Paul Riesman came with intersection and justice last night

The man who introduced me to the subject of Anthropology was Paul Riesman. This was at Carlton College, Minnesota, where I spent a trimester along with four other Sri Lankans from the University of Peradeniya as part of a student exchange programme called ‘ISLE’. Professor Riesman was kind, understanding and an excellent teacher. I enjoyed being in his class.

I wrote to him a couple of times after I returned, the second time to request that he write recommendations to schools in the USA that I was applying to.  This was at the height of the bheeshanaya of the late eighties when the entire university system had collapsed. I still remember his response. It was warm.  He said he was happy to recommend me and I believe this is how it was possible for me to complete my degree. He said something else.  

‘If there is any justice in this world, our paths will cross again, I am sure.’

I never saw him again. When I got to the USA, I wrote to him. His wife replied me. She said that he had died of a ruptured pancreas a few months before. It had been sudden.

I thought of his note about justice and paths that cross. I wondered then if there was no justice in this world. Later it dawned on me that the relevant unit of time was not lifetime but samsara or the notion of lifetimes. In the plural.  It makes multiple intersections possible and therefore concedes space to the possible consecration of justice in terms of my teacher’s thesis. I also realized that not all intersections are of body encountering body but can include the intersections of and among thoughts, memories  and other related things.

Paul Riesman came to mind last night outside a fast food outlet.  I remembered him on account of an intersection, which I called ‘re-intersection’ and recounted thus:

Last night my love

of a different century

arrived at a take-away.

There was chit-chat and update

pleasantries as such are customary,

subtexts too,

slipped in and duly noted.

Last night memory intersected with memory:

two who had acquired journey weight

lightened for a moment,

stopped time.

'Chicken fried rice deka ganna!'

her order was ready.

She smiled: 'I have to go'.

The stable had bolted

leaving horse behind,

many centuries ago,

I already knew.

This intersection was not scripted;

but then again, perhaps it was.

There is justice in this world and I am certain that I have met Paul Riesman many times since I left Carlton College on December 1, 1997. I might have not recognized him and he might have passed by without noticing. Last night I saw him. Recognised. He was a wonderful human being. He is, still.

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There are films Channel 4 will not make, questions they won’t ask

Dr. Noel Nadesan, a Tamil domiciled in Australia who edited the Tamil community newspaper ‘Uthayam’ for 14 years, has responded to the recently released Channel 4 film (yes, not ‘documentary’) on Sri Lanka.  He remarks, based on long experience with the Tamil community both in Australia and Sri Lanka, ‘about the callous way in which the media is exploiting the suffering of (his) Tamil people for self-serving ends’. He argues, cogently, that the Channel 4 film does not help the long suffering Tamil people but indeed only makes things worse.

He has pointed out example by example Channel 4’s malice and utter disregard for professional ethics.  He has stated some truths that would make the makers of that film uncomfortable but only if they are guilty of honest error.  That’s sadly not the case. Let’s hear what Dr. Nadesan says:

‘I travelled Sri Lanka seven times last two years widely in war zones in Vanni and talked to the victims who were trapped in the war zones. They knew that they were targeted both sides and they could not comprehend why the LTTE should expose to retaliatory fire in the NFZ. They could not understand why the LTTE turned the NFZ into a war zone.

‘The agents of LTTE in the Tamil diaspora also shed a lot of crocodile tears about the 300,000 IDPs. They described the IDPs camps as concentration camps. Knowing the general conditions under which Sri Lankans live I can assure you that the conditions of the Tamils, particularly in the in the IDP camps, were far superior to the slums of Colombo or even the conditions of the Sinhala villagers and hill country Tamils in remote areas.

‘Even the Tamil MPs of Tamil Nadu and Indian journalists who visited the camps were convinced that the Sri Lankan authorities had done a very good job under trying conditions. Besides a comparison with the manner in which the government treated the Sinhala JVP rebels who took up arms in 1971 will reveal that the LTTErs received far better treatment than the JVPers. Most of them were incarcerated for more than four years.’

