eCritics

FW: China's Public Enemy

2009-08-08T12:31:00.001-07:00

[Here is a very good article on Rebiya Kadeer, once `China's fifth richest person`, now only an exile activist for her people. I hope you will enjoy it.]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204908604574334482235596544.html

China's Public Enemy
The alleged instigator of the Uighur riots doesn't talk like a terrorist. Demonizing her may backfire on Beijing.
Article Comments (26) more in Opinion »Email Printer
By HUGO RESTALL
Washington, D.C.

Rebiya Kadeer is undergoing a Chinese version of George Orwell's "Two Minutes Hate." Separatist, extremist, terrorist-China's state-run media has pulled out the rhetorical big guns to put her beyond the pale of civilized society. By condemning her as the mastermind of last month's riots that killed 197 people in the northwest region of Xinjiang, Beijing has transformed an exiled businesswoman and dissident into public enemy No. 1 for 1.3 billion people.

Even Ms. Kadeer's family in China has joined the campaign-under duress, she says. After blaming her for the loss of innocent lives, several of her children and other relatives exhorted her in an open letter, "Don't destroy the stable and happy life in Xinjiang. Don't follow the provocation from some people in other countries." In scenes reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution, the signatories have appeared on state television to publicly disavow Ms. Kadeer.

This blood-stained image is hard to reconcile with the diminutive grandmother, dressed modestly in black, who bustles about a cramped, U.S. government-funded office a block from the White House. Ms. Kadeer may be hated by many Chinese, but the president of the World Uighur Congress inspires admiration among the nine million ethnically Turkish Uighurs in Xinjiang and two million-strong diaspora. An indication of why she inspires such strong emotions comes as she responds to the first question; she speaks with a startling intensity, perching on the edge of a folding chair.

First of all, Ms. Kadeer denies she instigated the July 5 protests in her home town of Urumqi: "I did not tell them to come out on that day or that particular time to protest. It was the six decade-long repression that has driven them to protest."

Ms. Kadeer's own life is a graphic illustration of that repression's ebb and flow. In the 1980s and early '90s, she and her fellow Uighurs benefited from Deng Xiaoping's loosening of controls in all areas of life. Like business pioneers around the country, she overcame obstacles created by Chinese officialdom to build a market stall into a business empire encompassing retail, real estate and international trade.

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Zina Saunders
Just as difficult was overcoming the Uighur community's resistance to the idea of a woman taking the lead. Ms. Kadeer's nickname was djahangir, a word of Persian origin meaning one who pushes forward regardless of the consequences.

The Uighurs are a fiercely independent people who have eked out a living in the arid Central Asian lands along ancient caravan routes and converted to Islam in the 15th century. During the Qing dynasty (1644-1912), China's Manchu rulers managed to subjugate the Uighurs and other local tribes but had to fight off periodic revolts. After the collapse of the empire, the region briefly became the East Turkestan Republic before falling under the thumb of Mao's People's Republic. Many Uighurs still harbor dreams of eventual independence.

Once Ms. Kadeer succeeded in business, both the Communist Party and the Uighurs embraced her as a leader. In the mid-1990s she became China's fifth richest person, and the party gave her a seat in the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, part of the country's rubber-stamp legislature.

But the tide was already turning against the Uighurs and other minorities. New policies and appointees from Beijing led to campaigns to assimilate the Uighurs and root out all dissent. That prompted Ms. Kadeer to make a fateful choice about where her true loyalties lay. She became increasingly outspoken about policies preventing Uighurs from sharing in the fruits of economic development. Finally, in March 1997, she gave an impassioned speech before the legislature enumerating the burdens faced by her people.

Immediately the party struck back. It took away Ms. Kadeer's positions, then destroyed her businesses. Having once held her up as a model citizen, the official media tossed her accomplishments down the memory hole. Her rise from rags to riches is now said to be the result of "economic crimes," including tax evasion and swindles. In 2000, a court sent her to prison for divulging "state secrets" for trying to send newspaper clippings to her exiled husband in the U.S. In 2005 she was allowed to emigrate to the U.S. in return for a promise not to engage in politics, a promise she promptly broke.

Now Ms. Kadeer is trying to garner support for the Uighurs from that most elusive of friends, the "international community." Even as other parts of China continue to liberalize, she says, repression is intensifying in Xinjiang. She explains, for example, that there is new pressure to use Chinese rather than the Uighur language: "Even during the Mao years, he was a brutal dictator of course, but at least the Uighur people spoke their own language, and at least the Uighurs were free to live in their own courtyards." Today, the government is flooding the region with Chinese immigrants, making the Uighurs a minority in their own homeland.

Uighurs face discrimination in education, employment, religion and even the ability to move around the country or travel abroad. Farmers are losing their small plots of land and being forced into the cities. Downtown Kashgar, the Uighurs' cultural capital, is being demolished to make way for Chinese-owned real-estate developments.

But the final straw may have been a measure ostensibly designed to alleviate poverty: "Now the authorities force young, unmarried women to go to eastern China to work as cheap labor in sweatshops," Ms. Kadeer says. "And this is a really provocative policy because it is against Uighur people's culture, religion and way of life to send their unmarried daughters to far-away places they themselves have never heard of. This policy has tremendously backfired."

One such deportation (villages are required to fill a quota) provided the spark for the July 5 protests. In April, some 400 Uighur men and women were sent to work in a toy factory in the town of Shaoguan in Guangdong province. At the end of June, after a disgruntled Chinese worker circulated a rumor that the Uighurs had raped Chinese women, a mob killed at least two of the outsiders.

Video of the riot quickly circulated on the Internet within Xinjiang, along with comments by Chinese that more Uighurs should be killed, while the authorities failed to announce measures to bring those responsible to justice. The city of Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang, become a powder keg of discontent.

According to Chinese accounts, protests began at around 5 p.m. on July 5 in the center of Urumqi and only turned violent more than three hours later. Whether or not this shift was sparked by the police attacking protesters remains in dispute. What cannot be disputed is that Uighur rioters killed Chinese, smashed windows, and burned cars in a shocking orgy of violence.

The intensity of the anger says much about the pent-up resentment of the population, and seems to have taken the authorities by surprise: "After six decades of repression Chinese officials had become confident they had control, and they were shocked at how quickly they lost control," Ms. Kadeer says. "They realized what six decades of repression and fake autonomy could lead people to, and of course that's the failure of their policies . . ." The Party's unwillingness to accept that failure meant it needed Ms. Kadeer as a scapegoat.

The best evidence Ms. Kadeer did not instigate the riots paradoxically comes from the Chinese themselves. A documentary provided by the Foreign Ministry entitled "July 5th Riot and Rebiya Kadeer" makes it clear the Chinese were listening to Ms. Kadeer's phone conversations to China and Europe. The most damning evidence the government propagandists could come up with is that she telephoned her relatives in Xinjiang to warn them that something big was brewing.

It seems more likely the protests were organized among residents of Urumqi using cell phones and the Internet. Immediately afterward, the government shut down all telecommunications and is only now reopening the networks.

Ms. Kadeer denies having the ability to orchestrate events within Xinjiang, but she freely admits that she maintains contact with family members and friends. "Of course we have some influence, but we did not influence what took place. There is no organization there."

Two of her sons have been jailed, she says, in a bid to stop her from speaking out. "Because the Chinese government failed to silence me by imprisoning them, now they are blaming me for the protests to silence my voice in the world."

The same documentary contains a disturbing clip of Ms. Kadeer's forced confession on the eve of her release in 2005, a scene reminiscent of the war crimes confessions of American soldiers captured by the Chinese during the Korean War: "My motherland is like my parents. I was born after the Liberation, the Communist Party is an eternal benefactor. Whoever seeks to separate his country will be the enemy of his nation. . . ."

The government's insistence that any dissent is equivalent to separatism, which in turn is evidence of terrorism, explains why Uighurs have been driven to such desperation. "When Uighurs who are not happy about policies stand up to say something," Ms. Kadeer explains, "the Chinese label them as terrorists, separatists or extremists, and arrest them and in some cases execute them."

Yet she does not rule out Xinjiang remaining part of the Chinese state-so long as Uighurs have self-rule within a democratic polity.

Demonizing Ms. Kadeer as a separatist may end up backfiring on Beijing. Uighurs had failed to attract as much international support as Tibetans because they lacked a figure like the Dalai Lama to speak on their behalf. Now they have a spokeswoman who is attracting angry démarches from Chinese diplomats as she travels the world.

In the last couple weeks she has visited Tokyo and Melbourne, Australia. In Melbourne she spoke at a film festival where a documentary about her life, "The 10 Conditions of Love," was shown for the first time. After Beijing failed to convince festival organizers to withdraw the documentary, Chinese filmmakers withdrew their own movies in a move widely seen as government-orchestrated.

Ms. Kadeer is not phased by the pressure, and indeed her stubbornness is again coming to the fore. She seems to have drawn a lesson from the failure of the Dalai Lama's softly, softly approach: Beijing only respects strength. She is determined to stir the pot, not turn the other cheek, in order to force China to the negotiating table.

Asked whether Uighurs should wait for the advent of democracy in China, she answers that by that time they may have lost their cultural identity. As difficult as it may be, the onus is on her and other Uighurs abroad to pressure the Chinese government into talks on greater autonomy: "I urge peace to the Uighurs," she says, "they should remain peaceful no matter what happens, because the Chinese government will use any excuse to further crack down on them. So it is up to us, it is our responsibility to negotiate with the Chinese government to resolve the situation on the ground."

But the immediate outlook for the Uighurs looks bleak. as China's top government official, Nur Bekri, has promised to crack down with an "iron hand." Ms. Kadeer claims that 10,000 Uighurs were rounded up after the violence.

Perhaps even more frightening is the way in which the government's efforts to obscure the real roots of the riots are stirring up Chinese nationalism. The day after the Urumqi protests, a Chinese mob took to the streets looking for Uighurs. "The . . . Chinese government is indoctrinating its own people with ultranationalism," Ms. Kadeer says. "It used to be the security forces arresting and killing Uighurs. Now it is the Chinese mobs themselves [who] are after Uighurs, both in Shaoguan and Urumqi. They know they can kill Uighurs and the police will turn a blind eye and just say it is a clash between peoples."

Perhaps the worst-case scenario for China is the possibility that some other individual will emerge as the "mastermind" of the Uighur movement. As a religiously moderate and largely secular figure, Ms. Kadeer is somebody Beijing might negotiate with.

But Beijing's efforts to portray resistance in Xinjiang as another front in the war on terror could become a self-fulfilling prophecy if Islamic fundamentalism takes root among the restive Uighurs and the global forces of jihad begin to target China. The need to avert that tragedy is the best argument for China to acknowledge its past mistakes in Xinjiang and end the campaign to demonize Rebiya Kadeer.

Mr. Restall is the editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review and a member of the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal.

Our begums and their hair pulling still continues

2009-04-03T14:53:00.000-07:00

You would think that enough has happened in the past two years and with all that is happening in the country, our begums (I call them our Pharaohs) might have superior things to do. Yet the `chul tana tani` continues.

None was to be surprised to see that the things in grand scale have not change a bit. With return of the Pharaohs to the throne, there come all the monsters crawling back to the capital. Some came just before the elections. Others, relatively more decorative monsters, came just after the election from their hiding place overseas. This was long predicted, no bingo moment there.

Even so, what's up with this petty leg pulling? Or Should I say girl's hair pulling fight? In local language it is called `chul tana tani`.

Apparently, over 300 roaring voice (or should I say ba ba) with over 90% majority in the parliament is not enough. Seeing two golden boys of her twin Pharaoh feeding away from country (in local language it is called `desh chara`) in their own merits is not enough. Must she be evicted from the home with memories of her late husband?

I hope this is just a girl fight. I hope this is not any deeper then that. I am very optimistic, but I have to confess that things are not looking good. Some are already seeing the Deja Vu of 1973 election. Here we see another Sheikh, another election with ultimate majority. Will Bangladesh face the same old fate? We will see.

Babu Solaiman

[In the news]

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jV7QZLkGTlgfTHaBmwDMBr3BaHwA

Bangladesh PM threatens to evict archrival

DHAKA (AFP) - Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has taken her feud with nemesis Khaleda Zia to a new level by threatening to evict the former premier from her home.

The two women, who have ruled the nation alternately for almost two decades, are frequently referred to as the "battling begums" for their longstanding personal animosity.

Hasina, who came to power with a landslide victory in December elections, told parliament late Wednesday that Zia was living in her house illegally.

"I will request her to leave her house in the (army) cantonment in Dhaka," the premier said.

"No member of parliament, no leader of the opposition should live in the cantonment. She should not keep the house ignoring the law. She should leave the house willingly."

The government would build apartments in the grounds around the house and give the homes to families of army officers who were slain in the February mutiny at another military base in the capital, Hasina said.

Zia, head of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, has lived in the army base since 1981 after her husband Ziaur Rahman, a former military chief and then president, was killed in an attempted coup.

Before the recent elections, Bangladesh was ruled for two years by a military-backed government which jailed both Hasina and Zia for a year on charges of corruption.

They were released on bail in deals with the army to ensure they took part in the elections.

The army took control because squabbling between their party supporters degenerated into deadly street violence.

The tax deductible debate: I am sold, how about you?

2009-03-24T22:32:00.001-07:00

When the idea first surfaced by WH, like many I was skeptical at least, stunned almost. You know that news about how ultra rich folks can get tax deduction on their charitable contribution. Obama wants to cut short the amount you can deduct by limiting the effective percentage of the contribution you can deduct. I was skeptical thinking about possible negative impact that may have on the amount those people will be contributing. Not fully, but almost stun thinking about how outraged our friends in the wrong side (not the right side, lol) with a big wallet will be. You know, people like Carly Fiorina. Of course, I was equally stunned when, just before 2008 election, she demanded absolution of progressive taxing system that we have for so long. Forget rollback of bush tax cut for the rich, she wants her tax rate to be same as Joe the fake plumber. So any tax cut or roll back issue, her dumb friends in Foxy Noise would argue “well, rich get more tax cut because they gave more tax in the first place”. I say, well, what gave “in the first place” is what we call progressive tax. That is well settle reality, there is no point going there.

But today in presidential press conference, Obama was asked the very same question. I had to shift focus from playing with my two year old to TV screen. Obama’s answer was to the point and in plain English, almost custom made just for me. Basically his point is, if Warren Buffet and his secretary both donate $100 to Red Cross, why would Warren Buffet get 39 dollars of it back, while his secretary get only say 20 dollars back? That is not fare, is that? I am sold by his argument. How about you?

Here is Obama's little long answer on the question from Politico's Mike Allen. Okay, I know, it is kind of long. By now we are getting used to this type of extended press conference form our new president. I know, he is trying to sell his product, but never the less I am enjoying it. It is better to here from the man in charge than those pundits in the Pandora box.

QUESTION: Mr. President, are you -- (takes mic) -- thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. Are you reconsidering your plan to cut the interest-rate deduction for mortgages and for charities? And do you regret having proposed that in the first place?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: No, I think it’s -- I think it’s the right thing to do.

Where we’ve got to make some difficult choices -- here’s what we did with respect to tax policy. What we said was that over the last decade, the average worker, the average family have seen their wages and incomes flat. Even at times where supposedly we were in the middle of an economic boom, as a practical matter their incomes didn’t go up. And so (what/well ?) we said -- let’s give them a tax cut. Let’s give them some relief, some help -- 95 percent of American families.

Now, for the top 5 percent, they’re the ones who typically saw huge gains in their income. I -- I fall in that category. And what we’ve said is, for those folks, let’s not renew the Bush tax cuts. So let’s go back to the rates that existed back in -- during the Clinton era, when wealthy people were still wealthy and doing just fine. And let’s look at the level at which people can itemize their deductions.

And what we’ve said is let’s go back to the rate that existed under Ronald Reagan.

People are still going to be able to make charitable contributions. It just means if you give $100 and you’re in this tax bracket, at a certain point, instead of being able to write off 36 (percent) or 39 percent, you’re writing off 28 percent. Now, if it’s really a charitable contribution, I’m assuming that that shouldn’t be the determining factor as to whether you’re giving that hundred dollars to the homeless shelter down the street.

And so this provision would effect about 1 percent of the American people. They would still get deductions. It’s just that they wouldn’t be able to write off 39 percent. In that sense, what it would do is it would equalize. When I give $100, I get the same amount of deduction as when some -- a bus driver who’s making $50,000 a year or $40,000 a year gives that same hundred dollars. Right now, he gets 28 percent -- he gets to write off 28 percent, I get to write off 39 percent. I don’t think that’s fair.

So I think this was a good idea. I think it is a realistic way for us to raise some revenue from people who benefitted enormously over the last several years. It’s not going to cripple them.

They’ll still be well-to-do. And, you know, ultimately if we’re going to tackle the serious problems that we’ve got, then in some cases those who are more fortunate are going to have to pay a little bit more.

Full transcript:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/24/obama.news.conference.transcript/index.html

Cheers

Babu

Excerpts from the Conversation on Kashmir with Arundhati Roy

2009-03-20T11:39:00.001-07:00

Here are some excerpts from the "Conversation on Kashmir with Arundhati Roy", an interview aired on February 4, 2009.

"I don't know if I need to keep on saying this because everyone knows it now, but still, for the record-more than half a million soldiers in the valley of Kashmir, which somebody in America wrote saying it was the equivalent of the entire U.S. Army and the entire Marine Corps deployed in Minnesota, sort of like that; 165,000 American soldiers in Iraq. Between 500,000 and 700,000 Indian security personnel in the valley of Kashmir."

"A lot of even liberal Indians say that the polls were free and fair. First of all, the first question you have to ask yourself is, when you have that kind of a densely deployed army, can you have free and fair elections? Is it at all possible?"

"In fact, the day I left Kashmir all these defeated independent candidates were having a press conference in this restaurant called Ahdoo's talking about how they had all been paid by the Intelligence Bureau sums of money to stand for election, and then some of them weren't given that money, so now they are disgruntled."

"But, then again, I don't think that it will always be possible to manage it, because eventually I do think that the price of holding down the Kashmir valley, which was being paid mostly by Indian soldiers, who are mostly poor people from India who don't count, was suddenly being paid by the Indian elite in five-star hotels in Bombay. That puts a totally different spin on things."

"It makes us complicit in the holding down by military force of a people, it makes us complicit in the propaganda, it makes us complicit in the lies. And eventually it makes us people who are unable to look things in the eye."

"So if you were to question the average Indian, the only thing they know is that there are terrorists in Kashmir. They wouldn't be able to tell you that 60,000 or 70,000 people have died in this war. They wouldn't be able to tell you about the dubious morality of India holding on to this place. They say Kashmir is an atut ang, which means an inseparable limb of India."

"And I did sense that there wasn't any possibility of the Indian state-and it's wrong for me to just say the Indian state, because Indian society in places like Gujarat and Maharashtra or even in Bombay-to continue to marginalize such a vast majority-only in India can 150 million people be a minority, 150 million Muslims in India-and to continue to bulldoze this population in Kashmir. Eventually all that can come out of it is destruction. All that come out of it is people wanting to take you down with them. If you push them to a stage where there is no possibility of any access to justice, even if 99% of them decide to put their heads down and suffer, 1% is enough to destroy life as you knew it."

Conversation on Kashmir with Arundhati Roy and David Barsamian
http://www.radioproject.org/archive/2009/0509.html

Full transcript:
http://www.radioproject.org/transcript/2009/0509.html

Audio:
http://www.radioproject.org/sound/MakingCon_090204.mp3

The rush to `resist the effort to group us`

2009-03-10T13:08:00.001-07:00

By now you probably came across some of the media lambo jumbo on Rush Limbaugh, the presumed `head of republicans party` or at least the `conservatives`. Not too bad, what you say? After Sharah the dumber and Joe the fake plumber, what else do you get?

However, one thing he said gave me a re-look on the whole idea about these `conservatives` or so called `religious right`.

On defining conservatives, Rush has said following.

"But we do understand, as people created and endowed by our creator, we're all individuals. We resist the effort to group us."

Later I found out, this is one of the core ideas behind conservatism. The conservative individualist philosophy is a conservative worldview that glorifies hyper-individualism.

As he said "when we see a group of people, such as this or anywhere, we see Americans. We see human beings. We don't see groups".

