Editorial
Constructive engagement with people
key to vibrant democratic process
THE extended general meeting of the Awami League on Saturday, where ministers and lawmakers of the ruling party came under fire from grassroots leaders, shed light on what could be called fault-lines that seemingly exist in almost all major political parties in Bangladesh. According to report front-paged in New Age on Sunday, district- and upazila-level leaders of the Awami League alleged, that too in the presence of the AL president and prime minister Sheikh Hasina, that some lawmakers ‘tend to forget the contribution of the grassroots-level leaders’ once they are elected to Jatiya Sangsad and do not even give the local leaders the respect that they deserve.
Such allegations are neither unprecedented nor specific to any particular political party. During the tenure of the previous political government of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party-led alliance, local-level leaders of the BNP levelled similar allegations the lawmakers and ministers at a similar meeting. Most political leaders, it seems, suffer from the same ailment, if you will; the further they climb up the party hierarchy the more estranged they become. It perhaps explains why there seems to be grievances at almost every tier in almost every political party against those occupying the tier above. On the other hand, similar disconnects seem to exist between the people at large and the politicians, especially those in power.
Such disconnects, needless to say, define the deficits of our political struggle for democratisation of the state and society. Any democratic political process thrives on the organic relationship between the politicians and the people. Regrettably, however, estrangement with the people seems to have become the norm for our politicians, especially after they have been elected to state power or any public office. Such estrangement gradually leads to indifference in the politicians to the woes of the people and grievances in the people against the politicians. In the end, the democratic political process becomes the biggest victim.
In such circumstances, the extended general meeting of the ruling Awami League on Saturday and the two-month drive planned by the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party appear to be initiatives in the right direction. Although there are indications that these initiatives may be part of the two parties’ preparation for possible showdowns in the days to come, some positives may be expected to come out of these exercises. As the extended general meeting of the Awami League afforded the party’s upazila- and district-level leaders the scope to ventilate their grievances against the ministers and lawmakers, so should the two-month drive of the BNP create the opportunity for its grassroots leaders to present theirs against the central leadership. If the two political parties can keep their minds open, these exercises may very well lead to interactive engagements with the people at large.
Hopefully, the two major political parties will realise that constructive engagements with their grassroots leaders and constituents are imperative for vibrancy of the political process, that open-minded interaction ultimately helps defuse grievances, and not coercion, and that their survival as democratic forces ultimately depend on reviving, redefining and reinforcing their ties with the people.
Hawkers must not pay for ill
-conceived eviction drives
MORE than 80 per cent of the 350 kilometres of footpaths are occupied by hawkers and makeshift shops, according to a report published in New Age on Sunday. Moreover, at many places, footpaths are used as parking space or dumping ground for construction materials. Besides, political activists often erect party offices and law enforcement agencies set up police boxes on the pavements. In other words, the pavements have generally become off limits to the pedestrians, for whom they were laid out in the first place, forcing them on to the roads and thus contributing to traffic congestion. In a city of 14 million people, 90 per cent of whom do not own vehicle of any kind, the public transport system remains their only means for commuting. The intractable traffic congestion only makes their life more miserable.
It is not that successive governments have not taken any step to clear the footpaths. But almost always their target was the poor street vendors whose livelihood and living depended on their trade on the footpath. Immediately after the Fakhruddin Ahmed-led interim government took over, evicting millions of people from slums and thousands of hawkers from pavements was one of its first few tasks. The hawker eviction drive in Dhaka, Chittagong and other parts of the country made more than one lakh hawkers jobless affecting about three million people in the process. The incumbent Awami League government has thus far also appeared somewhat indifferent towards the hawkers’ interest. Only a couple of days ago, clashes erupted between traders and roadside vendors at Reazuddin Bazar in Chittagong where the traders swooped on the roadside vendors and set fire to more than 200 makeshift shops on the pavements. The law enforcers did intervene but only after the makeshift shops were burnt to ashes.
The footpaths need to be cleared and there are no two ways about it. But the authorities need to think beyond their sporadic demolition drives to remove makeshift shops on the roadsides and pavements. Until and unless the hawkers are rehabilitated and they have designated places where they can sell their goods, they will keep coming back to the pavements. The citizens have a right to live in a cleaner city, use un-encroached pavements. However, the government needs to set its priorities right. The authorities must wake up from their slumber and take steps on an urgent basis for the street vendors. Though there are few hawkers’ markets in the city most of the street hawkers cannot afford to rent shops at any of them. They don’t have any access to loans either to take lease of shops in these markets. It is simply impossible for them to pay Tk 2 to 3 lakh to get possession of a shop in the hawkers’ markets.
