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

But, will the people forgive the President..?

By rahnuma ahmed

The president has granted clemency to AHM Biplob, son of Laxmipur ruling party leader Abu Taher, a death row inmate, convicted of kidnapping and murdering advocate Nurul Islam on September 18, 2000, who was then organising secretary of Laxmipur BNP (Bangladesh Nationalist Party).

But will the people forgive the President? This is the question that grips politicians, lawyers, intellectuals and activists as they discuss and debate, that arouses common people’s passions as they argue and pass judgment, even those who are opposed to the death penalty in principle, as I am. The ruling party’s electoral pledge to establish the rule of law now rings hollow. Absolutely. Finally.

Since July 14, when presidential clemency was granted to Biplob.

Ruling party leaders insist that president Zillur Rahman has acted in accordance with his constitutional powers. Part IV, section 49 says, “The President shall have [the] power to grant pardons, reprieves and respites and to remit, suspend or commute any sentence passed by any court, tribunal or other authority.”

But surely presidential pardons must necessarily be exercised with discretion? With caution? Only in cases where there is reasonable ground to assume that a miscarriage of justice has occurred? To prevent it from happening?

That, however, is not the case. The truth can no longer be hidden. It has been exposed as it was bound to, revealing the corrupt arrogance of ruling party talking heads who prove yet again to be blind to the absolute misery of common people devastated ever more by killings. By senseless road accidents.  By sexual assaults, rapes, mob attacks leading to deaths. By extra-judicial killings.

By cover-ups in the making which criminalise innocent people. Limon, a 16 year-old Jhalokathi college student whose leg had to be amputated after Rapid Action Battalion forces shot him, was dubbed a `terrorist’ by the prime minister’s defence adviser. His father too, was labelled a `terrorist’ by the adviser who added, I’m a `hundred percent sure.’ And, no, chimed in the home minister, these statements won’t influence the police investigation. Nor the judicial process.

The truth has been exposed by the presidential clemency which has de-criminalised a convicted criminal.

He should be kept above politics, says senior Awami League leader Suranjit Sengupta. Criticism must be targeted at the home ministry and the government, not at the president.  Offered as a skin-saver—obviously the prime minister’s since constitutionally the president is bound to act in accordance with her advice—it expresses wishful thinking, for the clemency proves that the president is deep into party politics as he has intervened to save the life of a convicted criminal belonging to the ruling party, an act that offers us deep insights into how the ruling party actually rules. A knife that cuts away at the lies and hypocrisies. Of the prime minister. Of her cabinet ministers, and senior ruling party members. The Awami League is committed to establishing the rule of law, a lie repeated ad infinitum. Even after the clemency. No reprieve. Not from lies, no.

The judgment passed by M Hasan Imam, judge, Speedy Trial Tribunal, Chittagong on December 9, 2003 contained a description of the gruesome murder. The accused Biplob, Lavu, Jiku, Rinku and Shipon had thrown Nurul Islam down on Biplob’s bathroom floor. They had used machettes and scythes, they had hacked him to death. Nurul Islam had pleaded for his life, he had even promised to leave Lokkhipur (Kaler Kantho, July 22, 2011). His body parts had been dumped in the Meghna river. Of the 31 accused, 15 were acquitted. Five including Biplob were condemned to death; 9 were given life sentences, while 2 were given 5-year imprisonments.

Biplob was gone for 10 years. Absconding, nowhere to be found. Until this April 6 when he turned up and surrendered before the tribunal.  His father Abu Taher, Laxmipur’s `godfather`, appealed to the president for his son’s life. The presidential pardon was granted a little over 3 months later. Was Biplob’s return a strange coincidence? Or, had the pardon been worked out in advance? Had it been guaranteed? By who?

Biplob’s pardon is preceded by another last year, of 20 death row inmates, most of them Awami League supporters, termed a `wholesale’ pardon (The Daily Star, September 8, 2010).  They had been convicted of killing Jubo Dal leader Sabbir Ahmed Gama, nephew of former BNP deputy minister Ruhul Quddus Talukdar Dulu in 2004. How can death penalties be awarded to 21

persons for the murder of only one person? There are those who contend that Dulu must have influenced the trial process, but he refutes the allegation. But has a president ever granted such a wholesale pardon in the history of Bangladesh? Jurist Shahdeen Malik, described both the verdict and the clemency as “unusual.” Human rights activist Sultana Kamal felt that the grounds on which the clemency had been granted needed to be explained by the government. The law minister Shafique Ahmed thought otherwise, the law ministry had given its recommendation, it was up to the president to grant it if he desired. The home secretary Abdus Sobhan Sikder stressed that it is was the president’s “absolute power to grant mercy to any convict.” And what about the attorney general Mahbubey Alam? It was the president’s “right,” he maintained, expressing absolute disregard for history. His own.

When Mohiuddin Ahmed Jhintu, convicted of committing a double murder, was awarded presidential clemency during the BNP-Jamaat rule on January 13, 2005, the Supreme Court Bar Association, then headed by the current attorney general, had demanded that the pardon be scrapped. At a rally held on August 8, 2005, SCBA leaders had demanded that all documents should be made public, they had castigated barrister Moudud Ahmed, then law minister, for “flip-flopping” on the issue. But the SCBA, not content with these demands alone, had demanded the resignation of the ruling coalition because of its “misrule”; it had demanded the establishment of the “rule of law.” Advocate Sahara Khatun, current home minister, had also addressed the rally, which was followed by a procession (see photo) where lawyers had raised the slogan, Jhintu-Moudud dui bhai, ek dorite fashi chai (Jhintu-Moudud are brothers, they should be hanged on the same rope).

