Thursday, September 12, 2024
Caller asks if Trump will reveal himself as the Antichrist — many believe he already has
Thom Hartmann
September 10, 2024
A supporter of former President Donald Trump wears a pro-Trump t-shirt at a Trump campaign rally at an outdoor fairgrounds, April 13, 2024 in Schnecksville, Pa. (Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images)
A listener called into my program recently and asked, “Is Donald Trump the Antichrist and, if so, will he reveal himself at the debate?”
I passed on drawing a conclusion, but then the lines lit up with a steady stream of people over the next few hours offering their “proofs” that Trump was, in fact, the Evil One come to ravage the Earth. That he’s a literal and iniquitous thaumaturge. My first caller clearly hit a nerve.
It’s a fascinating question, though, whether put literally or metaphorically.
Asking the question literally requires a belief in the actual reality of a Son-of-God Christ figure and of an Antichrist opponent of nearly equal but opposite power. This sort of thing fills the Bible, and I’ll get to that in a moment.
But first consider the question from the secular perspective, which argues these two terms represent, at their core, metaphors for the embodiment of good and evil.
In this context, then, a more accurate question is: “Is Donald Trump evil, and thus an antichrist?”
In The Sermon on the Mount, Jesus spoke in the plural when he predicted “false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves.”
After warning that grifters and con artists (in secular terms)would try to exploit His followers, He said, “by their fruits ye shall know them.”
Trump’s “fruits” are pretty obvious:
More than twenty women have accused him of rape and sexual assault.
Hundreds of contractors, customers and employees have accused him of stealing from them or refusing to pay them (or both), as have members of his own family
Throughout his presidency, he lied over 30,000 times and continues to lie daily
He pits Americans against each other by race, religion, and region in an effort to tear our country apart and thus weaken opposition to his authoritarian rule
He openly encouraged violence against unarmed people at multiple rallies and encouraged state violence at a speech to chiefs of police; most recently he encouraged an assault on members of the press
He tried to overthrow and end our democracy
He embraced depraved, ungodly murderers, kleptocrats, and “strongman” rulers while ridiculing western democracies and their elected leaders
He tried to damage or dismantle political and military systems designed to keep peace in the world, including the UN, NATO, and the Iran JCPOA
He reaches out to Jesus’s followers and then directs them toward bigotry, violence, and hatred
As an object of admiration and a role model, he’s replaced Jesus in many white evangelical congregations
He delighted in tearing children from their parents and putting them in cages
He tried to end Americans’ access to lifesaving medical care by killing Obamacare and privatizing Medicare
He watched on TV, like a delighted child, as his followers killed three police officers, sent 140 others to the hospital, and tried to murder the Vice President and Speaker of the House
He lied about Covid (after disclosing the truth to Bob Woodward), causing more disease and deaths in America than any other nation in the world except Peru
The main reason many Christians freak out about an antichrist is that following him will get you banned from heaven or even cast into hell.
But what did Jesus — the guy Trump’s white evangelical followers claim as their savior — say was necessary to get into heaven?
Back in 1998 I had a private audience with Pope John Paul II at his invitation; one of his personal secretaries had read one of my books. He gave Louise and me a private tour of many non-public parts of the Vatican and, the next day, we sat through an open-air concert with Pope John Paul II and about 30 VIPs, including the leader of Germany’s Bundestag, for more than an hour, surrounded by the splendor of Castel Gandolfo, the Pope’s summer palace on the rim of an extinct volcano overlooking lake Albano.
When we spoke privately after the concert, His Holiness’s forceful comments about the work we all must do reminded me of Jesus’ words in Matthew 25. It’s an amazing 2,000 year-old story that tells us everything we need to know about today’s “Christian” politics:
Jesus’ disciples had gathered around him in a private and intimate setting.
Finally, they thought, they could ask him, straight up, the question that had been haunting them, particularly now that the Roman authorities were starting to talk about punishing or even executing them: How they could be sure to hang out with Him in the afterlife?
Jesus told them that at the end of days He’d be sitting on His throne separating the sheep from the goats “as a shepherd divideth.”
The nations of “sheep” would go with Him to heaven, the “goats” to hell.
“For I was an hungred, and ye gave me food,” he told his disciples he would say to the sheep. “I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.”
At this point, His disciples — who had never, ever seen Jesus hungry, thirsty, homeless, sick, or naked — freaked out. Whoa! they shouted. We’re screwed!
“When saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee?” they asked, panicked. “Or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? Or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?”
“Verily I say unto you,” Jesus replied, reassuring them, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
This is the only place in the Bible where Jesus explicitly tells His disciples what acts they must perform, in their entirety, to get into heaven.
Feed the hungry, care for refugees, house and clothe the homeless, heal the sick, have compassion on those in prison.
That’s it.
And it’s a list that is quite literally the opposite of everything that Donald Trump advocates, stands for, and has done in his careers, both business and political.
While biblical scholars are split about who the actual “Beast” was that John referenced in his Revelation, many consider it to have been a then-politically-necessary cloaking of the identity of Roman Emperor Nero.
It was clearly a political figure, who represented the antithesis of the values and works Jesus laid out in the Sermon on the Mount and in Matthew 25.
A leader whose actions unleashed “a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.”
Caller after caller to my program offered their own proofs of Trump being the Beast or the Antichrist:
“MAGA” means “magic” or “sorcerer” in Latin and multiple other languages
His grandfather’s name when he emigrated to America to start a whorehouse in the Pacific Northwest was “Drumpf,” which he changed to Trump. John in German is “Johann.” Therefore, his “actual” name is Donald Johann Drumpf — each name having six letters. (Weirdly, the same is true of Ronald Wilson Reagan, the guy who laid the foundation for MAGA.)
He illegally armed the Saudis for their merciless bombing war against Yemen which had five million peoplefacing famine as the Saudi military blocked food arrivals.
His family owns 666 Fifth Avenue.
He fooled millions of evangelical followers of Jesus, just as the Beast is supposed to do.
He put his own red-hat MAGA mark on their foreheads.
He consorts with “whores” and “criminals.”
It was an interesting exercise and conversation, and I was surprised by how many people are actually religiously freaked out about Trump.
But for me, all the proof I need that Trump, if not the biblical Antichrist, is at least a political one, is what he says and does. And I’ll bet that tonight he will reveal himself, both as a disciple of the “Father of Lies,” and through his anti-Christ-type policies.
As Pope Francis today tells us, a man’s “fruits” show us all we need to know about who he really is.
Thom Hartmann
September 10, 2024
A supporter of former President Donald Trump wears a pro-Trump t-shirt at a Trump campaign rally at an outdoor fairgrounds, April 13, 2024 in Schnecksville, Pa. (Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images)
A listener called into my program recently and asked, “Is Donald Trump the Antichrist and, if so, will he reveal himself at the debate?”
I passed on drawing a conclusion, but then the lines lit up with a steady stream of people over the next few hours offering their “proofs” that Trump was, in fact, the Evil One come to ravage the Earth. That he’s a literal and iniquitous thaumaturge. My first caller clearly hit a nerve.
It’s a fascinating question, though, whether put literally or metaphorically.
Asking the question literally requires a belief in the actual reality of a Son-of-God Christ figure and of an Antichrist opponent of nearly equal but opposite power. This sort of thing fills the Bible, and I’ll get to that in a moment.
But first consider the question from the secular perspective, which argues these two terms represent, at their core, metaphors for the embodiment of good and evil.
In this context, then, a more accurate question is: “Is Donald Trump evil, and thus an antichrist?”
In The Sermon on the Mount, Jesus spoke in the plural when he predicted “false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves.”
After warning that grifters and con artists (in secular terms)would try to exploit His followers, He said, “by their fruits ye shall know them.”
Trump’s “fruits” are pretty obvious:
More than twenty women have accused him of rape and sexual assault.