What these uprooted and floating street vendors require is a permanent market for them where they will be provided a place through a long-term agreement of sort. With the vendors being rehabilitated, the authorities then need to take urgent steps in clearing other impediment and stern action against those who occupy the pavements and utilise it as dumping grounds or as car parking areas. Footpaths, by all means, need to be given back to its original users — the pedestrians.
PART I
‘Owning’ the weather?
by Rahnuma Ahmed
In 2025, US aerospace forces can ‘own the weather’ by capitalizing on emerging technologies and focusing development of those technologies to war-fighting applications... weather-modification offers the war fighter a wide-range of possible options to defeat or coerce an adversary.
Col Tamzy J House et al, Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025
‘OWNING’ the weather? You must be thinking, What a preposterous idea!
Apparently not, for those who wrote the report from which I’ve quoted above (August 1996). It was a study commissioned by the chief of staff of the US Air Force to examine the ‘concepts, capabilities, and technologies the United States will require to remain the dominant air and space force in the future.’ One which was reviewed by security and policy review authorities, and cleared for public release (http: //csat.au.af. mil/2025/volume3/vol3ch15.pdf).
As I read the report, I cannot help but wonder at what is contained in those documents which have not been revealed to the public, ones that are classified. Neither can I help but marvel at the devotion and hard work that has gone into imagining, drawing-up and detailing such a scheme of mass murder. At the colossal criminality involved. An issue that the authors hurriedly traverse—‘[weather-modification techniques] offers a dilemma,’ it is a ‘controversial issue’, ‘some segments of society’ are reluctant—lest they have any second thoughts, lest they develop any moral qualms over the matter.
Of course, as is only to be expected, all the necessary disclaimers are there. The views expressed are those of the authors. They do not reflect the official policy or position of the US Air Force. Or, the Department of Defence. Least of all, the US government. Representations of future scenarios are fictional. Any similarity to real people, to real events, why, to reality itself, is unintentional.
Weather modification, write the authors, has ‘tremendous military capabilities’ (see table). Rainfall can be enhanced to flood the enemy’s lines of communication. To reduce the effectivity of precision guided missiles. Rainfall can be prevented too. To deny the enemy access to fresh water. To induce drought and wreck food cultivation. Fogs and clouds can be generated, or removed. Friendly forces merit generation, to enhance their ability to conceal themselves. While enemy forces shall suffer from fog/cloud removal, to deny concealment. To smoke ’em out?
To develop an integrated weather-modification system, technological advancements are necessary in five areas: (1) advanced nonlinear modelling techniques (2) computational capability (3) information gathering and transmission (4) a global sensor array, and (5) weather intervention techniques. Some of these ‘intervention tools’ already exist, we are told. Others may be developed. May be refined. For future use. To develop and refine technologies of mass murder....?
Current weather-modification technologies which will mature over the next 30 years, will—in all likelihood—become ‘a part of national security policy with both domestic and international applications.’ A policy that could be pursued at ‘various levels’: NATO. UN. Coalition. And, if the national security strategy in 2025 includes weather-modification, ‘its use in our national military strategy will naturally follow.’ Its benefit? It’ll ‘deter and counter potential adversaries.’ Its ‘appropriate application... can provide battlespace dominance to a degree never before imagined.’ The executive summary ends on this ominous note: ‘The technology is there, waiting for us to pull it all together;’ in 2025 we can ‘Own the Weather.’
The current military and civilian worldwide weather data network will evolve and expand to become a Global Weather Network. One which will be a super high-speed, expanded bandwidth, communication network by 2025. By then, weather-prediction models will prove to be ‘highly accurate in stringent measurement trials against empirical data.’ And the ‘brains’ of these models? ‘Advanced software and hardware capabilities which can rapidly ingest trillions of environmental data points, merge them into usable data bases, process the data through the weather prediction models, and disseminate the weather information over the GWN in near-real-time’ (see figure).
