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IMMEDIATELY after Professor Anu Muhammad, member secretary of the National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Mineral Resources, Power and Ports, was taken to Square Hospital, injured in police action on the committee’s protest march in the capital Dhaka on Wednesday afternoon, eminent photographer Shahidul Alam interviewed him on camera. Excerpts:
   Shahidul Alam: What was your protest against?
   Anu Muhammad: The gas resources which Bangladesh has, both in its gas fields and in the deep sea, is limited but if Bangladesh was able to utilise it, it would help the country be rid of its electricity crisis, it would enable greater industrialisation, it would help solve many problems, problems in the educational and health sectors. For the last two decades, Bangladesh’s control over its gas fields has passed over to multinational corporations through contracts which have handed over the control of blocks to these companies. Bangladesh has its own organisations, there’s BAPEX [Bangladesh Petroleum Exploration and Production Company] and other organisations as well which can lift gas but instead of exploring that option, we have handed over the control of gas fields to the multinational companies. And now what has happened is that the vast resources which Bangladesh has in the deep sea are being secured by foreign companies.
   Recently, three gas blocks have been leased out to foreign companies, two to an American multinational, ConocoPhillips, and the other to an Irish firm, Tullow, with the opportunity to export 80 per cent of the gas produced. But we conducted our own study which reveals that they will own, and be able to export the full 100 per cent. And even though we are being told that this is being done in order to solve the gas crisis, to solve the electricity crisis, but actually, in reality, none of the gas produced — according to this contract — will enter Bangladesh. We will not agree to such a deal. There is absolutely no question that we will agree to a deal which deprives the people of Bangladesh. To a contract that threatens the nation’s future. This contract should be rescinded, it’s the people’s demand, it’s everyone’s demand.
   We had organised a protest today demanding that the government cancel its decision, we had organised a siege of Petrobangla because Petrobangla has turned into a den of these multinational corporations. It’s no longer a Bangladeshi organisation. Our protest rally was very peaceful, we were proceeding steadily and very calmly when, as we had walked a couple of hundred yards, the police suddenly turned on us and began attacking us. They lathi-charged us, they used their boots, they kicked us, they punched us, regardless of who it was, whether it was a man or a woman. They were brutal, they were all over the place. More than fifty of us were wounded, some of them very severely, some of these lives are at risk.
   So what we want to say is, since this movement concerns everyone, since it is in the interests of all, and since everyone is united behind us, nothing can stop this movement. Neither brutality nor repression, nor trickery nor any attempts to hoodwink us.
   Who else besides you was attacked today?
   About fifty of us were injured, this includes Saiful Huq, one of the leaders, and many activists. Among the students, Jewel and Tania, they suffered head injuries. And two women students who, when the police tried to hit me on the head and in my abdomen — very targeted attacks — they ran forward to protect me. These two women activists were very badly injured. They are all in hospital now.
   We often speak of democratic governments. So, what do you think of the manner in which this government is behaving, is it any different from other governments?
   You know, we tend to think that there has been a change in the government, but now I think that that’s an illusion, that we live within an illusion, a maya, which makes us believe that there has been a change in the government. Whereas in reality, the government does not change because power, and interests, particularly, the interests of imperialism, the interests of multinational corporations — whether it’s the Awami League or the BNP [Bangladesh Nationalist Party], and all other governments which were in power, in principle there is no difference amongst any of these governments. There is no difference in principle, and to protect their interests they can exert the greatest possible force, they make use of all possible avenues — their army, their police, their legal system, their thugs, to protect the interests of the MNCs, of the imperialists. And in exchange for protecting those interests, they get paid off. In exchange, they are given some material benefits.
   So what role should the people play now?
   I think, I believe, and also, I speak on the basis of my experience in the movement, that once the people recognise, once they understand that this is their resource, that they are its owners, then it’s impossible to take it away from them. And people are, generally speaking, very conscious now. And it’s not just deep-sea gas, it’s the whole of Bangladesh. It belongs to the people. People are now increasingly conscious of this, and the greater the consciousness the better. The more they realise this, the more inevitable becomes the defeat of these anti-people forces.
   Transcribed and translated by Rahnuma Ahmed

