Has The Countdown Begun?

An Israeli air strike on Natanz and Isfahan is very likely sooner than later. Things have started moving in that direction. The accumulation of US forces in the region is meant to deter any Iranian retaliation.

B. RAMAN

The US and Israel—acting separately and in tandem—have started stepping up psychological pressure on Iran. This PSYWAR campaign is directed at countering Iran's exploitation of the difficulties faced by the US in Iraq in order to advance its own agenda and to prevent any US intervention in Iran and to convey a message to the Iranian public that Iran will pay a heavy price if President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continues to defy the international community over its concerns regarding the real purpose of its acquiring an uranium enrichment capability.
This PSYWAR campaign has so far taken the following forms:

• The recent US detention and questioning of two Iranian diplomats posted in Iraq on their role in assisting the Shia extremist groups.
  
  
• The stepped-up US rhetoric on the devious game being played by the Iranian intelligence in Iraq by assisting the illegal Shia militias as well as pro-Al Qaeda Sunni extremist elements.
  
  
• The well-publicised authorisation by President George Bush of covert action against Iranians posing a threat to American lives and interests in Iraq.
  
  
• The beginning of an operation mounted by MOSSAD, the Israeli external intelligence agency, to eliminate senior Iranian nuclear scientists. The Sunday Times of London reported on February 4, 2007, as follows: "A prize-winning Iranian nuclear scientist has died in mysterious circumstances, according to Radio Farda, which is funded by the US State Department and broadcasts to Iran. An intelligence source suggested that Ardeshire Hassanpour, 44, a nuclear physicist, had been assassinated by Mossad, the Israeli security service. Hassanpour worked at a plant in Isfahan where uranium hexafluoride gas is produced. The gas is needed to enrich uranium in another plant at Natanz which has become the focus of concerns that Iran may be developing nuclear weapons. According to Radio Farda, Iranian reports of Hassanpour's death emerged on January 21 after a delay of six days, giving the cause as "gas poisoning". The Iranian reports did not say how or where Hassanpour was poisoned, but his death was said to have been announced at a conference on nuclear safety. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is expected to announce next Sunday — the 28th anniversary of the Islamic revolution — that 3,000 centrifuges have been installed at Natanz, enabling Iran to move closer to industrial scale uranium enrichment. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency say that hundreds of technicians and labourers have been "working feverishly" to assemble equipment at the plant."
  
  
• Stepping up of broadcasts and telecasts to Iran by radio stations and TV channels funded by the US and run by Iranian exiles.
  
  
• The movement of additional US naval ships, including another aircraft-carrier, to the Gulf and the designation by Bush of a senior naval officer (Admiral William Fallon) to head the US Central Command, which is responsible for operations in West Asia. In the past, a US Army officer had headed the Central Command.

The US had seen in North Korea what happens if it avoids action in response to pressure from other countries co-operating with the US. North Korea has carried out a nuclear test and is now insisting that any agreement it signs with the US and other powers would be as a nuclear power and not as a non-nuclear power.It is reportedly prepared to discuss a freezing of its military nuclear capability at its present level, but not its winding-up. The US and Israel—Israel even more than the US—are determined to prevent a similar scenario in Iran. The price of inaction will be prohibitively high for Israel, endangering its future.

The US Congressional opinion—now dominated by the Democrats—is strongly opposed to Bush's Iraq policy. Its views on his Iran policy are much more nuanced. The likely opinion of the Jewish voters in the US on the Iraq policy at the time of next year's Presidential elections would not be that important for the Presidential aspirants, but it would be in the case of Iran's nuclear designs. One could see evidence of it in the recent statements of Senator Hillary Clinton. She is not in favour of direct US military intervention in Iran, but at the same time she does not want to rule out the military option, should the worst comes to the worst.
After a visit to the US in February last year, I had reported that there were three groups there—one group was totally opposed to any intervention in Iran. A second group urged intervention by the US before it became too late. The third group favoured intervention by Israel with a US wink, without Washington getting directly involved. The third group seems to have won the debate.
Action to stop the acquisition of a military nuclear capability by Iran is vital for Israel's security and very survival. The repeated anti-Israel and anti-Jewish statements of President Ahmadinejad make it all the more important for Israel to disrupt, if not destroy, Iran's nuclear plans. For Israel, the question is not whether Iran has the intention to acquire a military nuclear capability. The question is should Iran be allowed to have an infrastructure capable of being used for military nuclear purposes even if it does not have the intention at present to use it for military purposes. Once it is allowed to have the infrastructure, any time—clandestinely and at short notice—it would be able to acquire a military nuclear capability and confront Israel with a nuclear fait accompli.
Israel is determined not to allow this scenario to develop. Two elements of Iran's existing infrastructure are key in this regard— the uranium hexafluoride plant at Isfahan and the uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. Raiding and destroying or seriously damaging them would be a more complex operation than the Israeli raid on the French-aided Osirak reactor in Iraq in the early 1980s. Osirak had not yet been commissioned. The French engineers collaborated with Israel by keeping away from the reactor site at the time of the raid.
Natanz and Isfahan are facilities, which have already been completed and are already in the production mode. There is a greater risk of heavy human casualties and possible environmental damage than there was in Osirak. Iran is a strong military power, with an ability to retaliate against Israel. Iraq of Saddam Hussein was not in the early 1980s. Moreover, it had got involved in a military confrontation with Iran. Israel did not have to pay a price for the Osirak raid. There is a risk that it may have to if it raids Isfahan and Natanz.
Israelis have a reputation of not allowing fears of likely consequences deter any action by them which they consider necessary for their security and survival. An Israeli air strike on Natanz and Isfahan is very likely sooner than later. Things have started moving in that direction. The accumulation of US forces in the region is meant to deter any Iranian retaliation. Israel hopes Iran will not be unwise enough to retaliate. If it does, Israel is prepared for it. Israel is confident of its ability to take on Iran—even if Teheran instigates the Hezbollah to step up attacks on Israel from the Lebanon.
It would be suicidal for Iran to think that the painful experience of the US in Iraq and of Israel in the Lebanon in July last year has weakened their will to resort to military action, if they consider it necessary in their national interests. It has not.