Although ‘extreme and controversial’ examples of weather modification, such as, the creation of made-to-order weather, large-scale climate modification, creation and/or control (or ‘steering’) of severe storms, etc were researched, ‘technical obstacles preventing their application appear insurmountable within 30 years.’ And therefore, the authors write, these are only mentioned briefly.
Close observers are inclined to disagree. Weather warfare, they think, has already started.
‘What are the underlying causes of extreme weather instability, which has ravaged every major region of the World in the course of the last few years?’ writes Professor Michel Chossudovsky, one of the keenest analysts.
He continues, ‘Hurricanes and tropical storms have ravaged the Caribbean. Central Asia and the Middle East are afflicted by drought. West Africa is facing the biggest swarm of locusts in more than a decade. Four destructive hurricanes and a tropical rain storm Alex, Ivan, Frances, Charley and Jeanne have occurred in a sequence, within a short period of time. Unprecedented in hurricane history in the Caribbean, the island of Grenada was completely devastated: 37 people died and roughly two-thirds of the island’s 100,000 inhabitants have been left homeless; in Haiti, more than two thousand people have died and tens of thousands are homeless. The Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Cuba, the Bahamas and Florida have also been devastated. In the US, the damage in several Southern states including Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and the Carolinas is the highest in US history.’
While global warming is undoubtedly an important factor, writes Chossudovsky, it does not fully account for these extreme and unusual weather patterns.
In the five years since he wrote ‘The Ultimate Weapon of Mass Destruction: “Owning the Weather” for Military Use’ (Global Research, September 2004), many more natural disasters have occurred: the Asian tsunami which hit 14 countries; Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand most severely, killing nearly 230,000 (December 2004). Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Louisiana, 1,836 people lost their lives (August 2005). Great Sichuan earthquake in China, 68,000 died (May 2008). The recent earthquake in Haiti, 200,000 estimated dead (January 2010).
Both the Americans and the Russians have developed capabilities, says Chossudovsky, to ‘manipulate the World’s climate.’
In a 1997 article of The Wall Street Journal (November 13), Chen May Yee wrote about a memorandum of understanding to be signed soon between a Russian and a Malaysian company to create a hurricane that would create torrential rains, one that would be directed close enough to clear the smoke without actually coming on land to create a devastation. In an earlier piece The Wall Street Journal had reported that a Russian company, Elate Intelligent Technologies Inc, advertising under the slogan ‘Weather Made to Order’—sold weather control equipment. Elate is capable of fine-tuning weather patterns over a 200 square mile area, for as little as $200 per day. Hurricane Andrew, which had occurred a year earlier and had caused damage worth $30 billion, could have been turned into ‘a wimpy little squall,’ according to Igor Pirogoff, a director of Elate. Doesn’t this mean that hurricane Katrina too, could have been diverted?
As I research on the internet, I come across another news item: ‘Entering a thunderstorm 10 miles off West Palm Beach, a B-57 Canberra jet bomber chartered for one million dollars releases some 9,000 pounds of improved Dyn-O-Gel capable of 10-times stronger water absorption. Miami’s Channel 5’s weather radar shows the huge thunderhead losing moisture. Within seconds, the buildup vanished as one side of the cloud collapsed “like an avalanche”, according to a chase plane cameraman’ (Sun-Sentinel July 20/01).
As a weapon of war, the use of weather modification techniques was publicly described much earlier. On March 20, 1974, by the Pentagon. A 7-year cloud seeding effort in Vietnam and Cambodia, costing $21.6 million, had been initiated to increase rainfall in target areas, thereby ‘causing landslides and making unpaved roads muddy, hindering the movement of supplies.’ That US forces had suffered a drastic defeat in Vietnam, and forced to leave in 1975, is now part of history.
At present, other countries, probably China and North Korea, are feverishly working to catch up. Early snow covered Beijing last November. According to the Chinese state media, it was the result of Chinese meteorologists’ efforts to ‘make rain by injecting special chemicals into clouds,’ a technique that often gets results (Agence France-Presse, November 1, 2009).
According to Chossudovsky, weather-modification technology is being perfected in the US under the High-frequency Active Aural Research Program, part of the (‘Star Wars’) Strategic Defence Initiative. Recent scientific evidence suggests that HAARP is fully operational. That it has the ability of potentially triggering floods, droughts, hurricanes and earthquakes. That it is—from the military standpoint—a weapon of mass destruction...
More, next week
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