Dr. Nadesan lists a number of documentaries that Channel 4 could have commissioned but did not and probably never will. Here is a selection from that list:

• LTTE decimating the entire Tamil leadership in the democratic stream
• LTTE going round Tamil houses, knocking on doors at midnight, to grab under aged children hidden by Tamils parents
• LTTE massacring Muslims worshippers at prayer in mosques in the East
• LTTE Ethnic cleansing of Muslims and the Sinhalese communities in the North and the East
• The slaughter of 600 policemen who surrendered to the LTTE in the hope of promoting peace talks
• The massacres of young Buddhist monks and pregnant Sinhala mothers in border (sic) village in remote Sri Lanka

Would Channel 4, given the obviously enormous resources it has access to, ever come up with a comprehensive documentary on the LTTE’s vast international racketeering, including credit card fraud, arms and human smuggling, drug trafficking and extortion?  It would be an eye-opener to all governments dealing with terrorist threats.

Channel 4 can do a documentary on Channel 4 itself; about selective emphasis, footage-doctoring and suppression of relevant information.  In fact Channel 4 can do a documentary on the making of ‘Killing Fields in Sri Lanka’, giving information to the world at large about why Ramesh’s story was half-narrated, why the complicity of an LTTE ‘TV presenter’ in suicide terrorism was not mentioned (they have the footage where she glorifies suicide terrorism, thereby actively engaging in mobilizing cadres for suicide missions which, Channel 4 knows, have taken the lives of thousands of civilians, including Tamils) and how it came to pass that it missed the obvious fact that much of footage shown was staged by the LTTE (as Dr. Nadesan damningly shows).

Channel 4 can also document why it did not include in its narrative the statements of UN and INGO officials who made observations about how the security forces treated the IDPs, the conditions in these facilities and how they treated detainees and those who surrendered in rehabilitation facilities.  Channel 4 can also make a film comparing how the security forces acted during and after the military operation with how other countries (especially the USA and UK) behave during military operations and after claimed war-end, especially the treatment of IDPs.

Would Channel 4 offer as ‘moving’ a film on US and UK atrocities in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Libya, one wonders. Would Channel 4 interview Tamil civilians in Sri Lanka who were held hostage by the LTTE and saved by the Sri Lankan security forces at great cost? Would they ask the following questions and faithfully report the answers?

• ‘What did you eat in the last days in Vellimullivaikkal?’
• ‘Did the LTTE ever take food, medicine and other supplies sent by the Government, I/NGOs and UN agencies?’
• ‘Did the LTTE set up artillery positions among civilian populations?’
• ‘Did you lose any child to the LTTE’s aggressive recruitment and were you happy then or thereafter that your child was made to join the LTTE?’
• ‘Were the conditions you lived in from January to May 2009 better than those in the IDP camps?’
• ‘Have you heard of the security forces having ill-treated any of the LTTE cadres who were captured or had surrendered and thereafter rehabilitated and released?’
• ‘Would you rather go back to the situation that prevailed before May 19, 2009?’

I wonder if Channel 4 would ever take on any of the above projects. Sorry, I am pretty sure they would not. They cannot, given political leanings, absence of journalistic integrity and professional incompetence. That’s sad. I am sure Dr. Nadesan would agree.

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On stature-loss and stature-gain in erring times

I am convinced that every country has a more or less equal percentage of crooks, liars, racketeers, murderers, sycophants and so on. I am convinced, also, that each country has roughly the same percentage of decent people: generous, friendly, amiable, honest, skilled and humble. The same goes for political parties.  Indeed, I would extend the thesis to all comparable collectives.

There are no perfect communities. There are no perfect political parties. There are no perfect congregations. There are no perfect governments.  Indeed it is this inherent imperfection that makes for the formulations of rules and regulations, terms of engagement and codes referred to when punishment is meted out in the event of transgression.

‘Flaw’, if made public can be seen as fatal in these days of spectacle and brand positioning. This is why collectives tend to do whatever possible to keep flaw under lid and, if it pops out, to swiftly implement damage-control mechanisms. These back-up plans rarely include genuine penitence or humility. They seek not correction but recovery of brand loyalty and market share.