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B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai.

Sexpresso coffee shops take Seattle by storm

By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles

Published: 05 February 2007

At the Sweet Spot Cafe in the northern suburbs of Seattle, you get more than a foam topping on your cappucino. You get a waitress in a bikini, or maybe a tight-fitting T-shirt, and a choice of drinks with names such as Wet Dream (with caramel and white chocolate), Sexual Mix (a caramel macchiato) or Erotic Pleasure.
South of the city, in Tukwila, the baristas at Cowgirls Espresso wear sheer negligees and visible pink panties. It's the same story in any number of other suburban bars and drive-through stands, like the Natte Latte in Port Orchard or Moka Girls in Auburn - bikinis, racy lingerie, fetish clothing, and plenty of suggestively exposed flesh.
At Best Friend Espresso in Kenmore, at the northern end of Lake Washington, the outfits take their inspiration from Playboy-style sex fantasies. The staff will go for the naughty schoolgirl look one week, then don black-framed glasses the next to look like sexy secretaries.
Welcome to "sexpresso" - the latest coffee fad to hit America, in which the country's seemingly boundless fascination for Italian-style Java is combined with its equally boundless fascination for half-naked women.
Seattle may not be the first American city to come to mind when it comes to the pleasures of the flesh, but it is super-saturated with coffee stands, all of which are battling each other - and the mighty, locally based behemoth that is Starbucks - to give morning commuters an extra reason to stop off at their particular establishment.
"Here on Aurora Avenue, there's a drive-through every 20 blocks. You have to do something to stand out," said Sarah Araujo, owner of The Sweet Spot. Ms Araujo brainstormed with her customers to come up with something new and different when she bought the cafe - then called Aurora Espresso - a couple of years ago.
Not only did her staff start removing clothing and giving suggestive new names to the drinks, they also started doing theme days - Tube Top Tuesdays, Wet T-Shirt Wednesdays and Fantasy Fridays.
The plastic coffee cups are indistinguishable in shape from those sold in any other coffee shop in north America. But they are decorated with the silhouette of a busty naked woman carrying a steaming mug of "Joe". The lid is sealed with a pink lipstick kiss.
During the summer, when the persistent Seattle rain finally lifts and the Pacific Northwest enjoys a few months of real sunshine, The Sweet Spot organises bikini car washes and takes care to post the most suggestive photographs on its website. This year, the cafe is planning a barista calendar.
Coming with a theme for a coffee bar is nothing new in America. In Los Angeles, there are cafes where you can buy second-hand books, get cut-price legal advice, throw pots, or listen to really, really bad live music provided by local bands. Strangely, nobody until now has thought of combining coffee with sex.
Ms Araujo and others say it has given an unmistakable boost to their businesses. Their staff may only receive minimum wage, but the tips can be terrific.
"Our customers may be half-asleep when they get here, but we do what it takes to wake them up," said Ms Araujo. "They always say: 'Thanks for the great cup of coffee and the smile; it made my day'."
Some local puritans have expressed disquiet - and railed at The Seattle Times newspaper after it ran a feature on the sexpresso trend 10 days ago. But law enforcement officials say there is nothing illegal about wearing scanty clothing, so the trend is almost certain to keep spreading.
Even Seattle, though, has its limits. Sexy underwear is all very well, but the city hardly has the climate of French Polynesia.
"We're not in bikinis right now," Ms Araujo conceded in the murky early hours of yesterday. "We're going more for miniskirts and boots. It's pretty cold up here."

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WHEN OPIUM CAN BE BENIGN
Feb 1st 2007

China's Communist Party, reconsidering Marx's words, is starting to
wonder whether there might not be a use for religion after all

"DEVELOP the dragon spirit; establish a dragon culture," urge large
green characters at the high school in Hongliutan, a poor village at
the foot of a range of bleak loess hills. Though dragon can be a
synonym for China, it is a god known as the Black Dragon that is being
invoked here. Without funds from the Black Dragon's hillside temple, in
a gully behind the village, the school would not exist. Nor, most
likely, would the adjacent primary school and the irrigation system
that brings water from the nearby Wuding River to the village's maize
and cabbage fields.

Many local governments in rural China are mired in debt. Recent central
government efforts to keep peasants happy by abolishing centuries-old
taxes have not made life any easier for these bureaucracies. With their
revenues cut, rural authorities have found it ever more difficult to
scrape together money for health care and education. So they are only
too happy to allow others to share the burden of providing these
services--even the Black Dragon, whose 500-year-old temple was
demolished by Maoist radicals during the Cultural Revolution in the
1960s. Now officials in Yulin, the prefecture to which Hongliutan
belongs, give the temple their blessing.

The revival of the Black Dragon Temple's fortunes is part of a
resurgence of religious or quasi-religious activity across China
that--notwithstanding occasional crackdowns--is transforming the social
and political landscape of many parts of the countryside. Religion is
also attracting many people in the cities, where the party's atheist
ideology has traditionally held stronger sway.