Hundreds of contractors, customers and employees have accused him of stealing from them or refusing to pay them (or both), as have members of his own family
Throughout his presidency, he lied over 30,000 times and continues to lie daily
He pits Americans against each other by race, religion, and region in an effort to tear our country apart and thus weaken opposition to his authoritarian rule
He openly encouraged violence against unarmed people at multiple rallies and encouraged state violence at a speech to chiefs of police; most recently he encouraged an assault on members of the press
He tried to overthrow and end our democracy
He embraced depraved, ungodly murderers, kleptocrats, and “strongman” rulers while ridiculing western democracies and their elected leaders
He tried to damage or dismantle political and military systems designed to keep peace in the world, including the UN, NATO, and the Iran JCPOA
He reaches out to Jesus’s followers and then directs them toward bigotry, violence, and hatred
As an object of admiration and a role model, he’s replaced Jesus in many white evangelical congregations
He delighted in tearing children from their parents and putting them in cages
He tried to end Americans’ access to lifesaving medical care by killing Obamacare and privatizing Medicare
He watched on TV, like a delighted child, as his followers killed three police officers, sent 140 others to the hospital, and tried to murder the Vice President and Speaker of the House
He lied about Covid (after disclosing the truth to Bob Woodward), causing more disease and deaths in America than any other nation in the world except Peru
The main reason many Christians freak out about an antichrist is that following him will get you banned from heaven or even cast into hell.
But what did Jesus — the guy Trump’s white evangelical followers claim as their savior — say was necessary to get into heaven?
Back in 1998 I had a private audience with Pope John Paul II at his invitation; one of his personal secretaries had read one of my books. He gave Louise and me a private tour of many non-public parts of the Vatican and, the next day, we sat through an open-air concert with Pope John Paul II and about 30 VIPs, including the leader of Germany’s Bundestag, for more than an hour, surrounded by the splendor of Castel Gandolfo, the Pope’s summer palace on the rim of an extinct volcano overlooking lake Albano.
When we spoke privately after the concert, His Holiness’s forceful comments about the work we all must do reminded me of Jesus’ words in Matthew 25. It’s an amazing 2,000 year-old story that tells us everything we need to know about today’s “Christian” politics:
Jesus’ disciples had gathered around him in a private and intimate setting.
Finally, they thought, they could ask him, straight up, the question that had been haunting them, particularly now that the Roman authorities were starting to talk about punishing or even executing them: How they could be sure to hang out with Him in the afterlife?
Jesus told them that at the end of days He’d be sitting on His throne separating the sheep from the goats “as a shepherd divideth.”
The nations of “sheep” would go with Him to heaven, the “goats” to hell.
“For I was an hungred, and ye gave me food,” he told his disciples he would say to the sheep. “I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.”
At this point, His disciples — who had never, ever seen Jesus hungry, thirsty, homeless, sick, or naked — freaked out. Whoa! they shouted. We’re screwed!
“When saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee?” they asked, panicked. “Or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? Or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?”
“Verily I say unto you,” Jesus replied, reassuring them, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
This is the only place in the Bible where Jesus explicitly tells His disciples what acts they must perform, in their entirety, to get into heaven.
Feed the hungry, care for refugees, house and clothe the homeless, heal the sick, have compassion on those in prison.
That’s it.
And it’s a list that is quite literally the opposite of everything that Donald Trump advocates, stands for, and has done in his careers, both business and political.
While biblical scholars are split about who the actual “Beast” was that John referenced in his Revelation, many consider it to have been a then-politically-necessary cloaking of the identity of Roman Emperor Nero.
It was clearly a political figure, who represented the antithesis of the values and works Jesus laid out in the Sermon on the Mount and in Matthew 25.
A leader whose actions unleashed “a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.”
Caller after caller to my program offered their own proofs of Trump being the Beast or the Antichrist:
“MAGA” means “magic” or “sorcerer” in Latin and multiple other languages
His grandfather’s name when he emigrated to America to start a whorehouse in the Pacific Northwest was “Drumpf,” which he changed to Trump. John in German is “Johann.” Therefore, his “actual” name is Donald Johann Drumpf — each name having six letters. (Weirdly, the same is true of Ronald Wilson Reagan, the guy who laid the foundation for MAGA.)
He illegally armed the Saudis for their merciless bombing war against Yemen which had five million peoplefacing famine as the Saudi military blocked food arrivals.
His family owns 666 Fifth Avenue.
He fooled millions of evangelical followers of Jesus, just as the Beast is supposed to do.
He put his own red-hat MAGA mark on their foreheads.
He consorts with “whores” and “criminals.”
It was an interesting exercise and conversation, and I was surprised by how many people are actually religiously freaked out about Trump.
But for me, all the proof I need that Trump, if not the biblical Antichrist, is at least a political one, is what he says and does. And I’ll bet that tonight he will reveal himself, both as a disciple of the “Father of Lies,” and through his anti-Christ-type policies.
As Pope Francis today tells us, a man’s “fruits” show us all we need to know about who he really is.
Artist turns Johannesburg's decay and dysfunction into vast canvas
Agence France-Presse
September 12, 2024
South African artist Robin Rhode poses for a portrait at the Stevenson Gallery in Johannesburg on September 6, 2024. (EMMANUEL CROSET/AFP)
When artist Robin Rhode needed a canvas for his latest work, he found it at an abandoned sports ground in his dysfunctional hometown of Johannesburg.
Beneath the waist-high grass, broken bottles and occasional bullet casing, he uncovered a decades-old miniature golf course, indoor soccer fields, and a tennis training wall. And that's where he started drawing.
The 48-year-old grew up not far from the sports ground but 20 years ago moved to Berlin as his career took off internationally. He paints on walls, sets fire to pianos, and draws everyday objects like keys and lightbulbs in chalk and charcoal.
"My work is deeply rooted in Johannesburg, and I think one of the reasons is that the city functions as a kind of rough, decayed canvas in many ways, that's almost calling for a new narrative to be drawn or painted" onto it, he told AFP.
Often Rhode works in outdoor spaces where much of his work will wash away -- the images preserved in often playful photographs, where he or his collaborators pose with the drawings.
His work has been bought by heavyweight institutions like the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He has also collaborated with U2 and won the 2018 Zurich Art Prize. Although he could work anywhere, Johannesburg keeps calling him back.
"Coming back from Berlin, and traveling around the city, and seeing the collapse of these structures, it's had a really profound effect on me," he said.
"It's motivated me to come back to South Africa and to revitalize these structures."
- Abandoned spaces -
Just 15 years ago, Cecil Payne Stadium had undergone a massive upgrade to become a training ground when South Africa hosted the 2010 World Cup.
Now abandoned by the city, the fencing is slowly being stolen for sale as scrap. Two indoor soccer fields are a weed bed. A private sports club is keeping the main fields functioning even as squatters build encampments in a nearby wetland at the foot of a mountainous mine dump.
Johannesburg has had 10 mayors in eight years, some serving just weeks, making local government resemble a game of musical chairs.
Amid the political chaos, a regional commuter train service collapsed, street lights went dark, and routine maintenance at places like the stadium simply stopped.
For Rhode, the decay provided inspiration for a collection called Joburg Hymn. He drew lightbulbs on the tennis courts while his brother Wesley flew a drone overhead to take images of him posing in black with the drawings.
Another series combines the visuals with music performed by Cape Town piano prodigy Qden Blaauw, and an original song by Johannesburg performers Maxime Scheepers, Love Sechabe and Kevin Narain.
"Working with Robin always reminds me to be hopeful and optimistic," Narain said. "What we do gives new life to the landscape. It revives a forgotten past and makes it relevant. I always leave set feeling hopeful about what I do."
The music they created plays over the images in one of Johannesburg's most prestigious galleries, CIRCA, with more photos at the nearby Stevenson Gallery.
Both venues are a far cry from the cracked courts where Rhode's drawings are already fading but which provide fertile ground for his creativity.
"The rough Johannesburg canvas serves as inspiration for me... It serves as a means for me to come back and inject a kind of energy and life, a new narrative into these decayed worn-out spaces," Rhode said.
"And also to allow my art to function as a critique to various political structures that are collapsing. I want to use my art as a mechanism for change."
Agence France-Presse
September 12, 2024
South African artist Robin Rhode poses for a portrait at the Stevenson Gallery in Johannesburg on September 6, 2024. (EMMANUEL CROSET/AFP)
When artist Robin Rhode needed a canvas for his latest work, he found it at an abandoned sports ground in his dysfunctional hometown of Johannesburg.
