Smog In Cities, The Invisible Protests And Chemical Weapons

Many cities around the world are engulfed in smog today, smog which can potentially build up to hazardous levels for human health. When faced with this hindrance to a healthy life, the city dwellers could abandon their daily activities as governed by the state and other authorities, and instead take to the streets in protest against the polluting of the environment. We do not know how many protests there have been which have been obscured by the smog, but these invisible protests pose a significant problem for authorities, who cannot deal with them or make the protesters visible for discipline. These protests may thus gain in much strength and numbers before authorities are able to see them and stop them.

The link between burning items and the act of protesting is strong: in Kathmandu for instance protesters have always sought to burn things like tires and cars in the course of their protest. A deep and threatening kind of politicization is evident today if we consider that industries and factories are deliberately polluting the city's streets in order to show their own disappointment and rebellion against governmental authorities. Whereas burning of cars and tires had been a sign of local and strategic control of certain streets or locations over others, the blanket of smog that engulfs the vast, whole city is evidence of a much more powerful group of people, with their associated industries, systematically protesting against the authorities. Also, this “smog protest” could finally signal an end to a kind of capitalism without social responsibility, and the beginning of a problematizing of the industries by the industrialists themselves. Only the governmental authorities are, in the end, reluctant to give up the capitalist model, regardless of the smog levels, and when the time comes these governmental authorities will enforce the model by themselves regardless of the feelings of certain industrialists.

We know that these same cities conduct the discussions of the ethics of “chemical weapons,” and we should wonder what the difference is between this hazardous smog and a chemical weapon. We have to ask why there has not been the identification of a culprit for this smog, some particular industry could be at fault but has not been identified, in much the same way that users of chemical weapons try to hide from the general public, and this correlation between smog emitters and chemical weapons users shows that smog emission is a “amoral and bad” thing, just as chemical weapons are. Further, whereas a chemical weapon as we conventionally understand it is used in smaller amounts and durations, smog is a weapon which is not directly controlled by the industrialists, but can arise at any moment, unpredictably, at times of peace or war, and without much that can be done to prevent it. This loss of control over a weapon-like substance is more threatening to world order than the weapons which are under control of the authorities. Hence it is now very important to find out the intentions and responses of the industrialists to the smog. 

Electricity Towers In Nepal In The New Society Of Control

With Nepal's purchase of electricity, new electricity towers will be built to support the newly added energy. The new electricity towers mark a shift in the kind of society that Nepal is: Nepal has moved away from a “disciplinary society” to a “society of control”. In a disciplinary society, the tower is a “Panopticon,” which is a tower made for surveillance of human beings that reside around the perimeter of the tower. The main Panopticon in Nepal is the apartment tower, which is situated in the midst of a city and provides a view for surveillance purposes. But in the new society of control, the relation between elevation and discipline breaks down, and a new punishing actor replaces the elevated human being, as control replaces discipline to achieve a higher severity in punishing.

The electricity tower is more dangerous and can lethally punish with electric shock if one comes too close to it. The necessity of human judgment to decide on who should be punished is thereby outdated, the electricity tower is always ready to punish whoever comes too close, whoever trespasses the “Danger” sign. The punishment is lethal, no longer is there the hope of rehabilitation, it is simply a matter of removing from this society the ones that cannot read the sign. The “Danger” sign beneath the electricity tower is, in Deleuzian terms, a test/examination of someone's literacy and aptitude, and the punishment is the taking of life, which is an intensification of the classroom punishment. The stakes of being literate or illiterate are very high in societies of control. Hence the the intense prioritization towards being literate, and the seeking out for dismissal of those that cannot be literate.

This society of control is difficult to problematize because there is no human being directly controlling others, and also because the punishment is so severe that critical voices find it very difficult to associate it to a real human being. Rather, the punishment is considered an accident by a dangerous but non-living force, or the result of a “mistake” on the part of the dead human being. The incidents of punishment by electricity tower need to be carefully recorded by research and the press, and the fact that there are real human beings behind the punishment needs to be displayed/clarified. The human element to a punishing object needs to be emphasized; how the electricity tower has been designed to act just like a punishing human being needs to be shown and problematized. The idea that punishment is not the most important purpose of the electricity tower is not true: for the various rural populations close to whom these electricity towers may be found, the supply of electricity is less important than the danger of electric shock. This new tool of control in Nepal has more reach and thereby the whole of Nepal should be considered a society of control because electricity towers are not only found in cities but are built in many marginal places.