The resurgence encompasses ancient folk religions and ancestor worship,
along with the organised religions of Buddhism, Taoism, Islam (among
ethnic minorities) and, most strikingly, given its foreign origins and
relatively short history in China, Christianity. In the face of this
onslaught, the party is beginning to rethink its approach to religion.
It now acknowledges that it may even have its uses.

In Hongliutan the party appears in retreat. It is not the party
secretary Zhang Tieniu who holds sway. Mr Zhang was the youngest party
chief in the prefecture when he was appointed last year at the age of
32. But in a culture that reveres age, some villagers refer to him
dismissively as a "lad". The man in charge in Hongliutan is 64-year-old
Wang Kehua. Mr Wang happens to belong to the village's main clan. He is
also the village's elected chief (a post which in most villages is
subordinate to that of party secretary). More to the point, he controls
the temple and its money.

It was Mr Wang's idea to rebuild the temple in 1986, a decade after
Mao's death. Mr Wang, who had become one of the village's wealthiest
men by wheeling and dealing elsewhere, donated some of his own money
and organised villagers to add theirs. It was a promising venture.
Historically, the Black Dragon Temple had a reputation extending far
beyond the village. The dragon was renowned in the parched semi-desert
of the north of Shaanxi Province, 600 kilometres (370 miles) west of
Beijing, as a bringer of rain. If the temple was rebuilt, people would
come, pray to the dragon--and spend money.

Mr Wang does not, however, speak of commercial motives. In the bare
concrete-walled room he calls his office, he describes how, one after
the other, the half-dozen villagers who had destroyed the temple in the
1960s fell victim to the vengeful dragon in subsequent years. The man
who had broken off the head of the Black Dragon's effigy (the god is
worshipped in a human-looking form, as shown in the picture above) had
his head blown off when a factory boiler exploded. Another bled to
death after accidentally chopping his foot with an axe. One was crushed
by a donkey cart. Their offspring also suffered ill fate. These events,
says Mr Wang, convinced him of the power of the dragon and of the
importance of reviving its worship.

The temple has no clergy. Visitors are mainly drawn by their belief in
the dragon's power to tell the future. Many want to know whether
business ventures or marriages will succeed. Mr Wang asked the Black
Dragon whether the divinity approved his appointment as temple chief.
It did. The dragon's responses are given in the form of obscurely
worded classical poems written on pieces of paper issued by a
70-year-old villager, Chen Yushan, clad in his blue padded Mao suit. Mr
Chen offers his interpretation of what these poems mean. An
entrepreneur who is told his business will be successful, and who then
enjoys financial success, is quite likely to make a big donation to the
temple.

TURNING A BLIND EYE
Officially, the party regards folk religion as superstition, the public
practice of which is illegal. But in many rural areas officials now
bend the rules. In Yulin prefecture, with 3.4m people, there are 106
officially registered places of worship and many more that are not
officially sanctioned. Most are not part of the five mainstream
religions (China regards the two Christian traditions, Catholicism and
Protestantism, as separate) that the party recognises. But Yulin has
allowed the Black Dragon Temple to affiliate itself with the
government-sponsored Taoist Association. This gives it a cloak of
legitimacy. So too does an arboretum that Mr Wang has planted with
temple funds (at the dragon's request, he says, but it also helps him
show officials how the village is contributing to government efforts to
stop the desert encroaching).

Local officials themselves benefit from the greater tolerance. For all
the party's dictatorial ways, government officers are often fearful of
triggering unrest by enforcing unpopular policies that are not all that
vital to the party's interests (hence the increasingly patchy
implementation of population control). Demonstrations in an official's
jurisdiction can do far more damage to his career than turning a blind
eye to popular religion--so long as such activity does not directly
challenge the party.

There are also more tangible rewards. In his book "Miraculous
Response", Adam Yuet Chau of the School of Oriental and African Studies
in London says that temples applying for official registration
typically have to treat local officials to banquets. Officials, he
adds, support temples that pay them respect and tribute. They also gain
financially from taxes levied on merchants who do business at temple
fairs. Policemen invited to maintain order at these occasions are paid
with cash, good food and liquor.

In the view of local officials, Mr Chau argues, temples play the same
kind of role as commercial enterprises. They generate prosperity for
the local economy and income for the local government. This is
especially true of the Black Dragon Temple, which says it attracts
200,000 people to its ten-day summer fair (the Black Dragon himself,
villagers say, has also shown up in the form of an unusually shaped
cloud).

Evidence of China's religious revival can be seen throughout the
countryside in the form of lavish new temples, halls for ancestor
worship, churches and mosques (except in the far western province of
Xinjiang, where the government worries that Islam is intertwined with
ethnic separatism and keeps tighter rein). Officially there are more
than 100m religious believers in China (see table), or about 10% of the
population. But experts say the real number is very much higher.

This does not mean that China has embraced religious freedom. Some
religions--Tibetan Buddhism, Islam as practised in Xinjiang,
Catholicism and "house church" Protestantism, which involves informal
gatherings of believers outside registered churches--are still subject
to tight controls because of the party's fears that their followers
might have an anti-government bent. A seven-year-old crackdown on Falun
Gong, a quasi-Buddhist sect that flourished in the 1990s, is still
being pursued with ruthless intensity. Many Falun Gong practitioners,
as well as lesser numbers of followers of other faiths who refuse to
accept state attempts to regulate their religions, are imprisoned in
labour camps.