Beneath the waist-high grass, broken bottles and occasional bullet casing, he uncovered a decades-old miniature golf course, indoor soccer fields, and a tennis training wall. And that's where he started drawing.
The 48-year-old grew up not far from the sports ground but 20 years ago moved to Berlin as his career took off internationally. He paints on walls, sets fire to pianos, and draws everyday objects like keys and lightbulbs in chalk and charcoal.
"My work is deeply rooted in Johannesburg, and I think one of the reasons is that the city functions as a kind of rough, decayed canvas in many ways, that's almost calling for a new narrative to be drawn or painted" onto it, he told AFP.
Often Rhode works in outdoor spaces where much of his work will wash away -- the images preserved in often playful photographs, where he or his collaborators pose with the drawings.
His work has been bought by heavyweight institutions like the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He has also collaborated with U2 and won the 2018 Zurich Art Prize. Although he could work anywhere, Johannesburg keeps calling him back.
"Coming back from Berlin, and traveling around the city, and seeing the collapse of these structures, it's had a really profound effect on me," he said.
"It's motivated me to come back to South Africa and to revitalize these structures."
- Abandoned spaces -
Just 15 years ago, Cecil Payne Stadium had undergone a massive upgrade to become a training ground when South Africa hosted the 2010 World Cup.
Now abandoned by the city, the fencing is slowly being stolen for sale as scrap. Two indoor soccer fields are a weed bed. A private sports club is keeping the main fields functioning even as squatters build encampments in a nearby wetland at the foot of a mountainous mine dump.
Johannesburg has had 10 mayors in eight years, some serving just weeks, making local government resemble a game of musical chairs.
Amid the political chaos, a regional commuter train service collapsed, street lights went dark, and routine maintenance at places like the stadium simply stopped.
For Rhode, the decay provided inspiration for a collection called Joburg Hymn. He drew lightbulbs on the tennis courts while his brother Wesley flew a drone overhead to take images of him posing in black with the drawings.
Another series combines the visuals with music performed by Cape Town piano prodigy Qden Blaauw, and an original song by Johannesburg performers Maxime Scheepers, Love Sechabe and Kevin Narain.
"Working with Robin always reminds me to be hopeful and optimistic," Narain said. "What we do gives new life to the landscape. It revives a forgotten past and makes it relevant. I always leave set feeling hopeful about what I do."
The music they created plays over the images in one of Johannesburg's most prestigious galleries, CIRCA, with more photos at the nearby Stevenson Gallery.
Both venues are a far cry from the cracked courts where Rhode's drawings are already fading but which provide fertile ground for his creativity.
"The rough Johannesburg canvas serves as inspiration for me... It serves as a means for me to come back and inject a kind of energy and life, a new narrative into these decayed worn-out spaces," Rhode said.
"And also to allow my art to function as a critique to various political structures that are collapsing. I want to use my art as a mechanism for change."
Brazil's Indigenous people hail return of sacred cloak
Agence France-Presse
September 12, 2024
It is not known how the ceremonial cloak left Brazil, though experts believe it was made in the mid-16th century, when the country was under Portuguese colonization (Pablo PORCIUNCULA) (Pablo PORCIUNCULA/AFP/AFP)
With the beating of drums and pipes filled with medicinal herbs, the Tupinamba people of Brazil are counting down the final hours of a 335-year wait for the official return of a sacred cloak taken in colonial times.
The highly symbolic artifact, held at the National Museum of Denmark since 1689, will be presented in Rio de Janeiro in a ceremony to be attended by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Thursday.
The return of the ceremonial cloak is part of diplomatic efforts by Brazil's government to recover other Indigenous objects from museums in France, Japan, and elsewhere.
Measuring just under 1.8 meters (6 feet) high and featuring red feathers of the scarlet ibis bird, the cloak arrived back in Rio in early July, where it is being stored at the national museum.
"I felt sadness and joy. A mixture between being born and dying," said Yakuy Tupinamba, who viewed the artifact after travelling more than 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) by bus from the eastern Olivenca municipality.
The 64-year-old, wearing a feather headdress, is among roughly 200 Tupinambas camped in grounds near the museum, where they held a traditional vigil with maracas-filled music.
Yakuy said Europeans "put (the cloak) in a museum, as if it were a zoo, for art scholars to observe... (But) only our people communicate and engage with such a symbol."
- 'Stop to the devastation' -
It is not known how the cloak left Brazil, though experts believe it was first made in the mid-16th century, when the country was under Portuguese colonization.
Its return is part of a push by President Lula's leftist government to better support Brazil's Indigenous people, who are also demanding territorial demarcation.
The mantle "is our father and our mother. Our ancestors say that when they (the Europeans) took it away, our village was left without a north," Sussu Arana Morubyxada Tupinamba, one of those camping near the museum, told AFP.
"Now we have a direction again: the demarcation of our territory by the Brazilian state," added the Indigenous chief.
The Tupinambas have demanded the government recognize the boundaries of more than 47,000 hectares (116,000 acres) where around 8,000 families live, making their living from fishing and farming.
They say the mineral-rich territory is being devastated by large agriculture and mining businesses.
Despite being a government promise, only a handful of territories have been recognized since Lula began his third term in January 2023.
"The return of the mantle means -- not only for the Tupinamba people but also for the Brazilian people -- a stop to the devastation of the Amazon, of the forests, of the mangroves," said Cacique Arana.
Thursday's ceremony in Rio will likely take place under a cloud of smoke from wildfires that are impacting several parts of Brazil, as it faces a devastating drought.
Thousands of fires have been unleashed, including in the Amazon -- a phenomenon that scientists say is linked to climate change.
Agence France-Presse
September 12, 2024
It is not known how the ceremonial cloak left Brazil, though experts believe it was made in the mid-16th century, when the country was under Portuguese colonization (Pablo PORCIUNCULA) (Pablo PORCIUNCULA/AFP/AFP)
With the beating of drums and pipes filled with medicinal herbs, the Tupinamba people of Brazil are counting down the final hours of a 335-year wait for the official return of a sacred cloak taken in colonial times.
The highly symbolic artifact, held at the National Museum of Denmark since 1689, will be presented in Rio de Janeiro in a ceremony to be attended by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Thursday.
The return of the ceremonial cloak is part of diplomatic efforts by Brazil's government to recover other Indigenous objects from museums in France, Japan, and elsewhere.
Measuring just under 1.8 meters (6 feet) high and featuring red feathers of the scarlet ibis bird, the cloak arrived back in Rio in early July, where it is being stored at the national museum.
"I felt sadness and joy. A mixture between being born and dying," said Yakuy Tupinamba, who viewed the artifact after travelling more than 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) by bus from the eastern Olivenca municipality.
The 64-year-old, wearing a feather headdress, is among roughly 200 Tupinambas camped in grounds near the museum, where they held a traditional vigil with maracas-filled music.
Yakuy said Europeans "put (the cloak) in a museum, as if it were a zoo, for art scholars to observe... (But) only our people communicate and engage with such a symbol."
- 'Stop to the devastation' -
It is not known how the cloak left Brazil, though experts believe it was first made in the mid-16th century, when the country was under Portuguese colonization.
Its return is part of a push by President Lula's leftist government to better support Brazil's Indigenous people, who are also demanding territorial demarcation.
The mantle "is our father and our mother. Our ancestors say that when they (the Europeans) took it away, our village was left without a north," Sussu Arana Morubyxada Tupinamba, one of those camping near the museum, told AFP.
"Now we have a direction again: the demarcation of our territory by the Brazilian state," added the Indigenous chief.
The Tupinambas have demanded the government recognize the boundaries of more than 47,000 hectares (116,000 acres) where around 8,000 families live, making their living from fishing and farming.
They say the mineral-rich territory is being devastated by large agriculture and mining businesses.
Despite being a government promise, only a handful of territories have been recognized since Lula began his third term in January 2023.
"The return of the mantle means -- not only for the Tupinamba people but also for the Brazilian people -- a stop to the devastation of the Amazon, of the forests, of the mangroves," said Cacique Arana.
Thursday's ceremony in Rio will likely take place under a cloud of smoke from wildfires that are impacting several parts of Brazil, as it faces a devastating drought.
Thousands of fires have been unleashed, including in the Amazon -- a phenomenon that scientists say is linked to climate change.