Reflecting on all this, I can’t help wondering when it was and how it is that honesty came to be thought of as a possible liability or a liability-generating sentiment. We all know no one is perfect. We’ve all erred. We have all encountered people who err and we know enough people who are remorseful. Yes, when it comes to a collective, we are stopped by the fear that admitting error would compromise the ‘us’ in irrecoverable ways.

Somewhere along the line, people have come to conclude that acknowledging error amounts to showing weakness and consequently leads to irrecoverable loss of stature. Two things seem to have been forgotten.

First, the world knows enough about imperfection and has no illusions on this count. Damage control can stop the rot but only for a while. It has the rarely acknowledged and never envisaged outcome that I like to call the ‘Pinocchio Factor’. The more you lie to cover up lie, the more you hide that which is too big to be hidden, the more you look the other way pretending to see what everyone else sees, the longer your nose grows.

Secondly, there is the stature that is lost in the attempt to retain it. If there is one easily obtainable political asset that politicians seem to be terrified to touch and exploit, it is humility. It not only makes the imperfect taller simply by admitting to imperfection, it adds to the project and the collective. Most importantly it not only makes the people believe that the relevant political (or commercial) entity more trustworthy, but gives additional space for project implementation (or taking the cause forward).

I was persuaded to write the above after reading about an observation made by the Minister of Housing and Construction Industries, Wimal Weerawansa.  Now I think Wimal is a great communicator and a powerful rhetorician. I believe he contributed much and in many ways to the nationalist cause. He’s been an embarrassment too.  He is not perfect. Like all of us. This is what he said:

‘Tough action must be taken against saboteurs within the government responsible for the fuel hedging gamble for which Sri Lanka might have to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to bank.’ Wimal insists that those guilty must be compelled to pay this money:  ‘if they cannot pay their property and other assets must be confiscated; if they don’t have sufficient assets, they must be jailed for this criminal gamble’.

Wimal has not listed all the cases of wrongdoing or elaborated on the mischief-making, the crooks, liars, thugs etc. This does not mean the public is unaware of wrongdoing or that they are blind to the fact that a blind-eye is being cast upon the wrongdoers by those who are known to have perfect vision.

We don’t have perfect institutions. It is also known that even the institutions we have are often compromised by the enormous formal and informal powers vested in Mr and Ms Politician by the JRJ Constitution. It is also known that when such powers are real, the powerful can use and abuse them. It is recognized that there has been very little ‘usage’ when it comes to tackling the errant politician.

This government, like all governments, is made up of the ‘usual’ quota of miscreants. It has engaged I am sure in about as much mischief as any other government would. It can go on like this and even get returned to power. It can fall too, as other governments have before.

There is no stature-loss in admitting error. There is stature-gain in acknowledging mistake, taking action, punishing the wrongdoer and putting in place mechanisms that stop would-be miscreants. There are words being spoken in the streets, not by those who are of-birth anti-regime, but those who have supported this government and indeed applaud its achievements. The words include knowledge of wrongdoing. They are not loud because there is fear that such vocalization would play into the hands of those who want to divide nation and compromise the achievements wrought of much sacrifice.  That silence will not stop them from expressing preference come election time, I feel.

This government, like all governments, can do with stature-boost. Humility is a virtue and not a liability. That’s something that President Mahinda Rajapaksa might want to reflect on in these erring times.

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Notes of a boat ride on a vessel of many names

One of my earliest memories is of boats in Tangalle. I can’t remember what the vantage point was. I think this was in 1971, on a family trip to Kataragama and Yala. Extended family, I should add. There were adults everywhere I looked; my brother, sister and I were the little people. We went unnoticed or at least that’s how it felt, from what I can remember.

I saw fishing boats.  Lovely ones. Moored. I knew next to nothing or boats or fishing or indeed of mooring or anchorage. All I knew was that the boats were moving. Wave and breeze made them toss a little, move a little. I remember wondering why they were so slow. I must have been as dumb as a kid as I am now, as an adult.