Jhintu’s tale is in many respects similar to Biplob’s. According to press reports, 3 others alongwith Jhintu had been awarded the death penalty. Only Kamal had been arrested, he was hanged immediately after the judgment. Jhintu, Shaheed and Manik absconded; in an interview given to Probashir Kontho, a Sweden-based Bangla newspaper (February 2004), the former Jatiyatabadi Chatra Dal leader Jhintu had said, I was approached by the Ershad government, “we would be pardoned if we surrendered,” but I did not compromise on BNP ideology. When I hid in Bangkok during the 1980s, former BNP secretary general Abdus Salam Talukdar advised me to flee to Europe. Other details emerge from the interview, Khaleda Zia, then prime minister, had given him the task of re-organising the BNP’s Sweden chapter, she had reportedly promised him that she would try to get him `justice.’ Pictures of Jhintu with Khaleda Zia (2003), and with the former finance minister Saifur Rahman (2004) graced the pages of the newspaper. His photo with barrister Moudud, presiding at a reception hosted in the latter’s honorwhen he had visited Sweden, gave lie to Moudud’s claim that he did not know Jhintu. That such statements were false, they were aimed at defaming him (The Daily Star, July 29, 2005).  Jhintu returned to Bangladesh 23 years later and surrendered before the court. A mere ten days later, he received a presidential pardon.

Moudud Ahmed now—now, that Biplob has been freed—insists that Jhintu’s case is different to Biplob’s. The former had been tried in a “kangaroo court” (1982), referring presumably to former president HM Ershad’s martial law regime, in which he himself had served as a cabinet, and later, as the prime minister.

Who will ensure our saftey, asks Shahin Rashida Islam, Nurul Islam’s widowed wife. http://tinyurl.com/3nlc6g8 How can killers be so powerful? She raises yet another, more powerful, question: will the president be able to forgive his wife Ivy Rahman’s killers?  A reference to the August 21 grenade attacks on a rally presided by Sheikh Hasina, then opposition leader, in which 23 Awami League members and supporters, and Ivy Rahman, was killed.

Offering it was suicidal, a retraction would be wise. One can only hope that the president, and the prime minister, realises it.

Published in New Age, Monday July 25, 2011
(typos corrected in this version)

By rahnuma ahmed

“…far from a mere method or an a priori technique to be imposed on all students, education is a political and moral practice that provides the knowledge, skills and social relations that enable students to explore for themselves the possibilities of what it means to be engaged citizens, while expanding and deepening their participation in the promise of a substantive democracy.”
– Henri A Giroux, Lessons to be learned from Paulo Freire, 23 November 2010

Solidarity rally for Viqarunnisa Noon school and college students, central Shaheed Minar, July 15, 2011. From left to right, Ayesha Khanam, professor Delwar Hossain, Zonayed Saki, Mushrefa Mishu, Advocate Habibunnesa, professor Naseem Akhter Hussain, professor Gitiara Nasreen, Ferdousi Priyabhashini, Faizul Hakim Lala, Nur Mohammad, professor Akmal Hossain, professor Sirajul Islam Chowdhury, Rahnuma Ahmed and Nurul Kabir observing a one-minute silence to pay their respects to 40 students killed in Mirsarai road accident. Professor Anu Muhammad, and dramatist and actor Mamunur Rashid joined the rally later. The rally ended with songs of resistance sung by Arup Rahee and his band Lila, Amal Akash and Samageet, and Krishnakoli Islam

Forty killed in Mirsarai road accident, July 11. Thirty-nine were schoolboys, aged 11-13, on their way home from a football match. http://tinyurl.com/4xpno3a Unimaginable swathes of grief sweep surrounding villages, engulf the nation. Three day mourning in educational institutions; the truck driver, chatting on his mobile as the truck skidded and plunged into a canal, still eludes arrest. Of humble backgrounds, father is an autorickshaw driver, a rickshaw puller. Dreams have crumbled into a void.

We mourned their deaths at Shaheed Minar last Friday, July 15, as we rallied in support of Viqarunnisa Noon students who are demanding the speedy trial and punishment of the schoolteacher accused of raping a student, who are against the return of Hosne Ara Begum as principal (temporarily replaced) on the grounds that she had suppressed the allegation.

News of more deaths as I write. Six college students beaten to death allegedly by Keblar Char villagers in Aminbazar, Savar, a drug belt. http://tinyurl.com/3d5b45g Media reports indicate villagers mistook them for robbers. The seventh surviving student says they had gone there to try drugs. Just `out of curiosity’ (The Bangladesh Today, July 19, 2011).

The law and order situation has worsened to alarming levels as police forces get largely deployed to contain the discontent of opposition political parties. To contain political dissent, a civic right. To contain student protests, as Viqis, both present and alumni, allege. Threatening phone calls; he claimed to be the officer-in-charge of Ramna thana, an allegation denied (New Age, July 17, 2011).  Police and Rapid Action Battalion forces were positioned outside Viqarunnisa’s main campus in Baily road, when hundreds of guardians joined students to protest.  Ex-Viqis have been prevented from entering the campus, threatened with arrest. Lists of alumnis who are blogging and networking on facebook have been prepared by the detective branch, searched out, threatened. If alumni allegations are to be believed, by treason.

I read and re-read the complaint of the Viqarunnisa Noon student, dated July 4. I am a regular student of the Basundhara unit. I attended all coaching classes conducted by my schoolteachers, I wanted to do well in my exams.

I look at her handwriting. Neat, but hesitant. Small letters. Who was with her when she wrote it? Her mother? Her sister? Thoughts race around in my head, the letter must have been drafted before being copied on to blank sheets of paper. How long did it take? How did she feel? How does she feel?

Was her father in the room as well? ‘A father normally does not discuss such issues with his daughter’ said a father, as he took part in the human chain held outside Viqarunnisa on July 9. But I went with my daughter. We don’t want this to happen to other girls (New Age, July 10, 2011).

I was late in my Bangla coaching class, Parimal sir asked me to wait, he said he’d help me with the bit that I’d missed. After everyone left, he closed the main door, he entered the room and shut the door and before I could understand what was happening he came and tied a piece of cloth around my mouth. I struggled but he quickly tied my hands behind my back with my orna. He then beat me, he beat me badly. He took off all my clothes, he took pictures. He then physically tortured me.