Brigitte Macron awarded damages over false trans claim
Agence France-Presse
September 12, 2024
Brigitte Macron (AFP)
A court on Thursday ordered two women to pay 8,000 euros in damages to French First Lady Brigitte Macron after making false claims she was transgender, sparking online rumor-mongering by conspiracy theorists and the far right.
Brigitte Macron filed a libel complaint against two women who posted a YouTube video in December 2021 alleging the French president's wife had once been a man named "Jean-Michel".
The claim went viral just weeks before the 2022 presidential election.
Posts spread on social media claiming that the first lady, formerly Brigitte Trogneux, had never existed and that her brother Jean-Michel had changed gender and assumed that identity.
A Paris court sentenced the two defendants to pay a total of 8,000 euros ($8,800) in damages to the president's wife, and 5,000 euros ($5,500) to her brother Jean-Michel Trogneux.
They were also handed a suspended fine of 500 euros.
Brigitte Macron, 71, did not attend the trial in June and was not present for the ruling.
Defendant Amandine Roy, a self-proclaimed spiritual medium, interviewed Natacha Rey, a self-described independent journalist, for four hours on her YouTube channel.
Rey spoke about the "state lie" and "scam" that she claimed to have uncovered.
The disinformation even spread to the United States where Brigitte Macron was attacked in a now deleted YouTube video ahead of the November elections.
Rey was ill during the trial, but did not manage to have it postponed.
Former US first lady Michelle Obama, US Vice President and presidential candidate Kamala Harris and New Zealand ex-premier Jacinda Ardern have also been the target of disinformation about their gender or sexuality in a bid to mock or humiliate them.
Also on Thursday, Brigitte Macron made her Netflix debut playing herself in the hit series "Emily in Paris".
The show's star Lily Collins told Elle magazine the idea came to her and programme creator Darren Star when they met the first lady at the Elysee Palace in December 2022.
© Agence France-Presse
Agence France-Presse
September 12, 2024
Brigitte Macron (AFP)
A court on Thursday ordered two women to pay 8,000 euros in damages to French First Lady Brigitte Macron after making false claims she was transgender, sparking online rumor-mongering by conspiracy theorists and the far right.
Brigitte Macron filed a libel complaint against two women who posted a YouTube video in December 2021 alleging the French president's wife had once been a man named "Jean-Michel".
The claim went viral just weeks before the 2022 presidential election.
Posts spread on social media claiming that the first lady, formerly Brigitte Trogneux, had never existed and that her brother Jean-Michel had changed gender and assumed that identity.
A Paris court sentenced the two defendants to pay a total of 8,000 euros ($8,800) in damages to the president's wife, and 5,000 euros ($5,500) to her brother Jean-Michel Trogneux.
They were also handed a suspended fine of 500 euros.
Brigitte Macron, 71, did not attend the trial in June and was not present for the ruling.
Defendant Amandine Roy, a self-proclaimed spiritual medium, interviewed Natacha Rey, a self-described independent journalist, for four hours on her YouTube channel.
Rey spoke about the "state lie" and "scam" that she claimed to have uncovered.
The disinformation even spread to the United States where Brigitte Macron was attacked in a now deleted YouTube video ahead of the November elections.
Rey was ill during the trial, but did not manage to have it postponed.
Former US first lady Michelle Obama, US Vice President and presidential candidate Kamala Harris and New Zealand ex-premier Jacinda Ardern have also been the target of disinformation about their gender or sexuality in a bid to mock or humiliate them.
Also on Thursday, Brigitte Macron made her Netflix debut playing herself in the hit series "Emily in Paris".
The show's star Lily Collins told Elle magazine the idea came to her and programme creator Darren Star when they met the first lady at the Elysee Palace in December 2022.
© Agence France-Presse
Trump's ex-FBI official: We have 'many reasons' to think ex-president is a Russian 'asset'
Travis Gettys
September 12, 2024
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin (AFP)
Donald Trump could rightly be seen as a Russian asset, according to a former FBI director the ex-president fired in his first term.
Andrew McCabe appeared on the One Decision podcast co-hosted by former British intelligence agency chief Sir Richard Dearlove, who asked whether he thought it possible that Trump was a Russian asset, and he said, "I do, I do," reported The Guardian.
“I don’t know that I would characterize it as [an] active, recruited, knowing asset in the way that people in the intelligence community think of that term," McCabe said. "But I do think that Donald Trump has given us many reasons to question his approach to the Russia problem in the United States, and I think his approach to interacting with Vladimir Putin, be it phone calls, face-to-face meetings, the things that he has said in public about Putin, all raise significant questions.”
McCabe raised suspicions about Trump's attitude toward Ukraine and NATO in the face of Russian aggression and said he's had concerns about his admiration for Vladimir Putin since the ex-president fired him in March 2018, two days before he was due to retire, during the FBI's investigation of Kremlin interference in the 2016 election.
“You have to have some very serious questions about, why is it that Donald Trump … has this fawning sort of admiration for Vladimir Putin in a way that no other American president, Republican or Democrat, ever has," McCabe said.
“It may just be from a fundamental misunderstanding of this problem set that’s always a problem," he added. "That’s always a possibility, and I guess the other end of that spectrum would be that there is some kind of relationship or a desire for a relationship of some sort, be it economic or business oriented, what have you. I think those are possibilities. None of them have been proven. But as an intelligence officer, those are the things that you think about.”
McCabe expressed “very serious concerns” about a second Trump presidency and said that Russia had long desired to interfere with U.S. democracy.
“Their desire to kind of wreak havoc or mischief in our political system is something that’s been going on for years, decades and decades and decades," McCabe said. “Their interest in just simply sowing chaos and division and polarization. If they can do that, it’s a win. If they can actually hurt a candidate they don’t like, or help one that they do like, that’s an even bigger win.”
The Justice Department investigated McCabe for allegedly lying about a media leak, but that case was dropped in 2020, and he settled a lawsuit the following year that restored his full pension.
Travis Gettys
September 12, 2024
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin (AFP)
Donald Trump could rightly be seen as a Russian asset, according to a former FBI director the ex-president fired in his first term.
Andrew McCabe appeared on the One Decision podcast co-hosted by former British intelligence agency chief Sir Richard Dearlove, who asked whether he thought it possible that Trump was a Russian asset, and he said, "I do, I do," reported The Guardian.
“I don’t know that I would characterize it as [an] active, recruited, knowing asset in the way that people in the intelligence community think of that term," McCabe said. "But I do think that Donald Trump has given us many reasons to question his approach to the Russia problem in the United States, and I think his approach to interacting with Vladimir Putin, be it phone calls, face-to-face meetings, the things that he has said in public about Putin, all raise significant questions.”
McCabe raised suspicions about Trump's attitude toward Ukraine and NATO in the face of Russian aggression and said he's had concerns about his admiration for Vladimir Putin since the ex-president fired him in March 2018, two days before he was due to retire, during the FBI's investigation of Kremlin interference in the 2016 election.
“You have to have some very serious questions about, why is it that Donald Trump … has this fawning sort of admiration for Vladimir Putin in a way that no other American president, Republican or Democrat, ever has," McCabe said.
“It may just be from a fundamental misunderstanding of this problem set that’s always a problem," he added. "That’s always a possibility, and I guess the other end of that spectrum would be that there is some kind of relationship or a desire for a relationship of some sort, be it economic or business oriented, what have you. I think those are possibilities. None of them have been proven. But as an intelligence officer, those are the things that you think about.”
McCabe expressed “very serious concerns” about a second Trump presidency and said that Russia had long desired to interfere with U.S. democracy.
“Their desire to kind of wreak havoc or mischief in our political system is something that’s been going on for years, decades and decades and decades," McCabe said. “Their interest in just simply sowing chaos and division and polarization. If they can do that, it’s a win. If they can actually hurt a candidate they don’t like, or help one that they do like, that’s an even bigger win.”
The Justice Department investigated McCabe for allegedly lying about a media leak, but that case was dropped in 2020, and he settled a lawsuit the following year that restored his full pension.
ILLEGAL UNDER ILO CHARTER
Ottawa (AFP) – Groups representing more than 200,000 businesses across Canada on Thursday urged the government to intervene to block a looming pilot's strike at flagship carrier Air Canada that they say risks devastating the economy.