I remember smells better than I remember images. Conversations more than I remember faces. Those boats, fishing vessel, were small come to think of it but back then enormous to my physical dimensions and capacity to assess true size and relevance. They are associated with the fragrance of salt water mixed with freshly caught fish. I don’t how that happened because I can’t remember going down to the quay or being among the fisherman. It must have got added along the way. Remembrance, after all is a trickster.

I don’t know if it is because that early childhood encounter with boats stuck or if it is due to some other and more pertinent reason that eludes me right now, but boats, especially stationary ones, fascinate me. They make me think of journeys and not only because I’ve heard of Sindbad and Marco Polo and have read The Odyssey and other accounts of travel and adventure, myth, legend and history all.

Boats are sad artifacts of human commerce. To me, at least. I wonder how long it takes, how many wave-whips or wave-laps it takes, how many showers of rain, what volumes of rainwater and how many hours of sunlight, to erase boat-name.  How long, for example, for boat to forget boatman and vice versa.

A few months ago, as I was browsing through my dear friend Hiranya Malwatta photographs on www.flickr.com, I came across boats. Many of them. This is one. Hiranya captures our beloved land, its ancient places and fresh faces in ways I just cannot describe. I don’t have her eyes but I suppose it is enough that she has them. Her boat, which I would not have seen ever had it not been for a click of mind, heart and camera, took me to Tangalle and to other boats I’ve known, literally and metaphorically. Brought to mind the words of Matthew Arnold, almost a century and a half ago (1867) in ‘Dover Beach’. That’s England. I remembered the following lines thanks to the years I spent learning English and literature, speech and drama under the stern and yet educating eye of Mrs. Lakshmi Jeganathan:

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! For the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Arnold was touched by ebb and flow of wave and water, life and death, joy and sorrow.  Back then I didn’t associate these lines with Arnold’s deep contemplation of Buddhist philosophy.  They make more sense now, these words do.  Hiranya made me remember all this.  She took me on a boat ride that had little to do with Matthew Arnold or Dover Beach, or perhaps this was what it was all about, who can tell?  I chronicled that journey in the poor English I know.  I titled by little note, ‘Ode to a boat untouched by time’.

Between the visited and to-be visited

the embraced and the longed for

the place we came from and those which await

the before and after of wave-break and sunset

of dawning of death

love and solitude,

among yesterday’s archaeology

things traced and extrapolated

in the unexplored seabed of dream

amid thought-shoals unnamed

and currents that dodge anticipation

there is a moment that invades sand

examines the woodwork of being

where madness unites with sanity

lover with lover

where broken dreams scramble into awkward image

where random clicks and structured browsing conspire

to reveal, hide, corrupt and erase,

designed for indescribable grip

intersection-scissoring

and cleansing

by abandonment.

This boat might take you to different destinations. It might make you want to stay put. We learn as we walk. We learn also by standing. We learn when our eyes are open. We learn when they are closed. I saw a boat. Reminded me of a childhood moment, took me to England, a class attended with dread, a learning I am grateful for, moments inhabited where I felt alive, dead moments and things that passed by unnoticed or on account of incapacitation.

There’s a boat moored to a window sill and a dream. Another anchored by word and longing. Yet another that has no name, next to one with a million tags.

We live in such a wonderful world.

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Has Barack Obama heard of Pelican Bay, I wonder

On June 30, 2011, I wrote about hell and heaven, of prisons hellish and heavenly (‘On prisons and death-escape’, Daily News). I wrote about a hell that had a name and acronym: Pelican Bay State Prison (PBSP), a “Supermax” state prison run by the California Department for Corrections and Rehabilitation, located in Crescent City in Del Norte County’. Inmates of PBSP are incarcerated in long-term solitary confinement under conditions of extreme sensory deprivation, I learned and reported. I wrote also that the law was a creature that has been denied visiting rights to PBSP.

I wrote about Pelican Bay because I had heard that the inmates were planning to starve to death. It is a facility, sorry hell, set out in 275 acres. The inmates inhabit hell-cells the size of a small bathroom in solitary confinement. They don’t see any other human being for 23 hours of the day. They don’t get to see the sky or feel sunlight on their faces. They don’t see a blade of grass, even. Whenever they do get to leave their cells, they are handcuffed and shackled, hands-to-waist and ankle-to-ankle. And so the years pass. Decades, in fact, in certain cases.