Parimal Jaydhar was arrested on July 6 from his wife’s sister’s home in Keraniganj. He was remanded for 5 days. In his confessional statement to the court on July 11, he admitted to the allegation of rape but denied taking any pictures, said the investigating officer (The Daily Star, July 18, 2011).  He was sent to jail on the magistrate’s order. The video was the incriminating evidence, but a mere denial seems to have satisfied the investigating officer. Is there more to it than meets the eye?

He had threatened me. I must not tell anyone. I must continue to attend his classes. If I didn’t, he would release the pictures on the internet. He even threatened to kill me. I was mentally shattered. I felt lost. I didn’t know what to do.

She was raped twice, on May 28, and again, on June 17 (Victim deposes before magistrate, bdnews24, July 18, 2011).

I went to Parimal sir’s coaching class. He was teaching another batch of students, he told me to wait in the next room. He sent them away soon and entered the room. He shut the door. I ran and told him not to. He shoved me, my head banged against the wall. It hurt. He shouted at me, `toke bolesi amar icchar baire jabi to toke jaaney mere felbo’(I warned you, if you go against my wishes, I will kill you). He then tortured me physically, most brutally.

The rest of the complaint meticulously details what happened next. It helps to explain why guardians later joined in the Basundhara protests, why it spread to other campuses.

June 18 was a holiday, I went to school the next day and told my classmates. They advised me to disclose what had happened to Lutfar Rahman sir, the head of our Basundhara unit. He was unavailable that day. I told him on June 21, he said he would look into it. But when I saw Parimal sir in school the next day, I went to Lutfar Rahman sir again. He provided assurances. June 23 was parents day, Hosne Ara Begum apa visited our branch on the occassion, Parimal sir wasn’t present. I was absent the next 2 days, I was ill. On June 28, my classmates and I discussed why action had still not been taken against Parimal sir. We decided to inform the principal. We wrote a letter demanding that he should be given exemplary punishment, it was read out, everyone present signed it willingly. We requested Lutfar Rahman sir to forward it to Hosne Ara apa. Please note that everyone at school got to know of the incident on the 27th when I had been absent. A copy of the complaint was forwarded to the chairman of the governing body (Rashed Khan Menon), who is also chairman of the parliamentary standing committee on education.

Viqarunnisa principal Hosne Ara (now replaced) says, she is not to blame. Parimal was suspended after the complaint was officially received on June 28. Only the governing body has the authority to sack him, it did do so on July 5, it suspended two other teachers as well, Barun Chandra Barman and Abul Kalam Azad. http://tinyurl.com/3oymagd It’s a conspiracy, she says, it’s because I had stopped the `admission trade’ (bdnews24.com, July 15, 2011).

Students allege that she failed to stand beside the raped girl, that she had given instructions that the latter should not be allowed to come to school. Guardians are infuriated. How can the authorities of such a prestigious school, one that excels in public exams year after year, often breaking its own previous records, be so callous toward allegations of teacher rape? Hosne Ara, they insist, should have come to Bashundhara campus immediately to take strong steps, to allay their fears. She should not have responded to them simply over the telephone, which she did when they entered Bashundhara campus en masse on July 29. She finally went to the campus on July 3, a day on which hartal had been declared as early as June 18.

The student’s father filed a complaint at Badda thana on July 4. Hosne Ara and the acting head of the Bashundhara branch Mujibar Rahman were also accused. Parimal was eventually arrested on July 6.

Before the July 5 governing body meeting, Hosne Ara met with college teachers, and reportedly said, `[how can it be true] why, she’s like a boy,’ supposedly because the girl was good at sports lending herself to social stereotypes, i.e., unfeminine, unattractive to men. Hosne Ara is also reported to have said, 1 or 2 such instances (rape) are likely to occur in an institution as large as Viqarunnisa which has 18,000 girls. Students allege that school authorities had initially attempted to disregard the allegation on the grounds that it had not taken place on school premises but at the coaching centre. That Hosne Ara had threatened to expel students who took part in protests. She is reported as having said, what occurred was `sex’ (not rape), it was `mutual.’

Some think, school authorities delayed in taking action against Parimal in the hope that as he’d succeeded in the Public Service exams, he’d leave, and the incident could be brushed under the carpet. Others are infuriated at his application not having been closely screened, as similar allegations were reportedly made against Parimal at the school where he taught previously.  A culture of impunity toward sexual harassment and rape by male teachers prevails, say guardians; they point at a similar incident which occurred several months ago at Motijheel Ideal.  The teacher was merely sacked. Rashed Khan Menon, as the member of parliament of the area, is the chairman of the governing body at Motijheel Ideal too.

Parimal is one of 6 teachers, employed last year, who all belong to Gopalganj, Faridpur, same home district as the prime minister. Hosne Ara is reported to have bragged often of her friendship with the prime minister; her initial attempts, after being appointed principal last year, to change the school uniform to red and green (colours of the national flag), to change the name from Viqarunnisa to Fazilatunnessa (the prime minister’s mother’s name) were deeply resented by students, teachers and staff alike. Hosne Ara’s initial line of defense, that it was a `conspiracy’ because she had introduced the lottery system and put an end to the admission trade, slowly fell apart as news emerged of `extra’ students having been admitted, i.e., in addition to those who had succeeded in the admission tests, 25 in class one, and an additional 4-5 students in each class upto class seven.

As student protests continued, accompanied by a class boycott, a section of the governing body in Rashed Khan Menon’s absence (in USA) called a meeting on July 13 and removed Hosne Ara, replacing her with the seniormost teacher at Viqarunnisa, Ambia Khatun, as principal.  Students were overjoyed, they finally had a principal in whom they could trust, who would stand beside them. The mood at Viqarunnisa was festive, students ordered cakes, they celebrated.

Within hours, the Dhaka Education Board dissolved the governing body. It had failed to tackle the situation. Its term had expired last August. It had failed to initiate elections to a new governing body.  Ambia Khatun was removed too, the governing body’s decision was contrary to rules and regulations. True. Viqarunnisa teacher Manju Ara Begum was appointed the acting principal. The ad-hoc committee was tasked with overseeing the institution and appointing a new principal in six months (bdnews24, July 17, 2011).