Some times we get confuse on how I can define me. Are we conservative or liberal? Are we conservative leaning or liberal leaning? Especially when you mix few sprinkle of religion on the mix, it become very confusing. Or that is what I thought!

So conservatives love the idea of individuals and want to `resist the effort to group us`. Wow! That is a polar opposite on where I stand.

That is not what my leader told us. Instead, in his last sermon, he told us that we are like brothers to each other. He told us that we from one brotherhood.

That is not what my God told us. Instead, He told us that we all are in a single entity, `a single brotherhood` (21:92) and (49:10). He told us that we `are protectors and supporters one of another` (9:71). He warn us by saying `be not like those who are divided amongst themselves` (3:105)

So, dare to be in `We resist the effort to group us`? That's your choice.

Thanks,
Babu

ClimateWire's Flooding, Food and Climate Change in Bangladesh

2009-03-09T18:18:00.001-07:00

LISA FRIEDMAN is writing a series of stories on Bangladesh and climate migration for ClimateWire. Here are some excerpts from first two installments of that series.

Thanks,
Babu

Bangladesh endures ugly experiments in 'nature's laboratory'
http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2009/03/09/09climatewire-ugly-experiments-in-natures-laboratory-10035.html

"Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries on earth, has almost no control over the cause. Here, the average person emits about 0.3 tons of carbon dioxide each year -- compared to about 20 tons annually for the average American."

"But when it comes to seeing the effects of climate change, Bangladesh has a ringside seat."

"Already, hydrologists in Bangladesh say, catastrophic floods that once were expected every 20 years are happening almost every four years."

The road from growing rice to raising shrimp to misery
http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2009/03/09/09climatewire-the-road-from-growing-rice-to-raising-shrimp-10034.html

"Water risks are a part of life in this low-lying country dominated by the reaches of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers. But scientists and environmental activists said the September flood, which happened during a lunar high tide, was deeply unusual for the time of year."

"For many years, floods have been bringing saline water further inland, destroying the rice fields that once sustained the villages. Shrimp farms, many built with World Bank investment, have rapidly replaced the rice paddies."

"But residents say the shrimp farms employ a fraction of the people needed to harvest rice. At the same time, a cheap form of food, rice, is being replaced with a pricey one. The Bangladesh government earns more than $400 million annually in shrimp exports, but few Bengalis can afford to eat it themselves."

"Now villagers in Gabura and parts of flood-prone southwest Bangladesh say it might finally be time to leave for good. Dozens of families interviewed along the coast said they have lived the close-knit village life for generations, and they're familiar with the rhythm of temporarily moving along when things get bad. The difference now, they say, is that brothers, husbands and uncles are leaving for the cities in greater numbers than ever before -- and this time, they're not coming home."

Breaking news: 2 more army officer killed in helicopter crash in Tangail

2009-03-08T21:01:00.001-07:00

I did not see the whole news yet. Bangladeshi cable TV channel is showing text news in the bottom of the screen.

Army helicopter crashed in Tangail. Three army officers killed. Two of them are Major General Rafiqul Islam (GOC of Jessore) and lieutenant colonel Shahid.

Okay, now it is showing: Two army officer killed and one taken to the hospital.

Is this the beginning of the end?

Thanks,
Babu

Sorry that we did not help you

2009-03-05T19:22:00.000-08:00

When we were threatened and ask your help

You put your life in the line

You came to rescue us

But when you were threatened inside that building,

And ask for `our` help

We did n0t go;

No one went in to rescue you

We played politics

SORRY

Justice?

Hmm, how could we talk of justice with any confidence?

We are under the rules of Pharaohs

We seek justice from no one, but God Almighty

And be sure, He will provide

Please forgive us

Dude, Where's My 'Alubokhra'?

2009-02-24T18:55:00.000-08:00

It's funny that I just started reading "Dude, Where's My Country?" by Michael Moore. (Yeah, I know, kind of late). With all my luck, here come this news. I wonder, what would Mr Moore have faced? Good thing he only wrote about `the leader of the free world`. Better yet, good thing that he wrote it in here, not there. Don't you think?

Thanks,

------------ --------- --------- --------- -

'Alubokhra'?Amar Desh 2009/02/24 (First page)
http://www.amardeshbd.com/dailynews/detail_news_index.php?NewsID=213178&NewsType=bistarito&SectionID=home&VJF=QBZRZZFZ&oldIssueID=2009/02/24

Bangladesh official loses plum job over fruit jibe
"Bangladesh' s top information official was sacked Monday for ridiculing the country's founding leader in a poem which compared him to a dried plum"
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5icULUoHMVHS-S3q6q8OsFOfrzd0g

Bangladesh on Monday sacked its top information official for penning a poem comparing the country's founder Sheikh Mujibur Rahman to a "dried
plum".

Newspaper published excerpts from his 2006 poem that compared Rahman with a "dried plum"

The publisher of the book has already closed its outlet at the annual Ekushey Book Fair on the Bangla Academy premises in Dhaka.

Bangladesh sacks official for alleged remarks against Mujibur
23 Feb 2009
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/Bangladesh-sacks-official-foralleged-remarks-against-Mujibur/articleshow/4179153.cms

Two sedition cases were filed yesterday against the force-retired information secretary on charges of writing a satirical verse on Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his family members and publishing malicious remarks subversive to the state.

One case was also filed against the publisher of the book 'Baganey Phutey Achhey Anek Golap', accusing him of publishing a controversial book about a great leader and his family.

In the book, the writer referred to Bangabandhu as Latifur Rahman and also called him 'Alubokhra' (plum), he referred to Sheikh Kamal as Kamalakoli, Sheikh Jamal as Jamtoli and Sheikh Russel as Roskoli, the complainant said.

(No respite for Abu Karim, Wednesday, February 25, 2009)
http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=77353

(Amar Desh, 2009/02/25 First page)
http://www.amardeshbd.com/dailynews/detail_news_index.php?NewsID=213355&NewsType=bistarito&SectionID=home&GCT=AVNBHWKT

What's for dinner? Ask Dipu and Hasan

2009-02-23T12:17:00.000-08:00

What's for dinner? Ask Dipu and Hasan. It looks like they are cooking up something. I hope it will be delicious.

Is Bangladesh backtracking from long held position? Are we willingly and foolishly admitting (without any sort of intelligence) that BD is involved? I remember when THE ADVISOR of current Prime Minister visited bay area few years back. He said Bangladesh is involved in almost all of the international T activity. Is this the implementation of that theory?

"Bangladeshi minister for foreign affairs Hassan Mahmud has hinted that terrorists, who launched the November 26 Mumbai attacks, may have
used Bangladeshi soil." What?

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2611-Bangladesh-minister-hints-at-Dhaka-link/articleshow/4155682.cms

Foreign Minister Dr Dipu Moni is comparing Bangladesh-to-India with Mexico-to-USA. What? She is also giving up a long held position of Bangladesh on push-in issue.
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/stopping-illegal-migration-to-india-tough-bangladesh/85558-2.html

Few days back, Dipu Moni has agreed that Banladesh is a buffer state of Pakistan. AL spokesperson later tried to undermine that issue by saying Dipu may not have understood what a buffer state is. Give me a break. I am from her constituency. I can assure you with full confidence, what ever she might be, she is not a dumb girl. No sir, she is not.

I see a consistent propaganda from BD's own ministry (what used to be India's talking point). Is BD's Foreign Ministry now India's forward taking point?

Bangladesh's position in international policy arena will be diminished before you know yet.

She is saying "joint taskforce" more often then she is saying her own name. This is a very serious issue. What will that force be look like? Will Indian Army enter in BD? Will Indian air force round BD's air? Will their missile hit BD targets? If Dipu/Hasan continues to talk like this, in a few days, even I will start to agree with her, YES BRING THEM IN.

Am I being too skeptical? Could it be just a conspiracy theory? You may say that and I hope and pray that you are right. What if you are not?

Thanks

Back to the past and bipartisanship - Bangladesh style

2009-02-23T11:46:00.000-08:00

"She said the media should compare neutrally and honestly the present situation with the post-election situation in 2001. After the 2001 election, she alleged, the winning BNP-Jamaat alliance carried out killings, grabbed lands, and occupied student dorms."

Yeah, we are doing it mutually. I did it, she did it, he did it, we ALL did it. So we are doing it. We will be fine.

That is what I call a true bipartisanship. Let us try to be happy!

Thanks

Student politics: a collection of reports and opinions
http://www.prothom-alo.com/sp.news.details.all.php?sid=OTI=

Eyewitness report: Photo of Police as a friendly neighbor
http://www.prothom-alo.com/archive/news_details_home.php?dt=2009-02-17&issue_id=1194&nid=MjE5ODY=

Jahangirnagar University
http://www.prothom-alo.com/archive/news_details_home.php?dt=2009-02-17&issue_id=1194&nid=MjE5ODU=

Chair @ Paltan Maidan
http://www.amardeshbd.com/dailynews/detail_news_index.php?NewsID=212409&NewsType=bistarito&SectionID=home&VVT=HLKSFBBC

Minus two, dakhol and bedokhol
http://www.amardeshbd.com/dailynews/detail_news_index.php?NewsID=212408&NewsType=bistarito&SectionID=home&QXS=WZFCHHSE

Aladin vs inheritance
http://dailynayadiganta.com/fullnews.asp?News_ID=129818&sec=1

JU BCL continues to defy central leaders
http://bdnews24.com/details.php?id=76581&cid=2

BCL dissolves JU unit, expels 2 leaders
http://bdnews24.com/details.php?id=76587&cid=2

Truck looted by Dinajpur 'BCL men'
http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=76552

BCL leader harasses DU teacher
http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=75832

BCL factional clash leaves 8 hurt at CU
http://nation.ittefaq.com/issues/2009/02/08/news0715.htm

Activists of Bangladesh Chhatra League, student wing of Awami League, also attacked the agitating students and issued threats to them.
http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=73245

FW: BANGLADESH: Report blasts primary school education

2009-02-18T11:15:00.000-08:00

To me, this is a very significant development. Around 70% of our 6th graders are "unable to read, write or count properly", that's a real problem. Most of the reasons behind this are known. We know that we have "Inadequate qualified teachers". We know that "many poor students come to school half-fed". We know that many classroom are "open air" or under the tree. In a country where 33% live under dollar-a-day poverty line and 66% live under 2-dollars-a-day poverty line, these are really tough hurdle to overcome.

What is eye opener for me is the comment, "the government placed emphasis on enrolment without concentrating on the quality of primary education". I never think of this way, but that's make sense. We made huge progress in enrollment (percentage is as high as high-90s). UN officials going around other poor nations and citing Bangladesh as an example is brilliant. This is praise worthy achievement over last couple of decade. Even our high female enrollment (thanks to our array of affirmative actions) amused our neighbors. To me this is a great advantage. Going around villages and making people understand that `education is the only way out` is a monumental job. That is done, we did it! However, that's only the beginning.

We must concentrate on the quality now. The task is twofold. First is how can we reduce drop out? There are significant developments going in this area. For example, early marriage is a significant reason for female drop out. There are laws in place to deter this, but law is not enough. Parent and community education on the issue are needed. Good thing that I see an increasing number amount of publicity are now aimed on the issue, and we are beginning to see the results. Government provided financial incentive for school attendee also paid up in big. However, there are no parallel programs aimed at boys. This is mostly because male drop out is very much tied up with poverty and child labor, and there is no near term relief in sight. If we can come up with a financial incentive program for boys that would definitely help.

The second task is how we can improve the quality of those who are able to stick around and graduate from primary school. I know that the resource is inadequate. But if 70% of the graduate is unable to read, we must have a structured institutional problem. I am sure there is opportunity for improvement even with limited resources. Educators and researchers need to concentrate on this and review existing structure. More importantly a comparative analysis is needed where we compare similar data from other neighboring countries. Where does Bangladesh stand on the quality of primary education among south Asian nations? Figure out what we are missing and where we can improve.

Thanks,
Babu

-----Original Message-----
Subject: BANGLADESH: Report blasts primary school education

DHAKA, 11 February 2009 (IRIN) - Around 70 percent of children in Bangladesh who complete their primary education are unable to read, write or count properly, according to an internal report by the Department of Primary Education (DPE).

Sixty-nine percent of students who had completed five years of primary school were unable to read news headlines in Bangla newspapers properly, while 87 percent of pupils failed to do simple mathematical calculations, the study, entitled National Assessment of Pupils of Grades Three and Five - 2006, said.

Conducted by the Second Primary Education Development Programme (PEDP-II) - a donor-assisted programme to ensure quality primary education for all children - the study reported that 72 percent of children were unable to write a short composition in Bangla - the mother tongue of over 95 percent of the population.

The report also found students "pitiably weak" in English, which plays a key role in day-to-day life, particularly in business, higher studies and technical education.

The quality of education in remote rural areas was far worse than in urban areas, largely due to a scarcity of English teachers and the predominance of religious schools (`madrasas') where English is not taught, the study said.

The report said students in the fifth grade completed only about 56 percent of the Bangla syllabus, 46 percent of the mathematics syllabus and 47 percent of the English syllabus.

Weak institutional framework

The PEDP-II study identified the weak organisational and institutional framework of primary education and the lack of a proper physical environment at school as leading causes of poor performance.

"Inadequate qualified teachers, lack of devotion on the part of the teachers, [and] poor support and monitoring from family largely contribute to the causes of weakness," Rawshan Ara Begum, head teacher of Chakhar government primary school in southern Barisal District, told IRIN.

"Many poor students come to school half-fed. They cannot pay attention to their studies in the afternoon classes as thirst for knowledge is replaced by hunger for food," she said.

According to Badrul Alam Tarafder, secretary in charge of the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education (PME), the government placed emphasis on enrolment without concentrating on the quality of primary education.

Insufficient contact hours

The PEDP-II study recommended that contact hours between teachers and students be increased and more attention paid to mathematics and literacy.

According to the DPE, children get only 500 hours annually to interact with their teachers in grades one and two. This increased to 700 hours from the third to the fifth grade.

This compared unfavourably to an international standard of 900 contact hours per year for grades 1-5.

One reason for the fewer contact hours was the running of double shifts in most government schools due to a lack of classrooms.

The low teacher-student ratio was another factor keeping contact hours down.

The study recommended that at least 90,000 new teachers be recruited and 60,000 new classrooms be built to enable the existing number of students to attend in a single shift.

Fewer holidays?

Power and Participation Research Centre (PPRC), a private research organisation, in its annual report for 2008 entitled Primary Education Halkhata (State of Primary Education), recommended reducing holidays.

"The future of the nation is dark because primary students lack adequate academic knowledge," said renowned academic Zillur Rahman Siddique. He attributed the low contact hours to long holidays.

At present in government primary schools, pupils get nine days holiday during the two Eid festivals, 15 days for the summer vacation and 20 days off for Ramadan. The report suggested seven days for the two Eids, five days in summer and 10 days for Ramadan would be more appropriate.

Some 200,000 teachers educate close to 19 million students in about 38,000 government primary schools country-wide. Teachers are paid by the government which also supplies free text books. At least 40 percent of students receive financial assistance based on their performance, attendance and the level of family poverty.

Hoirani?

2009-02-18T10:15:00.000-08:00

http://www.amardeshbd.com/dailynews/detail_news_index.php?NewsID=212282&NewsType=bistarito&SectionID=home&TTX=YWQSKZEE

Hmm... I am still thinking about Spitzer. Now that Democrats got "landslide" victory in House-Senate- POTUS, can we declare that a "hoyrani" and drop the case? How about Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick?

Or may be if Republicans got a "landslide" victory in 2012, we can unhook our beloved Ted Stevens. No?

Ohh, no, I forget. This is not Bangladesh. No queen or princess (aka Pharaohs) would come to rescue the monsters.

[No offence intended. Have fun.]

Thanks

Good thing there‘s a new president in office, right?

2009-02-11T12:33:00.000-08:00

Here is Rachel Maddow's treatment on a news, see if you like it. In case you missed it lst night.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#29129616

MADDOW: And now it is time for another installment in our thankfully very infrequent series, the RACHEL MADDOW SHOW melodramatic re-enactment. First the setting. The Ninth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals in San Francisco . The occasion, a case involving the alleged transport and torture of five terrorism suspects who were picked up as part of the CIA‘s extraordinary rendition program.
The context here, the Bush administration‘s Justice Department getting the case dismissed last year using one of Mr. Bush‘s favorite tactics, claiming state secrets. They made the argument that even talking about this case in court, even with sensitive information excluded, would jeopardize national security.
Good thing there‘s a new president in office, right, with a new Department of Justice in place for when those five prisoners appeal that dismissal, right? Right? Because there‘s no way that the Obama administration would repeat the blanket state secrecy invocation, right? Right?
Let‘s take a look at what was actually said by the lawyer and a judge in the San Francisco courtroom yesterday. We now join the hearing already fake in progress.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KENT JONES, POP CULTURIST (on camera): May it please the court. I‘m Douglas Letter for the United States Department of Justice, which has intervened in this case to urge affirmance.
MADDOW (on camera): When was the district court decision?
JONES: Hmm, about a year ago, February.
MADDOW: About a year ago? Yes. Is there anything material that has happened since that decision in terms of historical stage that has any bearing here?
JONES: No, your honor. No.
MADDOW: The change of administration has no bearing?
JONES: No, your honor.
MADDOW: The government‘s position is the same?
JONES: Exactly, your honor. The positions that I‘m arguing have been thoroughly vetted with the appropriate officials within the new administration and these are the authorized positions.
MADDOW: So you represent that you are conveying the views of the present Justice Department?
JONES: Exactly, your honor. Absolutely. Absolutely.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: That scene is probably the closest we will ever get to seeing a federal judge, or at least a fake federal judge, doing a spit take.
Like most people who were conscious during the last election cycle, Judge Schroeder probably assumed that the person who spent the better part of two years campaigning against Bush-era secrecy and Bush-era detention, interrogation and torture policies, the man who is now president, Barack Obama, would not go use the exact same state secrets defense that the Bush administration used as a blanket shield from accountability.
A defense that means the government can do whatever it wants. It can break the law. It can avoid accountability by hiding behind state secrets. This provision intended to protect individual classified documents, but ballooned and mass-produced by the Bush administration to get entire cases preemptively dismissed.
Did that really just happen like we think it did? Or did Kent and I make it seem way worse than it really was?
Joining us now is Ben Wizner, the ACLU attorney who argued on behalf of the five plaintiffs and against the Obama Justice Department, and who will hopefully forgive me and Kent for acting out that hearing like idiots. Mr. Wizner, it‘s nice to meet you. Thank you for coming in.
BEN WIZNER, ACLU ATTORNEY: Thanks for having me and thank you also for not having somebody play me in the reenactment. I appreciate it.
MADDOW: We thought about it.
WIZNER: Yes.
MADDOW: And we realized you‘re going to be here in person. You might be mad.
Let‘s understand the context. Who are your five clients and why did you take this case?
WIZNER: These are five foreign citizens who were abducted off the streets of various countries, who had their clothes sliced off by CIA black renditions teams. These are people dressed like ninjas head to toe, who were chained to the floor of airplanes, dressed in diapers and flown to dungeons literally around the world.
Some of these were CIA black sites that were operated by our government. Some of them were prisons in countries like Egypt and Iraq that are absolutely notorious for their torture. And these flights were facilitated and organized by a private corporation that we sued in this lawsuit.
This isn‘t the first time that we‘ve tried to bring the administration into court on behalf rendition victims. We brought a lawsuit earlier on behalf of an innocent German citizen named Khalid al-Masri that was similarly thrown out on these bogus state secrets grounds.
We were hoping on Monday to have a different kind of experience with a new administration. But as you saw and as you reenacted, this is just a kinder and gentler version of “trust us.”
MADDOW: I know that the arguments in this case, the briefs had been fully prepared by the time that the Obama administration walked in the door here. All that was left to them was to do the oral arguments here. But did Obama really just take this and run with it? Did they have another option here? Couldn‘t they even just have asked for more time to come up with a different plan?
WIZNER: That would have been the obvious thing for them to do.
Remember, this is a motion to dismiss filed by the Bush administration. The basis for this motion to dismiss our lawsuit was a declaration filed by Michael Hayden, the current head of the CIA for maybe a few more days. I don‘t know how much longer.
And that declaration says that the CIA‘s detention and interrogation program is one of most vital tools in our war against terrorists. That if we let this case go forward, it will reveal classified interrogation techniques that will train enemies on how to resist it.
But on January 22nd, the actual president of the United States essentially ended that program. He banned those techniques. He closed the CIA prisons. He said that from now on, we‘re going to comply with our treaties that prevent transfer of prisoners to countries that exercise torture.
And so the question was, what is the Justice Department doing defending a declaration like that?
MADDOW: Right.
WIZNER: And why are they standing in the way of accountability? And I do want to say here that there is no moral equivalent between the two administrations. You know, we have the benefit no longer to have our country run by war criminals.
And it is terribly significant that the administration ended so-called enhanced interrogation. It‘s shutting down Guantanamo and the extraordinary rendition program. Where we differ is on another critical issue and that‘s the question of accountability.
And I think that this administration would prefer to sweep the last seven years under the rug and move on and get along. The problem is not a single torture victim, and there are hundreds, has yet had his day in court.
And you did a segment on prosecution - I understand that‘s a controversial issue. The other side of the coin is civil liability. And if torture victims aren‘t going to be able to go into court at all - and bear in mind these victims can‘t go into court. I don‘t know which victims will be able to go into court.
Then, really, you‘ll have an immunity regime for the perpetrators, for the violators and it will be impossible really to enforce the prohibitions that are in those executive orders and in our laws.
MADDOW: This is really important stuff. Ben Wizner, attorney with the ACLU National Security Project, who argued for these five plaintiffs in yesterday‘s hearing. I hope that we helped get the word out about this. It seems incredibly important to me. Thank you for working on the case.
Thanks for joining us.
WIZNER: Thanks for having me on, Rachel.