Within the party, however, debate is growing about whether it should
take a different approach to religion. This does not mean being more
liberal towards what it regards as anti-government activities. But it
could mean toning down the party's atheist rhetoric and showing
stronger support for faiths that have deep historical roots among the
ethnic Han majority. The party is acutely aware that its own ideology
holds little attraction for most ordinary people. Given that many are
drawn to other beliefs, it might do better to try to win over public
opinion by actively supporting these beliefs rather than grudgingly
tolerating them or cracking down.

Pan Yue, then a senior official dealing with economic reforms and now
deputy director of the State Environmental Protection Administration,
argued in an article published in 2001 that the party's traditional
view of religion was wrong. Marx, he said, did not mean to imply that
religion was a bad thing when he referred to it as the opium of the
people. Religion, he said, could just as easily exist in socialist
societies as it does in capitalist ones. He also singled out Buddhism
and Taoism for having helped to bolster social stability through
successive Chinese dynasties. Stability being of paramount concern to
the party today, Mr Pan's message was clear.

IN PRAISE OF HARMONY
His article angered party conservatives at the time: the party's
official stance is that religion will die out under socialism. But more
recently the party itself has begun to put a more positive spin on the
role of religion. Last April China organised a meeting of Buddhist
leaders from around the world in the coastal province of Zhejiang (it
did not, however, invite the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual
leader). The event was given considerable prominence in the official
media. The theme, "A harmonious world begins in the mind", echoed the
party's recent propaganda drive concerning the need for a "harmonious
society". It implied just what Mr Pan had suggested-- that the opium
Marx was talking about should be seen as a benign spiritual salve. In
October the party's Central Committee issued a document on how to build
a harmonious society, arguing that religion could play a "positive
role".

The party's change of tone coincides with its recent efforts to revive
traditional culture as a way of giving China, in its state of rapid
economic and social flux, a bit more cohesion. The term "harmonious
society", which in recent months has become a party mantra, sounds in
Chinese (HEXIE SHEHUI) like an allusion to classical notions of social
order in which people do not challenge their role in life and treat
each other kindly. It is, in effect, a rejection of the Marxist notion
of class struggle.

Officials are now encouraging a revival of the study of Confucianism,
a philosophy condemned by Mao as "feudal" and which can be
quasi-religious. Since 2004 China has sponsored dozens of "Confucius
Institutes" around the world, including America and Europe, to promote
the study of Chinese language and culture.

In the countryside the revival of traditional values has needed little
encouragement. Clan shrines, where ancestors are worshipped, have
sprung up in many rural areas, particularly in prosperous coastal and
southern regions. The revival of clan identity (in many villages a
substantial minority, if not a majority, of inhabitants have the same
surname, which they trace back to a common ancestor) has had a profound
impact on village politics. Those elected as village leader often owe
much of their authority to a senior position in the clan hierarchy.
Control of the ancestral shrine confers enormous power. It is often
clan chiefs, rather than party officials, who mediate disputes. The
shrine will lend money for business ventures--so long as the recipient
has the right name.

WHERE CHRISTIANITY IS A FEMINIST ISSUE
Ironically, the growth of clan power has helped to fuel the growth of
Christianity in some parts of the countryside. In a village in the
eastern province of Shandong, the wife of a former party secretary was
a Protestant who attended prayer meetings with her female friends.
Their religious enthusiasm was apparently fuelled by the subordinate
role of women in the clan. A married woman is expected to revere only
her husband's ancestors but is excluded from his clan hierarchy. The
fast growing house-church communities often disapprove of ancestor
worship, thus attracting women who feel fettered by clan strictures.

The parlous state of China's health-care system has also given a
powerful boost to religion. Falun Gong owed much of its success in the
1990s to claims that it could heal without the need for medicine
(cash-strapped state-run hospitals usually sell medicines to patients
at inflated prices in order to boost their revenues). In the village of
Donglu in Hebei Province, about 140km south of Beijing, Catholic nuns
have set up a three-storey clinic where they offer ophthalmic, dental
and pediatric services for what they say is a fifth of the price of
government-run clinics or private ones run for profit. A picture of
Jesus is pasted to the wall in the operating theatre.

An apparition of Mary is said to have occurred in Donglu in 1900 when
local Catholics were fighting off an assault by members of the
fanatical Boxer cult trying to destroy their church. This has made the
village a site of great devotion for Catholics. Every May for the past
decade, the police have cordoned off Donglu to prevent thousands of
Catholic pilgrims making their way to the village to celebrate the
feast of Mary. Many of the pilgrims are loyal to an underground church
which claims closer ties with Rome than the state-approved Catholic
church. Yet for all Donglu's sensitivity, the local government appears
content to let Catholics run the hospital, which is a key public
service.

Chinese officials are even urging religious organisations to learn from
Hong Kong, where religious groups run many schools and hospitals. In
late November, Ye Xiaowen, the head of the State Administration of
Religious Affairs which oversees the five officially recognised
religions, said that religious groups had helped reinforce social
stability in the former British colony with their contribution to
public services. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, who
visited China in October, wrote afterwards in the TIMES that there was
now a sense in China that civil society needed religion, with its
motivated volunteers. During his trip he remarked on an "astonishing
and quite unpredictable explosion" in Christian numbers in China in
recent years.

The party still mouths its alarmist rhetoric about what it says are
foreign efforts to use religion as a means of undermining the party's
grip on power. Yet the appointment of Pope Benedict XVI, following the
death in 2005 of John Paul II who was seen by China as a more die-hard
anti-communist, has encouraged tentative efforts by China to restore
the ties with the Vatican that were severed in 1951.