Well, they’ve had enough of hell. They want death. They’ve been on a hunger strike since July 1, 2011. Yes, they’d rather die and take their chances in the hereafter (if such exists).

What is it all about?  We need some context here and Marilyn McMahon, Attorney at Law, provides some. She states that the notorious ‘D Corridor’ (also known as the ‘short’ corridor) has the highest level of restricted incarceration in the State of California and among the most severe conditions in the USA. The harshness is designed to force prisoners to ‘debrief’, i.e. to provide information about criminal or prison gang activity of other prisoners. She states that most inmates are neither members of or associated with prison gangs. ‘Debriefing’ does not lessen death-risk for those who give information or their families or other prisoners. The entirety that is their incarceration amounts to torture, sanctioned by the silence of those who ought to know better (e.g. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice et al).  Those who do ‘debrief’, do so simply to escape isolation units, she says.  Armed with this misinformation, the authorities then validate other prisoners as members or associates of prison gangs. That’s ‘Justice for all’, a la the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, ladies and gentlemen.

The striking prisoners have five core demands:

1. Eliminate group punishments. Instead, practice individual accountability. When an individual prisoner breaks a rule, the prison often punishes a whole group of prisoners of the same race. This policy has been applied to keep prisoners in the SHU indefinitely and to make conditions increasingly harsh.
2. Abolish the debriefing policy and modify active/inactive gang status criteria.
3. Comply with the recommendations of the US Commission on Safety and Abuse in Prisons (2006) regarding an end to long-term solitary confinement. This bipartisan commission specifically recommended to "make segregation a last resort" and "end conditions of isolation." Yet as of May 18, 2011, California kept 3,259 prisoners in Security Housing Units and hundreds more in Administrative Segregation waiting for a cell to open up. Some prisoners have been kept in isolation for more than thirty years.
4. Provide adequate food. Prisoners report unsanitary conditions and small quantities of food that do not conform to prison regulations. There is no accountability or independent quality control of meals.
5. Expand and provide constructive programs and privileges for indefinite SHU inmates. The hunger strikers are pressing for opportunities “to engage in self-help treatment, education, religious and other productive activities..." Currently these opportunities are routinely denied, even if the prisoners want to pay for correspondence courses themselves. Examples of privileges the prisoners want are: one phone call per week, and permission to have sweatsuits and watch caps. (Often warm clothing is denied, though the cells and exercise cage can be bitterly cold.) All of the privileges mentioned in the demands are already allowed at other SuperMax prisons (in the federal prison system and other states).

Ladies and gentlemen, I am not surprised by all this. We are, after all, talking about a country where George W. Bush and his partners in war crimes have got off the hook, possibly because Barack Obama wanted to purchase an insurance policy with respect to the risk of getting similarly branded for his adventures in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and who knows where else (he has a couple more years to go).

The prison authorities, meanwhile, have promised to ‘effect a comprehensive assessment of its existing policy and procedure’. The striking prisoners are not biting. Naturally. That’s as vague as one can get. Meanwhile, McMohan informs us that the principal hunger strikers have lost 25-35 pounds each. There are hundreds striking at Pelican Bay and thousands of others supporting in California’s 32 other prisons. There are support demonstrations all over the USA, but also in Canada, Australia and Turkey. You won’t find Channel 4 doing a documentary on all this, that’s for sure.

We live in harsh times, did I hear someone say? The USA seems to have lost its way, someone did tell me this morning. Well, times were always harsh in that country. The USA did not lose its way. It never had a way worth celebrating. Not since Christopher Columbus mis-navigated his ship and mis-labelled people, causing a lot of confusion about Indians, West Indians, Red Indians and so on. It’s been downhill since then for a lot of people in that country.  It’s a beautiful country and the people are really nice, I agree. It’s the political leadership that sucks. And of course the system, which includes foreign policy ‘prerogatives’ that sanction numerous crimes against humanity and domestic mechanisms that are as pernicious, especially since they are out-of-public-view for the most part.