FW: Tom Daschle Withdraws as Obama's Health Secretary Nominee

2009-02-03T12:15:00.000-08:00

Can anyone imagine a parallel scenario to this in Bangladesh? Can anyone block a nominee from madam/apa and still keep his head attached to his neck in following morning? Would anyone in BD withdraw? Was there even a question of block or withdraw?

The more I watch the political and governance process in US, the more I feel a growing respect. But more than that, a strange feeling trembled inside me. I find no words to describe it. Where did these guys come from? Where did I come from? Where did the leaders on BD that I supported or opposed come from? Did we born in the same world?

Do we live in the same world?

Why then we could not do a single thing to derail the Pharaohs and Monsters?

Moment like this invoke me to accept one conclusion. We are not even the same species. We may look like same, but we are not. I am convinced now. Why bother? Hakuna matata!

Thanks,

Tom Daschle Withdraws as Obama's Health Secretary Nominee
Obama Accepts Daschle's Withdrawal After Daschle Admitted He Failed to Pay Taxes.
By RUSSELL GOLDMAN
Feb. 3, 2009-

In a stunning setback for President Obama, Tom Daschle abruptly withdrew his nomination to become secretary of Health and Human Services today, following an admission that he failed to pay about $140,000 in back taxes.

In a joint Obama-Daschle statement, Obama accepted Daschle's withdrawal "with sadness and regret."

"Tom made a mistake, which he has openly acknowledged. He has not excused it, nor do I," Obama said.

Daschle, a former Senate majority leader from South Dakota, who had been one of Obama's closest advisers throughout his presidential campaign, said his tax problems meant he had lost the faith of the American people and was therefore unable to serve.

"This work will require a leader who can operate with the full faith of Congress and the American people, and without distraction," Daschle said in a statement released by the White House.

"Right now, I am not that leader, and [I] will not be a distraction," he said.

In addition to being nominated to be HHS secretary, Daschle was also slated to lead Obama's healthcare initative as health czar, a post from which he also withdrew.

Daschle's retreat raises questions about whether Obama can keep his promise to make more affordable healthcare one of the cornerstone of his agenda in his first 100 days in office.

Daschle's decision to quit the nominating process was surprising because Democratic senators had rallied around him Monday and Obama said he "absolutely" stood by Daschle.

Obama's backing didn't stop criticism of Daschle's fitness to join the White House cabinet. Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., said Obama was "losing credibility" by continuing to support Daschle. "Part of leadership is recognizing when there has been a mistake made and responding quickly," DeMint said.

Daschle's withdrawal came just hours after Nancy Killefer, Obama's nominee to be chief performance officer, withdrew her nomination following the revelation that she had a $946.69 lien on her property in 2005 for failure to pay taxes.

A third Obama Cabinet pick, Tim Geithner, admitted to Congress that he had owed and paid back more than $40,000 before he was confirmed as Treasury secretary last week, and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson withdrew his nomination as Commerce secretary over questions about state contracts.

The setbacks are likely to embarrass Obama, who announced a "new era of responsibility" at his inauguration and are likely to embolden Republican opposition to the president and his agenda at a time when Obama struggles to get his economic stimulus plan through Congress.

After a closed-door session before the Senate Finance Committee Monday, Daschle apologized and said his failure to pay taxes was unintentional.

"I deeply apologize to President Obama, to my colleagues and the American people," Daschle said. "I would hope that my mistake could be viewed in the context of 30 years of public service."

The failure by the former Senate majority leader to pay taxes on the free use of a car and driver for several years was first reported by ABC News.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/President44/story?id=6795650&page=1

Proposed Teacher/Stuff quota system in BUET admission

2009-01-06T12:51:00.000-08:00

Recently a buzz is going on about a quota proposal to BUET admission system. The two option proposal is to add 2% of `normal intake` seats or 10% of an all new `evening program` intake seats as a quota reserved for BUET teachers (if unused can be forwarded to `officers and other staff`).

I deliberately abstain from forwarding the opinion piece so you won't be affected by a particular view. May be you can just read the original proposal yourself and form an opinion of your own. (Please see the attachment)

Also, I neither verified the authority, nor the validity of this presented documents. So if we have a current faculty member in this list, please enlighten us.

Page 1:

Page 2:

Page 3:

Page 4:

Thanks,
BB

'Try Not to Cry'

2009-01-05T18:20:00.000-08:00

'Try Not to Cry'
(A song by Outlandish)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpUC45vugdY

You, you’re not aware
That we’re aware
Of your despair
Don’t show your tears
To your oppressor
Don’t show your tears

CHORUS:
Try not to cry little one
You’re not alone
I’ll stand by you
Try not to cry little one
My heart is your stone
I’ll throw with you

Isam:
‘Ayn Jalut where David slew Goliath
This very same place that we be at
Passing through the sands of times
This land’s been the victim of countless crimes
From Crusaders and Mongols
to the present aggression
Then the Franks, now even a crueller oppression
If these walls could speak,
imagine what would they say

For me in this path that I walk on
there's only one way
Bullets may kill, bones may break
Still I throw stones like David before me and I say

CHORUS

You, you’re not aware
That we’re aware
Of your despair
Your nightmares will end
This I promise, I promise

CHORUS

Lenny:
No llores, no pierdas la fe
La sed la calma el que haze
Agua de la arena
Y tu que te levantas con orgullo entre las piedras
Haz hecho mares de este polvo
Don’t cry, don’t lose faith
The one who made water come out of the sand
Is the one who quenches the thirst
And you who rise proud from between the stones
Have made oceans from this dust

Waqas:
I throw stones at my eyes
’cause for way too long they’ve been dry
Plus they see what they shouldn’t from oppressed babies to thighs
I throw stones at my tongue
’cause it should really keep its peace
I throw stones at my feet
’cause they stray and lead to defeat
A couple of big ones at my heart
’cause the thing is freezing cold
But my nafs is still alive
and kicking unstoppable and on a roll
I throw bricks at the devil so I’ll be sure to hit him
But first at the man in the mirror
so I can chase out the venom

Isam:
Hmm, a little boy shot in the head
Just another kid sent out to get some bread
Not the first murder nor the last
Again and again a repetition of the past
Since the very first day same story
Young ones, old ones, some glory
How can it be, has the whole world turned blind?
Or is it just ’cause it’s only affecting my kind?!
If these walls could speak,
imagine what would they say
For me in this path that I walk on
there’s only one way
Bullets may kill, bones may break
Still I throw stones like David before me and I say

CHORUS

lyrics: Isam Bachiri, Waqas Qadri, R. Lenny Martinez, Sami Yusuf, Bara Kherigi & Omar Shah

9 Is Not 11 (And November isn't September)

2008-12-15T17:33:00.000-08:00

[In case you have missed it]

9 Is Not 11
(And November isn't September)

ARUNDHATI ROY
Dec 22, 2008

We've forfeited the rights to our own tragedies. As the carnage in Mumbai raged on, day after horrible day, our 24-hour news channels informed us that we were watching "India's 9/11". And like actors in a Bollywood rip-off of an old Hollywood film, we're expected to play our parts and say our lines, even though we know it's all been said and done before.

As tension in the region builds, US Senator John McCain has warned Pakistan that if it didn't act fast to arrest the 'Bad Guys' he had personal information that India would launch air strikes on 'terrorist camps' in Pakistan and that Washington could do nothing because Mumbai was India's 9/11.

But November isn't September, 2008 isn't 2001, Pakistan isn't Afghanistan and India isn't America. So perhaps we should reclaim our tragedy and pick through the debris with our own brains and our own broken hearts so that we can arrive at our own conclusions.

It's odd how in the last week of November thousands of people in Kashmir supervised by thousands of Indian troops lined up to cast their vote, while the richest quarters of India's richest city ended up looking like war-torn Kupwara—one of Kashmir's most ravaged districts.

The Mumbai attacks are only the most recent of a spate of terrorist attacks on Indian towns and cities this year. Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Delhi, Guwahati, Jaipur and Malegaon have all seen serial bomb blasts in which hundreds of ordinary people have been killed and wounded. If the police are right about the people they have arrested as suspects, both Hindu and Muslim, all Indian nationals, it obviously means something's going very badly wrong in this country.

If you were watching television you may not have heard that ordinary people too died in Mumbai. They were mowed down in a busy railway station and a public hospital. The terrorists did not distinguish between poor and rich. They killed both with equal cold-bloodedness. The Indian media, however, was transfixed by the rising tide of horror that breached the glittering barricades of India Shining and spread its stench in the marbled lobbies and crystal ballrooms of two incredibly luxurious hotels and a small Jewish centre. We're told one of these hotels is an icon of the city of Mumbai. That's absolutely true. It's an icon of the easy, obscene injustice that ordinary Indians endure every day. On a day when the newspapers were full of moving obituaries by beautiful people about the hotel rooms they had stayed in, the gourmet restaurants they loved (ironically, one was called Kandahar), and the staff who served them, a small box on the top left-hand corner
in the inner pages of a national newspaper (sponsored by a pizza company I think) said 'Hungry, kya?' (Hungry eh?). It then, with the best of intentions I'm sure, informed its readers that on the international hunger index, India ranked below Sudan and Somalia. But of course this isn't that war. That one's still being fought in the Dalit bastis of our villages, on the banks of the Narmada and the Koel Karo rivers; in the rubber estate in Chengara; in the villages of Nandigram, Singur, Lalgarh in West Bengal; in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa; and the slums and shantytowns of our gigantic cities. That war isn't on TV. Yet. So maybe, like everyone else, we should deal with the one that is.

There is a fierce, unforgiving fault line that runs through the contemporary discourse on terrorism. On one side (let's call it Side A) are those who see terrorism, especially 'Islamist' terrorism, as a hateful, insane scourge that spins on its own axis, in its own orbit and has nothing to do with the world around it, nothing to do with history, geography or economics. Therefore, Side A says, to try and place it in a political context, or even try to understand it, amounts to justifying it and is a crime in itself.Side B believes that though nothing can ever excuse or justify terrorism, it exists in a particular time, place and political context, and to refuse to see that will only aggravate the problem and put more and more people in harm's way. Which is a crime in itself.

The sayings of Hafiz Saeed, who founded the Lashkar-e-Toiba (Army of the Pure) in 1990 and who belongs to the hardline Salafi tradition of Islam, certainly bolster the case of Side A. Hafiz Saeed approves of suicide bombing, hates Jews, Shias and Democracy, and believes that jehad should be waged until Islam, his Islam, rules the world. Among the things he has said are:

"There cannot be any peace while India remains intact. Cut them, cut them so much that they kneel before you and ask for mercy."

And, "India has shown us this path. We would like to give India a tit-for-tat response and reciprocate in the same way by killing the Hindus, just like it is killing the Muslims in Kashmir."

But where would Side A accommodate the sayings of Babu Bajrangi of Ahmedabad, India, who sees himself as a democrat, not a terrorist? He was one of the major lynchpins of the 2002 Gujarat genocide and has said (on camera):

"We didn't spare a single Muslim shop, we set everything on fire...we hacked, burned, set on fire...we believe in setting them on fire because these bastards don't want to be cremated, they're afraid of it.... I have just one last wish...let me be sentenced to death.... I don't care if I'm hanged...just give me two days before my hanging and I will go and have a field day in Juhapura where seven or eight lakhs of these people stay.... I will finish them off...let a few more of them die...at least twenty-five thousand to fifty thousand should die."

And where, in Side A's scheme of things, would we place the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh bible, We, or Our Nationhood Defined by M.S. Golwalkar 'Guruji', who became head of the RSS in 1944. It says:

"Ever since that evil day, when Moslems first landed in Hindustan, right up to the present moment, the Hindu Nation has been gallantly fighting on to take on these despoilers. The Race Spirit has been awakening."

Or:

"To keep up the purity of its race and culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races—the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here...a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by."

Of course, Muslims are not the only people in the gun sights of the Hindu Right. Dalits have been consistently targeted. Recently in Kandhamal in Orissa, Christians were the target of two-and-a-half months of violence which left more than 40 dead. Forty thousand people have been driven from their homes, half of whom now live in refugee camps.

All these years, Hafiz Saeed has lived the life of a respectable man in Lahore as the head of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which many believe is a front organisation for the Lashkar-e-Toiba. He continued to recruit young boys for his own bigoted jehad with his twisted, fiery sermons. On December 11, the UN imposed sanctions on the Jamaat-ud-Dawa and the Pakistani government succumbed to international pressure, putting Hafiz Saeed under house arrest. Babu Bajrangi, however, is out on bail and continues to live the life of a respectable man in Gujarat. A couple of years after the genocide, he left the VHP to join the Shiv Sena. Narendra Modi, Bajrangi's former mentor, is still the chief minister of Gujarat. So the man who presided over the Gujarat genocide was re-elected twice, and is deeply respected by India's biggest corporate houses, Reliance and Tata. Suhel Seth, a TV impresario and corporate spokesperson, has recently said, "Modi is God." The policemen who
supervised and sometimes even assisted the rampaging Hindu mobs in Gujarat have been rewarded and promoted.The RSS has 45,000 branches, its own range of charities and seven million volunteers preaching its doctrine of hate across India. They include Narendra Modi, but also former prime minister A.B. Vajpayee, current Leader of the Opposition L.K. Advani, and a host of other senior politicians, bureaucrats and police and intelligence officers.

And if that's not enough to complicate our picture of secular democracy, we should place on record that there are plenty of Muslim organisations within India preaching their own narrow bigotry.

So, on balance, if I had to choose between Side A and Side B, I'd pick Side B. We need context. Always.

In this nuclear subcontinent, that context is Partition. The Radcliffe Line which separated India and Pakistan and tore through states, districts, villages, fields, communities, water systems, homes and families, was drawn virtually overnight. It was Britain's final, parting kick to us. Partition triggered the massacre of more than a million people and the largest migration of a human population in contemporary history. Eight million people—Hindus fleeing the new Pakistan, Muslims fleeing the new kind of India—left their homes with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Each of those people carries and passes down a story of unimaginable pain, hate, horror, but yearning too. That wound, those torn but still unsevered muscles, that blood and those splintered bones still lock us together in a close embrace of hatred, terrifying familiarity but also love. It has left Kashmir trapped in a nightmare from which it can't seem to emerge, a nightmare that
has claimed more than 60,000 lives. Pakistan, the Land of the Pure, became an Islamic republic, and then, very quickly a corrupt, violent military state, openly intolerant of other faiths. India on the other hand declared herself an inclusive, secular democracy. It was a magnificent undertaking, but Babu Bajrangi's predecessors had been hard at work since the 1920s, dripping poison into India's bloodstream, undermining that idea of India even before it was born. By 1990, they were ready to make a bid for power. In 1992, Hindu mobs exhorted by L.K. Advani stormed the Babri Masjid and demolished it. By 1998, the BJP was in power at the Centre. The US War on Terror put the wind in their sails. It allowed them to do exactly as they pleased, even to commit genocide and then present their fascism as a legitimate form of chaotic democracy. This happened at a time when India had opened its huge market to international finance, and it was in the interests of
international corporations and the media houses they owned to project it as a country that could do no wrong. That gave Hindu Nationalists all the impetus and the impunity they needed. This, then, is the larger historical context of terrorism in the subcontinent, and of the Mumbai attacks.

It shouldn't surprise us that Hafiz Saeed of the Lashkar-e-Toiba is from Shimla (India) and L.K. Advani of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is from Sindh (Pakistan).

In much the same way as it did after the 2001 Parliament attack, the 2002 burning of the Sabarmati Express and the 2006 bombing of the Samjhauta Express, the Government of India announced that it has 'incontrovertible' evidence that the Lashkar-e-Toiba backed by Pakistan's ISI was behind the Mumbai strikes. The Lashkar has denied involvement, but remains the prime accused. According to the police and intelligence agencies, the Lashkar operates in India through an organisation called the 'Indian Mujahideen'. Two Indian nationals—Sheikh Mukhtar Ahmed, a Special Police Officer working for the Jammu and Kashmir Police, and Tausif Rehman, a resident of Calcutta in West Bengal—have been arrested in connection with the Mumbai attacks. So already the neat accusation against Pakistan is getting a little messy.Almost always, when these stories unspool, they reveal a complicated global network of foot-soldiers, trainers, recruiters, middlemen and undercover
intelligence and counter-intelligence operatives, working not just on both sides of the India-Pakistan border, but in several countries simultaneously. In today's world, trying to pin down the provenance of a terrorist strike and isolate it within the borders of a single nation-state is very much like trying to pin down the provenance of corporate money. It's almost impossible.

In circumstances like these, air strikes to 'take out' terrorist camps may take out the camps, but certainly will not 'take out' the terrorists. And neither will war. (Also, in our bid for the moral high ground, let's try not to forget that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the LTTE of neighbouring Sri Lanka, one of the world's most deadly terrorist groups, were trained by the Indian army.)

Afghan revenge: America’s debris, our headache

Thanks largely to the part it was forced to play as America's ally, first in its war in support of the Afghan Islamists and then in its war against them, Pakistan, whose territory is reeling under these contradictions, is careening towards civil war. As recruiting agents for America's jehad against the Soviet Union, it was the job of the Pakistan army and the ISI to nurture and channel funds to Islamic fundamentalist organisations. Having wired up these Frankenstein's monsters and released them into the world, the US expected it could rein them in like pet mastiffs whenever it wanted to. Certainly it did not expect them to come calling in the heart of the Homeland on September 11. So once again, Afghanistan had to be violently re-made. Now the debris of a re-ravaged Afghanistan has washed up on Pakistan's borders. Nobody, least of all the Pakistan government, denies that it is presiding over a country that is threatening to implode. The terrorist
training camps, the fire-breathing mullahs and the maniacs who believe that Islam will, or should, rule the world is mostly the detritus of two Afghan wars. Their ire rains down on the Pakistan government and Pakistani civilians as much, if not more, than it does on India. If at this point India decides to go to war, perhaps the descent of the whole region into chaos will be complete. The debris of a bankrupt, destroyed Pakistan will wash up on India's shores, endangering us as never before. If Pakistan collapses, we can look forward to having millions of 'non-state actors' with an arsenal of nuclear weapons at their disposal as neighbours. It's hard to understand why those who steer India's ship are so keen to replicate Pakistan's mistakes and call damnation upon this country by inviting the United States to further meddle clumsily and dangerously in our extremely complicated affairs. A superpower never has allies. It only has agents.

On the plus side, the advantage of going to war is that it's the best way for India to avoid facing up to the serious trouble building on our home front.