Issued on: 12/09/2024 -
Air Canada said it was preparing to suspend most of its flights starting next Sunday
© JOEL SAGET / AFP
The Canadian Chamber of Commerce, the Business Council of Canada and nearly 100 other associations in a letter to the federal labor minister asked him to order arbitration to settle the labor dispute.
This comes after Air Canada said it was preparing to suspend most of its flights starting next Sunday, as it faces an impasse in talks with its pilots over wage demands.
A total shutdown of its operations has been scheduled for September 18 if talks break down.
"No one wins in a strike, but a labor disruption would cause a lot of harm to a lot of people," Goldy Hyder of the Business Council of Canada told a news conference in Ottawa.
"Canadians cannot afford another disruption to our economy," he said.
The nation's biggest carrier said it has reached a tentative agreement with the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) union, representing more than 5,200 pilots, on most issues after 15 months of ongoing negotiations.
The union's demand for a 30-percent wage increase, however, remains a sticking point, it said Thursday.
"While we remain committed to reaching a negotiated settlement with ALPA, the federal government should be prepared to intervene if talks fail before any travel disruption starts," added Air Canada chief executive Michael Rousseau in a statement.
Labor Minister Steve MacKinnon has said he was optimistic a strike could be averted, while urging both sides to "knuckle down and get a deal."
MacKinnon was to meet with the union and Air Canada on Thursday.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said MacKinnon "would impress on them the fact that millions of Canadians are counting on everyone to get this resolved."
"We remain firm that the best deals happen at the bargaining table, and that's where parties need to keep working," Trudeau added.
The airline's pilots are pushing to close a pay gap with their American counterparts, but Air Canada says their demands "far exceed average Canadian wage increases."
Candice Laing, of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, said a disruption at Air Canada would not only disrupt passenger travel, but also air transport of food, manufactured goods and other materials.
"It's about businesses of all sectors of the economy and communities of all sizes... trying to stay connected across our incredible land mass and geography," she said. "This is a national issue."
Air Canada flies to 47 countries and carries an average of 110,000 passengers a day on its 670 flights.
© 2024 AFP
The Canadian Chamber of Commerce, the Business Council of Canada and nearly 100 other associations in a letter to the federal labor minister asked him to order arbitration to settle the labor dispute.
This comes after Air Canada said it was preparing to suspend most of its flights starting next Sunday, as it faces an impasse in talks with its pilots over wage demands.
A total shutdown of its operations has been scheduled for September 18 if talks break down.
"No one wins in a strike, but a labor disruption would cause a lot of harm to a lot of people," Goldy Hyder of the Business Council of Canada told a news conference in Ottawa.
"Canadians cannot afford another disruption to our economy," he said.
The nation's biggest carrier said it has reached a tentative agreement with the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) union, representing more than 5,200 pilots, on most issues after 15 months of ongoing negotiations.
The union's demand for a 30-percent wage increase, however, remains a sticking point, it said Thursday.
"While we remain committed to reaching a negotiated settlement with ALPA, the federal government should be prepared to intervene if talks fail before any travel disruption starts," added Air Canada chief executive Michael Rousseau in a statement.
Labor Minister Steve MacKinnon has said he was optimistic a strike could be averted, while urging both sides to "knuckle down and get a deal."
MacKinnon was to meet with the union and Air Canada on Thursday.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said MacKinnon "would impress on them the fact that millions of Canadians are counting on everyone to get this resolved."
"We remain firm that the best deals happen at the bargaining table, and that's where parties need to keep working," Trudeau added.
The airline's pilots are pushing to close a pay gap with their American counterparts, but Air Canada says their demands "far exceed average Canadian wage increases."
Candice Laing, of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, said a disruption at Air Canada would not only disrupt passenger travel, but also air transport of food, manufactured goods and other materials.
"It's about businesses of all sectors of the economy and communities of all sizes... trying to stay connected across our incredible land mass and geography," she said. "This is a national issue."
Air Canada flies to 47 countries and carries an average of 110,000 passengers a day on its 670 flights.
© 2024 AFP
Dam and Deluge: Decoding Tripura-Bangladesh Floods
Empirical data suggests it was the heavy rainfall caused by monsoon winds and low pressure, not the opening of sluice gates of the Dumbur Dam that prompted the disaster.
In the third week of August 2024, disturbing visuals of people — poor and helpless — relocating to relief camps from their houses submerged under water were seen on social media. With no regard for national boundaries, an unprecedented deluge had affected North Unkoti, Dhalai, Khowai, Gumti and South Tripura districts of Tripura in India, and Kumilla, Chattogram, Noakhali, Feni, Khagrachhari, Maulvibazar, Habiganj, Brahmanberia, Sylhet and Lakshmipur districts of Bangladesh.
A war of words ensued between the Indian and the Bangladeshi sides, with Bangladesh’s Nahid Islam, one of the anti-discrimination students’ movement leaders who is part of the recently-installed Interim Government, commenting that it is India who is responsible for the disaster wrecked upon more than 36 lakh people. The Dumbur Dam, situated in Tripura over the Gumti River that flows into Bangladesh, had released large amounts of water on August 21, after 31 years. Many flood-affected people accused that it was ‘India’s water’ that drowned them. India, by intentionally opening the sluice gates of the Dumbur dam in the middle of the night without informing the Bangladeshi authorities, was accused of unleashing water as a ‘weapon’ against their country.
The Indian authorities regarded these allegations to be factually incorrect. On August 22, the Ministry of External Affairs in a statement claimed that “the catchment areas of Gumti river that flows through India and Bangladesh have witnessed heaviest rains of this year over the last few days. The flood in Bangladesh is primarily due to waters from these large catchments downstream of the dam.”
This line of reasoning has been echoed in a report by the Bangladeshi news portal Prothom Alo. It quoted Sardar Uday Rayhan, an official of the flood security division of the Bangladesh Water Development Board, who said that the seven main rivers of North-Eastern and South-Eastern Bangladesh were already flowing above the danger level. The lunar cycle had caused high tide waters to rise above normal.
Additionally, the low pressure created on the sea had entered the land on August 18, and caused a severe landfall in Tripura and the hilly parts of South-Eastern Bangladesh. Reports suggest that on 19th August, Feni, Khagrachhari, Noakhali, Kumilla, Maulvibazar in Bangladesh and South Tripura in India had received unexpectedly high rainfall, which worsened the flood situation. However, some experts argued that India should have forewarned its neighbour about the dangerous flood situation prevailing upstream.
Empirical data suggests that it was the heavy rainfall caused by monsoon winds and the low pressure and not the opening of sluice gates of the Dumbur Dam which had prompted the disaster. The waters of the Dumbur lake flow into the Gumti River and pass on to Bangladesh. After flowing through large parts of Kumilla, Debidwar, Muradnagar, and Daudkandi, the waters move into the Meghna River system. The rivers Feni and Muhuri, which flooded large parts of South-Eastern Bangladesh, have no connections with the Gumti River and the Feni district is not situated in the Gumti River valley either. Heavy incessant rainfall in Feni and the discharge from the hills caused floods in Khagrachhari and Feni. In Chouddogram in Kumilla, the Dakatia River had overflowed. Due to the saturation of the canals and waterways in Noakhali, the flood waters did not get passages to be drained out. The pressures from the Brahmaputra River system only added to the problem.
Long-term climate trends also support India’s argument. Bangladesh is one of the world’s regions most vulnerable to natural hazards caused by anthropogenic climate change. The World Bank’s 2024 ‘Climate Risk Country Profile’ of Bangladesh stated that about 56% of the country’s population lives in areas most exposed to floods and other natural hazards. The World Bank’s ‘Country Climate and Development Report’ on Bangladesh published in October 2022 regarded climate change-induced flooding as “the most economically draining natural hazard” in the country.