On the same day, the education minister, Nurul Islam Nahid said, `evil forces’ were behind the protests at Viqarunnisa. I don’t blame the students, vested quarters are instigating them. How could they eat cake when the nation’s education institutions are in mourning due to the Mirsarai accident? But cake-eating had occurred later, what about the education minister’s own ethical duties, for, as a Viqarunnisa student said at the solidarity rally, `how could you, as education minister, not come to the school? How could you not feel concerned or obliged to come and see the situation for yourself?’ [from 0:45 secs]  Bashundhara students by the way, had faxed petititions to the education minister; they had also handed over to the prime minister’s private secretary an appeal requesting her to step in to resolve the crisis.

The `admission trade’ conspiracy theory, having proven to be shaky, government propagandists immediately latched on to the `evil forces’ theory. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party must be behind the student protests! Easily `proven’ since Khaleda Zia had lent her support to the protests, had called for punishment of all concerned; also, since the faction of the governing body which had removed Hosne Ara, was led by Khaleda’s former private secretary. Jamaat too, they must be behind the protests! Ambia Khatun’s headscarf lent `proof’, posters appeared overnight on Viqarunnisa’s outer walls proclaiming that Ambia was a Jamaat-i. So what if she had been the first to sign a mass petition against Jamaat politics launched by Viqarunnisa students two years ago, which, as a Viqi blogger points out, is deposited in the Liberation War Museum. So what if the mother of an ex-student, a Hindu, had turned to Ambia, to confide her sorrow at her daughter’s marriage to a Muslim boy.

Sections of the media, both printed and electronic, jumped in to divert public attention away from rape, from the school authorities suppression of the allegations, from the thick web of ruling party connections. http://tinyurl.com/3av9ync [0:08 secs] I watched several well-known faces, including newspaper editors, a woman TV anchor, and a former advisor to the military-installed caretaker government who is an educationist, repeatedly ask, how could teachers have allowed such young girls to go out on the streets? Why should they be demanding Hosne Ara’s removal?

It is up to us to turn these questions on their head, to ask, do you mean to say a raped girl should remain silent? That she, her family, that girls as a collective should not protest? But since the persons I speak of, are known to be women’s rights defenders, let me settle for something closer to the truth: I think what they mean is, protest against rape but only when it’s Yasmin (14-year old Dinajpur girl raped and killed by police personnel when the BNP was in power). http://tinyurl.com/3lsu38s Tailor your protests to suit `our’ side.

As an ex-Viqi put it at the July 15th solidarity rally, yes, we are being instigated. Yes, we are being provoked. By our conscience!

Apparently those who are opposed to Viqarunnisa’s student protests seem to have er… lost it?

—————–
Published in New Age, Wednesday, July 19, 2001 (Monday was Shab-e-Barat holiday)
Typos corrected, slightly changed version.

By rahnuma ahmed

Soft hands, gentle hands. I bent, I kissed.

Rumana was lying in her hospital bed. We have never met before, I said, as I held and caressed her hand, but your ex-teacher Meghna Guhathakurta, is a close friend of mine. You probably know that.

I wish we didn’t have to meet under these terrible circumstances but please know Rumana, that we are with you. All of us.

She inclined her head graciously. Even under these circumstances.

Stray thoughts entered my head. When visiting foreign lands where I didn’t know the language, my senses were invariably heightened. I could always sense when people were talking of me.

Rumana’s senses must have altered. Could she sense from my kiss, my touch, my caress, that I was a friend?

Blinded by jealousy, rage and pettiness at not being able to hold a candle to her warmth and beauty, at not being able to match her intelligence and competence, Hasan Sayeed Shumon, Rumana’s husband, gouged out her eyes on June 5.

Not his own. Her’s.

Behind this brutal act—which occurred soon after she came home from Canada this May, to visit her husband and daughter—lay years of abuse and violence which began soon after marriage.

Marriage, for Bengalis, is sacred. It needn’t be, at least, not for those who are Muslims, because under Muslim laws, marriage is a civil contract. It is not a tie made in Heaven. Couples do not have to remain wedded till death do them apart. But social norms, ideologies and practices decree otherwise.

Women are brought up to revere marriage. To remain steadfast. Even if they are abused, even if they are battered, even if it occurs continually. Even women who come from better-off backgrounds, are highly-educated, professionally accomplished and have independent means of earning. As is, Rumana. This is why, feminists insist, there is no neat fit between class and gender inequalities. They are complexly inter-related. Simplistic equations are unable to explain, or to provide us with the intellectual and political resources needed to combat wife-battering. To resist domestic violence.

Was June 5 the first time you were assaulted? Asked a reporter at the press conference held at LabAid hospital where Rumana was re-admitted after returning from India on June 20th. After doctors at Shankar Netralaya had said, her left eye is irreparably damaged. It’s difficult to predict about the other. There’s a slim chance, but if only natural healing takes place. Come back after two months. We pray to mother nature, please heal Rumana.

No, she sobbed. It wasn’t. But he would always beg for forgiveness. It was wrong of me, it won’t happen again, he’d say. I believed him, every time he said that, I believed him. Ami to oke bhalobeshecchilam, it was a long wail that ended in deep sobs. I thought of my daughter too.

But I’m afraid now. After failing to kill me on June 5, he said, he wouldn’t let me live. He has threatened to shoot me, or to throw acid. I’m afraid for myself, for my daughter, for my family. Please put him away, please ensure my security.

Hasan was arrested a good ten days later, on 15 June. Police were under political pressure, alleged her family members. It was denied by the investigating officer (New Age, June 15, 2011). But rumours fly that cabinet members had contacted the thana on Sayeed’s behalf, that he had had been sheltered by a high-up official, that when national outrage made his arrest a necessity, he was arrested not from the Chittagong house where he was holed up, but, to save face, brought to Dhaka, and shown arrested here.