Last month the Vatican decided to appoint a commission to handle
Chinese relations. But progress has been far from smooth. On November
30th, much to the Vatican's annoyance, China's state-backed Catholic
church appointed a bishop without the Vatican's prior approval for the
third time that year. Since 2000 China had done so only with the
Vatican's tacit assent. In August, however, China released a bishop
loyal to the underground church, An Shuxin, who had been arrested a
decade earlier after leading celebrations of the feast of Mary in
Donglu.

An even more tentative rapprochement is under way with the Dalai Lama.
Since 2002, China has held five rounds of talks with his
representatives, most recently last February. But China retains
profound fears that the Dalai Lama's real intention is to separate
Tibet, and adjoining areas, from China (see article[1]).
Notwithstanding the government's suspicions, Tibetan Buddhism has
acquired a certain chic in Chinese cities in recent years, with some
urbanites regarding it as spiritually more pure than Chinese-style
Buddhism, which has strong links to the government.

Within its own ranks, the party knows that some members practise
religion even though this is against the party's rules. Falun Gong
claimed many adherents among party members in the 1990s. In the
countryside, party secretaries routinely take part in religious
ceremonies. Mr Wang at the Black Dragon is not a party member, but in
other villages in the region temple chiefs double up as village party
bosses. If the party is still trying to keep its members atheist, it is
fighting a losing battle.

One result of allowing religion to play a bigger role in providing
education could be that the party finds its efforts to inculcate its
ideology among the nation's youth becoming ever more frustrated. In
Hongliutan, the temple-sponsored middle school attracts many boarders
from the town--a reversal of the normal flow of village pupils to the
towns. Thanks to the temple's sponsorship, the middle school's fees are
half of what they would be at a government school, teachers say. With
this sort of discount, the popularity and influence of the Black
Dragon, and other such spiritual beasts, seems certain to spread.

A Tribute To M A Khan

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat

03 February, 2007
Countercurrents.org

He was a mobile Information Centre of Sonbhadra district in eastern part of Uttar-Pradesh, whose work during the past thirty years was utilized by those who do not have time to visit the villages and follow up the stories after they started. M.A.Khan was always cheerful related to his work, his love for the Adivasis and his conviction against the child labour, brought him close touch of the ground reality. His only concern was that 'agencies outside Sonbhadra were using the ignorance and poverty of the poor people for their own purposes and not with an aim to lift the tribals and end poverty which they can very much do. Once the project was over, these agencies left the tribal for their own good.' For the past few years, Khan in his every interaction with me displayed his disappointment of how the international donor agencies find their people and agencies in these regions but never found Khan and his Chaupal which had been fairly active in the region.

In a two days human rights consultation in Delhi, when I was informing a friend about Khan and his impeccable credentials for fighting the rights of the common man in Sonbhadra district, a shocking news was revealed by another friend that M.A.Khan passed away, a day before, on 27th of January 2007, in Varanasi. I was dumb and shocked to hear this. Just a fortnight ago, I spoke to him on his mobile when he told me that Doctors have found symptoms of cancer in him and that he wish to be transferred to AIIMS in Delhi. That time, the first thought in my mind was that this news would be wrong and hence I said ' Khan Saheb, you will get well soon. AIIMS is not the same as it used to be. If people like you are here who speak for the poor Dalits and marginalized, I do not know whether the doctors who do politics and not the treatment, would treat you well or not.'

M.A.Khan was quintessentially a secular activist with strong left leaning. He was not fit in the glamour world of NGOs where you are fixed in certain style of format and report as per it. Though, his documentation of events, custodial deaths, cases of torture of Adivasis and forest dwellers in Sonbhadra would remain unparallel. At a time, when NGOs masquerading to be human rights organization splash information with the purpose of publicity and not to really help the poor, Khan was refreshingly different with his people centric approach. He would walk down the villages, record the narratives of the victims and finally take them to the related authorities in the district and even file petition in the court. In fact, he had formed a group of lawyers in Sonbhadra who used to take such cases of illegal detentions of the tribal in the name of naxalism.

Born in 1946 in a Zamindar family of Robertsganj, Khan went to Deoband to earn a degree in Fazil and then he completed his masters. He worked very hard during the 1967 famine in the region. In 1968 he joined Communist Party of India and started Pragatisheel Kisan Manch (progressive farmer's forum). He continued to travel around the villages and help the needy. In 1985 he founded Jan Sewa Kendra to assist the poor of his region.
It was his concern about the growing landless situation in Sonbhadra that he traveled around 500 villages of his district to understand the condition and found that tribal were living in utter misery. Their land being occupied by others and that they did not have two-time meal to eat. He felt that they lacked information regarding their rights. He found that the ignorance of the people was the biggest obstacle in their development and the officers were misusing it. In fact, one of his candid remarks was that despite huge funds flowing to NGOs in Sonbhadra and Varanasi, the condition of the poor and their rights remain the same. He would laugh and say that the NGOs have not come to remove the poverty of the people but their own poverty. 'Chaupal', a village initiative to discuss and resolve their problem by the villagers took shape during this period. He would form a team of 8 members in every village who would discuss their issues and carry the information to the central office in Robertsganj. Chaupal worked in 80 villages. Khan Saheb new it very well that it was difficult to run an organization without resources. Often, the big fishes would catch the members of Chaupal for their own purposes. He started getting depressed because of the growing commercialization of the civil society movement where the powerful elite had gathered all the NGOs in the name of 'poor'. In the region of eastern Uttar-Pradesh where dirty tricks among the NGOs are the best practices, where NGOs are run by powerful connections and castes, Khan remain a grounded man. Very much down trodden who with the help of a few committed lawyers tried to do help the tribal.