The Mumbai attacks were broadcast live (and exclusive!) on all or most of our 67 24-hour news channels and god knows how many international ones. TV anchors in their studios and journalists at 'ground zero' kept up an endless stream of excited commentary. Over three days and three nights, we watched in disbelief as a small group of very young men armed with guns and gadgets exposed the powerlessness of the police, the elite National Security Guard and the marine commandos of this supposedly mighty, nuclear-powered nation. While they did this, they indiscriminately massacred unarmed people, in railway stations, hospitals and luxury hotels, unmindful of their class, caste, religion or nationality.Part of the helplessness of the security forces had to do with having to worry about hostages. In other situations, in Kashmir for example, their tactics are not so sensitive. Whole buildings are blown up. Human shields are used. (The US and Israeli armies don't
hesitate to send cruise missiles into buildings and drop daisy cutters on wedding parties in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan.) But this was different. And it was on TV.

The boy-terrorists' nonchalant willingness to kill—and be killed—mesmerised their international audience. They delivered something different from the usual diet of suicide bombings and missile attacks that people have grown inured to on the news. Here was something new. Die Hard 25. The gruesome performance went on and on. TV ratings soared. Ask any television magnate or corporate advertiser who measures broadcast time in seconds, not minutes, what that's worth.

Eventually the killers died and died hard, all but one. (Perhaps, in the chaos, some escaped. We may never know.) Throughout the stand-off, the terrorists made no demands and expressed no desire to negotiate. Their purpose was to kill people and inflict as much damage as they could before they were killed themselves. They left us completely bewildered. When we say 'Nothing can justify terrorism', what most of us mean is that nothing can justify the taking of human life. We say this because we respect life, because we think it's precious. So what are we to make of those who care nothing for life, not even their own? The truth is that we have no idea what to make of them, because we can sense that even before they've died, they've journeyed to another world where we cannot reach them.

Gujarat ’02: The elephant in the room

One TV channel (India TV) broadcast a phone conversation with one of the attackers, who called himself 'Imran Babar'. I cannot vouch for the veracity of the conversation, but the things he talked about were the things contained in the 'terror e-mails' that were sent out before several other bomb attacks in India. Things we don't want to talk about any more: the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, the genocidal slaughter of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, the brutal repression in Kashmir. "You're surrounded," the anchor told him. "You are definitely going to die. Why don't you surrender?" "We die every day," he replied in a strange, mechanical way. "It's better to live one day as a lion and then die this way." He didn't seem to want to change the world. He just seemed to want to take it down with him.

If the men were indeed members of the Lashkar-e-Toiba, why didn't it matter to them that a large number of their victims were Muslim, or that their action was likely to result in a severe backlash against the Muslim community in India whose rights they claim to be fighting for? Terrorism is a heartless ideology, and like most ideologies that have their eye on the Big Picture, individuals don't figure in its calculations except as collateral damage. It has always been a part of—and often even the aim of—terrorist strategy to exacerbate a bad situation in order to expose hidden fault lines. The blood of 'martyrs' irrigates terrorism. Hindu terrorists need dead Hindus, Communist terrorists need dead proletarians, Islamist terrorists need dead Muslims. The dead become the demonstration, the proof of victimhood, which is central to the project. A single act of terrorism is not in itself meant to achieve military victory; at best it is meant to be a
catalyst that triggers something else, something much larger than itself, a tectonic shift, a realignment. The act itself is theatre, spectacle and symbolism, and today, the stage on which it pirouettes and performs its acts of bestiality is Live TV.Even as the Mumbai terrorists were being condemned by TV anchors, the effectiveness of their action was magnified a thousand-fold by TV broadcasts.

Forgotten man: Former PM V.P. Singh’s death passed without a mention

Through the endless hours of analysis and the endless op-ed essays, in India at least there has been very little mention of the elephants in the room: Kashmir, Gujarat and the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Instead, we had retired diplomats and strategic experts debate the pros and cons of a war against Pakistan. We had the rich threatening not to pay their taxes unless their security was guaranteed (is it alright for the poor to remain unprotected?). We had people suggest that the government step down and each state in India be handed over to a separate corporation. We had the death of former prime minister V.P. Singh, the hero of Dalits and lower castes and villain of upper-caste Hindus, pass without a mention. We had Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City and co-writer of the Bollywood film Mission Kashmir, give us his version of George Bush's famous 'Why They Hate Us' speech. His analysis of why "religious bigots, both Hindu and Muslim", hate Mumbai:
"Perhaps because Mumbai stands for lucre, profane dreams and an indiscriminate openness." His prescription: "The best answer to the terrorists is to dream bigger, make even more money, and visit Mumbai more than ever." Didn't George Bush ask Americans to go out and shop after 9/11? Ah yes. 9/11, the day we can't seem to get away from.

Though one chapter of horror in Mumbai has ended, another might have just begun. Day after day, a powerful, vociferous section of the Indian elite, goaded by marauding TV anchors who make Fox News look almost radical and left-wing, have taken to mindlessly attacking politicians, all politicians, glorifying the police and the army, and virtually asking for a police state. It isn't surprising that those who have grown plump on the pickings of democracy (such as it is) should now be calling for a police state. The era of 'pickings' is long gone. We're now in the era of Grabbing by Force, and democracy has a terrible habit of getting in the way.

Dangerous, stupid television flash cards like the Police are Good, Politicians are Bad/ Chief Executives are Good, Chief Ministers are Bad/ Army is Good, Government is Bad/ India is Good, Pakistan is Bad are being bandied about by TV channels that have already whipped their viewers into a state of almost uncontrollable hysteria.

Tragically, this regression into intellectual infancy comes at a time when people in India were beginning to see that the business of terrorism is a hall of mirrors in which victims and perpetrators sometimes exchange roles. It's an understanding that the people of Kashmir, given their dreadful experiences of the last 20 years, have honed to an exquisite art. On the mainland we're still learning. (If Kashmir won't willingly integrate into India, it's beginning to look as though India will integrate/disintegrate into Kashmir.)

It was after the 2001 Parliament attack that the first serious questions began to be raised. A campaign by a group of lawyers and activists exposed how innocent people had been framed by the police and the press, how evidence was fabricated, how witnesses lied, how due process had been criminally violated at every stage of the investigation. Eventually the courts acquitted two out of the four accused, including S.A.R. Geelani, the man whom the police claimed was the mastermind of the operation. A third, Shaukat Guru, was acquitted of all the charges brought against him but was then convicted for a fresh, comparatively minor offence.The Supreme Court upheld the death sentence of another of the accused, Mohammad Afzal. In its judgement, the court acknowledged that there was no proof that Mohammad Afzal belonged to any terrorist group, but went on to say, quite shockingly, "The collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if capital
punishment is awarded to the offender. " Even today we don't really know who the terrorists that attacked Indian Parliament were and who they worked for.

More recently, on September 19 this year, we had the controversial 'encounter' at Batla House in Jamia Nagar, Delhi, where the Special Cell of the Delhi police gunned down two Muslim students in their rented flat under seriously questionable circumstances, claiming that they were responsible for serial bombings in Delhi, Jaipur and Ahmedabad in 2008. An Assistant Commissioner of Police, Mohan Chand Sharma, who played a key role in the Parliament attack investigation, lost his life as well. He was one of India's many 'encounter specialists', known and rewarded for having summarily executed several 'terrorists'. There was an outcry against the Special Cell from a spectrum of people, ranging from eyewitnesses in the local community to senior Congress Party leaders, students, journalists, lawyers, academics and activists, all of whom demanded a judicial inquiry into the incident. In response, the BJP and L.K. Advani lauded Mohan Chand Sharma as a
'Braveheart' and launched a concerted campaign in which they targeted those who had dared to question the integrity of the police, saying it was 'suicidal' and calling them 'anti-national'. Of course, there has been no inquiry.

Only days after the Batla House event, another story about 'terrorists' surfaced in the news. In a report submitted to the court, the CBI said that a team from Delhi's Special Cell (the same team that led the Batla House encounter, including Mohan Chand Sharma) had abducted two innocent men, Irshad Ali and Moarif Qamar, in December 2005, planted 2 kg of RDX and two pistols on them, and then arrested them as 'terrorists' who belonged to Al Badr (which operates out of Kashmir). Ali and Qamar, who have spent years in jail, are only two examples out of hundreds of Muslims who have been similarly jailed, tortured and even killed on false charges.

This pattern changed in October 2008 when Maharashtra's Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), which was investigating the September 2008 Malegaon blasts, arrested a Hindu preacher, Sadhvi Pragya; a self-styled godman, Swami Dayanand Pande; and Lt Col Prasad Purohit, a serving officer of the Indian army. All the arrested belong to Hindu Nationalist organisations, including a Hindu supremacist group called Abhinav Bharat. The Shiv Sena, the BJP and the RSS condemned the Maharashtra ATS, and vilified its chief, Hemant Karkare, claiming he was part of a political conspiracy and declaring that "Hindus could not be terrorists". L.K. Advani changed his mind about his policy on the police and made rabble-rousing speeches to huge gatherings, in which he denounced the ATS for daring to cast aspersions on holy men and women.

On November 25, newspapers reported that the ATS was investigating the high-profile VHP chief Praveen Togadia's possible role in the Malegaon blasts. The next day, in an extraordinary twist of fate, Hemant Karkare was killed in the Mumbai attacks. The chances are that the new chief, whoever he is, will find it hard to withstand the political pressure that is bound to be brought on him over the Malegaon investigation.

While the Sangh parivar does not seem to have come to a final decision over whether or not it is anti-national and suicidal to question the police, Arnab Goswami, anchorperson of Times Now television channel, has stepped up to the plate.He has taken to naming, demonising and openly heckling people who have dared to question the integrity of the police and armed forces. My name and the name of the well-known lawyer Prashant Bhushan have come up several times. At one point, while interviewing a former police officer, Arnab Goswami turned to the camera; "Arundhati Roy and Prashant Bhushan," he said, "I hope you are watching this. We think you are disgusting." For a TV anchor to do this in an atmosphere as charged and as frenzied as the one that prevails today amounts to incitement as well as threat, and would probably in different circumstances have cost a journalist his or her job.

So according to a man aspiring to be India's next prime minister, and another who is the public face of a mainstream TV channel, citizens have no right to raise questions about the police. This in a country with a shadowy history of suspicious terror attacks, murky investigations, and fake 'encounters'. This in a country that boasts of the highest number of custodial deaths in the world and yet refuses to ratify the International Covenant on Torture. A country where the ones who make it to torture chambers are the lucky ones because at least they've escaped being 'encountered' by our encounter specialists. A country where the line between the Underworld and the Encounter Specialists virtually does not exist.

How should those of us whose hearts have been sickened by the knowledge of all of this view the Mumbai attacks, and what are we to do about them? There are those who point out that US strategy has been successful inasmuch as the United States has not suffered a major attack on its home ground since 9/11. However, some would say that what America is suffering now is far worse. If the idea behind the 9/11 terror attacks was to goad America into showing its true colours, what greater success could the terrorists have asked for? The US army is bogged down in two unwinnable wars, which have made the United States the most hated country in the world. Those wars have contributed greatly to the unravelling of the American economy and, who knows, perhaps eventually the American empire. (Could it be that battered, bombed Afghanistan, the graveyard of the Soviet Union, will be the undoing of this one too?) Hundreds of thousands of people, including thousands of
American soldiers, have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. The frequency of terrorist strikes on US allies/agents (including India) and US interests in the rest of the world has increased dramatically since 9/11. George Bush, the man who led the US response to 9/11, is a despised figure not just internationally but also by his own people. Who can possibly claim that the United States is winning the war on terror?

Homeland security has cost the US government billions of dollars. Few countries, certainly not India, can afford that sort of price tag. But even if we could, the fact is that this vast homeland of ours cannot be secured or policed in the way the United States has been. It's not that kind of homeland. We have a hostile nuclear weapons state that is slowly spinning out of control as a neighbour, we have a military occupation in Kashmir, and a shamefully persecuted, impoverished minority of more than a hundred and fifty million Muslims who are being targeted as a community and pushed to the wall, whose young see no justice on the horizon, and who, were they to totally lose hope and radicalise, end up as a threat not just to India, but to the whole world. If 10 men can hold off the NSG commandos and the police for three days, and if it takes half-a-million soldiers to hold down the Kashmir Valley, do the math. What kind of Homeland Security can secure
India?

Nor for that matter will any other quick fix.Anti-terrorism laws are not meant for terrorists; they're for people that governments don't like. That's why they have a conviction rate of less than two per cent. They're just a means of putting inconvenient people away without bail for a long time and eventually letting them go. Terrorists like those who attacked Mumbai are hardly likely to be deterred by the prospect of being refused bail or being sentenced to death. It's what they want.

What we're experiencing now is blowback, the cumulative result of decades of quick fixes and dirty deeds. The carpet's squelching under our feet.

The only way to contain (it would be naive to say end) terrorism is to look at the monster in the mirror. We're standing at a fork in the road. One sign says 'Justice', the other 'Civil War'. There's no third sign and there's no going back. Choose.

Election, secularism, and us war policy in south asia

2008-12-06T12:17:00.000-08:00

Here is a column by Farhad Mazhar which I found very interesting. If you have some spare time, you might want to check it out.

http://dailynayadiganta.com/2008/11/22/fullnews.asp?News_ID=115284&sec=6

Thanks

Not giving your vote simply means you are voting with the majority

2008-11-02T10:02:00.000-08:00

Not giving your vote simply means you are voting with the majority whatever they decide.

With lot of things and rights that democracy gives us, it takes away a very big right: that is the right of not participating. At least all the various form of democratic society that we have, none have preserved this right.

So what do you do? Not registered to vote? Not going to poll?

And you thought that you did not participate? With all due respect, I don’t understand how a bunch of engineer can make such a profound logical mistake. Please think again, you will see it. It’s a no brainer.

By not exercising your right to vote, you have already cast your vote. You cast your vote for majority decision in advance. You are saying that I trust all the people who do give vote. That’s all.

There is no option for not giving your vote. Your options are as follows:

1) Vote YES on propX
2) Vote NO on propX
3) Vote with majority decision (you don’t have to vote, just relax and watch CNN)

Same goes for president candidates:
1) Mr X
2) Mr Y
3) Mr Z
4) Majority decision (you don’t have to vote, just relax and watch CNN)

If there were a democratic election that required 50+% of possible voters (not only the actual voters) to be elected, then and only then not voting means not participation. For all other case, you have already casted your vote to go with majority decision by default. Now all you can do is to change that vote the way you want (if you want).

Thanks,
Babu

[Okay, so looks like few countries are experimenting with idea of a "NO vote". For example, Bangladesh's December 2008 parliament election may have an option of "NO vote" in the ballot. If number of NO vote is greater than 50% of total given vote, election result will be rejected and a new election will be held. This will give you an opportunity to "participate" in a negative way. Then again, it will take you to square one where you face another election, so not much success there.]

"No, ma'am. He's a decent family man"

2008-10-15T12:42:00.000-07:00

"No, ma'am. He's a decent family man"?? That's all?
Few commentary I found interesting.

-------------------------------------------------
Los Angeles Times
Opinion
'Muslim' shouldn't be a slur
Both McCain and Obama should condemn implicit attacks on Muslims and Arabs.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-rice15-2008oct15,0,5744288.story

That was a good step one -- until McCain blew it. A woman stood up in the audience and said that she just couldn't trust Obama because, as she put it, "he's an Arab." McCain shook his head, took the microphone and said: "No, ma'am. He's a decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues."

So, what is he saying? Arabs aren't decent family men? They can't be citizens?
-------------------------------------------------
CNN
October 14, 2008
How Being Called An Arab Became A Slur
http://edition.cnn.com/CNNI/Programs/middle.east/blog/2008/10/how-being-arab-became-slur.html

What if the woman had said she didn't trust Obama because he is Black? Would there have been outrage then? Would McCain's answer had been different?

The truth is that, throughout this campaign, the term Muslim or Arab has been routinely used as a slur. And both parties are playing the game.

-------------------------------------------------
Huffington Post
October 11, 2008
Is Muslim The New Queer?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hanna-ingber-win/is-muslim-the-new-queer_b_133870.html

Just yesterday an elderly woman at a campaign event with John McCain rambled into the microphone about how she doesn't trust Barack Obama and then said, as if it were her kicker, "HE'S ARAB."

McCain took the microphone back, shook his head, and acting like he is suddenly better than gutter politics, said something along the lines of, "No, no, mam. He's a decent, family man."

What?! That old lady did not say Obama is a terrorist. She did not say he is a murderer or a rapist or a drug dealer to little children. She said he is "Arab." And yet, McCain automatically understood her point and equated "Arab" with "bad man."
-------------------------------------------------
CNN
By Campbell Brown
Commentary: So what if Obama were a Muslim or an Arab?
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/13/campbell.brown.obama/index.html

So what if Obama was Arab or Muslim? So what if John McCain was Arab or Muslim? Would it matter?

When did that become a disqualifier for higher office in our country? When did Arab and Muslim become dirty words? The equivalent of dishonorable or radical?
-------------------------------------------------

Monsters on the phone: Who wants to answer them?

2008-10-08T12:57:00.000-07:00

Monsters on the phone: Who wants to answer them?

I guess, it would be who does NOT? Once you see the consequence, you wouldn't dare to ignore.

I don't want to get into any argument, but just to release some of my frustration I would like to congratulate.

I would like to congratulate those who, by some magical way, succeed to bring back Pharaohs in the land.

Sure enough the phones are ringing. Guess who is on the other side? Yeap!! It's the monster himself. Live for a hiding place near you! There are many of them. Not to worry, we got lot of phones as well.

Welcome to the land of Pharaohs.

I hope some of us are happy!

If you can't see the attachment, you may access it here:
http://prothom-alo.com/archive/news_details_home.php?dt=2008-10-08&issue_id=1065&nid=MTkyMTU=
Prothom Alo, October 8, 2008

Thanks,
Babu

Recap: Democratic Convention 2008

2008-08-29T17:01:00.001-07:00

Obama's acceptance speech:
--------------------------
Transcript:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/28/obama.transcript/index.html
Video:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/28/obama.transcript/index.html#cnnSTCVideo

Sen. Joe Biden's acceptance speech
----------------------------------
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/27/biden.transcript/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/27/biden.transcript/index.html#cnnSTCVideo

John Kerry's DNC speech:
--------------------------
Years ago when we protested a war, people would weigh in against us saying, "My country right or wrong." Our answer? Absolutely, my country right or wrong. When right, keep it right. When wrong, make it right. Sometimes loving your country demands you must tell the truth to power.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/27/john-kerry-democratic-con_n_121944.html

Bill Clinton's DNC speech:
--------------------------
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/27/bill.clinton.transcript/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/27/bill.clinton.transcript/index.html#cnnSTCVideo

Al Gore's speech
------------------
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/28/gore.transcript/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/28/gore.transcript/index.html#cnnSTCVideo

Hilary's DNC speech:
-----------------------
"But remember, before we can keep going, we have to get going by electing Barack Obama the next president of the United States.
We don't have a moment to lose or a vote to spare.
Nothing less than the fate of our nation and the future of our children hang in the balance."
Transcript: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/26/clinton.transcript/index.html
Video:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/26/clinton.transcript/index.html#cnnSTCVideo

Michelle Obama's DNC speech:
-----------------------------
Are we nominating the `wrong` Obama? I mean, she was so good. She over shadow her husband's 2004 keynote speech.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/25/michelle.obama.transcript/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/25/michelle.obama.transcript/index.html#cnnSTCVideo

Ted Kennedy's DNC speech:
--------------------------
"And nothing -- nothing is going to keep me away from this special gathering tonight.
I have come here tonight to stand with you to change America, to restore its future, to rise to our best ideals, and to elect Barack Obama president of the United States."
Transcript: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/25/kennedy.dnc.transcript/index.html
Video:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/25/kennedy.dnc.transcript/index.html#cnnSTCVideo

Look who failed the Wiretap test

2008-07-09T19:05:00.000-07:00

Full Senate Roll-Call Vote - H.R. 6304 (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 )

Yeas - 69

Alexander (R-TN)
Allard (R-CO)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Baucus (D-MT)
Bayh (D-IN)
Bennett (R-UT)
Bond (R-MO)
Brownback (R-KS)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burr (R-NC)
Carper (D-DE)
Casey (D-PA)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Coleman (R-MN)
Collins (R-ME)
Conrad (D-ND)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Craig (R-ID)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Dole (R-NC)
Domenici (R-NM)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Graham (R-SC)
Grassley (R-IA)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hagel (R-NE)
Hatch (R-UT)
Hutchison (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Inouye (D-HI)
Isakson (R-GA)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kohl (D-WI)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lieberman (ID-CT)
Lincoln (D-AR)
Lugar (R-IN)
Martinez (R-FL)
McCaskill (D-MO)
McConnell (R-KY)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE)
Obama (D-IL)
Pryor (D-AR)
Roberts (R-KS)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Salazar (D-CO)
Shelby (R-AL)
Smith (R-OR)
Snowe (R-ME)
Specter (R-PA)
Stevens (R-AK)
Sununu (R-NH)
Thune (R-SD)
Vitter (R-LA)
Voinovich (R-OH)
Warner (R-VA)
Webb (D-VA)
Whitehouse (D-RI)
Wicker (R-MS)

Nays - 28

Akaka (D-HI)
Biden (D-DE)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Boxer (D-CA)
Brown (D-OH)
Byrd (D-WV)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Cardin (D-MD)
Clinton (D-NY)
Dodd (D-CT)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Harkin (D-IA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Klobuchar (D-MN)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Murray (D-WA)
Reed (D-RI)
Reid (D-NV)
Sanders (I-VT)
Schumer (D-NY)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Tester (D-MT)
Wyden (D-OR)

Not Voting - 3

Kennedy (D-MA)
McCain (R-AZ)
Sessions (R-AL)

“Hussein” could be a common household middle name!