A High Court bench had meanwhile passed an order at its own motion following press reports. Police officers were censured for their failure to arrest Sayeed, they were instructed to submit an explanation. The court announced, it would monitor steps taken by the police for a month (bdnews.com June 18, 2011).

`Your husband says you were unfaithful to him, that you had an extra-marital affair with an Iranian man while studying abroad? Is it true?’  This was the first question levelled at Rumana at the press conference. After all the horrors that she and her father, had recounted — how she had been assaulted, eyes gouged, nose bitten off, mauled, bruised, their feelings of helplessness and fear, her loss of sight.

To cries of `shame, shame’ from women activists present, Khushi Kabir stood up. It is the violence done to Rumana, which is the crime. She is not on trial. He is. Actress Sara Zaker raised her voice, social ideas are to blame, a wife is viewed as her husband’s property. Does impropriety, even if it be true, mean that a husband has the right to kill his wife? Accusations of immorality are an old trick, said Rumana’s colleagues professor Akmal Hussain and Tanzim Ahmed. They are levelled to distract attention, to justify domestic violence.

The press conference was amply covered in the electronic media (what I write above was shown in the news footage http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqDSUuoa6wU&feature=related ), but interestingly, what got left out was the question raised by Amena Mohsin, another colleague and ex-teacher. Why don’t you ask instead where Hasan Sayeed was these 10 days? Why don’t you want to know who offered him protection?

Media censorship? Not unlikely. Journalistic ethics too, hardly practised among significant sections of the media, was thrown to the winds as some dailies and tabloids searched for `the real reason’ behind the violence. The Rapid Action Battalion’s impunity over crossfire killings may be criticised by bolder sections of the media, but its own impunity? When sections pose to be self-righteous seekers of truth? When they become apologists for crimes? When they trample over toes? Over eyes? Over blood?

Sayeed reportedly confessed to intelligence officials later, these allegations were false. They were made on the advice of well-wishers and lawyers. In the hope of swinging public sympathy toward him. In the hope of extracting some legal benefits. His confession did not noticeably lessen misogynist outpourings in the social media, such as facebook, ek haatey tali baajey na. She must have done something wrong.

After the press conference, women activists rallied to counter misogynist propaganda. Earlier, Sadeka Halim had made things happen. While later, Shireen Huq and Maheen Sultan at Naripokkho, worried that the Bangla press release which professor Gitiara Nasreen and I’d drafted was a watered-down version of what we’d agreed upon, wrote a fresh one. Much stronger. Allegations of infidelity, said the English statement, are an attempt to deviate attention from the attack and the attacker, to shift the blame to the person attacked. A woman’s fidelity or character is immaterial to the prosecution of a case of criminal violence. The facts of the attack are, the injury to her eyes was the result of deliberate assaults, it was not the result of a tussle [as Sayeed had said]. Accusations of infidelity do not justify violence against women, they have no place in law.

Women members of parliament too rallied around Rumana, they held a human chain outside the hospital. But although Tarana Halim said, they were non-partisanal, they were against all acts of violence toward women regardless of who she was, regardless of who the perpetrator was, another woman MP did not miss the opportunity to regurgitate government propaganda: violence toward women was caused by `fundamentalist’ forces, and hence, we needed to extend our support to the government’s recently declared Women Development Policy-2011.

Misogynist outpourings here, some of which were deliberate, are matched by ones that are undoubtedly orientalist, surfacing in some Canadian blogs. Rumana, a Fulbright scholar, studying for her master’s degree at the University of British Columbia, was depicted as a victim of “`brutal’ honor in Islam.” A commenter, under the name an Ordinary American, wrote, “Why is this [attack on Rumana] any surprise? These people from Third World countries are little more than semi-anthropologically developed animals–especially the (so-called) men. .. I saw these same types of animals over three decades ago when I was in the military and having to go to these Third World outhouses to train their incompetent asses”.

His sentiments echoed those of the current Canadian Chief of Defense Staff, who recently declared that the function of Canadian troops in Afghanistan is not peace-keeping, but bringing the lives of `detestable murderers and scumbags’ to abrupt and violent ends.” Overlooking the fact that US former president George Bush’s so-called `war on terror’ has wreaked death and destruction in Iraq, regarded as the cradle of human civilisation, and, that the Canadian parliament was never given the opportunity to vote on whether troops should be committed to the war (Michael Keefer, The Harper Government and Canada’s ‘War-on-Terror’ Immigration Policy, Global Research, June 26, 2011).

Rumana’s father, a retired army major, has constantly stood by his daughter, one cannot help but be moved as he keeps wiping his eyes while speaking of his daughter’s predicament, of the torture which she silently endured, of his public appeals for justice. His professional training, obviously, had not prepared him for a misfortune of this proportion, so close to his heart.

Dhaka university prides itself on being the oldest, the most reputed and the highest seat of learning in the country. Students have accused university authorities, closely aligned to the ruling party, of having been distant and aloof. Public assurances that even if permanently blinded, Rumana will be able to retain her teaching post, is not enough. To truly belong to the Justice for Rumana campaign will require the university’s top leadership to be far more pro-active, one which may cost them their smooth tradeoffs with the ruling party.

But who ever said fighting for justice was smooth and easy?

Published in New Age, Monday 27, 2011

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by rahnuma ahmed

In the end, treachery will betray even itself.

Roman proverb

When the prime minister, the finance minister etc., not known for being democratically-oriented, feel obliged to respond publicly according to the terms and conditions set by the National Oil-Gas Committee, it is clear that the tide is shifting.

It is clear that  the National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Mineral Resources, Power and Ports (NCPOGMR) has made a significant impact on public consciousness. That there is a growing national awareness of the issue of ownership of natural resources; of the terms on which production sharing contracts are signed with international oil companies (IOCs); a growing suspicion that exporting extracted gas may not be the best way of solving the nation’s energy shortfall. More precisely, of the hollowness of the government’s reasoning as to why gas blocks need to be, must necessarily be, leased out to multinational companies.  More broadly, of whether the nation’s ruling class, regardless of which political party is in power, does act in the interests of the nation, of its people.

