Category: Uncategorized

B. R. Gowani

one veteran of the
1991 US War Against Iraq
psychologically devastated
affected by Depleted Uranium
suffering from GWS and PTSD*
deserted by the live-in partner
financially ruined
addicted to drugs and alcohol
homeless,
out on the street …

survival meant begging
life had no meaning
meaningless life
life should be meaningful
thought and rethought
“tonight, like any other night
alone I am not
there are over 150,000
war veterans like me”

was aware of the second war
disastrous in lives and money
also thought of himself
he was nameless, no one knew him
respect, dignity nobody gave him
little money some gave
dirty glances others gave

what to do?

he yearned for a dose of equality
and a place of his own

after a long while
gathered all his strength
to be converted into a mercenary
before the war ends
so he joined the Filthywater

his fears were untrue
the rulers were in his favor
the war continues

after some “patriotic” acts
he got kidnapped by the homeowners
after all, a liberator he was not
he was the occupying force

the world came to know him
many people prayed for him
they talked about him
scores worried for him
most wished him well
and ..

he became the hero
his face was everywhere
his name was on a millions lips
millions of eyes shed tears

within two weeks he was free
actually, he escaped, unharmed
had experience dodging police
by living homeless on US city streets

the homeless veteran
granted a hero’s welcome
interviews, photos, autographs
the complete spotlight
and then the media found another hero
and so he went out of focus

two years later ..
the government cut budget
he was united with the streets again
now he wasn’t interested in better times or
even the meaning of life

he had lost that ability
his mental balance was no more

* Gulf War Syndrome and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com

Who are homeless veterans?
The U. S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) says the nation’s homeless veterans are mostly males (4 % are females). The vast majority are single, most come from poor, disadvantaged communities, 45% suffer from mental illness, and half have substance abuse problems. America’s homeless veterans have served in World War II, Korean War, Cold War, Vietnam War, Grenada, Panama, Lebanon, Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan), Operation Iraqi Freedom, or the military’s anti-drug cultivation efforts in South America. Forty-seven percent of homeless veterans served during the Vietnam Era. More than 67% served our country for at least three years and 33% were stationed in a war zone.
How many homeless veterans are there?
Although accurate numbers are impossible to come by — no one keeps national records on homeless veterans — the VA estimates that 154,000 veterans are homeless on any given night. And approximately twice that many experience homelessness over the course of a year. Conservatively, one out of every three homeless men who is sleeping in a doorway, alley or box in our cities and rural communities has put on a uniform and served this country. According to the National Survey of Homeless Assistance Providers and Clients (U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness and the Urban Institute, 1999), veterans account for 23% of all homeless people in America.
Why are veterans homeless?
In addition to the complex set of factors affecting all homelessness — extreme shortage of affordable housing, livable income, and access to health care — a large number of displaced and at-risk veterans live with lingering effects of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and substance abuse, compounded by a lack of family and social support networks.
A top priority is secure, safe, clean housing that offers a supportive environment which is free of drugs and alcohol.
While “most homeless people are single, unaffiliated men … most housing money in existing federal homelessness programs, in contrast, is devoted to helping homeless families or homeless women with dependant children,” according to “Is Homelessness a Housing Problem?” in Understanding Homelessness: New Policy and Research Perspectives, published by Fannie Mae Foundation in 1997.
Doesn’t the Department of Veterans Affairs take care of homeless veterans?
To a certain degree, yes. According to the VA, in the years since it “began responding to the special needs of homeless veterans, its homeless treatment and assistance network has developed into the nation’s largest provider of homeless services, serving more than 100,000 veterans annually.”
With an estimated 300,000 veterans homeless at some time during the year, the VA reaches 33% of those in need … leaving 200,000 veterans who must seek assistance from local government agencies and service organizations in their communities.
Since 1987, VA’s programs for homeless veterans have emphasized collaboration with community service providers to help expand services to more veterans in crisis. This partnership is credited with reducing the number of homeless veterans on any given day by nearly 25% over the last six years. For more information about VA homeless veteran programs, go to http://www1.va.gov/homeless/.
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Bhumika (English: The Role) is a 1977 Indian movie directed by Shyam Benegal. The movie stars Smita Patil, Amol Palekar, Anant Nag, Naseeruddin Shah and Amrish Puri.

This film is broadly based on the memoirs of the well-known Marathi Stage and screen actress of the 1940s, ‘Hansa Wadkar’ who led a flamboyant and unconventional life and focus at an individual’s search for identity and self-fulfillment.