2008-06-30T12:13:00.000-07:00

I am fascinated by this guy’s ability to inspire people.

This is a preemptive strike in good sense. Come this fall, it’s obvious that the right wing will use Obama’s middle name in a very ugly way. They don’t want to pull the trigger too early. Well, as it seems, they may have missed the train.

Nice move!

-Babu

Obama Supporters Take His Name as Their Own
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/us/politics/29hussein.html?bl&ex=1214971200&en=442dcec2d2792561&ei=5087%0A

The NY Times
June 29, 2008
Obama Supporters Take His Name as Their Own
By JODI KANTOR

Emily Nordling has never met a Muslim, at least not to her knowledge. But this spring, Ms. Nordling, a 19-year-old student from Fort Thomas, Ky., gave herself a new middle name on Facebook.com, mimicking her boyfriend and shocking her father.

“Emily Hussein Nordling,” her entry now reads.

With her decision, she joined a growing band of supporters of Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, who are expressing solidarity with him by informally adopting his middle name.

The result is a group of unlikely-sounding Husseins: Jewish and Catholic, Hispanic and Asian and Italian-American, from Jaime Hussein Alvarez of Washington, D.C., to Kelly Hussein Crowley of Norman, Okla., to Sarah Beth Hussein Frumkin of Chicago.

Jeff Strabone of Brooklyn now signs credit card receipts with his newly assumed middle name, while Dan O’Maley of Washington, D.C., jiggered his e-mail account so his name would appear as “D. Hussein O’Maley.” Alex Enderle made the switch online along with several other Obama volunteers from Columbus, Ohio, and now friends greet him that way in person, too.

Mr. Obama is a Christian, not a Muslim. Hussein is a family name inherited from a Kenyan father he barely knew, who was born a Muslim and died an atheist. But the name has become a political liability. Some critics on cable television talk shows dwell on it, while others, on blogs or in e-mail messages, use it to falsely assert that Mr. Obama is a Muslim or, more fantastically, a terrorist.

“I am sick of Republicans pronouncing Barack Obama’s name like it was some sort of cuss word,” Mr. Strabone wrote in a manifesto titled “We Are All Hussein” that he posted on his own blog and on dailykos.com.

So like the residents of Billings, Mont., who reacted to a series of anti-Semitic incidents in 1993 with a townwide display of menorahs in their front windows, these supporters are brandishing the name themselves.

“My name is such a vanilla, white-girl American name,” said Ashley Holmes of Indianapolis, who changed her name online “to show how little meaning ‘Hussein’ really has.”

The movement is hardly a mass one, and it has taken place mostly online, the digital equivalent of wearing a button with a clever, attention-getting message. A search revealed hundreds of participants across the country, along with a YouTube video and bumper stickers promoting the idea. Legally changing names is too much hassle, participants say, so they use “Hussein” on Facebook and in blog posts and comments on sites like nytimes.com, dailykos.com and mybarackobama.com, the campaign’s networking site.

New Husseins began to crop up online as far back as last fall. But more joined up in February after a conservative radio host, Bill Cunningham, used Mr. Obama’s middle name three times and disparaged him while introducing Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, at a campaign rally. (Mr. McCain repudiated Mr. Cunningham’s comments).

The practice has been proliferating ever since. In interviews, several Obama supporters said they dreamed up the idea on their own, with no input from the campaign and little knowledge that others shared their thought.

Some said they were inspired by movies, including “Spartacus,” the 1960 epic about a Roman slave whose peers protect him by calling out “I am Spartacus!” to Roman soldiers, and “In and Out,” a 1997 comedy about a gay high school teacher whose students protest his firing by proclaiming that they are all gay as well.

“It’s one of those things that just takes off, because everybody got it right away,” said Stephanie Miller, a left-leaning comedian who blurted out the idea one day during a broadcast of her syndicated radio talk show and repeated it on CNN.

Ms. Miller and her fellow new Husseins are embracing the traditionally Muslim name even as the Obama campaign shies away from Muslim associations. Campaign workers ushered two women in head scarves out of a camera’s range at a rally this month in Detroit. (The campaign has apologized.) Aides canceled a December appearance on behalf of Mr. Obama by Representative Keith Ellison, a Minnesota Democrat and the first Muslim congressman.

Mr. Obama may be more enthusiastic, judging from his response at a Chicago fund-raiser two weeks ago. When he saw that Richard Fizdale, a longtime contributor, wore “Hussein” on his name tag, Mr. Obama broke into a huge grin, Mr. Fizdale said.

“The theory was, we’re all Hussein,” Mr. Obama said to the crowd later, explaining Mr. Fizdale’s gesture.

Some Obama supporters say they were moved to action because of what their own friends, neighbors and relatives were saying about their candidate. Mark Elrod, a political science professor at Harding University in Searcy, Ark., is organizing students and friends to declare their Husseinhood on Facebook on Aug. 4, Mr. Obama’s birthday.

Ms. Nordling changed her name after volunteering for Mr. Obama before the Kentucky primary.

“People would not listen to what you were saying on the phone or on their doorstep because they thought he was Muslim,” she said.

Ms. Nordling’s uncle liked the idea so much that he joined the same Facebook group that she had. But when her father saw her new online moniker, he was incredulous.

“He actually thought I was going to convert to Islam,” Ms. Nordling said.

Sisters on the Planet - Sahena's story

2008-06-12T16:41:00.001-07:00

UK based charity organization launched a campaign called "Sisters on the Planet".

They created 4 short films on 4 women fighting climate change from 4 continents. This one is on Sahena, a village community activist/leader from Bangladesh.

"As obvious as it sounds, climate change affects everybody. But climate change is already having a disproportionate impact on people in developing countries, and it's hitting women hardest."

"Watch them and become aware of the impact our changing climate is having on people's lives. And be inspired to join the fight against climate change too."

http://www.oxfam.org.uk/get_involved/campaign/climate_change/sisters/sahena.html

If you have problem watching @oxfam's website, you can watch it in youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqYgDGy8Z4M

Interesting development in Bangladesh

2008-06-12T15:16:00.001-07:00

Hope you are enjoying the ride :)

1. Bangladesh army witnesses major reshuffle, silent coup?
http://www.edeshi.com/deshinews/2008/06/bangladesh-army-witnesses-major.html

2. BNP decoys endorsed AL in power (desperate? surely they know something that we don't)
http://www.shamokal.com/details.php?nid=95110

3. 1/11 key player Masud set for exile
http://nation.ittefaq.com/issues/2008/06/09/news0879.htm

4. Dr. Hasina released (went to exile?)
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gpDmJ14RcB5d26Vf8RNqHgA0c7Qg

5. Heavyweight assault: Motiur Rahman on BNP decoys (both wing)
http://prothom-alo.com/archive/news_details_home.php?dt=2008-06-12&issue_id=951&nid=MTY2NTU=

6. One big happy family?

Keith Olbermann on Hillary's A-word

2008-05-25T12:41:00.000-07:00

Opps...Hillary invoked the A-word which made lots of folks upset. Here
is Keith Olbermann's (MSNBC) commentary on this, just in case you
missed it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa85uo1QyGw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sny8VfgcjaI

Thanks,
Babu

Asian states feel rice pinch

2008-04-14T19:20:00.000-07:00

In the news: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7324596.stm

This article is related to what some of us have been discussing. One of my friends forwarded this with a note (commented at the bottom). It looks like that we are facing a worldwide food shortage. Keep in mind that BD is coming into this crisis with two legs down (by flood & Sidr).

I always believe that it is some kind of crisis that creates the opportunity for a great leader to emerge. (By pulling us back in to life) Let's pray that we do have a leader among us who can save the day. Let's not disguise ourselves by doing back comparison with our known evils (aka don makers and their dons).

Thanks,
Babu

Regarding questions from a non-Muslim on Muslims, Mohamed, Jesus, protest, violence

2008-04-08T12:33:00.000-07:00

Regarding questions from a non-Muslim on Muslims, Mohamed, Jesus, protest, violence

A non-Muslim have asked following question in a forum I came accross:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why is it the case that Muslims protests violently and many people died over number of cartoon, film, book which depicts Mohamed badly? But no one died when same thing happens with Jesus. Question #1: Are Muslims more violent then Christians?

Let’s forget Christians, let’s talk about Muslims and Islamic view only.
Muslims always tell me that Mohamed is not divine. He is a messenger/prophet of God. Muslims love and respect Jesus, Mary, Moses same way as all the prophets including Mohamed. Why is then we see Muslims protests violently against anti-Mohamed incident, but not against anti-Jesus incident? Didn’t you say that they both are prophets of same God and Muslims love them both!
Question #2: Is it because Islamic prophet Mohamed gave more violent teaching than Islamic prophet Jesus? (Compare only Islamic view of both the prophets and compare only Muslims reaction to both the prophets)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

I do not have an immediate answer. But his questions made me thinking, REALLY THINKING!
I would ask you all to THINK about this:
“Compare ONLY Islamic view of both the prophets and compare ONLY Muslims reaction to both the prophets”

1. Are we following the real teaching of Mohamed (peach be upon him)?

2. Would he have approved this (http://southernledger.com/ap/117514/25,000_Pakistanis_Protest_Quran_Film)?

3. Who is actually defaming Mohamed (peach be upon him) more? Is it the cartoonist and film makers? Or is it these violent protesters?

4. Think as a third party and non believer’s perspective. Which one is more likely?
a) John Doe see a cartoon portrays Mohamed as bad person, he come to conclusion that Mohamed IS in fact a bad person.
b) John Doe sees 25000 angry followers of Mohamed burning cars, creating riots, people died, he come to conclusion that the very person they are following must be a bad person.

4. Who is doing more harm toward image of Muslims and Mohamed (peach be upon him)? Who is guilty more? Who would be disliked more by Mohamed (peach be upon him)? Who would be disliked more by God?

-x86

The Unknown Citizen -- A poem by W. H. Auden

2007-11-23T10:46:00.000-08:00

The Unknown Citizen

(To JS/07/M/378 This Marble Monument Is Erected by the State)

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Installment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace; when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

-- W. H. Auden

Recently I came across this poem written around 1939, just before the WW2.

Wystan Hugh Auden was born in England in 1907 and moved to the United States in 1939. This is his observation or view toward American state and bureaucracy. The narrator in this poem, I think, is the state. He is saying about a citizen who is just an average person, nothing unusual about him. Also the state is viewing its citizens only by letters and numbers. The state, by its various agencies, is monitoring all his actions. He is expected to do things in a certain way, give certain opinion, work hard to satisfy employers and pay his dues to the union. Basically the state is pre-planned the “right way” for every thing and make sure he and all average citizens fill into that.

The state through is press make sure that “he bought a paper every day” and that “his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way”. That’s how the bureaucracy creates an opinion that they want. Auden said “When there was peace, he was for peace; when there was war, he went”. Auden describes as many as 10 people and groups check and monitor this individual person, but still he is an “Unknown Citizen”. That’s because no one is interested about his individuality, they monitor him through his record and numbers, just like you would do to a machine if you want to make sure that it is working “properly”. The state and its bureaucracy are manipulating the whole system and give you an illusion of freedom. At the end, Auden is saying it is really an absurd question to ask if he is free or even happy. No one is interested on that. If any thing goes “wrong” according to the master, we would certainly have heard and he would have been dealt with.

-x86

Pakistan and its prisoners of destiny

2007-10-23T18:42:00.000-07:00

The Hindu : Opinion
Wednesday, Oct 24, 2007

Pakistan and its prisoners of destiny

Ramesh Thakur

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Benazir Bhutto knows how to press the right buttons when speaking to Western audiences through the mass media. But clichés of women empowerment, democracy, poverty eradication, human rights and war against terrorists are all at odds with the actual record of her rule as Prime Minister, not once but twice.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Benazir Bhutto’s autobiography was originally published as Daughter of the East (June 1989) but then changed to Daughter of Destiny (January 1990). The sense of destiny manifested itself last Thursday when she returned to Pakistan to reclaim the family legacy of ruling over the volatile, nuclear-armed country that has been buffeted by increasingly strong Islamist crosswinds.

The same sense of destiny that explains her sense of entitlement to rule is likely the wellspring of her remarkable courage in proceeding with the journey against the explicit advice of Pervez Musharraf and the chilling threat from Islamist enemies of the “welcome” she could expect. They delivered immediately on their threat and killed over 140, but not her.

Pakistan’s destiny has been tied up with the story of the Bhutto family and its relationship with the army, the real arbiter of the country’s government, politics and economy; with the relationship with India, largely one of enmity with periodic peace feelers; and with the relationship with the United States.

India may be the mother of dynastic democracies. Motilal Nehru joined the Congress Party in the early years of the struggle for independence. His son Jawaharlal led the country to independence and delivered one of history’s great political speeches, on a par with Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, on August 15, 1947. India had made a tryst with destiny, he proclaimed, and the time had come to redeem the pledge. The mantle passed from him to daughter Indira and then to her son Rajiv.

The story of dynastic succession is often punctuated with tragedies. Both Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi were assassinated. Rajiv’s younger brother Sanjay, who had been the heir apparent, died when the light plane he was piloting crashed in Delhi. Destiny then embraced Italian-born Sonia Gandhi, a daughter-in-law of the Nehru family, as a daughter of India and as supreme leader of the party of independence. Son Rahul Gandhi is now being groomed as the next heir to the family patrimony.

The Bhutto dynasty in Pakistan has not been quite as dominant as the Nehru-Gandhi in India. Benazir did not have the prime ministership fall into her lap but had to fight adversity in order to reclaim it after a military rule by a man who, promoted by her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, ended up killing him through judicial murder. Her brother was also killed subsequently by the police in circumstances that remain murky.

Bangladesh has two political dynasties, one headed by Hasina Wajed, the daughter of the country’s founding father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and the second by Khaleda Zia, widow of General Ziaur Rahman who took charge of the country after Sheikh Mujibur and many members of his family were assassinated just four years after independence. Every election in Bangladesh becomes a battle of the begums.

Sri Lanka too has two political dynasties: the Senanayake (Don Stephen and son Dudley) and the Bandaranaike (Solomon Dias, widow Sirimavo — who in 1959 became the world’s first woman Prime Minister — and daughter Chandrika Kumaratunga, the last President who, from 1994 to 2000, had her mother Sirimavo as her Prime Minister) families.

Thus the dominance of political dynasties, the habit of assassinations and palace intrigues, and the striking success of women inheritors of the dynasty are common across South Asia. Inder Malhotra has written a fascinating account of the political dynasties of the subcontinent since the British left (Dynasties of India and Beyond, 2003).

The reality of political dynasties is not limited to the subcontinent. The mantle passed seamlessly from father to son in Syria and looks likely to do so in Egypt. In Indonesia, Megawati Sukarnoputri moved back into the palace in which she grew up as a child. In North Korea, we have the world’s only example of a Stalinist dynasty.

In the United States, the dynastic credentials of the Kennedy clan (which too is no stranger to family tragedy) seem to be waning. Instead, we bear witness to the rise of the alternating Bush and Clinton dynasties.

All of which would suggest that whatever else may explain the phenomenon in South Asia, it isn’t just a matter of these societies being still essentially in a state of 19th-century suspended feudalism.

Washington may believe it was merely the midwife to the new power-sharing arrangement in which Gen. Musharraf wins the presidency but sheds his uniform while Ms Bhutto becomes Prime Minister. There is the very real risk, however, that Washington will be viewed by millions of Muslims as the puppet master pulling the strings once again in yet another Islamic country. This will be hardened by the fact that while Ms Bhutto enters into a power-sharing deal with Gen. Musharraf, Nawaz Sharif — the legally elected Prime Minister whom Gen. Musharraf deposed — was not even allowed to return to Pakistan. The whole saga could thus feed into the narrative of Islamic grievance against the U.S.

Therein lies a clue to why “they” continue to hate “us.” Benazir Bhutto was rather more complicit in encouraging and tolerating Pakistan’s many pathologies (Faustian bargains with the Islamists that included tolerating anti-woman laws, state sponsorship of cross-border terrorism in Kashmir, and self-enrichment — her husband was widely known within Pakistan as “Mr. 10 per cent” based on what people alleged was his share of any government contracts); while Mr. Sharif tried to curb some of them and made some effort at reconciliation with India.

The fascination with Ms Bhutto by the people and governments of the West remains a mystery. Perhaps it is due to her charisma and Western education. She certainly knows how to press the right buttons when speaking to Western audiences through the mass media. Clichés of female empowerment, democracy, poverty eradication, human rights and war against the terrorists trip readily enough off her tongue. But they are all at odds with the actual record of her rule as Prime Minister, not once but twice.

‘Make no mistake’

As Jemima Khan commented in Britain’s Sunday Telegraph, “It’s all totally bogus. Benazir may speak the language of liberalism and look good on Larry King’s sofa, but both her terms in office were marked by incompetence, extra-judicial killings and brazen looting of the treasury.” She ended by warning: “Make no mistake, Benazir may look the part, but she’s as ruthless and conniving as they come — a kleptocrat in a Hermes headscarf.”

Lest the comments seem harsh — they certainly jibe with my impressions and memories of her rule — consider the circumstances last week. She makes a U.K.-U.S.-sponsored deal with Gen. Musharraf under which the intensely unpopular and besieged General can become President while corruption charges against her are dropped (Gen. Musharraf’s National Accountability Bureau reckoned she had $1.5 billion stashed away in Swiss accounts) so she can return from eight years of self-exile. The commitment to democracy is proven in cutting the last elected Prime Minister out of any power-sharing and deporting him so he cannot contest elections, free or rigged. The egotism is evident in dismissing advice to delay her return owing to several threats of suicide terrorists, rejecting the offer of a helicopter ride from the airport to her house in Karachi, encouraging a public rally from the airport to the city to welcome her as a show of mass support for her, organising an armour-plated bus for herself but leaving her crowded supporters vulnerable to terrorist carnage.

Pakistan’s legendary cricketer-turned politician Imran Khan, who was at Oxford with her, wrote (also in the Sunday Telegraph) that “Given the way that she has undermined democracy by siding with Musharraf, I don’t know how Benazir has the nerve to say that 130 people killed in those bomb blasts sacrificed their lives for the sake of democracy in Pakistan.” But they did — for dynastic democracy.

(Ramesh Thakur is distinguished fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation and professor of political science at the University of Waterloo in Canada.)

Source: http://www.hindu.com/2007/10/24/stories/2007102453911201.htm

Two fallacies: Why not catch them ALL? Are YOU good enough to catch?

2007-09-04T11:12:00.000-07:00

Two fallacies:
1. Why not catch them ALL?
2. Are YOU good enough to catch?

Some people are not happy about current crack down of corruption in Bangladesh aka war-on-corruption. They “see” lot of problems with it. Most of the folks tell me about two problems.

First one is that why pick and choose? They say that if you arrest and punish them for this or that violation of law, then how come you are not punishing others? They laugh (showing there 32 teeth or 36?) about punishing some of our dons on tax violation? They are like, well, every body defy tax laws in BD. If you can not punish ALL of them, you should not punish ANY.