According to the statistics presented by the World Bank’s Climate Change Knowledge Portal, the average annual occurrence of floods was 81 between 1980-2020, which amounted to 26.56% of the total number of natural hazards afflicting the country. Ahsan Uddin Ahmed’s 2006 report titled ‘Bangladesh Climate Change Impacts and Vulnerability: A Synthesis’, in its discussion of the country’s vulnerability to floods listed the following reasons for the occurrence of floods: “huge inflow of water from upstream catchment areas coinciding with heavy monsoon rainfall in the country, a low floodplain gradient, congested drainage channels, the major rivers converging inside Bangladesh, tides and storm surges in coastal areas, and polders that increase the intensity of floodwater outside protected areas.” The report further stated that floods of high intensity occur when the rate of discharge of the river is less than the rate of accumulation of water. These are often caused by inefficient water management infrastructures.
Despite objective facts hinting at a more complicated scenario, tendentious keyboard warriors from both India and Bangladesh got busy bashing each other on social media using reductionist (or untrue) statements. Bangladeshi YouTubers waged a concerted campaign to attack the Indian government. They complained that India has built dams on all 54 rivers draining into Bangladesh and is robbing their country of their fair share of water. Indians retaliated with crude humour about the plight of their neighbours struggling to sustain their lives. Vain invocations of God’s wrath were made in reference to the violence inflicted upon Hindu places of worship by supporters of Jamaat-i-Islami after Sheikh Hasina’s ouster from power in July.
India using water as a ‘weapon’ against Bangladesh is an allegation far from the truth. Only two of the dams built on rivers flowing into Bangladesh from India are large-scale irrigation barrages: the Farakka Barrage on Ganga/Padma and the Gajoldoba Barrage on Teesta. Since these barrages divert a lot of water into water channels towards India, they have been subjects of long-standing disputes between the two countries which will be discussed later in the essay. All the other dams are either hydel dams or check dams. None of these other dams divert river water or affect its flow significantly.
The Nagor, Tangon, Punorbhobha and Atrai rivers flow from Bangladesh’s Dinajpur district into West Bengal’s South Dinajpur and again into Bangladesh’s Rajshahi division. There are check dams present on Tangon, Punarbhaba and Atrai in Bangladesh’s Dinajpur. The rivers of North Bengal: Jaldhaka, Torsha, and Raidak are glacial rivers and their waters are not diverted. There is no diversion of the Brahmaputra River or the Barak River and its tributary Jatinga in Assam. From Mizoram, the Karnaphuli/Khawthlangtuipui River flows into Bangladesh, which only has a hydel dam at the Kaptai Lake in Bangladesh.
In Tripura, none of the North-flowing rivers — Manu, Dhalai, and Khowai — have any dams on them. The Muhuri River has a small check dam named Kalashi. The Gumti River harbours the much-discussed Dumbur Hydroelectric power plant, but there is no diversion here as well. 80% of the rainwater from the Meghalaya hills flows southwards into Sylhet and Mymensingh, forming and replenishing large natural lakes or Haors.
We understand that the current floods have been caused by a complex admixture of long-term and short-term processes shaping the region's riparian landscape. However, the anti-India sentiments harboured by a significant section of Bangladeshis regarding water-sharing cannot be dismissed as completely ludicrous. Their genesis must be traced back to political, economic, and ideological constructions of the past.
The idea that river waters should be ‘owned’ and ‘controlled’ for human needs goes back to the colonial period. Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt and Gopa Samanta, through a discussion of the works of the noted engineer Sir William Willcocks (who was also responsible for the construction of the Aswan Dam in Egypt), showed how the fluvial Bengal Delta was dependent upon ‘overflow irrigation’ by the rivers in the ancient and medieval times. The regime of private property, inaugurated in Bengal by the Permanent Settlement, made land a prized commodity (for maximising revenue demand) meant to be safeguarded from the erratic action of rivers. Later, embankments and irrigation facilities were built to control the river waters.
Similarly, Rohan D’Souza, in his study of the Odisha riparian delta, demonstrated that interests of colonial capital had transformed the delta from ‘flood-dependent’ to ‘flood vulnerable.’. An ecological regime based on the forceful control of flood waters and subsequent transformation of fluvial ecologies into land markets (through the reclamation of marshes and alluvial char lands, as has been argued by Debjani Bhattacharyya) was laid out by the British colonial state.
With the Partition in 1947, there was a major change in the ecological regime of the Bengal Delta. Most of the alluvial fertile lands of East Bengal went to (East) Pakistan, while the rivers which drained them flowed through India. In his study of (West) Pakistan, Daniel Haines has argued that river waters had become crucial elements of nation-building in the aftermath of the Partition. Most of the lands in undivided Punjab were dependent on irrigation from the rivers for cultivation. Since the Radcliffe Line had sliced rivers into halves between the two countries, issues of control over the waters got translated into issues of sovereignty. Rivers became ‘national’. Both countries tried working out arrangements to ensure an equitable sharing of river waters. The 1960 Indus River Water Treaty, though with its share of problems, was a success.
The situation in the Bengal Delta was more complicated. Joya Chatterji showed that Murshidabad, despite being a Muslim-majority district, was brought into India due to the Congress’ insistence to keep control over the Ganga waters. The Ganga moved southwards into its lower course from this district, and if the river went into Pakistan, the Congress feared that Pakistan might arm-twist India into submitting to an inequitable water-sharing arrangement. There were several border disputes over control of river waters and the islands formed on them in the 1950s and 1960s. India and (East) Pakistan shared 54 rivers, as mentioned earlier, and in almost all cases, the latter was the lower riparian. (East) Pakistani authorities were anxious that India would deprive them of their waters. Things came to a head when India commissioned the building of the irrigation barrage at Farakka in Murshidabad over the Ganga/Padma River.
The 2,240-meter-long Farakka barrage, by diverting 40,000 cusec waters from the Ganga River into the Bhagirathi, was intended to serve two main purposes for India — increasing the navigability of the moribund Hooghly River, which was endangered due to the Damodar Valley Corporation project, and create convenient rail and roadway connection between south and north West Bengal. The (East) Pakistani (and later the Bangladeshi) authorities vehemently opposed the project. They feared that the dry season flow of the Ganga would be significantly hampered.
Surprisingly, this concern had been echoed by Kapil Bhattacharya, a Superintendent Engineer of the West Bengal Irrigation Department, who, in his book titled Bangladesher Nod Nodi Porikolpona first published in 1954 and reprinted in 1959, had presented a serious critique of the Farakka barrage plan. He saw it as prompted by capitalist interests. Apart from severely affecting the agrarian ecosystem surrounding the Ganga/Padma in (East) Pakistan, the barrage, he argued, would cause devastating floods in Bihar and Malda, and the rapid siltation of the Hooghly River. He also warned that the fierce rivers of North Bengal (the likes of Kushi, Mahananda and Teesta) might bring down significant amounts of water and flood large parts of the region. Going forward with Sir Willcocks’ earlier suggestion of building a dam below the source of the Mathabhanga River in Nadia was the rational solution for Bhattacharya. Despite having noble intentions, his opposition to the project was not viewed kindly by the Indian authorities, and he was termed a Pakistani spy by a section of the Indian journalists.
After the barrage became operational in April 1975, a historic long march from Rajshahi to Chanpaibabganj in demand of decommissioning the project was led by the nonagenarian mass leader Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani. He accused India of depriving Bangladesh of Padma waters. At the diplomatic level, the Bangladeshi government accused India of violating principles of mutual cooperation in water-sharing. Although India and Bangladesh signed the Ganga Water-sharing agreement in 1996 (which stated that both the countries would receive 35,000 cusec flow in alternate 10-day cycles between March and May), the woes of Bangladesh were far from being mitigated, mainly due to climate variability. Kapil Bhattacharya’s ominous predictions have been vindicated, and apart from Bangladeshi politicians, Indian leaders like Nitish Kumar have also called for the removal of the barrage.
The dispute regarding the Teesta River is more complicated, since Mamata Banerjee, the Chief Minister of West Bengal, has opposed the arrangement of reserving 42.5% of its waters for India and 37.5% for Bangladesh. According to Banerjee, this would lead to the drying up of approximately one lakh hectares of land in North Bengal, thereby seriously affecting agriculture. The claim is only partially true.