Smita Patil gave the strong performance of transforming herself in its course from a vivacious teenage girl to a wiser but deeply wounded middle-aged woman.

The film won two National Film Awards and Filmfare Best Movie Award, it was invited to Carthage Film Festival 1978, Chicago Film Festival, where it was awarded the Golden Plaque 1978, and in 1986 it was invited to Festival of Images, Algeria.

This film remains an iconic film in the art house/ off-beat film tradition of Indian cinema and is still as relevant today as it was when it was first released in 1977 and the period that it depicts, ranging from the 30s to the late 50s. The film is inspired from and is a fictional recreation of the autobiography of the famous Hindi and Marathi screen actress of the 1930s, 40s and 50s, Hansa Wadkar.This film is a very complex film in terms of its structure and the plethora of themes and issues that it tackles, but this in no way distracts the viewers from enjoying the film as it unfolds to us the story of Usha, aka Urvashi in a seamless blend of past and present.

Smita Patil’s essaying of the role is amongst the best performances in not just Indian cinema but world cinema and rightly fetched her the National Award in that year. Within the film, her depiction of different roles in the films that she performs in, not only traces the evolution of acting styles in Hindi cinema over three decades, but also demonstrates her remarkable histrionic ability.

By Erika Tapalla, INQUIRER.net – 24 March 2009

MANILA, Philippines—The United Nations is looking to set up a global network by which indigenous peoples (IPs) can help each other respond to violations of their rights, mainly by extractive industries.
Eighty-five IP representatives from Asia, Africa, the Pacific, Europe and Russia, Arctic, Latin and North America, as well as experts, have gathered in Manila for the International Conference on Indigenous Peoples and Extractive Industries.
Victoria Tauli-Corpuz chair of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues said there is a need to unite IPs in a global network to strengthen their responses to the problems they face.
“This conference is really to tackle the indigenous peoples’ rights, which are violated by extractive industries…oil, mineral or gas corporations. There is a need to develop a global network because there is no one existing body of IPs, there is no existing global network. If there is one, the voice of these people [is] stronger, so that’s what we did in this conference,” Corpuz told INQUIRER.net in an interview.
Corpuz said among the things IPs could do is bring their cases before national and international courts, raise awareness about destructive cultural and environmental issues through media, and dialogue with investors.
“By raising the issues and cases to national and even international courts, the voices of the indigenous peoples will be heard. Now, with this global network, hopefully their voices can be heard. Media also [have] a crucial role in delivering the situations, the issues, these people encounter so everyone will know about what is really happening. And lastly, the dialogue with the investors and these corporations will really help. It is in fact the most important thing,” Corpuz said.
Corpus also said it was sound corporate thinking to respect IPs’ rights.
“It is in the self-interest of these corporations to respect the rights of the indigenous peoples because, if not, there will be more conflict, and more conflict means more expenses for them. Then they [corporations] will be seen in a bad light. If they don’t mutually agree to terms or negotiate, it’s like they are robbing these people of their own things in their own home,” she said.
Corpuz also said states and mining corporations should adhere to the standards set by the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) to avoid criminalizing IPs for protecting their land or resisting the entry of extractive industries.
The UNDRIP, signed by 143 countries in September 13, 2007, is the latest international agreement adopted by the UN General Assembly.
Conference organizer Tebtebba, the Indigenous Peoples’ International Centre for Policy Research and Education, said cases of human rights violations committed against indigenous peoples have been filed before courts in various countries as well as inter-governmental bodies such as the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
IP representatives said their cultural territories continue to shrink because of massive encroachment by mining companies.
The Philippines alone has suffered two of the biggest mining disasters—the collapse of the Tapian Pit of Marcopper Mining Corporation, which spilled 1.6 million cubic meters of mine tailings into the waterways of Marinduque in 1996; and the cyanide-laden waste spill of Australia-owned Lafayette Mining Limited in waters around Rapu-Rapu Island in 2005.
“We thought that the Philippines was in one of the worse states, but after this conference, we have realized that many groups [and] tribes from different parts of the world experience similar issues. The actors involved are the same– corporations that act like thugs encroaching on the lands of the people,” Corpuz said.
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(Submitted by Michelle Cook and Cathal Doyle)

by By Kate Doyle and Jesse Franzblau
Source: The National Security Archive

Declassified documents show U.S. Embassy knew that Guatemalan security forces were behind wave of abductions of students and labor leaders. National Security Archive calls for release of military files and investigation into intellectual authors of the 1984 abduction of Fernando García and other disappearances.