Second complain I hear is that, WHO are these folks to punish? They are doing the same mistake. They are violating this and that law themselves, they will give some examples. Folks get some how angry at this point, and say CG is not dhowa-tulshi-pata themselves either. They all are same, so no one should punish our corrupt leaders. Let them be free!

Say an officer stop you in the road and give you a speeding ticket. Does it mean that every one that have crossed speed limit also have to get a ticket. Hmm…. May be I will use this excuse next time. Tell the judge that, since law is equal to every one and you have not fined every one who speeds, you can not punish me. Interesting, huh? This is a fallacy I see many of my fellow Bangladeshi for some reason believe. Don’t ask me why, I have no idea.

Here is another fallacy. Think about the officer that gave you the ticket. Is he a perfect man/woman? Didn’t he ever violate any law? How come then HE give me the ticket? What if he get arrested the next day for some sin that he did? Will that make ME any less guilty? I don’t know how this fallacy come into us either. It’s not between YOU and the OFFICER. It’s between YOU and the STATE. It is between YOU and the LAW.

On a second thought, may be I do have a hypothesis on why we have these fallacies. May be it’s because we have been ruled by our masters for centuries. Masters are not like us in any way (by the skin). And of course masters don’t have any fault, what they DO is the LAW. Problems start to pile on when we are in the arena of self-govern. Now, why the hell you deserve to punish me or judge me, huh? You are almost just like me. The masters were different at least by the skin, you are not. So YOU must have to be some kind of angel to deserve to judge me.

Yeah, I know. May be, there is very weak logic behind this hypothesis. Well, do you have a better one?

-X86

FW: ...... Star coverage of 9/3 ......

2007-09-04T10:58:00.000-07:00

1. Khaleda lands in sub-jail
2. The mandate that Khaleda Zia wasted
3. Mixed reaction among public
4. From a housewife to premiership
5. Moments before the arrest
6. Star Editorial : Khaleda's arrest

==========================
1. Khaleda lands in sub-jail
==========================
Published On: 2007-09-04
Son Koko taken on remand; she expels rebel Bhuiyan, Ashraf from party
Staff Correspondent

Escorted by police, BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia waves before entering the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate's Court in the capital yesterday morning. Photo: STAR
A Dhaka court yesterday sent BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia to jail and placed her younger son Arafat Rahman Koko on a seven-day remand a couple of hours after they were arrested on graft charges at their cantonment residence.

The arrests followed close on the heels of the Anti-Corruption Commission's (ACC) filing the first graft case against the former premier and her son after the state of emergency came into force on January 11.

In the case filed with the Tejgaon Police Station late on Sunday night, Khaleda, her son and 11 others were charged with violating tender conditions in appointing an indenting house for container handling.

The joint forces hauled them in a little after 7:30am, and took them straight to the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate's (CMM) Court, Dhaka at 8:05am.

At the court premises, Khaleda's lawyers in her presence announced that BNP Secretary General Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan and Joint Secretary General Ashraf Hossain have been expelled for "attempts to split the party in the name of reforms with support from the government".

Like her archrival Awami League (AL) President Sheikh Hasina who was arrested on extortion charges on July 16, Khaleda too was sent to a special jail set up in the Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban complex.

Since the present military-backed caretaker government assumed power in January, the going has got tough for both the leaders who had run the country alternately for the last 15 years and boast a past of nine years' vigorous street agitations against military ruler HM Ershad.

In the event of conviction, they will be disqualified from contesting the next parliamentary election planned to be held within December 2008.

Soon after declaration of the state of emergency, it has been widely discussed that the two might be forced to quit politics for alleged abuse of power and corruption.

But lately many have been questioning the government's approach to its anti-graft drive, as it was yet to take action against Khaleda long after detaining Hasina and having at least four cases filed against her.

Appearing before the crowded courtroom, the BNP chief protested her innocence and described the case against her and Koko as false and part of a conspiracy against her party and family. She sought bail for her and Koko in line with the submissions made by their counsels earlier.

Law Adviser Mainul Hosein, however, rejected Khaleda's allegation and said, "Arrests of the two former prime ministers have proved that the present government is not biased towards any party."

The mother and son, who once were considered to be dwelling somewhere high above the law, looked gloomy while in the dock.

Khaleda was brought in an ash Nissan Patrol while Koko in a red Pajero amid tight security measures along the stretch between their Shahid Moinul Road residence and the court.

In a white chiffon saree, Khaleda however smiled and waved outside the courtroom. At that time, a group of party faithful were chanting slogans.

Meanwhile, sources in the administration said that more graft cases would soon be filed against her.

According to the BNP constitution, she will be disqualified from holding the party chief's post and retaining the membership if she is convicted of graft.

Immediately after the court orders, the security forces whisked her off to the makeshift jail. This is for the first time she has landed in a prison in a political career spanning over two decades.

Late president Ziaur Rahman who founded the BNP in 1978 after taking over state power as a military ruler won public support for what many political observers say his stance against corruption. But the image of his widowed wife, who ruled the country for 10 years since restoration of democracy in a mass upsurge in 1990, has been tainted by corruption allegations.

During her last stint as the prime minister, many of the party lawmakers and leaders had allegedly been involved in massive corruption and made a huge wealth.

The country's political situation turned volatile in October last year as the BNP-led four-party alliance tried desperately to hold the ninth parliament election despite the AL-led grand alliance's decision to boycott the polls that they viewed were designed to bring BNP and allies back to power.

Amid violence and chaos on the streets, President Iajuddin Ahmed, who assumed the office of the chief adviser sidestepping various constitutional options, stood aside as the caretaker government chief on January 11. He declared the state of emergency and postponed the election scheduled for January 22.

Fakhruddin Ahmed took the reins with a promise to rid politics of corruption before holding the stalled parliamentary election. In February, his administration launched a crackdown on graft suspects and began rounding up the political and business heavy weights on charge of corruption.

LEGAL PROCEDURE
Opposing Khaleda's plea for bail, Assistant Commissioner (prosecution) Maqbul Hossain Khan yesterday told the court that it is a very sensitive case and so she should be confined to jail till the investigation is completed.

He also petitioned the court to place Koko on a 10-day remand.

Hearing both the sides, Magistrate ABM Abdul Fattah rejected the bail prayer and sent her to jail. He also placed Koko on a seven-day remand in police custody.

Khaleda's other son, Tarique Rahman, who was perceived to be the most powerful man during the last BNP government, has already been detained on graft charges.

The assistant commissioner (prosecution) told the court that an application for bringing the case under the emergency power rules has been in process at the home ministry.

Once the case is brought under the emergency power rules, Khaleda will not be entitled to bail, and she will be ineligible to contest the polls if found guilty by a trial court.

The same day the investigation officer of the case submitted a petition seeking permission to carry out a search of the cantonment residence. In response, Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Jalal Ahmed assigned Metropolitan Magistrate Mohammad Ashrafuddin to conduct the search.

Earlier, the assistant commissioner (prosecution) placed the case dockets and read out the charges brought in the first information report (FIR) and the forwarding report.

Moving the petitions for bail and cancellation of the remand prayer, the counsels for Khaleda and Koko told the court that the two have been implicated as part of a conspiracy to harass them.

GOVT ACTIONS AGAINST HER
On June 12, Khaleda, Tarique Rahman and 12 other BNP leaders, who were directors of Daily Dinkal Limited, were sued for not submitting service returns of the daily for the past several years.

Under the Income Tax Ordinance, 1984, the Central Intelligence Cell (CIC) of the NBR had earlier asked the banks to provide it along with bank account information of Khaleda and 10 of her family members.

Finally on August 29, the NBR asked all banks to freeze the accounts of the former prime minister, her son Koko and nine others of her family.

Sources said the government is preparing to file a case over Khaleda's wealth statement submitted to the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC), which has gross anomalies.

The NBR recently allowed Khaleda to legalise Tk 1.30 crore undisclosed money on payment of Tk 33 lakh tax but rejected Tarique and Koko's bid to legalise Tk 18 lakh and Tk 1.5 crore respectively by paying a total tax and fine of Tk 44 lakh.

Earlier, the High Court quashed two graft cases against Khaleda Zia filed during the AL regime regarding decoration of her house and airbus purchase.

PAST SEVEN MONTHS OF KHALEDA
Khaleda, who ruled the country for a maximum period as prime minister and run the party with an iron fist, became isolated within the party as most of the senior BNP leaders started keeping away from her since the beginning of the crackdown on the political bigwigs.

After the declaration of state of emergency, Khaleda kept running party activities from Hawa Bhaban, popularly known as the alternative powerhouse during the BNP regime, until slapping of the ban on indoor politics on March 7.

Next, she was reportedly put under pressure to leave the country, but later she changed her mind and decided to face the situation.

In June, BNP leaders led by Secretary General Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan came up with a set of reform proposals with a provision to exclude Khaleda from the helm of the party.

In the face of challenges from senior party leaders, Khaleda started holding teleconferences with other party leaders and activists within the country and overseas, urging them to be united against any 'conspiracy' against BNP.

Earlier in May, Khaleda cancelled her Singapore trip for medical check-up as her younger son Koko was sued for extortion and was barred to leave the country.

Most recently, she was not allowed to visit the grave of late president Ziaur Rahman on the occasion of founding anniversary of BNP on September 1.

KHALEDA'S HEALTH CONDITION
Khaleda Zia is physically fit now, DIG (Prison) Maj Shamsul Haider Siddiqui told a private television channel yesterday.

He also said that after arriving at the sub-jail, Khaleda took a cup of tea and then went to take rest.

In the sub-jail, she would be provided with four newspapers to read and a colour television to watch Bangladesh Television, the state owned television channel, the DIG said.

Replying to another query, he said that both Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina would receive same facilities in the sub-jails.
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2. The mandate that Khaleda Zia wasted
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Commentary
The mandate that Khaleda Zia wasted
She could have transformed our political culture
Mahfuz Anam

Seldom did an elected leader, especially in parliamentary democracy, receive the type of popular mandate as Khaleda Zia did in 2001. In fact she is the only leader who got elected as prime minister twice (We are not counting the controversial election of February '96) in our country's history. Of the 15 years of our unbroken succession of elected governments she was in power for ten years. In the last election in 2001 her party, the BNP, alone won 194 seats in a parliament of 300 seats. With her allies, her total strength in parliament was 217.

With such a mandate and her personal stature as a politician at her peak, she was in a position to totally reshape Bangladesh's political culture and economic prospects. With so many MPs at her command she could have demanded a higher standards of integrity and dedication from them. She could have warned that anyone found wanting in honesty and integrity would be expelled from the party, which would automatically lead, as per our law, to losing their seats in the Jatiya Sangsad. This would have saved us from corrupt politics, the primary reason for which our democracy now stands derailed.

The stability of government that such a massive electoral victory automatically implies could have easily been used to attract FDI. With steady FDI inflow, we could have easily reached our goal of 7 to 8 per cent of growth if not more. It was all within our reach only if she wanted it.

She could have brought an end to our confrontational politics by offering a hand of co-operation to the opposition, which ruling parties with massive parliamentary strengths usually do. Instead, from the very start, she took a tough policy in dealing with them starting from physical attack on the opposition immediately after her election victory. Terming it as wrath of common people for AL's misgovernance, the BNP and its allies turned a blind eye to, if not directly participated in assaults of thousands of AL activists in several districts.

Subsequent repression on rallies by the opposition, denying them their due participation inside the Jatiya Sangsad and never giving any importance to them in formulating policies resulted in the erosion of the moral strength that such a huge mandate usually carries.

Instead of her unprecedented strength leading to farsighted, conciliatory fence-mending attitude, she became imperial in personal style, arrogant in political behaviour and condescending in dealing with important members of her own party. She attributed her party's sweeping victory to her son Tarique Rahman's election management, and as such, she felt ready to bring him directly into the power structure both of the party and of the government.

The proof of this is the growth of the Hawa Bhaban, which truly and practically became the second centre of power after the PMO. In fact, in some instances the Bhaban was more effective than the PMO itself as functionaries often felt that getting the son's support was more useful than the mother's as the latter's consent could be taken for guaranteed if the former's was already there.

In our view, the seed of destruction of Khaleda Zia's government was sown almost immediately after her election victory. That seed was the size of the new government. Initially it was supposed to be small, say of round 35 to 40 members. But about 48 hours before oath-taking the word came out that the cabinet would be nearly of 60 members, the highest ever in Bangladesh, and bigger than most governments in the world.

This was Tarique Rahman's first major foray into governance. He insisted on appointing his loyalists as deputy or state ministers virtually in every ministry. So we had a dual government where the cabinet ministers were reporting to the PM while their deputies to Tarique Rahman.

Over time, as more and more cabinet ministers found out that they were being either overridden in decision making, or totally ignored, they realised where the real governance emanated from and either started visiting Hawa Bhaban or became inactive.

In fact only a few ministers like Saifur Rahman, Mannan Bhuiyan, Khandakar Mosharraf wielded some power. Others literally became ciphers. The duality in government brought about by the rise of the Hawa Bhaban, which Khaleda Zia permitted or at least did nothing to stop, made it impossible for the government to function and as such destroyed it.

As loyalty to the Bhaban resulted in lucrative postings, extensions of job tenure and enhanced stature within the administration, the bureaucracy became totally politicised, followed by other branches of the government, especially the police and its branches.

While the Hawa Bhaban destroyed the government, another action by Khaleda Zia destroyed the BNP itself. That was the unceremonious removal of Dr Badruddoza Chowdhury from the position of the Head of State. The founding secretary general of the BNP, one of the earliest comrades of its founder Gen. Ziaur Rahman, (years before Khaleda Zia entered into politics) and one of its most revered leaders, Dr Chowdhury was made the President after the 2001 election.

Within seven months of assuming the Presidency he fell out of grace (why we still don't know, and in her arrogance she never bothered to give any explanation to parliament or to the public) and was forced to resign in a most humiliating manner. This was done without the slightest consideration to either the dignity of his office (after all it was the highest constitutional post) or respect for the contribution he made in making BNP one of the two largest parties in the country.

The humiliation did not end there. When the venerable doctor wanted to float his own party, BNP goons beat him up and the factories and residences of several of his main supporters were set on fire. So much for respect for rule of law. With the firing and humiliation of Dr Chowdhury it became evident, if evidence was at all necessary, that the BNP from now on would mean only Khaleda Zia and Tarique Rahman, and that party loyalty would be defined as total, unquestioned and blind support for the Zia family.

The mother and the son's writ would be party law and the slightest trace of dissent would result in the swift dismissal from the party. So the ouster of Dr Chowdhury transformed the BNP from a party with whatever little semblance of collective decision making to one of total centralised power to be run on personal whims and caprice of first the mother, Khaleda Zia, and later the son, Tarique Rahman.

As we had said earlier, the Hawa Bhaban destroyed the government and Dr Chowdhury's dismissal destroyed the party. Both these events occurred within seven months of Khaleda Zia's second term. From then on it was a one-way slide downwards, presided over by the leader who got such a huge parliamentary majority and who really had a chance to change Bangladesh as we know it and who, with a little bit of modesty and capacity for introspection and self criticism, could have done it.

We are deliberately not bring on the issues of corruption under Khaleda Zia's tenure as she has been accused of it and the matter should be decided in court. However, it must be mentioned that evidence of graft was all around. While we continued to be termed as the most corrupt country in the world, our elected government preferred to do nothing to stem it except blaming those who were saying so.

It is amazing how little concern was expressed for the issue of corruption and how little was done to investigate the thousands of corruption stories that the media relentlessly published. Instead of finding out the culprits, it was the media that were accused of deliberately maligning the image of the country. Whether or not Khaleda Zia was personally corrupt the courts will decide. But the fact that she tolerated it and did absolutely nothing to either fight corruption or even to raise it as a matter of concern, are now a matter of record.

Now that Khaleda Zia is in custody we will insist that she be given all the protection of law and rights guaranteed by the constitution, especially since she has been twice our elected prime minister. Yet today we cannot but feel deeply sorry for the magnificent opportunity she wasted. Instead of giving us a Bangladesh of unity and growth she left us in a mire worse than the one when she came to power.

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3. Mixed reaction among public
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Mixed reaction among public
Staff Correspondent

People of different walks of life yesterday expressed mixed reactions over the arrest of BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia and her son Arafat Rahman Koko while many said they were not surprised at the government's move to arrest them.

Following the arrest, The Daily Star correspondents talked to over 100 people of different professions--lawyers, businessmen, NGO workers, students, rickshaw pullers, taxi drivers and other professionals.

Many preferred anonymity while some declined to make any comment regarding the arrest of the former premier and her son.

A corrupt person will eventually be punished, said Ismail, a coconut vendor of Hatirpul Bazar. They were involved with corruption for years together and that is why they have been put behind bars, he said.

A lawyer, wishing to remain anonymous, told The Daily Star that Khaleda Zia should have been arrested and put on trial much earlier as the countrymen suffered for their unbridled corruption during the BNP-Jamaat alliance government.

"Her government brought nothing but corruption, which

made Bangladesh the most corrupt country in the world," he said. He said successive governments always ignored the general people. They always thought about themselves and were busy with changing their own lot.

Many said there were rumours of Khaleda's arrest after the arrest of Awami League President Sheikh Hasina.

"It is nothing surprising since the rumour of Khaleda Zia's arrest was already around," said Mokhlesur Rahman, an employee of a private firm in the capital. "I think the move was made to balance out the actions taken against the rival party," he added.

A retired police officer told The Daily Star that during his days in service he had to carry out many unlawful orders from high-ups. With her arrest, he expects that such practices from Bangladesh politics would go forever.

Nazmul Alam, an electrical equipment dealer said, "We [referring to general people] all suspected that they were corrupt, now charges have been brought against them. We want her [Khaleda Zia] to be given exemplary punishment, if the charges brought against her are proved… if not she should not be harassed."

Kabir Ahmed, an NGO worker, said that Khaleda Zia's arrest proves that the government is sincere in its crackdown on corrupt people in the country.

When asked for comments, Mizanur Rahman, a banker, became a bit angry and said the government arrested Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina to implement their "minus-two policy". The government's plot will not be successful, he added.

"None is above the law and those who stole people's money and were involved with corruption must be brought to justice," said an owner of a shoe shop in the capital.

"I think her arrest was not handled properly. The process through which she was arrested is not very clear to us as she was arrested within a few hours of the filing of the case," said a banker seeking anonymity.

Many low-income people claimed the arrest did not affect them at all as it would not bring any positive changes to their lives. "It does not matter whether they were arrested or not as it does not bring any good to us," said Shah Ali, owner of a pharmacy at Karwan Bazar in the city.

He claimed he has not seen any changes in the lives of low-income people since the caretaker government came to power. Rather the prices of essentials are going up and out of their reach, he said.

During their "corrupt" regimes the situation was far better, he said adding that the government should concentrate more on price hike of essentials rather than arresting top political leaders.

Many claimed the government's move would not bring any positive changes for the country rather it might even create an anarchic situation.

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4. From a housewife to premiership
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From a housewife to premiership
Star Report

Khaleda Zia's political life has been defined by her rise from a reclusive and shy housewife of a slain president to the longest serving prime minister in Bangladesh's history.

First gaining fame as one of the spearheads of the anti-Ershad movement in the 80s, Khaleda subsequently became the country's first female head of government when she won the 1991 parliamentary elections after the restoration of democracy.

It all changed for Khaleda when her husband military leader and later president Gen Ziaur Rahman

was assassinated in 1981 during an abortive military coup and Gen Ershad came to power a year later.

Conspicuous by her low profile and image as the retiring housewife during her husband's presidency, Khaleda rose to prominence when she was appointed vice-chairman of BNP in 1982, the party founded by Ziaur Rahman in 1979. She later assumed the BNP chair in August, 1984.

Much like her political rival--Awami League (AL) chief Sheikh Hasina--Khaleda was brought in to quell the rising tensions within the party, unite the disparate forces within the party and fill in the power vacuum in BNP following Ziaur Rahman's death.

As BNP chair, she worked to unify political opposition to the authoritarian Ershad regime, forming a seven-party coalition alongside a similar grouping formed by the BNP's main rival, the AL.

During the nine years of military rule, Khaleda Zia was arrested seven times.

