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INTERNATIONAL Women’s Day this year has an added significance as it marks the centenary of German socialist leader Clara Zetkin’s declaration of a day for women, to be celebrated every year, internationally, at the Second International Conference of Socialist Women in the Danish capital of Copenhagen in 1910. The declaration was epoch-making and rejuvenated women’s struggle worldwide, for their emancipation from discrimination — social, political and economic — by the state and society. The struggle has been persistent and needs to be perpetual because emancipation and empowerment of women, in the true sense of the terms, still remain beyond the realm of reality. Resistance in this regard has always come from undemocratic, patriarchal and capitalist forces, forces that still reign supreme, not only in least developed or developing countries but also in the developed ones, albeit in subtler forms. It is not to suggest though that the state and status of women across the world have not changed for the better. A hundred years back, women were not allowed to vote; now, in a number of countries, women are heads of government. Similar success stories can be found in other areas as well. Yet, the state and society have remained essentially patriarchal. As a result, individual achievements have not translated into collective elevation of women’s state and status, be it in a developed or a developing or least developed country. Bangladesh provides a glaring example in this regard. In a country, which has had female prime ministers for the most part of the past two decades, women remain captive to patriarchy at all levels. The reason is obvious: while the faces have changed at the top, the system has remained unchanged. Thus, the struggle was, is and will be to bring about essential changes in the system. Here, the proponents of the movement for women’s emancipation and empowerment need to realise that, as the struggle has gained momentum, the forces of resistance have not essentially retreated; they may have simply changed their tack. The change in strategy is evident in the co-option of women’s movement by the same undemocratic, patriarchal and capitalist forces. These forces have pretended to join in the cause, in a bid to redefine the objective of the women’s movement, by harping and hammering on cosmetic successes at the social, cultural and political levels. Hence, those who are active exponents of the women’s movement and their sympathisers must not take their guards off. They need to realise that unless and until the women’s movement is made an essential component of the mainstream politics, a decisive victory can never be secured.

High on promises, low on delivery

THAT twenty ministries and divisions, which have undertaken development programmes funded with local resources, utilised only 19 per cent of the allocated money in the first six months of the fiscal year presents us with a bleak picture. Worse still, according to a report published in New Age on Sunday, this utilisation rate is lower than the rate of the previous year, which was only at 25 per cent. Again, the government has been able to implement only 31 per cent of the annual development programme in six months. As is axiomatic, a higher growth is a must for reducing poverty, which was the prime target of most of the announced development goals of the Awami-League alliance government. In a bid to achieve that target, more public spending is needed to boost domestic production, demand and employment. That a number of steps were planned or taken up to accelerate fund release and public procurement but no dividend was seen as yet and that the country’s gross domestic product grew only to 5.8 per cent in the last fiscal year is, indeed, disappointing. According to sources in the finance ministry, the 20 ministries and divisions spent a total of Tk 104.76 crore during six months, out of the allocation of Tk 550.40 crore for the entire financial year of 2009-10. The money has been earmarked for implementation of as many as 108 development programmes. As regards this slow pace of implementation, it goes without saying that if this trend continues in the coming months the goals of increasing domestic demands will be jeopardised. This grim picture also points to the fact that the poor implementation rate is not a match for the expansionary public investment plans envisaged in the 2009-10 budget to give enough stimuli to the domestic economy in a bid to chase a growth target of 8 per cent in 2013. Needless to say, that the current rate of implementation does not commensurate with the political rhetoric that the government leaders are uttering everyday about development. If one probes deeper into the failures of the government in implementing the development programme, s/he will not fail to identify the reasons. For the developments programme to be implemented properly, it is important that the elected representatives of the local governments are involved in the planning as well as implementing the projects; that the public servants are serious about their defined responsibilities in materialising the government’s programmes; and that the government is really committed to the cause of people-oriented development. In the present case, the government has not yet been able to define the role of the elected representatives at the upazila level, has destabilised the bureaucracy by crudely politicising it along partisan line, and the government leaders appeared busier marginalising their political opponents than implementing their own developments programmes. Hence, is the lowest rate of development. To expedite the process of the implementation of the development projects, the government therefore has to develop genuine commitment to the cause of the people in the first place. Besides, it has to engage the upazila parishads in development activities and free the bureaucracy from political partisanship, and spend more time and energy in monitoring the development activities.