Following a stunning breakthrough in a 25-year-old case of political terror in Guatemala, the National Security Archive today [March 17,2008] is posting declassified U.S. documents about the disappearance of Edgar Fernando García, a student leader and trade union activist captured by Guatemalan security forces in 1984. The documents show that García’s capture was an organized political abduction orchestrated at the highest levels of the Guatemalan government.

Guatemalan authorities made the first arrest ever in the long-dormant kidnapping case when they detained Héctor Roderico Ramírez Ríos, a senior police officer in Quezaltenango, on March 5th and retired policeman Abraham Lancerio Gómez on March 6th as a result of an investigation into García’s abduction by Guatemala’s Human Rights Prosecutor (Procurador de Derechos Humanos—PDH). Arrest warrants have been issued for two more suspects, Hugo Rolando Gómez Osorio and Alfonso Guillermo de León Marroquín. The two are former officers with the notorious Special Operations Brigade (BROE) of the National Police, a unit linked to death squad activities during the 1980s by human rights groups.

According to the prosecutor Sergio Morales, the suspects were identified using evidence found in the vast archives of the former National Police. The massive, moldering cache of documents was discovered accidentally by the PDH in 2005, and has since been cleaned, organized and reviewed by dozens of investigators. The National Security Archive provided expert advice in the rescue of the archive and posted photographs and analysis on its Web site. Last week, Morales turned over hundreds of additional records to the Public Ministry containing evidence of state security force involvement in the disappearance of other student leaders between 1978 and 1980. As the Historical Archive of the National Police prepares to issue its first major report on March 24, more evidence of human rights crimes can be expected to be made public.

Government Campaign of Terror

The abduction of Fernando García was part of a government campaign of terror designed to destroy Guatemala’s urban and rural social movements during the 1980s. On February 18, 1984, the young student leader was captured on the outskirts of a market near his home in Guatemala City. He was never seen again. Although witnesses pointed to police involvement, the government under then-Chief of State Gen. Oscar Humberto Mejía Víctores always denied any role in his kidnapping. According to the Historical Clarification Commission’s report released in 1999, García was one of an estimated 40,000 civilians disappeared by state agents during Guatemala’s 36-year civil conflict.

In the wake of García’s capture, his wife, Nineth Montenegro – now a member of Congress – launched the Mutual Support Group (Grupo de Apoyo Mutuo—GAM), a new human rights organization that pressed the government for information about missing relatives. Co-founded with other families of the disappeared , GAM took shape in June of 1984, holding demonstrations, meeting with government officials and leading a domestic and international advocacy campaign over the years to find the truth behind the thousands of Guatemala’s disappeared. The organization was quickly joined by hundreds more family members of victims of government-sponsored violence, including Mayan Indians affected by a brutal army counterinsurgency campaign that decimated indigenous communities in the country’s rural highlands during the early 1980s.

Declassified U.S. records obtained by the National Security Archive under the Freedom of Information Act indicate that the United States was well-aware of the government campaign to kidnap, torture and kill Guatemalan labor leaders at the time of García’s abduction. “Government security services have employed assassination to eliminate persons suspected of involvement with the guerrillas or who are otherwise left-wing in orientation,” wrote the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research four days after García disappeared, pointing in particular to the Army’s “notorious presidential intelligence service (archivos)” and the National Police, “who have traditionally considered labor activists to be communists.”
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By Yusuke Nagano, The Asahi Shimbun