It is clear from what top ruling party leaders are now obliged to say, to repeatedly say, we are patriotic, we are not treacherous, that they have been forced to cede ground.

It is clear that a moral battle has been won.

Two days after the deal was signed with energy giant ConocoPhillips on June 16, 2011 for deep sea exploration in the Bay of Bengal, prime minister Sheikh Hasina was forced to say, we are not doing anything which goes against the interests of the nation, against the interests of the people. She was echoing what her cabinet colleagues and energy officials had said earlier. The finance minister had affirmed at the signing ceremony, the government has protected the country’s interest.   Petrobangla’s chairman Hossain Monsur too, had said, the production sharing contract contains nothing which goes against the national interest. Similar words had been mouthed by the prime minister’s energy advisor Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury.

No one is a better patriot, no one is a better protector of the nation’s interests than me, said the prime minister (Who is a better patriot, asks PM, bdnews24, June 18, 2011).

News reports indicate, she then went off into a rant. Where was the National Oil-Gas committee during the previous government when there was no development in the country? When there was no electricity production? When there was no gas exploration? When investors were kept waiting due to lack of gas and electricity?

Leaders and activists of the National Committee were exactly where they are now. They had demanded then, as they demand now, that energy policies should benefit the people, not the multinational companies. That it is detrimental to the national interest.

But I wonder whether the prime minister remembers where she herself had been when there was `no development in the country, when there was no electricity production…’ etc. etc. When the people of Phulbari had risen up against Asia Energy’s proposed open-pit mine. When an elderly woman had said, “No, we do not want the coal mine. What will we eat?” When a young man had asked, `Two coal mines have been built in neighbouring areas. What development has it brought, tell me?’ When paramilitary forces had opened fire on August 26, 2006. Three persons killed. Many more injured (`You cannot eat coal.’ Resistance in Phulbari, New Age, August 19, 2008).

Sheikh Hasina, then leader of the opposition, had visited Phulbari. She had publicly pledged to resist any move to start open-pit mining in Phulbari, or at any other place in the country.  She had lent support to the hartal called by the National Committee on August 30, 2006; had publicly called upon the government led by Khaleda Zia, to stick to the agreement it had entered into with the people of Phulbari.

It is a pledge that has been betrayed since the government, by all indications, is moving ahead to implement an open-pit pilot project at Barapukuria, with top-ranking government leaders desperately trying to shore up support for open-pit mining.  The very leaders who earlier opposed it, now insist, open-pit mining will yield higher economic benefits.

Is it a wonder then that the National Committee accuses the government of betraying the people? Of betraying themselves? Their own words, their own actions? That it accuses them of treachery?

The chorus of voices to be seen and heard now, had been noticeably absent when cables from US embassy Dhaka, WikiLeaked on 24 December night, revealed that US ambassador James Moriarty had met the prime minister’s energy advisor, Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury, had sought assurances that US-based Conoco Phillips (from among 7 bidders) be awarded two of the uncontested blocks in the Bay of Bengal.

New Age had contacted foreign minister Dipu Moni, and the energy adviser Chowdhury. It had sought official responses on the disclosure. They had avoided questions; a day later, they stopped receiving calls. They did not responded to text messages either (WikiLeaks Bangladesh-1, New Age, December 27, 2010).

Till date, this government, which won a landslide victory in the December 2008 elections, has not responded to the WikiLeaks disclosure.

Instead, top-ranking government leaders keep mouthing words, no, the contracts are not against the national interest. We would never do such a thing, would we?

How can one tell if the contracts are not made publicly available? All contracts signed thus far for coal and natural gas, have been kept secret. They have not been placed before the parliament—the people’s elected body—either.  There has been no parliamentary discussion. To top it all, these contracts have been kept secret from the parliamentary standing committee on energy as well.

Is it not reasonable to want to read the contracts, especially in the light of WikiLeaks disclosure which served only to confirm, and very definitively so, what the National Committee had suspected all along?

But instead, whenever specific criticisms of the terms of the contract are raised, for instance, that the leasing company has been awarded the right to sell off 80% of the gas extracted, that they are likely to do so given our own experiences and that of other third world countries, that this will not solve the country’s energy crisis, or, that the multinationals will sell it to us at very high prices, that gas prices will double from earlier prices, $2.92, or 210 taka for a million cubic foot to $5-6 or 420 taka,  that this will push up the prices of daily necessities and services further (rice, lentils etc., to transport), that we can see through the government’s excuses, that just because India and Myanmar are going ahead with exploration in their own offshore territory, does not mean that unless we sign over blocks to MNCs we will lose control of that which indisputably belongs to Bangladesh, that we should instead pursue a different path to development, by retaining control over our natural resources, by strengthening the nation’s exploration agencies, that we should stop moaning, `we have neither the money nor the technology’ that it is the political will that matters….

I could go on and on, but I won’t. I’ll stick to the issue of contract instead. All reasonable concerns raised are either dismissed by the Petrobangla chairman, by high officials at the energy ministry as being merely `speculative.’ Or, they are pooh-poohed by our garrulent finance minister, it is `utter nonsense.’  But I have noticed that some of these high officials slip up in their enthusiastic defence, this wont-happen, no, that wont-hapen either, where does it say in the contract?

But exactly. Where is the contract? Why has the government not made any contract available publicly? Why are they secreted away? The only document that we, members of the public, have access to, is the production sharing contract (PSC model 2008), which Anu Muhammad, member secretary, National Committee, is quick to point out, was designed during the caretaker government and was uploaded on the net to facilitate international bidding. Not to elicit comments or suggestions from members of the public. Does secrecy over contracts not lend credence to B D Rahmatullah’s accusation that the power crisis has been manufactured, has been `artificially created’ to push through anti-people power projects like rental power plants? There is reason to take his word for it, he was former director-general of the Power Cell. `Our engineers,’ he says, `are willing to sell their country just for a ticket abroad’ (Budhbar, August 18, 2010).