‘Owning’ the weather?

by Rahnuma Ahmed

Our goals are not to gain political control, monetary wealth nor military power, but rather to pray and to promote the welfare of all living beings and to preserve the world in a natural way... For many years there has been great fear and danger of World War Three... This is now a time to weigh the choices for our future. We do have a choice. If you, the nations of this Earth, create another great war, the Hopi believe we humans will burn ourselves to death with ashes.
   Banyacya, interpreter for Hopi Traditional Elders, in his address to the UN General Assembly in New York, International Year of the Indigenous People, December 10, 1992
   
   THE weaponisation of weather has led to the creation of new distinctions in our understanding of phenomena which was unhesitatingly termed natural, previously. Readers must have noted this, that some researchers and activists now distinguish ‘earth-quakes’ from ‘HAARP-quakes’.
   A somewhat similar distinction has emerged in recent years as heated arguments occur over ‘contrails’ and ‘chemtrails’. The controversy centres around the trails left by planes in the sky. Are these trails ‘contrails’, short for condensation trails, i.e. do these artificial clouds form because ‘water vapour condenses and freezes around small particles (aerosols) that exist in aircraft exhaust’ (Science Directorate at National Space and Aeronautics Administration, NASA)? Or, are they, as investigative reporter and author William Thomas has insisted for over a decade, ‘chemtrails’ (‘chem’ short for chemical)?
   Chemtrails look like contrails, but are usually much thicker, and extend across the sky. They are laid down in varying patterns of Xs, grids, checker boards and parallel lines. Unlike contrails, they do not dissipate but open into fluffy formations which join together, forming a thin white or milky veil, or, a ‘fake cirrus-type cloud’ which persists for hours.
   ‘Strange’ contrails were first reported on February 20, 1999 by ‘concerned citizens’ of Long Island, New York who took photos. William Thomas, the first reporter to draw national attention to the issue, dubbed these ‘chemtrails’. These, he alleged, were caused by aerosol spraying by government aircrafts. Early sightings in the first quarter of 1999 were accompanied by reports of sudden and unexplained illness in local newspapers: ‘a wave of respiratory illnesses’ (in Berlin, New Jersey), ‘everyone is coming down with something’ (San Francisco), ‘a new bacteria’ (Castle Rock, Colorado), ‘flu-type symptoms’ (7 counties in Kentucky), ‘throat, lung, and upper respiratory ailments’ (in Akron, Ohio), ‘totally packed’ hospitals (in Chandler, Arizona).
   A former Raytheon Missile Systems engineering technician ‘positively identified’ two of the aircrafts most often involved in aerial spraying incidents, Boeing KC-135, Boeing KC-10, both used by the US Air Force for air-to-air re-fuelling. When most of the KC-135s were grounded for repair and maintenance, wrote Thomas, chemtrail sightings dropped, only to pick up after the aircrafts resumed flying. The US government, he says, is purposely spraying something in attempts to modify the weather, an allegation that is denied by the government.
   Increasing numbers of people and activist social networks, both physical and virtual (i.e. on the internet), are convinced that the US government, and other western ones too, are spraying the skies. Some term it an ‘aerosol weapon’. They argue that its deployment—for purposes other than dusting, cloud seeding, or aerial fire-fighting within national borders, to further common goals—constitutes an ‘aerial crime’. Close watchers of chemtrails allege that spraying steadily increased throughout the 1980s; since 1998, it is conducted on a nearly daily basis with an average of 1 ‘clear’ day per week; most areas in the US, Canada, England and Europe have been sprayed intensely, including areas which have no commercial flight paths overhead. In recent years, they claim, chemtrail spraying has been extended to Australia, Mexico, South Africa, Bahamas, Puerto Rico and Croatia.
   ‘The air we breathe,’ writes Amy Worthington, is laden with ‘asbestos-sized synthetic fibers and toxic metals, including barium salts, aluminum, and reportedly, radioactive thorium’ (Chemtrails: aerosol and electromagnetic weapons in the age of nuclear war, Global Research, June 1, 2004). Particles and polymers which are spewed into the atmosphere ‘bypass lung filters and enter the blood stream’ causing radical changes in the endocrine and nervous systems (may trigger high blood pressure, cause heart attack). These give rise to increased asthma, allergy and serious skin lesions (including itchy skin with crawling, biting sensations, white granules from skin and hair follicles, chronic fatigue, fibrous material coming from skin, a disease dubbed as ‘Morgellons’ by its sufferers).