YOKOHAMA–The district court here Monday denied the children of a deceased journalist the chance to clear their father’s name in a case that is regarded as the most notorious instance of suppression of free speech in wartime Japan.
The court elected to bypass handing down a verdict on whether Yasuhito Ono was guilty of promoting communism and engaging in subversive activities during World War II, thus allowing his conviction under the Peace Preservation Law in 1945 to stand in what is known as the “Yokohama Incident.”
The Yokohama District Court, following a March 2008 ruling set by the Supreme Court in an earlier case, decided to dismiss the plea for a verdict that addresses the question of guilt or innocence.
Ono worked as an editorial member of Kaizo (Reform) magazine. He died in 1959.
Ono’s two children had requested the retrial. It was the fourth such request by former defendants convicted over the Yokohama Incident or their family members.
Presiding Judge Takaaki Oshima made clear he had no choice but to dismiss the case, citing provisions under the former Criminal Procedure Law, which stated that trials involving individuals convicted under laws no longer on the books and those granted amnesty should be dismissed.
The Peace Preservation Law was abolished in October 1945, after which Ono was granted an amnesty.
When the district court agreed to a retrial last October, Oshima cited evidence that would suggest a “not guilty” verdict was more appropriate.
For instance, the court noted that a 1942 meeting attended by political scientist Karoku Hosokawa, editors and others in Toyama Prefecture, which wartime police had labeled an occasion to discuss the resurrection of the Communist Party, was “nothing but a friendly meeting among editors.”
The court on Monday cited that finding again. It also noted that wartime special police used torture to make suspects confess their “crimes.”
“But for a legal obstacle, it would be possible to reach substantial judgment in a retrial right away,” Oshima said, apparently referring to the former Criminal Procedure Law.
But the court sidestepped the issue of guilt or innocence until family members take steps to request criminal compensation.
Ono’s son, Shinichi, 62, and daughter, Nobuko Saito, 59, said Monday they will not appeal the case but instead move to seek compensation from the state for their father’s ordeal.
“We wanted to hear the word ‘innocent’ from the court,” Shinichi Ono said at a news conference. “We now realize the difficulty of trying to overturn a Supreme Court decision.”
Ono was arrested by a special unit of the Kanagawa prefectural police in May 1943 after proofreading an article written by Hosokawa for Kaizo magazine in 1942. Wartime authorities determined that the article enlightened the public on communism.
Ono was found guilty in September 1945, a month after World War II ended.
Overall, more than 60 journalists and others were arrested on suspicion of violating the Peace Preservation Law between 1942 and 1945. Four of them died in prison as a result of being tortured during the investigation.(IHT/Asahi: March 31,2009)
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Researchers in the UK have invented a new way of boosting the sensitivity of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) measurements by a factor of 1000. The technique involves mixing molecules of interest with a “spin isomer” of hydrogen and a metal hydride, which forces the nuclear spins of the sample into a specific energy state. This makes the molecules much more visible to NMR measurements as well as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which uses NMR to map different tissue types within the body.
According to the researchers, led by Simon Duckett and Gary Green from the University of York, molecules that have been treated in this way could someday be injected into the body, reducing the time to take an MRI image from hours to a fraction of a second. This, they say, could allow medical researchers to watch how a patient responds in real time to drug therapy. It could also allow larger and more detailed scans to be made — allowing doctors to see tumours earlier than possible today (Science 323 1708).
NMR measurements are made by exposing a sample to a very high magnetic field, which aligns the magnetic moments of its nuclei in a specific direction. The magnetic energy levels are quantized, and the spacing between the levels — as well as the time it takes for transitions between those levels — can be measured by applying a radio-frequency signal to cause a transition and then measuring the radio signals that are given off as the magnetic moments return to equilibrium. This provides a wealth of information about the chemical and structural composition of the sample.
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Amrit and Rabindra have always produced their fabulous art the only way they know how: together. Peter Stanford meets a singular pair