IN ISRAEL, a country stolen from the Palestinians, fanatics control the government. One of the fanatics is the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Last week Netanyahu called for ‘crippling sanctions’ against Iran.
   The kind of blockade that Netanyahu wants qualifies as an act of war. Israel has long threatened to attack Iran on its own but prefers to draw in the US and NATO.
   Why does Israel want to initiate a war between the United States and Iran?
   Is Iran attacking other countries, bombing civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure?
   No. These are crimes committed by Israel and the US.
   Is Iran evicting peoples from lands they have occupied for centuries and herding them into ghettoes?
   No, that’s what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians for 60 years.
   What is Iran doing?
   Iran is developing nuclear energy, which is its right as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran’s nuclear energy programme is subject to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which consistently reports that its inspections find no diversion of enriched uranium to a weapons programme.
   The position taken by Israel, and by Israel’s puppet in Washington, is that Iran must not be allowed to have the rights as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty that every other signatory has, because Iran might divert enriched uranium to a weapons programme.
   In other words, Israel and the US claim the right to abrogate Iran’s right to develop nuclear energy. The Israeli/US position has no basis in international law or in anything other than the arrogance of Israel and the United States.
   The hypocrisy is extreme. Israel is not a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and developed its nuclear weapons illegally on the sly, with, as far as we know, US help.
   As Israel is an illegal possessor of nuclear weapons and has a fanatical government that is capable of using them, crippling sanctions should be applied to Israel to force it to disarm.
   Israel qualifies for crippling sanctions for another reason. It is an apartheid state, as former US President Jimmy Carter demonstrated in his book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.
   The US led the imposition of sanctions against South Africa because of South Africa’s apartheid practices. The sanctions forced the white government to hand over political power to the black population. Israel practices a worse form of apartheid than did the white South African government. Yet, Israel maintains that it is ‘anti-Semitic’ to criticise Israel for a practice that the world regards as abhorrent.
   What remains of the Palestinian West Bank that has not been stolen by Israel consists of isolated ghettoes. Palestinians are cut off from hospitals, schools, their farms, and from one another. They cannot travel from one ghetto to another without Israeli permission enforced at checkpoints.
   The Israeli government’s explanation for its gross violation of human rights comprises one of the greatest collections of lies in world history. No one, with the exception of American ‘Christian Zionists’, believes one word of it.
   The United States also qualifies for crippling sanctions. Indeed, the US is overqualified. On the basis of lies and intentional deception of the US Congress, the US public, the UN and NATO, the US government invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and used the ‘war on terror’ that Washington orchestrated to overturn US civil liberties enshrined in the US Constitution. One million Iraqis have paid with their lives for America’s crimes and four million are displaced. Iraq and its infrastructure are in ruins, and Iraq’s professional elites, necessary to a modern organized society, are dead or dispersed. The US government has committed a war crime on a grand scale. If Iran qualifies for sanctions, the US qualifies a thousand times over.
   No one knows how many women, children, and village elders have been murdered by the US in Afghanistan. However, the American war of aggression against the Afghan people is now in its ninth year. According to the US military, an American victory is still a long way away. Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, declared in August that the military situation in Afghanistan is ‘serious and deteriorating.’
   Older Americans can look forward to the continuation of this war for the rest of their lives, while their Social Security and Medicare rights are reduced in order to free up funds for the US armaments industry. Bush/Cheney and Obama/Biden have made munitions the only safe stock investment in the United States.
   What is the purpose of the war of aggression against Afghanistan? Soon after his inauguration, President Obama promised to provide an answer but did not. Instead, Obama quickly escalated the war in Afghanistan and launched a new one in Pakistan that has already displaced 2 million Pakistanis. Obama has sent 21,000 more US troops into Afghanistan and already the US commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, is requesting 20,000 more.
   Obama is escalating America’s war of aggression against the Afghanistan people despite three high-profile opinion polls that show that the American public is firmly opposed to the continuation of the war against Afghanistan.
   Sadly, the ironclad agreement between Israel and Washington to war against Muslim peoples is far stronger than the connection between the American public and the American government. At a farewell dinner party last Thursday for Israel’s military attaché in Washington, who is returning to Israel to become deputy chief of staff of the Israeli military, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Undersecretary of Defence Michele Flournoy, and Dan Shapiro, who is in charge of Middle East affairs on the National Security Council, were present to pay their respects. Admiral Mullen declared that the US will always stand with Israel. No matter how many war crimes Israel commits. No matter how many women and children Israel murders. No many how many Palestinians Israel drives from their homes, villages, and lands. If truth could be told, the true axis-of-evil is the United States and Israel.
   Millions of Americans are now homeless because of foreclosures. Millions more have lost their jobs, and even more millions have no access to health care. Yet, the US government continues to squander hundreds of billions of dollars on wars that serve no US purpose. President Obama and General McChrystal have taken the position that they know best, the American public be damned.
   It could not be made any clearer that the president of the United States and the US military have no regard whatsoever for democracy, human rights, and international law. This is yet another reason to apply crippling sanctions against Washington, a government that has emerged under Bush/Obama as a brown-shirt state that deals in lies, torture, murder, war crimes, and deception.
   Many governments are complicit in America’s war crimes. With Obama’s budget deep in the red, Washington’s wars of naked aggression are dependent on financing by the Chinese, Japanese, Russians, Saudis, South Koreans, Indians, Canadians and Europeans. The second this foreign financing of American war crimes stops, America’s wars of aggression against Muslims stop.
   The US is not a forever ‘superpower’ that can indefinitely ignore its own laws and international law. The US will eventually fall as a result of its hubris, arrogance, and imperial overreach. When the American Empire collapses, will its enablers also be held accountable in the war crimes court?
   Counterpunch, September 1. Paul Craig Roberts was assistant secretary of the treasury in the Reagan administration.

Concern on climate change

Bangladesh’s concern on climate change is not reflected on the budget. I believe we cannot leave this concern totally on donors. Being a frontline nation confronting climate change and global warming, Bangladesh should chalk out its own programmes and commitments in confronting rising sea level and global warming. With the sea level rising three kilometres per year, the people living in the coastal southern regions are exposed to perpetual and long term risks of losing their habitat and resources. Unless we design and roll out adoptive living conditions with our firm commitment, our whole national development effort will be at risk. Every natural disaster will strain our national resources and drain out our allocated resources from other sectors and force us to return to square one again and again.
   MH Khan
   Via e-mail

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