equipment, stolen cash—as evidence of their criminality, images which are served up on the news of all private TV channels, which are printed a day later in the newspapers, I had thought of conducting research on these photo op sessions. I had wanted to examine these as `sites’ that are organised and arranged by the organs of the state, by the functionaries of the state, ones that construct criminality through visual means, i.e., still photos and video recordings of criminals, their tools, the loot. RAB, for the few who may not know, falls under the jurisdiction of the ministry of home affairs, its members are seconded to the battalion from the army, navy, air force and police, a measure which, according to its critics, eases in the carry-over of its culture of gross abuses and impunity to other parts of the security forces.

RAB Photo Session

My interest in RAB and its activities, as many of my readers probably know, is not new. It re-surfaced recently, however, because of several incidents which gave rise to thoughts, ones that not only refused to go away but dug deep into the soil and grew shoots.

It surfaced as I poured water over a waterproof camera that Shahidul Alam, my partner, held underneath. He was working on re-creating images of water-boarding for his upcoming photo exhibition on torture. I concentrated on carrying out his instructions, on not thinking about how I would have felt if an actual head had been in the bucket. It surfaced languidly as I heard Nurul  Kabir ask third year students of photography—he is currently teaching a course on Media and Politics at Pathshala—to reflect on how the Bangladeshi media participates in non-violent means of ruling. On how it seeks and gains people’s consent to ideas which work against their interests. Drawing instances from how the media had significantly contributed to making Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia, women with no political experience, into `national’ leaders, on how intellectuals, writers and journalists gratuitously offer the view that the nation’s problems would be solved if only the two women would meet and talk to each other, Kabir moved on to a discussion of ideological state apparatuses (the ISA’s, as those familiar with the French Marxist theorist Louis Althusser’s ideas, know). While listening to him, I thought of RAB’s crossfire deaths and how it had simultaneously constructed, and cashed in on an idea of meting out instant justice in a situation of deteriorating law-and-order and a failing criminal justice system, a situation for which the government, of course, was ultimately responsible. I then thought of how it was increasingly becoming difficult for crossfire deaths to garner public support, even of people who supported the government on all other counts. But what about RAB’s press briefings? What did they construct, and what did we consume by watching images of these on television, or through seeing printed pictures?

Mug shots, or photographic portraits of arrested people, taken by police photographers at the police station is not something that is practised in Bangladesh. The genre of photography and framing that has developed since RAB (inaugurated in March 2004) began its press briefings seems unique to Bangladesh, and to its visual history. Through my network of photographer friends I got hold of about sixty photographs, and sat looking through these, scribbling notes while I did: RAB officials conducting security searches on buses. Squad dogs snarling at each other. A pair of startled eyes of a young man, the alleged criminal, in front of whom lay a table full of machettes. He seemed to have been hauled up and planted in front of the table. Three young men, guarded on either side by two RAB officials, but although they seemed to be in the middle of a forest, strangely enough, they had A-4 sheets with their names, computer-composed and printed, hanging on their shirt fronts.

I then turned to dozens of photographs of press briefing sessions. These invariably, with one or two slight variations, had `criminals’ standing behind a long table, covered with a white table cloth, a banner behind announcing the number of the battalion (twelve in all), the alleged criminal or criminals guarded by armed RAB members on either side, criminal artefacts in front. The names of those caught, `Mohd Rafiqul Islam, illegal woman trafficker,’ a meticulous description of what was recovered, `125 bhori gold ornaments,’ `ten thousand US dollars,’ often neatly affixed. To the person. To the object. Reminiscent of colonial inventories.

I spoke to a photographer who has covered nearly a hundred RAB events in the last 4 years. He spoke to me on condition of anonymity. So what happens, I asked. Well, the press, from the channels, from the dailies, we all go at the appointed time. We go to a large room, a hall room. There are chairs for us. It takes about half an hour, the criminals are brought, we are briefed on the crime, what happened, who was caught, with what. We take photographs. I prodded and he said, well, what the RAB official says, and what the alleged criminal says seem to be based on the same script. Does anything ever untoward happen? Have you seen any such thing happen? Oh no, he replied. It’s all very neat, very well-organised. No ruffles, none whatsoever. So, why do they do it? Why do they go to the trouble? I think because they get free publicity. I wondered to myself whether it had made crime reporters and investigative journalists lazy. So, you mean, it’s a package? Yes, his eyes lit up. It’s all pre-packaged, you get everything all at once. Sometimes, he said, I think, it is arranged to divert attention. Whose? Well, the media’s, and thereby that of the public. For instance? If you remember the whole Yaba thing, when it blew up, most of those who were paraded before us were Yaba addicts, there was such a big circus over it but none of the really big fish were caught. So, what makes you think it’s stage-managed? Well, two things. If we see something happening on the street, and RAB is there, in action, and we go up to take photographs, they behave very badly. They’ll snarl and say, `Do you have any permission?’ They beat up a Jugantor photographer once. But then the next thing you know, they’ll organise this elaborate press briefing at their offices and parade these so-called criminals with ten-or-so Phensedyl bottles laid out on the table. And they also offer us tea, snacks. We don’t want their nasta, we want to work, I want to take photographs because I think I am accountable to the public. As he spoke I thought to myself, surely, these staged photo ops violate constitutional rights? What does one call them, a sort of media trial, held in what, RAB’s court? Aloud, I asked, what strikes you as most odd about these sessions? Well, when they put on their sunglasses, I mean we are inside the building, inside a room, there’s no sunlight but these guys put on their dark glasses just before we start taking photos.

I return to examining the photographs. There is one set missing, I think. A set that none of us will probably ever get to see. Those that RAB officials are said to have taken of New Age’s crime reporter F Masum after they beat him up outside his house for failing to open the gate with alacrity. According to him, they later dragged him into his bedroom, placed six Phensedyl bottles in his pillow case, stood him beside it. The camera clicked.

First published in New Age on Monday 16th November 2009.

High Court orders government to explain killings.

Tags: contempt of court, criminal, Death, Extra Judicial Killings, impunity, Law, media, media trial, Photography, RAB, Rahnuma Ahmed, torture