Apart from Teesta, the northern part of West Bengal is primarily drained by glacial rivers like Torsha and Jaldhaka which do not have any diversions. Also, the irrigation potential of Teesta has been seriously compromised due to the rapid accumulation of alluvial soil due to the Gajoldoba barrage, climate variability, and the alleged illegal extraction of sand from the river beds. There has been no significant effort on part of the West Bengal government to solve the problem, which in turn is already affecting thousands of farmers in the region. Meanwhile, the Chinese authorities have proposed to invest $1 billion to dredge the Teesta River and build embankments to form a single manageable channel. India is opposed to this, owing to fears of Chinese intrusion near the strategically important ‘Chicken neck’.
The controversy regarding the proposed Tipaimukh dam on the Barak River rests on anxieties regarding the future of the endangered Haors in Bangladesh. In recent years, Bangladeshi public opinion towards India has veritably turned sour after Bangladesh allowed the latter to draw 1.82 cusecs of water per second from the Feni River in 2019 to help the inhabitants of Sabroom in Tripura.
The colonial legacy of extending sovereign control over river waters, the fateful Partition of 1947, and the ill effects of anthropogenic climate change plague people of both countries today. When I am writing this piece in the comfort of my privileged dwelling, lakhs of people in Tripura and South-Eastern Bangladesh are fighting against their present predicament to secure an uncertain future. Rivers flow along the line of least resistance. They care little about national boundaries. Or about who is a Hindu or a Muslim. Vigorous attempts to demarcate ‘national’ rivers with little regard towards preserving the fluvial ecologies of the Bengal Delta will invariably cause ‘international’ hazards like what we are witnessing today. What now? I am no expert to suggest any remedy. I am a fool trying to stop a forest fire with a bucketful of water. I earnestly hope that I am not the only one.
I would like to extend my heartiest gratitude to my dear friend Srestha Majumder for her constant encouragement and valuable inputs during the process of writing this piece. Nahid Rahman sent me important resources which came in handy: many thanks to him too. In the age of rampant misinformation, illuminating Facebook posts by Alakes Guchhait have been godsent. Lastly, the brilliantly committed on-ground reportage of the flood situation by Ganashakti has been a source of great inspiration to me.
The writer is a post-graduate from the Department of History, University of Delhi. The views are personal. This article was first published in the Lokayata blog on August 30, 2024.
Empirical data suggests it was the heavy rainfall caused by monsoon winds and low pressure, not the opening of sluice gates of the Dumbur Dam that prompted the disaster.
In the third week of August 2024, disturbing visuals of people — poor and helpless — relocating to relief camps from their houses submerged under water were seen on social media. With no regard for national boundaries, an unprecedented deluge had affected North Unkoti, Dhalai, Khowai, Gumti and South Tripura districts of Tripura in India, and Kumilla, Chattogram, Noakhali, Feni, Khagrachhari, Maulvibazar, Habiganj, Brahmanberia, Sylhet and Lakshmipur districts of Bangladesh.
A war of words ensued between the Indian and the Bangladeshi sides, with Bangladesh’s Nahid Islam, one of the anti-discrimination students’ movement leaders who is part of the recently-installed Interim Government, commenting that it is India who is responsible for the disaster wrecked upon more than 36 lakh people. The Dumbur Dam, situated in Tripura over the Gumti River that flows into Bangladesh, had released large amounts of water on August 21, after 31 years. Many flood-affected people accused that it was ‘India’s water’ that drowned them. India, by intentionally opening the sluice gates of the Dumbur dam in the middle of the night without informing the Bangladeshi authorities, was accused of unleashing water as a ‘weapon’ against their country.
The Indian authorities regarded these allegations to be factually incorrect. On August 22, the Ministry of External Affairs in a statement claimed that “the catchment areas of Gumti river that flows through India and Bangladesh have witnessed heaviest rains of this year over the last few days. The flood in Bangladesh is primarily due to waters from these large catchments downstream of the dam.”
This line of reasoning has been echoed in a report by the Bangladeshi news portal Prothom Alo. It quoted Sardar Uday Rayhan, an official of the flood security division of the Bangladesh Water Development Board, who said that the seven main rivers of North-Eastern and South-Eastern Bangladesh were already flowing above the danger level. The lunar cycle had caused high tide waters to rise above normal.
Additionally, the low pressure created on the sea had entered the land on August 18, and caused a severe landfall in Tripura and the hilly parts of South-Eastern Bangladesh. Reports suggest that on 19th August, Feni, Khagrachhari, Noakhali, Kumilla, Maulvibazar in Bangladesh and South Tripura in India had received unexpectedly high rainfall, which worsened the flood situation. However, some experts argued that India should have forewarned its neighbour about the dangerous flood situation prevailing upstream.
Empirical data suggests that it was the heavy rainfall caused by monsoon winds and the low pressure and not the opening of sluice gates of the Dumbur Dam which had prompted the disaster. The waters of the Dumbur lake flow into the Gumti River and pass on to Bangladesh. After flowing through large parts of Kumilla, Debidwar, Muradnagar, and Daudkandi, the waters move into the Meghna River system. The rivers Feni and Muhuri, which flooded large parts of South-Eastern Bangladesh, have no connections with the Gumti River and the Feni district is not situated in the Gumti River valley either. Heavy incessant rainfall in Feni and the discharge from the hills caused floods in Khagrachhari and Feni. In Chouddogram in Kumilla, the Dakatia River had overflowed. Due to the saturation of the canals and waterways in Noakhali, the flood waters did not get passages to be drained out. The pressures from the Brahmaputra River system only added to the problem.
Long-term climate trends also support India’s argument. Bangladesh is one of the world’s regions most vulnerable to natural hazards caused by anthropogenic climate change. The World Bank’s 2024 ‘Climate Risk Country Profile’ of Bangladesh stated that about 56% of the country’s population lives in areas most exposed to floods and other natural hazards. The World Bank’s ‘Country Climate and Development Report’ on Bangladesh published in October 2022 regarded climate change-induced flooding as “the most economically draining natural hazard” in the country.
According to the statistics presented by the World Bank’s Climate Change Knowledge Portal, the average annual occurrence of floods was 81 between 1980-2020, which amounted to 26.56% of the total number of natural hazards afflicting the country. Ahsan Uddin Ahmed’s 2006 report titled ‘Bangladesh Climate Change Impacts and Vulnerability: A Synthesis’, in its discussion of the country’s vulnerability to floods listed the following reasons for the occurrence of floods: “huge inflow of water from upstream catchment areas coinciding with heavy monsoon rainfall in the country, a low floodplain gradient, congested drainage channels, the major rivers converging inside Bangladesh, tides and storm surges in coastal areas, and polders that increase the intensity of floodwater outside protected areas.” The report further stated that floods of high intensity occur when the rate of discharge of the river is less than the rate of accumulation of water. These are often caused by inefficient water management infrastructures.
Despite objective facts hinting at a more complicated scenario, tendentious keyboard warriors from both India and Bangladesh got busy bashing each other on social media using reductionist (or untrue) statements. Bangladeshi YouTubers waged a concerted campaign to attack the Indian government. They complained that India has built dams on all 54 rivers draining into Bangladesh and is robbing their country of their fair share of water. Indians retaliated with crude humour about the plight of their neighbours struggling to sustain their lives. Vain invocations of God’s wrath were made in reference to the violence inflicted upon Hindu places of worship by supporters of Jamaat-i-Islami after Sheikh Hasina’s ouster from power in July.
India using water as a ‘weapon’ against Bangladesh is an allegation far from the truth. Only two of the dams built on rivers flowing into Bangladesh from India are large-scale irrigation barrages: the Farakka Barrage on Ganga/Padma and the Gajoldoba Barrage on Teesta. Since these barrages divert a lot of water into water channels towards India, they have been subjects of long-standing disputes between the two countries which will be discussed later in the essay. All the other dams are either hydel dams or check dams. None of these other dams divert river water or affect its flow significantly.
The Nagor, Tangon, Punorbhobha and Atrai rivers flow from Bangladesh’s Dinajpur district into West Bengal’s South Dinajpur and again into Bangladesh’s Rajshahi division. There are check dams present on Tangon, Punarbhaba and Atrai in Bangladesh’s Dinajpur. The rivers of North Bengal: Jaldhaka, Torsha, and Raidak are glacial rivers and their waters are not diverted. There is no diversion of the Brahmaputra River or the Barak River and its tributary Jatinga in Assam. From Mizoram, the Karnaphuli/Khawthlangtuipui River flows into Bangladesh, which only has a hydel dam at the Kaptai Lake in Bangladesh.