Despite hailing from a Zamaindar family, Khan did not have much land and property at the end. He had a small typewriter where he would type reports of malfunctioning of the government department. If a tribal girl or woman would come to him, he would type their application and go along with them to submit it to the relevant authorities. He would nicely take a copy of the same in his file. And this was his regular practice. The habit resulted in one of the best documentation, which was hardly recognized and which remain thoroughly unpaid, that I had ever seen. It was this information, which proved volatile for police once upon a time and his office was burnt and valuable information got lost. Nevertheless, after that, he started working from him home and still had huge piles of files, meticulously maintained in his drawer.

For me he was a great source of information. He would send his well-written reports on issues as important as custodial deaths, National Rural Employment Guarantee programme, land and forest issues to be send to national and international agencies for lobbying. He felt betrayed that his work was not recognized by the international community leave along the donor agencies who have their own criteria for support.

Apart from sending these reports, which Khan was really very committed, the thing, which was very admirable about him, was his concern for the natural resources of the people and how they lost it to big companies and local feudal elements! His stories, many of which remain unpublished would be treasure to learn how the state and its apparatus have sucked the blood of tribal over the year. He had detailed information about how forest department captured the land of the tribal and how the NGOs from outside did not have enough information about it and they flash information and leave the place making the lives of the tribal more vulnerable to exploitation. I had promised to him to get them published in future. In fact, I introduced him to Hum Dalit, a monthly journal, which regularly published his well thought out articles.

I still remember the day when the villagers had come to protest in front of the district collector and all of them showed the food product they had been eating. The district Magistrate did not turn up but send his deputy and several forest officials. Seeing the tribal displaying their food produce the SDM became angry and said ' you sale our poverty abroad. You have no business do that. Go back.' The forest department officers were equally angry and blamed Khan that he was responsible for misguiding them, a charge which Khan openly denied. Khan stood by the people all the time.

Being a local citizen of Sonbhadra, his house was always open for the tribal and Dalits of the region. Women would come to his house, get their work done and go back satisfying. In fact, for many of them, he was their father, who had performed the 'kanyadaan' during the marriage.

Once, I asked him why doesn't he work on the 'communal issues'. As usual he said ' I always feel my heart with the Adivasis of Sonbhadra. I never feel that I am different from them. They have been cheated by the regularly. The government has done very little for them. If they retaliate they are charged with being Naxalites and cases are filed against them.' In fact one of the work that Khan did was to fight for a young 12 years old boy who was charged under POTA. This is tragic how police behave. Sonbhadra district is notorious for police highhandedness since they are unable to take on the Naxal, they exploit the helpless villagers.

It was therefore not surprising that the man who was arrested many time as well as whose office was burnt by the police in the name of alleged link with naxalites, did not find any favor from the donor agencies in their work for the region.

He would always say that the village needs to connect with international community. The idea of his Chaupal was to flood the authorities with complaints and information about the villages and the people and their problems. He would always ask me that internet and computers should linked to village and they would empower the poor people and reduce their dependency others to write letters for them as well as it will also enable the international community to see things at their own rather then being shown.

M A Khan remains simple all through his life. He was an anguished man that he could not communicate and write in English language and felt that it was the reason why people like him remain outside the net of those who matter. While, not many have had opportunity to hear him internationally, for the thousands of tribal people, he was one of their own, very own father figure, who went out of his way to help them and gave them a sense of dignity and honour. Like a lone man struggling in utterly difficult circumstances, he left a legacy of his work but no second rank leadership since he himself remained penniless till his end, struggling to get resources for his medication. That is the biggest irony of those work in the grassroots that they work for all and at the end they remain aloof from the world. None care to listen their problems and perhaps very few to bother that a committed man is no more. Since nobody care to inquire about each other particularly those come from not powerful families, there remain no news about them. It is tragic and it should end. The best tribute to MA Khan would be to strengthen the ideas that he gave and carry on his message of Chaupal so that the rural poor is saved from the a contemptuous bureaucracy as well as local middlemen who thrive on their ignorance.

IITians are Big Fools

Rajesh Gajra

No, it wasn't a frustrated or failed aspirant but a former IITian who said this last week at a lecture while addressing a crowd of nearly a thousand IITians and other college students during the annual Techfest at Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IITB). But coming from Dunu Roy, who, unlike his colleagues and peers, decided to pursue grassroot integration of technology with local and practical requirements, it shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone who has followed this IITian's career.

But for a first-timer, the 90-minute talk and the subsequent Q&A could well have been an eye-opener. Provoking his audience by calling them "big fools" who know nothing about India and its village life, Roy said the IITians are victims of the politics of education and science. He added that the first lesson he learnt was that technologists and engineers are under an illusion that they get to take the decisions. That was not all. He went on to say that environmental dynamics aren't understood by engineers who seem to specialise in solving one problem to create another one, thereby creating a "sustainability for the engineering profession and not for the people".

"How many of you will end up working for the Haliburtons and Microsofts of the world?" he asked. And then proceeded to answer by pointing out that many of the students would do so because "Indian technical education is geared to meet global demands". The collapse of the US education system has led to a shortage of scientists and technologists, he said, which is why the courses they [the IITians] are learning are required for the US". Since Indian engineers are also cheaper than the American counterparts, "it made good sense for the Indian government to promote technical education so that you can provide cheap service to the US." Therefore, he suggested, the curriculum has changed. Earlier, he pointed out, IITs had a more integrated approach and also taught humanities, ethics and logic. But these subjects were removed in order to hasten the production of 'unreal' technologists.