Something popped out though. It began in Pelican Bay. It will be tough thrusting it all back again. I think Barack Obama knows this.

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A note on power, truth and their relative lifetimes

The worth of a statement is not necessarily associated with its truth-value.  Truth does stand on its own, but very often by the time it is so recognized and even consecrated, a lot of water has already passed under the bridge. Blood-stained, we might add.

How many innocents have been slaughtered in the name of justice courtesy the death penalty? How many communities, cultures and languages have been obliterated from the face of the earth in the name of progress?  How many thousands are being rendered homeless, orphaned, widowed, limbless and distraught even as I write, all in the name of pursuing democracy and peace?
 
We all know that things are seldom as they seem. When the USA invaded Iraq, the excuse trotted out was ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’. Tommy rot, it turned out to be. Barack Obama’s Libyan testosterone-test was about no-fire zones and protecting civilians. Both Bush and Obama were cheered all the way by the mainstream media in the West. The cheering has not stopped.  Crimes against humanity are being perpetrated in gay abandon and with 100 per cent impunity. Truth, like justice, is slaughtered on the altar of expedience. This was how it was and this is how it is. There is no reason to believe it will not be so in the future.
 
It is all about power. Glen Ford in an article titled ‘African Union says ‘UP YOURS!’ to International Criminal Court’ (published on July 7, 2011 by Black Agenda Report), lays it all out. He talks of the US-led attack on Libya and how original reason has been left far behind and how the International Criminal Court appears to be half or almost totally blind when it comes to crimes against humanity perpetrated by the West, in particular the USA and the UK.  Israel too is a no-no as far as the ICC is concerned, one notes. The ICC does not see what the West is doing in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq.
Ford tells us what the current AU Chairman, Jean Ping, had to say about Navaneethan Pillai, the UN Human Rights Commissioner, the lady with more than a soft spot for LTTE terrorists.  It is worth a full quote:
 
‘Without doubt, the International Criminal Court is as Eurocentric in its view of the world as are the governments in Paris, London and Washington. So is the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillai, who had the nerve to chastise China for ignoring the ICC indictment against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. Bashir has travelled in Africa and the Middle East on state visits, and went to China for high level talks, last week. Navi Pillai, the Human Rights Commissioner, whined that she was disappointed with China for not arresting Bashir – although China, like the United States and Russia, is not a member of the International Criminal Court.
 
‘Nevertheless, Pillai showed herself to be a true servant of the West. “The whole world favours” putting Bashir on trial,” said the bureaucrat. Most of the continent of Africa does not want to put Bashir on trial. Isn't Africa part of the world? China does not want to put Bashir on trial. And one out of every five people in the world is Chinese!’
 
We haven’t heard Pillai calling for George W Bush’s arrest or for that matter the arrest of Barack Obama, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Nicolai Sarkozy or David Miliband. She hasn’t expressed regret or dismay that countries these gentlemen have visited had not arrested them.
 
Ping lays it out as thick as it deserves: ‘Pillai thinks the whole world revolves around Paris, London and Washington. So does ICC chief prosecutor Luis Morena Ocampo, who wants to deputize the United States military to enforce the criminal court's arrest warrants – regardless of what the African world or the Chinese world or anybody that is not European or American thinks. It's sad to say, but at this point in history, the UN serves the Empire.’

There is no such thing as unadulterated truth, ladies and gentlemen. Truth comes out of the barrel of a gun. It is something that strains out of power realities and relevant structures of approval and rejection.

The most important thing to remember is that truth does not win the day.  Power does. Truth wins. Later. It keeps us waiting, very often. In the long run, we are all dead, they say. In the long run, our children may be alive and if not, their children would. Time is longer than life, some Africans say. This is true. Time beats power. That’s small consolation for us of course. 

Civilizations, however, outlasts tyrant and idiot both. That’s why we are Sri Lanka, have been, are and will be. A bump along the road will trip the Obama’s, not a nation, a civilization and a culture.

http://print.dailymirror.lk/opinion1/50441.html

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