Two of a kind: Amrit (left) and Rabindra

You’re doing very well telling them apart,” Amrit and Rabindra Singh’s elderly father remarks as he watches me talk to his daughters. “I still get them confused.” The identical twins, dressed in matching Punjabi outfits, right down to the earrings, necklaces, bangles and jewelled bindis in the centre of their foreheads, smile indulgently at his joke. Even their laughter sounds the same.
But these Sikh sisters long ago stopped worrying about being mistaken for each other and have turned being twins to their advantage. They have made it part of their brand in the art world, where they are known and celebrated as one artist: the Singh Twins.
Their style is a fusion of Indian tradition and contemporary Western influences which they label “past modern”. Each canvas is produced jointly and combines the bright colours, intricate designs and flattened perspectives of intricate Indian miniature paintings with modern political, social and cultural themes. Among their best-known are From Zero to Hero, featuring the Beckhams, and Art Matters, a piece commissioned to mark Liverpool’s tenure last year as European Capital of Culture, but Singh Twins’ works are to be found across major national and international collections. In 2002, they were only the second British-born artists, after Henry Moore, to be accorded an exhibition at New Delhi’s National Museum of Modern Art. And the windowsill of their neat, calm, book-lined studio, next to the family home halfway up a sandstone hill between Birkenhead and the Irish Sea, is lined with awards that are sparkling in the spring sunshine.
“One thing that might help,” offers Rabindra, as I once again address her as Amrit, “is that I tend to find myself, almost subconsciously, standing on the right.” Indeed, the reddish shawl each wears is, helpfully, over her right shoulder and Amrit’s left until the photographer mentioned it and Rabindra duly moved hers to match her sister. There is undoubtedly an element of playing with hapless visitors’ confusion over which is which, but the twins regard their shared identity, I quickly come to realise, as more than a game or a marketing device. They have turned it into something to highlight the tensions they have encountered, as citizens and as artists, in being both British and Asian.
“Western contemporary art is all about the individual, the inner self,” reflects Amrit, the more talkative of the two, as the three of us perch at the end of the long studio table where their latest painting – based on events in Palestine and looking at the impact of politics on everyday lives – lies half-finished. “So in Western art, it doesn’t matter if anyone else understands the work, as it is about the individual artist and what they are feeling. This was certainly the view when we were studying art at university [from the mid-1980s until 1991 first at University College, Chester, later Manchester]. We were constantly being told that to be individual was healthy, that we had to be more different from each other, be influenced by different Western artists from each other, but that didn’t seem valid to us. From the point of view of Sikh, Indian or even Asian philosophy, the community comes first and the individual is second.”
The clash between the two codes, say the twins, left them, like many other British Asians, under sustained pressure to abandon their cultural heritage. Their final degree grades were even reduced because they wouldn’t yield – though they subsequently had the marking overturned after a seven-year battle with academia. The prejudice they encountered – at one stage an examiner was reported to have remarked, “Give them a 2.2, they won’t mind because they’ll soon be in an arranged marriage” – might have broken some, but it brought out the rebel in the sisters. “It was when we were at college,” Rabindra recalls, “that we started to deliberately wear the same clothes to challenge the notion of individuality. We’d always had the same clothes, but until then had not necessarily worn them on the same day.”
They see their art, too, as a challenge to questions of identity and what is acceptable or fashionable. It favours narrative, detail, colour and time-honoured techniques – none of which are qualities likely to see them lionised alongside their contemporaries, the Young British Artists. Yet it is also very modern and even edgy because of its exploration of what it is to be British and Asian simultaneously.
“We were told by our tutors that the miniature was outdated,” Amrit remembers. When they first wanted to exhibit, they would routinely receive “nice letters, saying how much they liked our work, but perhaps we’d do better in an ethnic gallery in the East End of London”. They have, with their success of the past two decades, turned the tables – though they feel that a “London, art- establishment elite” continues to look down on their work because of its traditional Indian roots. They decided early on not to sell their works in order to build a touring collection, but do accept commissions and have, of late, allowed some pieces to go into national collections. But it is hard to say what their paintings would command on the open market; substantial five-figure sums are mentioned by dealers.
Though they are “twin-dividuals”, they insist, the Singhs spend 99 per cent of their time together. They simultaneously discovered a passion for Indian miniatures aged 13, while spending a year travelling with their father around his native Punjab. They jointly devise and execute most of their works, their skills interchangeable. “We could probably tell which of us has done which part, but otherwise only those very close to us could work it out,” says Amrit. Some pieces, especially in the various series they have completed on particular themes (such as “The Hart Project” and “Facets of Femininity”), are wholly by one or the other. “But we don’t see it as my work, your work,” Rabindra stresses. “It is not that we can’t do things on our own, but this is a joint venture. Our thinking, our ideology, our political-social outlook is identical.”
She does concede that the sisters have different characteristics. “I am a perfectionist, which is not always a good thing, and Amrit is the one who gets it done.” But they also say the last three words in harmony.
Their mode of working, the twins point out, has parallels in the medieval age, when monks would work together on a single illuminated manuscript. And there is something rather monk-like and self-abnegating about the Singh Twins. For all their warmth and humour, they continue to see themselves as outsiders and are more comfortable talking about their work than themselves.
The twins’ Sikh father came to Britain when he was nine. They were born in Richmond, Surrey, but moved to the Wirral when they were still small and encountered what they describe as low-level racial prejudice as youngsters – name-calling and, on one occasion, a brick through their window. Though now in their early forties, they continue to live in the extended family home with their father, uncles and cousins. They used domestic settings a lot in their early work – part, as Amrit puts it, “of celebrating the more positive side of the traditional Indian lifestyle rather than girls locked in their bedrooms and forced marriages”.
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