The original vision to set up IITs stemmed from the independence movement. The Indian leaders at that time realised "the need to have trained scientists and technologists" who could provide equal rights to food, shelter, education and work to the people. The idea was to take the "best from universal education, invest in pockets like IITs (so that) they would return their expertise to the common pool of the country." Which is why the money to fund the IITs comes from the exchequer, he pointed out.

And then came perhaps the most thought-provoking part of the lecture. Referring to the hyped-up success stories of IITians , he cited the example of Kanwal Rekhi, a Silicon Valley-based venture capitalist who has earned millions of dollars, Roy posited that while the ostensible aim of education is to teach us about success, most of our learnings comes from analysing and understanding failures. For every one IITian who makes money, there are 10 others who don't. And no one talks about the thousands of IITians who stay back and work for the country despite encountering victimisation by domestic politics of science and technology. Urging the young students to ask questions, and not just be receivers of "wisdom", Roy asked them to "learn the laws of motion of society and not just the laws of motion of science."

And coming from him, it did not sound phoney. For after his post-graduation from IITB, Roy moved to Shahdol district of Madhya Pradesh and started the Vidushak Karkhana as part of the Shahdol Group carrying out focussed work on building a development model for the district and its implementation, in conjunction with local people.He was involved in this for 17 years during which he earned his income primarily out of repairing bicycles in the village district. He then shifted to Delhi for a four-year stint with the World Wide Fund for Nature, and later set up the Hazards Centre, a multi-disciplinary consultancy group.

It's rare for IITians to be the recipients of such blunt talk. And it should be noted that the student organisers of Techfest invited Dunu Roy to give this talk after accepting his condition that there would be no restriction on the content of his lecture. So perhaps the IITians are not such big fools after all.

dnaindia.com : Friendship of circumstance: Why the US-India love affair may fail

Friendship of circumstance: Why the US-India love affair may fail

By - Sachin Kalbag

Article in the influential Foreign Policy magazine says it is not yet time for the US and India to raise their champagne glasses

WASHINGTON DC: Barbara Crossette, writing in the latest issue of Foreign Policy, an award-winning magazine by the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has said that though India is the flavour of the month in the US, the reality is that the two democracies have very little in common and a lot to pull them apart.

The author of the piece, foreign policy commentator and former Chief South Asia Correspondent for the New York Times, Barbara Crossette, gives five reasons why the US-India love affair - centred around the nuclear deal - may not work. The US and India are not natural allies, she says, because it is a friendship of circumstance.

"It was not until the collapse of its champion and friend, the Soviet Union, that Delhi saw reasons to improve ties dramatically with the United States," Crossette writes in the piece titled 'India: Think Again'.

"Though the world's most populous democracy seems to be increasingly in sync with free-market American thinking, India's interests often conflict with those of the United States. Consider India's relationship with Iran... Iran and India reached a "strategic partnership" in 2003, cementing the "historical ties" between the two nations.

India is now chafing at Western demands that it stop backing Iran's right to develop its nuclear capacities."

Crossette contends that India is not yet a responsible world power because it "has a history of interference in the politics of its weaker South Asian neighbours." She specifically mentions the creation of Bangladesh in 1971 and India's covert support to Tamil rebels in Sri Lanka during the 1980s as examples if India's domineering nature in the region.

She also talks about India's support to US-basher Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez's for a UN Security Council seat.

The author has doubts about India surpassing China in economic terms, saying population might be the only thing it might beat China at. Crossette asks readers to prove the US contention that India is becoming a high-tech, middle class nation saying 500 million of its people still do not have basic sanitation.

"The information technology sector in India, which accounts for just 4 per cent of GDP, employs only 1 million people," she says. "Although some parts of the country are becoming world centres of research and development in technology, just 32 out of every 1,000 Indians have access to the Internet."

Another reason why India could not be a natural ally of the US is its scant regard for human rights. Crossette says that human rights abuses in India are "far more prevalent than in other democracies." Of special mention is Kashmir, "whose people consider themselves ethnically and historically separate from India."

Crossette writes: "Most Muslim Kashmiris have become united in their contempt for Indian rule. Over the last two decades, tens of thousands of people on all sides have died in Kashmir; thousands more have been arrested or "disappeared."

Human rights groups have decried abuses on both sides. But extrajudicial killings by the Indian military are common and well documented. It is a stinging indictment of democratic India."

Giant mirrors in space that deflect the sun's heat

Apocalypse never? Science could yet save the day

Giant mirrors in space that deflect the sun's heat, carbon 'scrubbers' that clean up the atmosphere - where governments have failed to tackle global warming, science could yet save the day, says Steve Connor