Did the Awami League sign a muchleka with foreign powers that if voted to power, our natural resources would be handed over?

As the issue of caretaker government rages between the two major political parties, which government will hold the next parliamentary elections, will it be the current one, or a caretaker government, as rumors fly around of the dice being stacked so that Hossain Mohd Ershad and his Jatiya Party, currently a member of the ruling alliance, can form the loyal opposition, as it increasingly seems that the war crimes trials are being drawn-out to help win another election, as Ershad gets acquitted in a money-laundering case filed over 15 years ago (as I write),  suspicions keep deepening.

Suspicions which led the National Committee to organise a seige of the energy ministry—dubbed Kashimbazjar Kuthi—on June 14, 2011, to protest against the government’s decision to sign the deal with ConocoPhillips.  Police action prevented the seige from taking place, protestors were clubbed, many were hurt and injured.

Mir Jafar, who swore by the Holy Quran to fight the English, bowing before Robert Clive after the Battle of Plassey, 1757, which inaugurated 200 years of British colonial rule and exploitation in India. Artist Francis Hayman, 1757

Our rulers have not learned any lessons from history. Despite Mir Jafar being one of the most despised and reviled names, despite his having been unable to `benefit’ in the narrow sense of the word from his act of treachery.

The demoted army chief of Nawab Sirajuddoula, the last independent Nawab of Bengal, entered into a secret pact with the British, negotiated by William Watts, chief of the British factory at Kasimbazar. In exchange of promises of huge bribes and the Nawabship of Bengal, Mir Jafar withheld his troops when Sirajuddoula fought with the British East India Company’s army on June 23, 1757. Despite being numerically superior, the nawab’s forces lost; forced to flee, Sirajuddoula was later caught and executed

Later day historians agree that although the purported reason given for the Battle of Plassey was Sirajuddoula’s capture of Fort William in Kolkata, the Company had actually decided that only a change of regime would help it advance its interests. That the East India Company’s geo-political ambition and the larger dynamics of colonial conquest are essential to understanding the larger picture. For, the conquest of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa had led to further conquests. Of India. Of South Asia.

And what of geo-political ambitions now? Critical commentators agree that the the US-led `war on terror’ is actually a war for energy resources. That America’s foreign oil dependency is being militarised by the US government, that it has chosen to rely on military forces to protect access to foreign oil. And that, as other players (China, Russia) enter the stage, the US administration is turning to seek other energy sources.

But to return to history, what happened to Mir Jafar? Installed as the Nawab, he was a mere puppet figure. He was un-installed when he realised that British expectations were boundless, but was re-installed after Mir Qasim proved to be too strong-minded. Another quisling, Jagat Seth, hereditary banker to the Mughal Emperor and the Nawab of Bengal, reportedly went mad after Clive refused to give him 5% of the loot promised.

To return to the present, close to Mir Jafar’s palace in Murshidabad, in ruins, stands a gate known as Nimak Haramer Deori (the traitor’s gate).

Published in New Age, Monday, June 20, 2011 http://newagebd.com/newspaper1/editorial/23090.html

It’s been more than a week since my friend had said, apnader naamte hobe, but there has not been much of a response from women’s organisations to the government’s back-pedalling on the Women Development Policy regarding equal inheritance shares for Muslim women.

Meanwhile, news has come to light of a group—variously described in media reports as religious extremists, villagers, local influentials, members of the ruling party—having assaulted 28 Bauls (mystics) who had met in a two-day programme, held annually in a Pangsha village (Faridpur) on April 6. Media reports vary regarding the reasons, according to one, their meet was termed anti-Islamic as Baul songs contain lyrics which go against the Quran and Sharia (Blitz, April 8, 2011) ; according to police sources, the house where the programme was held was near the mosque, local leaders requests to Lalon followers had been disregarded (New Age, April 9, 2011). Altercation started soon after the programme began, followed by Bauls being dragged off to the mosque. Their long locks of hair and beard were cut short, mustaches were shaved off, all under the instructions of the local mosque’s imam. They were forced to pray, to utter words of repentance (touba). The thana initially refused to file a case. Only one of the named aggressors, a madrasa principal, has been arrested thus far, all others have reportedly fled the village.

In the meanwhile, Mufti Fazlul Haque Amini, chief of the Islami Ain Bastobayon Committee (Committee for the Implementation of Islamic Law), and chairman of a faction of the Islamic Oikya Jote, has threatened to “paralyse” the country at an hour’s notice if the Women Development Policy is not annulled. Twenty thousand madrasas will “respond to our call immediately.” He also threatened to launch counter attacks if his son, Abul Hasnat, allegedly picked up by law enforcing personnel in plainclothes on April 11, who hasn’t been released yet, was harmed.

Amini claims his son was kidnapped, and that too, on the prime minister’s orders. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party says, the abduction was carried out at the instruction of the government, that Hasnat should be publicly handed over to his family.

We are not against the development of women, says Amini, but it must be in accordance with the holy Quran and Hadis. Members of the current cabinet do not understand the language of the Quran, they interpret it wrongly. We are not against the celebration of the Bangla New Year either. Only against those anti-Islamic activities which were committed on April 14.

Protests demanding exemplary punishment to the assaulters have been held, by left and cultural activists (outside Jatiya Jadughor), by university teachers and students (Rajshahi), by others too, including the Palli Baul Unnayan Sangstha, a recipient of financial support from US embassy (Dhaka) in recognition of helping “save the music of the wandering ministrels of Bangladesh” (ambassador Patricia Butenis, May 24, 2006).

Amini has demanded the resignation of the law minister, and the director general of the Islamic Foundation (April 11). Qawmi madrasas are breeding centres of militants, they should be brought under the education ministry, these comments, attributed to the minister, are denied, he claims he was misinterpreted. The government, adds Amini, blames subversive activities on Islamist groups without conducting proper investigation.