   Like other accounts that challenge the US government’s version of reality, ‘chemtrail theory’ has been dubbed a conspiracy theory—a pseudoscience, the work of nutters, rightwingers, feverish speculators—by mainstream media, and by ruling class ideologues. These include government officials, experts and scientists. Also, website and blog-owners. Of course, not all ideologues are equally dismissive and slanderous; some seem good-hearted but atrociously naïve. I come across a blogger who provides evidence of chemtrail-like cloud formations from scanned images of clouds from a 1905 book. He insists, like many others, that it is increased jet flights which lead to grids in the sky.
   But I am not persuaded. Chemtrail debunkers rest their case—bolstered no doubt by evidence—on the unvoiced assumption that until the US government admits to spraying in the skies, it isn’t true. It can’t be true. They choose to forget the 1977 Senate hearings. Between 1949 and 1969, 239 populated areas had been contaminated with biological agents. They forget the 1994 Rockefeller report. Hundreds of thousands of American military personnel had been subjected to secret biological experiments over the last 60 years. They seem blinded by their unwavering belief in science, in scientific findings as neutral and impartial. Not politically-driven (unlike social science, of course). Nor corporate-motivated. Not even as climategate unfolds exposing climate science (as practised), and global warming theory, to be a sham. To be the ‘greatest scientific fraud in this history of mankind.’ But that’s next week’s story. Back to chemtrail.
   Why should aerosol be released into the atmosphere over America? Dr Stephen D McKay, who has researched on this for 6 years, thinks that it is aimed at setting up an electrical and chemical environment that supports radio frequency ducting from point A to point B for the RFMP/VTRPE warfare system. It enables the system to work over land masses, to visually see the battlefield terrain in 3-dimensions on a TV screen. The Radio Frequency Mission Planner/Variable Terrain Radio Parabolic Equation is the US Navy’s most secretive programme. The mixture of barium salts in the atmosphere, by supporting moisture, lends itself to another project, a weather control project, which utilises Nikola Tesla’s concepts of radio frequency radiation (HAARP). AC Griffith, a whistle-blower, earlier associated with CIA operations, who had enjoyed top secret clearance, says the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Environmental Quality ‘have been told to keep their nose out’ of the aerosol programme. When it comes to air quality and aerosol, they are instructed to talk about the ‘ozone level’ instead. ‘The pilots probably do not know what they are doing, the crews that put it there they have no idea what it was for. We believe that it was sold to governments as global warming fix.’
   Banyacya, the last of four Hopi messengers selected by Hopi Elders in 1948 to deliver an urgent prophetic message to all people, had suffered 7 years of federal imprisonment for having refused to register for WW II. ‘No Hopis or other original native peoples should be forced to go to war against another people and land. It invites even greater destruction.’ While addressing the UN General Assembly, he had said, As children of Mother Earth, we should clean up this mess before it’s too late. The nations of the world must be stopped from moving towards self-destruction.
   The skies had been clear the night before. The evening after his presentation, a strong winter storm, with hurricane-force wind gusts, lashed New York City. Tidewaters rose, there were ‘transportation shutdowns, power failures, and extensive flooding’ including the lower subfloors of the UN building. UN personnel were asked to go home. Banyacya, in a meeting with UN representatives and other native peoples, spontaneously called on all to form a great circle—the circle of unity—and to pray. No further storm damage occurred. Soon the storm itself abated.
   Did the world’s leaders listen to the Hopi prophecy? Did American leaders—the nation with the most capable military, the highest defence budget, the largest number of military bases etc, etc—listen to the Hopis, who are, to them nothing more than a defeated nation? And, of all things, to a prophecy? Obviously not. But not because they thought, as you might expect, that the paranormal belongs to the realm of occultism and voodoo. After all, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) had investigated paranormal phenomena during the Cold World to search ways of how it might give the Americans a military edge over the Soviets. The leaders didn’t listen because it’d have dampened political control, monetary wealth, military power...
   And what lies ahead? If one messes with Mother Nature, said the Hopi Elders, nothing short of self-destruction.