While she led the BNP's movement against the Ershad regime, she faced three attempts to break up the BNP from powerful forces within the party. Khaleda's adroit management of these three blows to the BNP strengthened her hold within the party and cleared her way to launch the upsurge against Ershad with a united BNP.

By 1990, discontent over Ershad's rule and support for the opposition political parties had grown sufficiently to convince the president to step down and organise fresh elections. Khaleda Zia led the BNP to a convincing victory in February 1991.

The 1991-96 Khaleda-led government was comparatively successful in revising the country's presidential system in favour of a parliamentary system, restoring the country's flagging economy with nominal signs of corruption. But, her government was largely blamed for holding farcical elections in February 1996, which were boycotted by the AL, ensuring a BNP victory, and Khaleda Zia had her second term in office in February. However, agitations continued and she called for fresh elections for June, which the BNP lost to the AL.

But, her last term in office, between 2001-2006, was marked by unprecedented corruption, wide-ranging abuse of power and flagrant violation of state regulations that subsequently triggered the violence and political crisis that precipitated the declaration of emergency on January 11.

She was heavily criticised by senior BNP leaders for stacking up the party leadership and cabinet posts with her sons, nephews, brothers, sisters and other relatives, which was not the case during her husband's regime or her own in 1991-96 government.

A critical turning point and burning example of this unchecked nepotism was the sacking and expulsion of erstwhile president of Bangladesh and BNP founding member, Badruddoza Chowdhury in the same party meeting, which promoted Khaleda's son Tarique Rahman to the post of senior joint-secretary-general of the party.

Khaleda's patronage of the corrupt and criminal elements within the BNP and its coalition partners in government gave her regime an aura of invincibility that allowed her party members--including her two sons--to demonstrate a minimum of accountability for their actions. The BNP had assumed power in 2001 with two-thirds majority.

Her last term in office also saw most violent expression of militancy in the country with her reported patronage of Bangla Bhai, who played a vital part in the creation of Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), responsible for the 469 near-simultaneous bomb blasts on August 17, 2005.

The longest serving prime minister in Bangladesh's history, Khaleda Zia was inaugurated for her third official term as prime minister of Bangladesh on 10 October 2001.

Election on 1 October 2001 were preceded by high levels of violent unrest and yielded a sweeping victory of the BNP and its coalition allies. The BNP secured 66 percent of the seats in parliament leaving the AL with just 20 percent. Khaleda Zia was inaugurated as prime minister nine days later.

Khaleda was born on August 15, 1945 in Dinajpur to businessman Iskander Mazumdar from Feni and his wife Taiyeba Mazumdar, a well-known social worker. Her late sister Khurshid Jahan Haq was a minister for women and children affairs and her brother Sayeed Iskander was a member of parliament. She has another sister and a brother.

At the age of 15, she married the then captain Ziaur Rahman in 1960 right after she passed her SSC examinations and then attended Surendranath College in Dinajpur where she attained her HSC in 1962. In 1971, she was under the custody of the Pakistani military with her two sons.

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5. Moments before the arrest
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Published On: 2007-09-04
Front Page
Moments before the arrest
Star report

She seemed reluctant to meet her fate. As law enforcers knocked at the door of Khaleda Zia's house at 5:30am, she appeared on the veranda more than 45 minutes later and asked: "Why are you here?"

The law enforcers then told her about the case and the reason for their presence at the address.

"Ok," Khaleda tartly replied. "Let me offer prayers, get my suitcase packed and then I will come out."

As the law enforcers requested her to let them in, she sounded agitated, "What for? You have already checked my house thrice. Why again?"

At around 7:30am, Khaleda finally stepped out with her son Koko to their uncertain future. She still looked angry.

As she walked to the vehicle, she almost said in a monologue: "I am very sad today. Why are you taking away the Zia family members one after another? Why don't you just round them together and send them to the firing squad?"

Hours later, as she stepped inside the lavish Speaker's house-turned-sub-jail complete with central AC, she looked to be lost in a different world far from her palatial luxury. She was received by the inspector general of prisons. A little hesitantly, she muttered: "I never did any household work. You know I am suffering from arthritis. May I have my personal servant to do my works?"

The jail officials said they would look into the rules if her request could be complied with.

Khaleda was then led upstairs to her bedroom. As the officials left her to herself, Khaleda gave them a crucifying last look.

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6. Star Editorial : Khaleda's arrest
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Published On: 2007-09-04
Editorial
Editorial
Khaleda's arrest
Due process of law must be ensured

The ex-PM's arrest does not come as a surprise. In fact the news of Khaleda Zia's impending arrest had been in the air for sometime, particularly after the arrest of Sheikh Hasina. Many had been left wondering after July 16, 2007 as to what kept an immediate past PM out of the reach of the law while an ex-PM, whose tenure of office had been long over, was incarcerated.

It would not be wrong on our part to suggest that there were doubts in the public mind regarding the government's intention of making public office-holders, and those who benefited by exploiting political and family linkages, accountable under the current anti-corruption drive. It was reinforced with the release of Khaleda Zia's youngest son, soon after he was arrested the first time. With their arrest one hopes that all the speculations would have been put at rest.

Now that Khaleda Zia has been arrested we would expect that all due process of law would be followed and that the facilities that the law of the land provides to an accused would be afforded to the ex-PM.

We feel obligated to repeat in case of Khaleda Zia what we had said in these columns after the arrest of Sheikh Hasina. Both the party leaders, in spite of the way they chose to conduct politics during their term in office, have developed a stature and standing of their own in the minds of the public. Therefore we insist that they, both Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina, must be treated with due dignity and honour and ensured all legal rights during the process of trial. So far, to the credit of this government, both these leaders have been treated with due respect.

We would like to call upon the government to ensure that whatever charges are brought against the accused, they are grounded on incontrovertible facts and that they are legally founded. It is also important to keep in mind that the legal proceedings are not only transparent; it must also be made certain that they are open and fair.

FW: Why I'm Returning To Pakistan (Benazir Bhutto)

2007-09-02T00:48:00.000-07:00

Why I'm Returning To Pakistan Benazir Bhutto
Sat Sep 1, 9:23 PM ET

I was looking forward to a quiet family holiday in New York this summer with my three children, our dog Maxmillian and my husband, who is being treated for a heart condition that developed while he was a political prisoner in Pakistan from 1996 to 2004. I thought we would go to the theatre and spend time walking in Central Park, as well meeting up with friends for nice, long chatty dinners. But in this surprisingly momentous summer of 2007, our quiet family vacation disappeared as we found ourselves caught up in the media attention on my country Pakistan, and its fast changing political situation.

It is clear to those following events in South Asia that Pakistan is truly at a turning point. Almost a decade of military dictatorship has devastated the basic infrastructure of democracy. Political parties have been assaulted, political leaders arrested, and the judicial system manipulated to force party leaders into exile. NGOs have been under constant attack, especially those that deal with human rights, democratic values and women's rights. The press has been intimidated, with some reporters -- even those that work for papers like the New York Times -- arrested, beaten or made to disappear. Student and labor unions have not been allowed to function. The electoral institutions of the nation have been manipulated by an Election Commission that could not stop rigging and fraud. And in the battle against terrorism, we look on with dismay as the government of Pakistan ceded sections of our nation that previously had been governed by the rule of law to Taliban sympathizers and to Al Qaeda, making Pakistan the Petri dish of the international terrorist movement.

But the most dangerous manifestation of this retreat from democracy has been a growing sense of hopelessness of the people of Pakistan, and a total disillusionment with the political system's ability to address their daily problems. The social sector has festered -- underfinanced and relegated to the back burner of national policy. All the indicators of quality of life have spiraled down, from employment to education to housing to health care. And as people's sense of disillusionment has grown, there has been a corresponding growth in the spread of religious and political extremism. The failure of the regime has made our citizens open to extra-governmental experimentation with fanaticism. This has clearly been manifest in the spread of politicized madrassas, schools in which the curriculum incorporates xenophobia, bigotry and often para-military terrorist training. But poor parents who cannot feed or clothe their children entrust them to these kinds of schools, so their children may be fed and housed.

The growth of the madrassas is but one important signal that extremism has been making inroads against moderation amongst the Pakistani polity. I have always believed that the battle between extremism and moderation is the underlying battle for the very soul of Pakistan. Yet moderation can prevail against the extremists only if democracy flourishes and the social sector improves the quality of life of the people. In 2007, I sensed that the decade of dictatorship was threatening to undermine the moderate majority of Pakistan, those people committed to pluralism, to education, to technology -- in other words, those committed to Pakistan taking its place among the community of civilized nations as a leader in the 21st century. Under democracy, the extremists had been marginalized in the past, never receiving more than 11% of the vote in an election. But under dictatorship, Pakistan was edging toward extremism, chaos, and sliding towards a failed state.

My party [the Pakistan Peoples Party] was engaged in a dialogue with the regime of General Musharraf, but discussions didn't move the regime concretely toward democratic reform. In the summer of 2007, after the reinstatement of the Chief Justice of Pakistan and the birth of judicial activism, the dialogue with General Musharraf took a more substantive turn. It seemed now that the country had an opportunity to peacefully transition to democracy, which is critical for the other war -- the war of moderation against extremism -- to succeed. I had a choice. Engage in dialogue, or turn toward the streets. I knew that street protests against the Musharraf dictatorship could lead to the deaths of hundreds. I thought about the choice before me very carefully. I chose dialogue; I chose negotiation; I chose to find a common ground that would unite all the moderate elements of Pakistan for a peaceful transfer to a workable political system that was responsive to the needs of the 160 million people of Pakistan whose empowerment is critical to the success of both governing and the fight against terrorism.

I know that some in Pakistan, including those in political parties were so embittered with the military regime that they wanted the door of dialogue shut. But from the very beginning my goal was and remains to guarantee a free and open electoral process that would provide for a legitimate Parliament and provincial assemblies that would then select, in a constitutional process, a civilian President who understands that in a parliamentary democracy, the parliament is supreme. I wasn't negotiating for a guaranteed outcome, I was negotiating for a guaranteed process. That was the goal at the beginning. That is the goal now. Are we making progress towards that goal? I still am unable to say. There are many elements, in particular those sympathisers in the ruling Party and Government who enabled the extremists and militants to expand their influence in my country who are fearful of the return of the PPP and a rollback of the terrorist forces that have gained strength since my government was overthrown in 1996. They want to scuttle a process that could see the emergence of a moderate Pakistan. So it has been a roller coaster ride. Some times the dialogue moves forward with General Musharaf . But then he consults his colleagues in the ruling alliance and retracts from confidence building measures promised for a fair electoral process.

As the presidential and parliamentary elections approach, I am making plans with my supporters to return to Pakistan. I know that it is critical for Pakistan to return to a democratic way of life so that the people's problems can be addressed. When people are partners with government, they stand up to defend their communities against terrorists, criminals and negative forces.

My stay in New York wasn't exactly the family vacation I had planned, but it was a critical period of weeks that could very well determine the future of Pakistan. I long ago realized that my personal life was to be subjugated to my political responsibilities. When my democratically elected father, Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was arrested in 1977 and subsequently murdered, the mantle of leadership of the Pakistan Peoples Party, our nation's largest, nationwide grassroots political structure, was suddenly thrust upon me. It was not the life I planned, but it is the life I have. My husband and children accept and understand that my political responsibilities to the people of Pakistan come first, as painful as that personally is to all of us. I would like to be planning my son's move to his first year at college later this month, but instead I am planning my return to Pakistan and my party's parliamentary election campaign.

I didn't choose this life. It chose me.

“Bangladesh Army”, total leadership and a basket full of rotten apples

2007-09-01T23:50:00.000-07:00

I see some people some how love to hate “Bangladesh Army”. They laugh with showing their 32 teeth to see its humiliation. That’s interesting.

If you are still carrying a Bangladesh passport, you must love “Bangladesh Army”. That’s a must do for a citizen of an independent nation. If for some reason, you can not do that, dissolve the army or toss your passport.

Shocked?? Let me explain.

When some of us jumping up and down and saying “Houston, we have a problem” and “we need to fix it, NOW”, we meant the collapse of total leadership in Bangladesh. The state itself is NOT failed (even though some of us are very excited to label it so, where are the inspiration, well, we can understand), but its TOTAL LEADERSHIP has definitely failed. We need to turn it around.

If you are long enough in free air, you probably realized it by now that leadership of a country is not just few ex-PM (aka don makers) and their chamcha ministers (aka dons). The leaders in the business organization, the leaders in the professional organization, the leaders in the arm forces, the leaders in the intellectual community etc are all part of this TOTAL LEADERSHIP of the country. And guess what? They all have failed. They ALL have brought us in this mess of today while we are trying so hard to get out of.

For an example, look at our leaders in shikkok samiti. Yeah, I am talking about those god-makers who some how fall in love with loud speakers. I mean, hey, teachers and loud speakers? Asking students to hold on to the fort and fight like a ……. well, god. That’s just too much, isn’t it? But on a second thought, they are no teachers. They may be in the class room (I am not sure what they were up to in the class room, textbooks or propaganda; I will give them benefit of doubt) they are teachers. But they are actually leaders of a professional organization (teachers association in this case). They are part of total leadership of the country that I was talking about. And just look at them, how pathetic they are. No wonder we are in this mess.

If you just become little less lazy and look around, then you will see that the same pathetic scene in every branch of leadership. If you are with me up to this, we can draw two very important points and I will give my take on these. You probably won’t agree with me, but that’s okay.

First point: If it is the failure of total leadership, why then we (well, some of us) are so mad with our don-makers and their dons? Why them? Good question. My take on this is that I believe very firmly on a saying “first rule of leadership, every thing is YOUR fault”. Who do you think put these clowns in the leading position of teachers association? Who mastermind the choice leaders of bankers? Who mastermind the choice of leaders in FBCC? Who mastermind the choice of leaders in armed force? Who mastermind the choice of leaders in …….well, say ……. beggars union? You got the idea. It all points to our don-makers, isn’t it? So yes, everything is in deed their fault.

Second point: You say, okay okay I got the point. But wait, what about those khaki dictators? I say, what about them? You mean they are BAD. Of course they are! But why are you blaming “Bangladesh Army” for that? Just because they are part of army, is it? Well, please think hard. They are not just member of Bangladesh army. They are the “leader” of army. Just like our loud speaker teacher, they are leader of armed force. They are in deed just few more rotten apples from the basket of TOTAL LEADERSHIP. Of course they are very pathetic too, like the leaders aka rotten apples of other branch of TOTAL LEADERSHIP. No wonder we are in this mess. Just like we should not hate our teachers just because of few rotten apples (leaders) in teacher community, we should not feel negative toward our brave sons in “Bangladesh Army” just because of some rotten apple (leaders) in it.

Bonus point: You say, wait a minute. If I have taken your previous two points, then these saviors of 1/11 are rotten apples too. Why would we support them? What good that will do? I will tell you a secret; don’t tell any one ….shhhhh….. I KNOW. But if one fine morning, few rotten apples from the basket of rotten apple jump up and say enough is enough. Let’s do some clean up. I am smart enough to shut up my mouth. I hope you would be too. This is a game we can’t loose, talking about win-win situation. Because even if they fails in total make over, we will have less rotten apple in the basket to worry about in the day out than in the day in. It’s not the very best, but it’s better at least. If they do succeed, then voila! I can see your fear though. What if these dudes stick around like a pain in the neck like other appear to be good fellow that we have seen. That is a legitimate fear, I don’t disagree. But you see, as long as they keep doing what they are doing i.e cleaning up, I am okay to take that risk. We will have less and less rotten apple in our basket, the TOTAL LEADERSHIP basket will change its label from a basket full of rotten apple to a basket full of fresh apple with FEW remaining rotten apple. Eventually these FEW remaining rotten apples will definitely be over run by all the fresh apples. Right now, what we have is full basket of rotten apple. We just simply can’t accept that. No way.

-x86

FW: Must we go back to square one?

2007-08-28T11:20:00.001-07:00

Published On: 2007-08-28
Editorial, The Daily Star

Sense & Insensibility
Must we go back to square one?
Shahnoor Wahid

No, we cannot afford to go back to square one. For that matter, we cannot even go back to square five or square three! In fact, we cannot backtrack under any circumstances, because the stakes are too high.

It's a high-stake game and the opponents are sly and ruthless, and apparently they have some powerful cards up their sleeve. So, we have no option left but to outwit the opponents and win the game. We have to go forward on the perilous journey, like Odysseus, to reach the shore of Ithaca and end the mission.

It is common knowledge now that there are forces out there trying their best to push us back to square one, back to pre- 1/11, so that they may reinstate their rule of misrule throughout the country, once again. They want disorder to reign supreme because they thrive in a disorderly society. They suffocate in a society that is trying to bring order back in life.

Now, who are these people who do not want order, transparency, discipline, and stability in society?

They are the black marketers, gold smugglers, diesel smugglers, electricity thieves, rice hoarders, land grabbers, toll collectors, lake grabbers, forest grabbers, and relief thieves who have been crowding the corridors of state power for decades. And this time they have gotten together to play their own kind of game, waiting for an opportunity to strike back at everything that stands for goodness with all their might.

So, last week, they thought they had one such opportunity knocking on the door early in the morning. They watched in dismay the peaceful settlement of the altercation between students and army personnel at the Dhaka University playground.

They saw the opportunity vanishing in thin air. They were not ready to let it go to waste. It was an opportunity they had been waiting for. So, they got together in the dark depth of the night to connive and conspire to destabilise the government.

They quickly got into action, cooked up an "upsurge," and the nation witnessed wanton breaking of car windshields and windowpanes of office buildings. It was vandalism of the worst kind. They wanted to make it look like a student protest, but people saw only a few astray students and hundreds of hoodlums going berserk on the streets. As a result, people withdrew their support and sympathy and openly condemned the actions.

Student politics and student leaders
The recent student protest on various campuses brought forth the role of some of the student leaders who allegedly have worked from behind to fan the fire on behalf of the political parties for their individual and narrow political gain. The very mention of the term "student leaders" continues to intrigue us.

Who are these people? What actually do they do on the campuses across the country? Do they help the general students in improving their education standard? Do they bargain with the authorities to take examinations in time, take classes regularly, and assess performance of students impartially? Do they take steps to improve the infrastructure, laboratory facilities, hostel facilities, research facilities, and teaching/learning standard of the institution?

They do nothing of the above. We have information that they are the licensed gangs of toll collectors who send their cadres to collect weekly tolls from shop owners and contractors. They come with two trousers and two shirts from their villages and eat free breakfast, lunch, and dinner in student halls. Within three years on the campus, they drive tinted Pajeros and live in their own flats in Gulshan or Banani. Aladdin's lamp? No, blessing of madam or apa.

The present lot of student leaders is quick to cash in on the reputation of the past leaders, who had shown great valour in our fight against the Pakistani rulers. But this has to be added here that many of those past "heroes," at a later time, forgot all about their ideology. It's sad, people do not consider them heroes anymore.

Square one …
We had started with the warning of dark forces working together to push the country back to square one. The government has to be fully awake about the conspirators and take immediate actions against them. The reform agenda has to be fulfilled. Political arena must be cleansed of thugs and murderers. Democracy does not mean reinstating demons. The sacred precinct of our parliament must not be defiled once again by Lultoos, Faltoos and Biltoos.

Shahnoor Wahid is Senior Assistant Editor of The Daily Star.

It would take courage to love the flag and its protector

2007-08-23T09:28:00.001-07:00

Before I jump into any discussion, let’s just say I am a very believer of the saying “a nation gets a leader it deserves”. That’s the bottom line. So, no need to get over board. At the end of the day, it will all be fine. If not, at least it will be well justified, as that’s what we deserve any way.

No savior will fall from the sky to give us a golden country. “We the people” have to build one. For that we need to learn how to behave. No nation in today’s world became prosperous because their teenagers go to street and burned some cars. Not in the planet earth. Some other planet; may be, who knows. This is the curse we get from centuries of ruled by foreigners.

Burning down the system, just simply will not works. How many times we have to try it? It is like those smart folks in centuries ago, who were trying to build a divine machine that will give output of energy with out any input. They had no clue what’s they are up against. It’s the thermodynamics law that they had to break, and of course they were no match for it. Likewise, we are no match for law of physics and it’s no different for Bangladesh. The sooner we learn it the sooner we will be free.