It is worth noting that Amini’s threat to paralyse the country by calling on madrasa students refers to Qawmi i.e., private madrasas which follow the Deobandi curriculum, their growth was patronised by military rulers, generals Ziaur Rahman and

H M Ershad, 1975-1990. That, according to WikiLeaks Dhaka revelations, the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) has been working with USAid to develop and implement a standardised curriculum for unregulated madrassas as a “common counter-terrorism goal” (Guardian, December 21, 2010). Alia madrassas i.e., the government ones, include science, mathematics, English and vocational training in their curriculum in addition to religious teachings, whereas the Qawmi curriculum teaches only the Quran, hadis, sunnah, and orthodox interpretations of the sharia.

Apparently 300-400 crores taka flow into madrasas annually, spendings unsupervised by the government, a cause for concern which has recently led the DGFI (military intelligence agency) to recommend that a madrasa university be set up. It is a proposal which has the support of US embassy staff who are involved in the project ; according to Afsan Chowdhury, the underlying idea is that a university opened under DGFI scrutiny and control, complemented by US advice, will aid in containing the money and those who have militant interests, that it will assist in tracing the money to their funding sources (DGFI and US embassy push for a madrasa university : concern about incompetence, opinion.bdnews24.com, January 17, 2011).

I find it also worth noting that the regional Counter-Terrorism Centre (for South Asia) is being set up in Dhaka, that the European Union is providing 1.5 million euros alongwith technological assistance, that training will be provided by counter-terrorism experts from European countries, the US and Canada to investigators, police and intelligence agency personnel across South Asia, this includes India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Myanmar, possiby some other countries as well. The proposed centre’s Southeast Asian counterpart, SEARCCT (The Southeast Asia Regional centre for Counter Terrorism), was launched in Malaysia in 2003, it offers courses on terrorism financing investigation/money laundering, enhancing port and aviation security, cyber terrorism, counter terrorist laws, chemical and biological terrorism, examining documents for fraudulence etc., etc.

The prime minister’s strong commitment to eliminate all sorts of terrorism and Dhaka’s support for EU causes in international forums and the UN, has been cited as being the reasons for selecting Dhaka. It is a move that has been welcomed by opinion-makers in the country, as the editorial of the leading English daily worded it, the news is a “welcome development” because although Bangladesh is not a “focal point of terrorism,” its “vulnerability to this global menace cannot be overemphasized.” Therefore, we need to “make the most of it” (The Daily Star, October 21, 2010).

What I find mind-boggling is the blind refusal of the majority among those who identify themselves as the thinking sections of society, whether writers or journalists, poets, politicians, women’s movement activists, academics, teachers, researchers, developmentalists, NGOs, business people, entrepreneurs, lawyers, doctors, engineers, other professionals and so on, to intellectually and politically confront the ten-year long war on terror for what it is. A hoax. A fraudulent war, actually being conducted to occupy lands and resources, one that has led to the killing and maiming of millions, to untold sufferings, to irreversible uprooting, dislocation and destruction.

Okay, I grant that for many of them to think (alone, silently, hand-wringingly), let alone lend support to the idea that 9/11 was in all likelihood a false flag operation is irreverent of America Almighty, a sin they would not dream of committing.

But at least the WMD lie, the irrefutable evidence that the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were planned prior to 9/11 (Libya too, at least, according to US ret. General Wesley Clark), the living proof that suicide hijackers of 9/11 have-risen-from-the-dead, the US’ open acceptance that Osama bin Laden has long been dead (since December 13, 2001, see Years of Deceit, Veterans Today, December 5, 2009), one would have thought that that would encourage people to think independently. Critically. What prevents people? Fear? Of what? Being irreverent? Possibly. Now that America, as George Monbiot points out, has become a religion, where US leaders see themselves as priests of a divine mission to rid the world of its demons (Guardian, July 29, 2003).

There is a possibility, one that cannot be ruled out, that we are loath to let go of a deeply-nurtured belief that violence is exclusively religious, one that is deeply-rooted in ekattur when we struggled to liberate ourselves from our Pakistani rulers and their local collaborators, in whose eyes we were deemed to be not pukka Muslims, to be filthy Hindus. That we cling to the idea that the violence unleashed by secular forces, despite all the coups, counter-coups, the institutionalised violence committed by civilian governments, repeatedly so, continually so, is accidental. Stray. Aberrations.

And, that it is religious violence, particularly of the Islamically-oriented variety, which targets women. It is a story that was craftily manipulated to invade Afghanistan (Laura Bush, Cherie Blair), that is being regurgitated endlessly by mainstream western media to justify its continued occupation, as does the Time magazine cover of August 9, 2010, the photo of an 18 year old Afghan whose nose was severed as punishment for disgracing her family, underlined by the question, What Happens if We Leave Afghanistan? One that coincided with the release of 76,900 classified Afghan war documents which tell the story of the horrors of war. Afghan women, says a leaked CIA document, “could serve as ideal messengers in humanizing the ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] role in combating the Taliban…” (Anne Holmes, The Face that Launched a Thousand Drones?)

But what about the other photo? In early 2010, a platoon of US soldiers in Afghanistan went on a shooting spree, killing at least 4 unarmed civilians and mutilating several corpses. Members of the “kill team” took scores of photos chronicling their kills. Before these became public, the Pentagon went to extraordinary lengths to suppress them (Rolling Stone, March 27, 2011). Just in case you are thinking, but these are men killing each other, let me remind you that acts of rape in Abu Ghuraib, of imprisoned Iraqi women were photographed, but totally suppressed. And, just in case you are thinking, that it is all the act of a few bad apples, know that more than 1/3rd of American women soldiers are raped, that 41% of female veterans allege to have been sexually harassed. That more are likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire in Iraq. That the US defense department did not cooperate with a House panel investigating sexual assaults of female soldiers by ordering its top official on sexual abuse not to show up despite a subpoena.

We cannot counter terror, by being, by insisting on being, half-blind. To fail to do so, makes one culpable.