Published: 31 January 2007

Scientists are thinking the unthinkable. What can be done to save the planet from global warming if political measures fail? If governments cannot agree on the necessary cuts in carbon-dioxide emissions, can engineering projects such as giant mirrors in space save the world?
This week, more than 2,000 of the world's leading climate scientists will issue their formal assessment of the threat posed by rising temperatures. In its fourth report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is expected to say that man-made emissions of greenhouse gases are causing average global temperatures to rise towards a tipping point where climate change will become dangerous, and potentially irreversible.
The document will not look at how to mitigate climate change - that will be dealt with in a later report - but some scientists are already thinking about the kind of large engineering schemes that might have to be deployed if policies for cutting CO2 emissions get nowhere. These range from capturing it at power stations and burying it underground, to launching spacecraft loaded with reflective tinfoil to deflect solar radiation.
Such mega-engineering schemes fall into two broad categories. One is aimed at curbing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, which would lessen the greenhouse effect that exacerbates global warming. The other focuses on deflecting solar radiation back into space by increasing the albedo, or reflective power, of the Earth, or by using mirrors.
Capturing carbon and storing it underground is already happening in a few pilot projects. There are two ways of doing this. One is to remove carbon from hydrocarbon fuels - namely, oil, gas or coal - before it is burnt. The second way is post-combustion, by removing CO₂ from power-station emissions and then burying it underground.
The Norwegian state oil company, Statoil, and BP already remove CO₂ from North Sea gas as it emerges from the field. They then pipe it back underground to enhance further gas recovery - and reduce carbon emissions in the process. Removing CO₂ post-combustion from power stations requires the fitting of "scrubbers" to chimneys that can absorb the gas.
Both are expensive. A power station with effective scrubbing technology would consume between 10 and 40 per cent more energy than one without, but such a power station could reduce its carbon emissions by up to 90 per cent.
Klaus Lackner of Columbia University has proposed an extension of this idea, by dotting the landscape with windmill-like machines fitted with scrubbers that can remove CO₂ from the atmosphere. The advantage of such a scheme is that it could be placed anywhere in the world - a desert rich in solar power, for example, or windy islands in the open ocean - and the technology need not be too efficient provided there are enough scrubbers to offset man-made emissions.
"The trick is to absorb enough carbon dioxide and to get rid of it quickly enough by burying it in long-term deposits," says John Shepherd of the Southampton Oceanography Centre. "This is the only scheme that could potentially reduce global levels of carbon dioxide to pre-industrial levels."
Other schemes focus on improving the efficiency of the world's natural carbon sinks. For instance, scientists have postulated that sprinkling iron filings over the ocean would have a fertilising effect on marine plankton. In theory, this could improve the absorption of CO₂ by encouraging giant algal blooms that draw down atmospheric carbon. But there are problems.
"I think this is a non-starter," says Dr Shepherd. "Experiments show that you can initiate a bloom, but the majority of the algae die or are eaten within days, releasing carbon dioxide back into the system."
Another approach is to tinker with the amount of solar radiation that hits the Earth. Changing the planet's albedo by as little as 1 per cent could have a significant impact on global warming. An advantage of this approach is that CO₂ levels could be allowed to rise to perhaps four or even eight times pre-industrial levels, which would boost agricultural output with improved carbon fertilisation.
John Latham, of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, is working with Stephen Salter of Edinburgh University to increase the albedo of low-level clouds over the oceans, by atomising sea water to produce droplets that enter the clouds and make them whiter and more reflective.
"The scheme could produce a global cooling, sufficient to balance the warming resulting from a doubling of the atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentration, by seeding clouds in three oceanic regions which together cover about 3 per cent of the Earth's surface," Dr Latham says. "The only raw material required is seawater, the amount of global cooling could be controlled and, if necessary, the system could be switched off, with conditions returning to normal within a few days."
Another way of altering atmospheric albedo has been proposed by Paul Crutzen, a Nobel Prize-winning chemist at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany. He suggests that the release of sulphate particles in the upper atmosphere would reflect sunlight and heat back into space. The idea is based on the way that a volcanic eruption releases sulphur into the air, resulting in discernible global cooling. Weather balloons, aircraft or even artillery shells could be used to put the sulphate aerosol into the atmosphere, Dr Crutzen suggests. "Such a modification could also be stopped on short notice, if undesirable and unforeseen side effects become apparent," he says.
Perhaps the most ambitious plan of all involves for solar reflectors. A fleet of tiny aluminium balloons could be released into the upper atmosphere, or a giant mirror could be placed in space at the point of lowest gravitational pull between the Earth and the sun.
The idea has been proposed by Lowell Wood of the University of California Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He is a disciple of Edward Teller, the military scientist who first suggested the idea. Dr Wood believes that removing less than 2 per cent of solar radiation would avert dangerous global warming - although it would cost billions.
Many unanswered questions remain about these mega-technological fixes, but perhaps the biggest of all is whether they are safe. James Lovelock, the inventor of the Gaia theory of Earth systems, has suggested that the mega-engineers should take the equivalent of the Hippocratic oath. Their first priority, he says, should be to do no harm to the Earth and the life on it. Otherwise the cure for global warming could end up being worse than the illness.
The big ideas
Capturing carbon
Carbon is removed from hydrocarbon fuels before they are burnt, or from power station emissions, and then buried.
Carbon scrubbers
Windmill-like machines that can remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Such machines could be located anywhere in the world.
Carbon sinks
It is hoped that sprinkling the ocean with iron filings would have a fertilising effect on marine plankton, a natural carbon sink, thus improving the absorption of atmospheric carbon.
Reflective clouds
The albedo (reflective power) of clouds could be enhanced by atomising sea water to produce tiny droplets that enter the clouds and make them more reflective, thus deflecting heat from the Earth.
Sulphate aerosols
Weather balloons, commercial aircraft or artillery shells would be used to release sulphate particles into the upper atmosphere, to reflect sunlight and heat back into space.
Mirrors in space
A giant folding mirror or a fleet of tiny aluminium balloons would be released into the upper atmosphere to deflect solar radiation before it reaches the Earth.

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