In Tripura, none of the North-flowing rivers — Manu, Dhalai, and Khowai — have any dams on them. The Muhuri River has a small check dam named Kalashi. The Gumti River harbours the much-discussed Dumbur Hydroelectric power plant, but there is no diversion here as well. 80% of the rainwater from the Meghalaya hills flows southwards into Sylhet and Mymensingh, forming and replenishing large natural lakes or Haors.
We understand that the current floods have been caused by a complex admixture of long-term and short-term processes shaping the region's riparian landscape. However, the anti-India sentiments harboured by a significant section of Bangladeshis regarding water-sharing cannot be dismissed as completely ludicrous. Their genesis must be traced back to political, economic, and ideological constructions of the past.
The idea that river waters should be ‘owned’ and ‘controlled’ for human needs goes back to the colonial period. Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt and Gopa Samanta, through a discussion of the works of the noted engineer Sir William Willcocks (who was also responsible for the construction of the Aswan Dam in Egypt), showed how the fluvial Bengal Delta was dependent upon ‘overflow irrigation’ by the rivers in the ancient and medieval times. The regime of private property, inaugurated in Bengal by the Permanent Settlement, made land a prized commodity (for maximising revenue demand) meant to be safeguarded from the erratic action of rivers. Later, embankments and irrigation facilities were built to control the river waters.
Similarly, Rohan D’Souza, in his study of the Odisha riparian delta, demonstrated that interests of colonial capital had transformed the delta from ‘flood-dependent’ to ‘flood vulnerable.’. An ecological regime based on the forceful control of flood waters and subsequent transformation of fluvial ecologies into land markets (through the reclamation of marshes and alluvial char lands, as has been argued by Debjani Bhattacharyya) was laid out by the British colonial state.
With the Partition in 1947, there was a major change in the ecological regime of the Bengal Delta. Most of the alluvial fertile lands of East Bengal went to (East) Pakistan, while the rivers which drained them flowed through India. In his study of (West) Pakistan, Daniel Haines has argued that river waters had become crucial elements of nation-building in the aftermath of the Partition. Most of the lands in undivided Punjab were dependent on irrigation from the rivers for cultivation. Since the Radcliffe Line had sliced rivers into halves between the two countries, issues of control over the waters got translated into issues of sovereignty. Rivers became ‘national’. Both countries tried working out arrangements to ensure an equitable sharing of river waters. The 1960 Indus River Water Treaty, though with its share of problems, was a success.
The situation in the Bengal Delta was more complicated. Joya Chatterji showed that Murshidabad, despite being a Muslim-majority district, was brought into India due to the Congress’ insistence to keep control over the Ganga waters. The Ganga moved southwards into its lower course from this district, and if the river went into Pakistan, the Congress feared that Pakistan might arm-twist India into submitting to an inequitable water-sharing arrangement. There were several border disputes over control of river waters and the islands formed on them in the 1950s and 1960s. India and (East) Pakistan shared 54 rivers, as mentioned earlier, and in almost all cases, the latter was the lower riparian. (East) Pakistani authorities were anxious that India would deprive them of their waters. Things came to a head when India commissioned the building of the irrigation barrage at Farakka in Murshidabad over the Ganga/Padma River.
The 2,240-meter-long Farakka barrage, by diverting 40,000 cusec waters from the Ganga River into the Bhagirathi, was intended to serve two main purposes for India — increasing the navigability of the moribund Hooghly River, which was endangered due to the Damodar Valley Corporation project, and create convenient rail and roadway connection between south and north West Bengal. The (East) Pakistani (and later the Bangladeshi) authorities vehemently opposed the project. They feared that the dry season flow of the Ganga would be significantly hampered.
Surprisingly, this concern had been echoed by Kapil Bhattacharya, a Superintendent Engineer of the West Bengal Irrigation Department, who, in his book titled Bangladesher Nod Nodi Porikolpona first published in 1954 and reprinted in 1959, had presented a serious critique of the Farakka barrage plan. He saw it as prompted by capitalist interests. Apart from severely affecting the agrarian ecosystem surrounding the Ganga/Padma in (East) Pakistan, the barrage, he argued, would cause devastating floods in Bihar and Malda, and the rapid siltation of the Hooghly River. He also warned that the fierce rivers of North Bengal (the likes of Kushi, Mahananda and Teesta) might bring down significant amounts of water and flood large parts of the region. Going forward with Sir Willcocks’ earlier suggestion of building a dam below the source of the Mathabhanga River in Nadia was the rational solution for Bhattacharya. Despite having noble intentions, his opposition to the project was not viewed kindly by the Indian authorities, and he was termed a Pakistani spy by a section of the Indian journalists.
After the barrage became operational in April 1975, a historic long march from Rajshahi to Chanpaibabganj in demand of decommissioning the project was led by the nonagenarian mass leader Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani. He accused India of depriving Bangladesh of Padma waters. At the diplomatic level, the Bangladeshi government accused India of violating principles of mutual cooperation in water-sharing. Although India and Bangladesh signed the Ganga Water-sharing agreement in 1996 (which stated that both the countries would receive 35,000 cusec flow in alternate 10-day cycles between March and May), the woes of Bangladesh were far from being mitigated, mainly due to climate variability. Kapil Bhattacharya’s ominous predictions have been vindicated, and apart from Bangladeshi politicians, Indian leaders like Nitish Kumar have also called for the removal of the barrage.
The dispute regarding the Teesta River is more complicated, since Mamata Banerjee, the Chief Minister of West Bengal, has opposed the arrangement of reserving 42.5% of its waters for India and 37.5% for Bangladesh. According to Banerjee, this would lead to the drying up of approximately one lakh hectares of land in North Bengal, thereby seriously affecting agriculture. The claim is only partially true.
Apart from Teesta, the northern part of West Bengal is primarily drained by glacial rivers like Torsha and Jaldhaka which do not have any diversions. Also, the irrigation potential of Teesta has been seriously compromised due to the rapid accumulation of alluvial soil due to the Gajoldoba barrage, climate variability, and the alleged illegal extraction of sand from the river beds. There has been no significant effort on part of the West Bengal government to solve the problem, which in turn is already affecting thousands of farmers in the region. Meanwhile, the Chinese authorities have proposed to invest $1 billion to dredge the Teesta River and build embankments to form a single manageable channel. India is opposed to this, owing to fears of Chinese intrusion near the strategically important ‘Chicken neck’.
The controversy regarding the proposed Tipaimukh dam on the Barak River rests on anxieties regarding the future of the endangered Haors in Bangladesh. In recent years, Bangladeshi public opinion towards India has veritably turned sour after Bangladesh allowed the latter to draw 1.82 cusecs of water per second from the Feni River in 2019 to help the inhabitants of Sabroom in Tripura.
The colonial legacy of extending sovereign control over river waters, the fateful Partition of 1947, and the ill effects of anthropogenic climate change plague people of both countries today. When I am writing this piece in the comfort of my privileged dwelling, lakhs of people in Tripura and South-Eastern Bangladesh are fighting against their present predicament to secure an uncertain future. Rivers flow along the line of least resistance. They care little about national boundaries. Or about who is a Hindu or a Muslim. Vigorous attempts to demarcate ‘national’ rivers with little regard towards preserving the fluvial ecologies of the Bengal Delta will invariably cause ‘international’ hazards like what we are witnessing today. What now? I am no expert to suggest any remedy. I am a fool trying to stop a forest fire with a bucketful of water. I earnestly hope that I am not the only one.
I would like to extend my heartiest gratitude to my dear friend Srestha Majumder for her constant encouragement and valuable inputs during the process of writing this piece. Nahid Rahman sent me important resources which came in handy: many thanks to him too. In the age of rampant misinformation, illuminating Facebook posts by Alakes Guchhait have been godsent. Lastly, the brilliantly committed on-ground reportage of the flood situation by Ganashakti has been a source of great inspiration to me.
The writer is a post-graduate from the Department of History, University of Delhi. The views are personal. This article was first published in the Lokayata blog on August 30, 2024.
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