We all get so excited talking about 52 and 71. Every thing we do, some how, some people, would like to link it to 52 and 71. That’s great. But that’s also very immature. Why is that? Shouldn’t we learn from our past? Shouldn’t we feel proud about our past heroes? Make no mistake; we should …… as long as we understand that they are “past”. Confused? Let me explain. The heroism in 52, 69 and 71 (you can even go back as early as 1757 and 1857) was for a freedom-less nation against their foreign masters. Just like any classic heroism. Those were to end slavery and to be free. If we can’t feel free, then all those heroes sacrifice will go in vain. Like I said, it’s hard to remove physical slavery. But it is even harder, if possible at all, to root out slavery form one’s mind. Bringing back 52 is not helping, because along comes slavery (in our mind). All the strategy of getting out of slavery just simply fails when we need to use them to build a nation. That’s why probably; the heroes of freedom movements are often a failed nation builder. A stunning example could be Gandhi vs Jinnah/Mujib. I am not a history analyst, but one could go back and analyze the success of “Gandhi to Nehru transition” vs. the failure of Jinnah & Mujib as a nation builder.

I saw some Bangladeshi columnist aka buddijibi getting so nostalgic. To them, so called jolpai rong is synonymous to Ayub khan. In fact every thing is about Ayub Khan to them, either for or against. This is so funny. But I don’t blame them. I feel very pity for them. What can you do? They have born as a slave. No matters how many independence our brave sons bring to them, their mind won’t be free. It’s a curse they can not get out of. They are still kept inside in the independence war. That makes sense. The 71-minus generation, who born as a Pakistani or Indian, are in constant battle inside their mind. The poor fellows feel like they have to prove that they belong to independent Bangladesh. That’s why every thing is about Pakistan-ponthi or India-ponthi to them. It’s like something inside ask them constantly, which side are you in? Who can blame them? I am like, dude, the war is over long ago. Now, just get over with it. I have born into independent Bangladesh. I got only one side. I don’t need no stupid question, stop making fool out of yourself. Freedom is a blessing, not everyone can feel it.

Comparing our brothers and sons who take the oath to protect us, for whom we can say that March 25th of 71 will not repeat, to those of enemy soldiers are not only silly, it’s also unethical. It’s like comparing your brother with the criminal who have just raped your sister-in-law. After all, both of them do the same. ARE THEY??

Just because you & I earned few degrees, does not necessarily make us better then the soldiers. While I headed to buet after HSC, few of my best friends take the oath. I always look up to them (not down) for their courage. My uncle/mama was a very brilliant student, one of the best that I have seen. He joined the force and now he is flying with a Bangladesh flag and bringing peace to world ahead. Trust me; you are not necessarily smarter than him, neither am I. If we judge our nation’s brave sons by few rotten apples aka dictators, we would be very wrong.

It may take a little brain to find pin holes and criticize. It may take an evil mind to push our teenagers in the street and encourage them on burning. But it would take courage to love the flag and its protector.

NB: It’s a great shame. We are setting up booths in different office campus to literally beg money from our foreign colleague for a sinking BD and show them the picture of flood victims. But the truth of the matter is BD is burning. Stupid GOOGLE have no sense of what to show and when. All my colleague have to do is go to google.com, click News, and search for the word “Bangladesh”. It’s like he took out the shoe from his foot and slap me in the face. And trust me, it hurts. But good thing is that we all collected some dollars yesterday, enough to replace one or two tire of one of those many cars that I saw burning in BD. We hope that will help.

-X86

Messing with gods…………GOD help us!!

2007-08-22T09:43:00.000-07:00

If a Dhaka University student beaten by a soldier is so XYZ that whole country needs to be upside down, then GOD help us!!

I remember when I was a new graduate student in my school in US. One day, a policeman came to the next door. One of my classmates lives there with his wife. Being clueless we rush after the police left. His wife was crying with tears all over her. The poor girl was all alone just listening music. Well, may be little too loud according to one neighbor, that’s all. Apparently all it took is a phone call. Next thing you know, police was banging your door.

WOW, we said. Boy, are these students stupid or coward? In back home, police in our campus?? Ha ha ha. I remember all those “misil” in BUET campus. You know like “campus a police keno, kortipokhkho jobab chai”. Well, that was just the beginning, words gets ugly after a while and campus become kurukhetro.

I got my first lesson that US is no BD, this campus is not even close to buet or DU campus. Here the university have a police camp of it’s own. Can you believe that? What? Like you still ruled by “british benia”, or what? I came to know about the police camp after getting a parking ticket for apparently violating “front end parking only” sign. Well, that’s a long story, let’s not go there.

In Bangladesh however, DU students are some kind of god. And no one touch god, especially police. Because when you touch god, you are cursed. Who in the hell are brave enough to mess with god? A god beaten by a soldier, wow! By the way, gods doesn’t go to soldier's superior to complain. They don’t go to court to sue you. They don’t write in the news paper, saying Houston, we have a problem here. Are you kidding me?? Those are not god kind of work, are they? Instead, god will simply crash you. That’s what gods do.

NB: By the way if you are one those folks who haven’t done his undergrad in BD, you would probably not understand what I am talking about. For a start, just take this. Our 12th grade pass kids don’t go to university to learn business, law, engineering, medical. Aaa aaa, that’s a no no. They go there to become gods and save the nation. As if we are still in those era when anyone out side of the campus is just as good as a cow, dog or cat. As if, a nation of cow, dog and cats (often associated with the word “bloody” by Brits) is trying to be human in the classroom. As if we are still in the era, when parents don’t teach their kids, but kids come home to teach their parents.

-X86

In the news:
============
Breaking News
Protests break out across country: 1 killed, hundreds injured
Star Online Report

At least one person was killed and hundreds were injured as violence broke out across the country for the 3rd day today.
Students of different colleges and universities across the country came out on streets and fought pitched battles with police.

A rickshaw-puller was killed and more than 50 students were injured when around 2000 students marched through the Rajshahi University (RU) campus demanding withdrawal of law enforcers from the campus and protesting DU incident.

Several dozens of students of Jagannath University and DU were injured in sporadic clashes with police. A DU student also sustained bullet injuries in front of F Rahman Hall during the clashes.

Dhaka city streets virtually became void as violence spilt over into the third day. Several incidents of vandalism and arson were reported from Airport road, Mohakhali, Gulistan, Kamalapur Railway Station, Mouchak, Noyabazar, North-South road and Nawabpur areas. The protesters also vandalised the windowpanes of the Chief Metropolitan Magistrates’ (CMM) Court, Dhaka.

Reports said students of Dhaka University, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (Buet), Eden University College, Jagannath University, Titumir College, Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University and Tejgaon Polytechnic Institute also joined the demonstration.

The pitched battles across the country between police and students occurred when police tried to resist the demonstrating students.

UNB reports that students of Jagannath University staged violent protest and burned four vehicles including a Pajero jeep around the District Court in Old Dhaka at about 10:30am.

Students of Titumir College brought out a procession and moved towards Mohakhali crossing chanting anti-government slogans.

In Rajshahi, police lobbed innumerable rubber bullets and hurled around 600 tear gas shells in a bid to disperse the unruly students who were pelting policemen with brickbats, leaving the rickshaw-puller dead and over 50 students injured.

The road communications on the Rajshahi-Dhaka Highway came to a halt as the law enforcers were forced to retreat and took position on the highway. On information, additional contingent of police were deployed in the area and the RU premised virtually became a battleground.

Our RU correspondent reports that among the injured, the condition of one student is critical. Our RU correspondent and Rajshahi staff correspondent were also assaulted by the agitating students.

The angry students also ransacked the administrative building of the university. They set fire to the temporary police camp, three vehicles and residence of Vice-chancellor Prof Altaf Hossain. They also cut off the telephone, power, water and cable TV connections of the VC’s home.

On the other hand, Progotishil Chhatra Jote (PCJ), a combine of left-leaning student organisations, called for an indefinite strike at the university.

The student unrest erupted on Monday afternoon when some army men beat up three students and humiliated a teacher of the DU during a soccer match on the university central playground.

Drunken driving, unlicensed gun and Joy (Weekly Probe magazine)

2007-08-21T15:26:00.000-07:00

Here is an article worth exploring. It is full of pointers that need some more work and supporting data. I am not necessarily agree on the conclusion though. At this moment, its all seems speculation that is not necessarily all false or true.

I can add one more point though. I went to the same school in US little later than him. His legacy did not look good. He was portrayed as an anti-Bangladeshi to Bangladeshi students there. I was told that he specifically blocked other Bangladeshi students from getting a job in the lab that he was working as a student worker. I was told that he never wanted to let people know that he is a Bangladeshi origin. He was always kept distance from any BD students and their activity. But again these are not necessarily all bad. He might have his reason and his own issue to deal with. I would like to give him the benefit of doubt.

Also if he is in fact a spoiled kid, who would we blame! Finger will probably can only points to us the people of Bangladesh. For we are the reason he was away from home. For we are the reason he was left without his parent’s love and affection. I can’t even imagine how it was like to be grow up knowing that you are the grandson of a nation’s founder which, by the way, killed most of your ancestors. (For what ever was the reason that is pointless to the kid). I feel like we woe an apology to Joy. It’s us, who took one of the greatest freedom movement leader of south Asia; and turn him into the greatest dictator of south Asia in mare 3 years or less. It was us who did not tell him to stop until it was too late. I wasn’t old enough, but I guess I could have been the little boy, jump up and ask “King, where is your dress, you are nude”. No one did. ====SORRY====

I may write about his visit to bay area some other time. Stay tuned :)

-X86

In The news:
=============
Article on Sajeeb Wazed Joy on Weekly Probe magazine

Drunken driving, unlicensed gun and Joy

Joy, son of Awami League President Sheikh Hasina, has been arrested for drunken driving on several occasions, was in possession on an unlicensed gun and guilty of a host of other misdeeds

A PROBE report

When Sajib Wazed Joy, son of Awami League President Sheikh Hasina, returned to Bangladesh after many years abroad, the massive reception organized for him at the airport reflected his mother’s wish that he be her successor in politics. But was he cut out for the tough task of a political career? It doesn’t seem so. He seems quite happy with his cushy life in the United States, notwithstanding his several scrapes with the law and other shady tales.

Going back

Joy has hardly much childhood association with Bangladesh. His mother lived a life in exile since August 1975, spending a long asylum in India under the patronage of the Indian government. She would live at Basant Bahar, the safe house run by the agencies there.

As a result, Joy had his early education in India where he spent much of his formative years. They may have returned to Bangladesh in 1981, but there was a sense of isolation from normal family life for Joy. This was only to be expected, given his boarding school years, the intense political activities of his mother, all compounded with the estrangement of his parents.

Persons who knew him then say he was a rather reckless youth. Even later, he reportedly met with an accident in Gulshan in the mid-nineties, totaling the Pajero jeep of a businessman of Narayanganj. Rather than keeping him in Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina sent her son to the US for further studies. She perhaps felt that would give him some stability, a sense of responsibility.

Reckless driving

Life in the USA didn’t seem to change Joy much. That reckless trait in his character showed itself time and again. Records show several cases were filed against him. He has been charged on various occasions with drunken driving, speeding, reckless driving, unlawful use of radar detection device, and even carrying an unlicensed gun. He even had to spend time in jail for his misdemeanours, not to mention all the fines he had to pay too. If Hasina had political aspirations for him, she couldn’t have chosen a more unsuitable candidate.

As it is, he had a basically apolitical character. He disliked the gathering of poor people at home and expressed a distinct disinterest in politics. He often snubbed persons who, out of affection or simple curiousity, came to meet Sheikh Mujib’s grandson.

He continued his fast life in the US as he had no sense of belonging with Bangladesh, no affinity to his mother’s party and had no intention of living with his dysfunctional family at home. In was no secret that there was no love lost between Sheikh Hasina and husband Wazed Miah.

Clouds over love and marriage

During his mother’s tenure as Bangladesh’s Prime Minister (1996-2001), Joy reportedly got engaged with an old girlfriend from his school days. She was an Indian girl of Sikh religion. Hasina, taking cover of an official visit, went to London to formalize the marriage. Along with the barat of close friends and relations, she even took along cooks of Dhaka’s famous Fakhruddin bawarchi. Her one condition was that the girl convert to Islam. The girl refused. Hasina was more than upset. She reportedly cancelled all programmes on that day. She shut herself up in her hotel room the whole day, refusing to talk to any one. She immediately returned to Dhaka. The marriage reception never took place, and her entourage, cooks and all, returned home without the taste of biriyani in their mouths.

Joy is presently married to American citizen Kristine Ann Overmire a.k.a. Kristine Wazed. They were married in the US on October 26, 2002. Kristine may have been previously married to a certain Richard D Loomis. There were rumours that Joy and Kristine were on the verge of a divorce, but if there had been a separation, things have apparently been patched up, perhaps with the birth of their child.

Informal entry into politics

Joy’s arrival in Dhaka and grand reception by young cadres of the party at the airport, and the several subsequent meetings at Sudha Sadan, heralded his informal entry into politics. It is not clear how serious he actually was about politics. He may have just been out to impress his newly-wed American bride. Or he may have just been pacifying his mother who had big plans for her prodigal son.

It was clear that Sheikh Hasina wanted him to be her successor, but Sheikh Rehana had her reservations in this regard. This fact was brought home further by an article in the magazine Bichitra, owned by Hasina’s sister Sheikh Rehana. The article was vehemently opposed to the idea of Joy’s entrance into politics.

The matter of Joy’s political induction was made clear again by the visiting card he had printed. His designation was shown as Advisor to the Prime Minister. He would use the card in his meetings and dealings in the US.

Interestingly, after the grenade attack on August 21, 2004, Joy’s statement was published in the official Awami League website with special prominence. The website normally only carried news, analyses and statements of Sheikh Hasina. At times it would have statements of senior party leaders like Abdul Jalil or Zillur Rahman at the most. But then suddenly it began posting Joy’s statements prominently.

Power breeds money

When Awami League came to power and his mother became ruler of the country, Joy got involved in business. There was the Texas-based Infolink International (from November 1998 to March 2001) and Nova BD International, LLC (May 1998 to August 2000). He had links with the SEAMEWE-4 undersea cable project through Nova BD International. He was also involved with Tyco Communications (USA) along with a certain Mahboob Rahman.

He also founded two other companies, Wazed Consulting and Sim Global Services in March 2005. This was after Awami League was out of power. Interestingly, the annual sales of these two companies were only 61,000 dollars and 35,000 dollars respectively. Yet Joy, in his own name, bought a brand new house at 3817 Bell Manor Court, Falls Church, Virginia, on May 12, 2006, worth about one million dollars. His wife is not a co-owner of the house. He used a fixed-rate mortgage and paid only about 200 thousand dollars (20 percent of the value) in cash. This was a clever move as it hid the real value of the property in terms of cash.

Earlier, together with his wife, he brought another property at 4823 Martin Street, Alexandria, VA 22312. The property is worth 749,000 dollars.

Business, not as usual

Like Joy, his brother-in-law Khandkar M Hossain, husband of sister Saima Wazed Hossain (Putul), started a few businesses in the US when his mother-in-law Sheikh Hasina came to power, but dissolved them after a couple of years. These businesses included Bangladesh Metals and Pipes Trading Corporation; Shonali Inc; Doug’s Wholesale Inc; Afsana Inc; and Jampy Corporation.

Apparently business was not quite the cup of tea for either of them. However, despite none of the businesses seeming to make any money and most of them being shut down before long, no one has ever heard of them suffering from financial difficulties. Perhaps mother’s affection helped them in this regard.

A reluctant successor

It was more than apparent to senior and mid-level leaders of Awami League in the mid-nineties that Sheikh Hasina to all intentions and purposes was intent on grooming Joy as he successor. Sheikh Rehana, Sheikh Selim and other in the family were no comfortable with this.

The Awami League leaders were noting with alarm that the post-2001 scene witnesses a gradual infiltration of newcomers into the membership of Hasina’s kitchen cabinet. Kazi Zafrullah, Saber Hossain Chowdhury, Abul Hossain, Salman F Rahman and a number of former bureaucrats were gradually entering the hallowed circle of Hasina’s favoured ones, pushing the old-timer “uncles” out of the way. Only Abdul Jalil and Zillur Rahman, together with half-baked politicians like Obaidul Kader, were allowed to come into prominence. Thanks to the pro-Awami League media who were friendly with the “uncles”, the seniors managed to maintain some semblance of political visibility.

Sheikh Hasina is going through critical times. In all likelihood she will have to relinquish her leadership of Awami League. At this juncture, given South Asian political trends, it would have only been natural for Joy to step into his mother’s shoes. Now, however, that does not seem likely. His background and records hardly present him as leadership material, particularly when reforms are the call of the day. The party leaders will not accept him. After all, his propensity for joy rides seems to outweigh his penchant for politics.

Arrests and criminal charges

Criminal court clerk records identify the following criminal charges and arrests of Sajib Wazed Joy:

On June 14 1998, Joy was arrested in Tarrant County, Texas. He was charged on two counts of carrying an unlicensed handgun and one count of driving while intoxicated. He was convicted for drunken driving and was imprisoned for 120 days, sentenced to 24 months of probation and fined $500.

On February 6, 2000, Joy was charged with reckless driving and having a radar detector in Hanover County, Virginia. He was fined and incarcerated for one day.

On March 19, 2000, he was arrested and charged with reckless driving in Fairfax County, Virginia. He was found guilty and given a suspended 30-day jail sentence and 12 months probation along with a $400 fine.

On April 29, 2001, Joy was charged with speeding in Rappahannock County, Virginia.

On May 20, 2004, Joy was charged with speeding in Arlington County, Virginia.

Putul’s property

Saima Wazed Hossain (Putul), Sheikh Hasina’s daughter and Joy’s younger sister, along with husband Khandakar Mahbub Hossain, own considerable property in the US. The houses they purchased there include:

456 North Bay Point Way, Jacksonville, Florida. This is a single family residence purchased by Saima and husband Hossain on November 1, 2005 for $245,000 from Merrill and Priscilla King.

845 York Way, Maitland, Florida. This is also a single family residence purchased by Saima and Hossain on October 16, 2004, for $311,000 from David and Elizabeth Cocchiarella. The property has an assessed value of $208,844.

2065 W 119th Avenue, Miramar, Florida. This single family residence was purchased by Saima and Hossain on October 28, 1998 for $154,300 from Pulte Home Corporation. On March 15, 2005, a non-purchase money loan of $197,000, was obtained from SunTrust Bank secured with this property. The property has an assessed value of $265,440.

Source:
http://www.probenewsmagazine.com/index.php?
index=2&contentId=2701&PHPSESSID=6cbb66180d90b402c6cff21c9a34d9e2

Professor Wins $1 Million Prize for Providing Clean Water, One Village at a Time

2007-08-14T13:28:00.000-07:00

Professor Wins $1 Million Prize for Providing Clean Water, One Village at a Time

February 26, 2007

Professor Abul Hussam's water filtering system is improving health and saving lives in developing countries. Most of his $1 million Grainger Challenge Award will go toward ensuring that even more people can benefit from clean water.

By Tara Laskowski

In the United States, turning on the tap and getting clean drinking water is something most people take for granted. We have the luxury of multimillion-dollar filtration systems and deep wells that pump toxin-free water to our homes.

However, in developing countries such as Bangladesh and West Bengal, India, shallow water wells are the norm for villages. Arsenic, a poisonous element, is naturally occurring in these tube-wells, and in Bangladesh alone, more than 18 million people are daily drinking arsenic-contaminated water.

Arsenic poisoning is a slow, painful process that can cause skin cancer, tumors and ultimately death. Affected people can have difficulty working or even walking, and continued exposure can lead to liver failure, kidney failure and the need for amputation of arms or legs.

Abul Hussam

For Bangladesh native Abul Hussam, associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Mason for more than 20 years, this threat hits close to home. About 10 years ago, his brother, a medical doctor in Bangladesh, started to see the frightening consequences of arsenic poisoning in his village. He asked Hussam to help develop a way of measuring the arsenic levels in wells.

Measuring the Problem
Hussam did his PhD work in analytical chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh. Developing an instrument to measure arsenic levels in drinking water was a perfect match for his interests.

He started with his own family’s well in Bangladesh. To his shock, he learned his family had been drinking water with three times the toxicity level of arsenic for more than 20 years, and there was a possibility his own father had died from arsenic poisoning.

“Measurement is absolutely critical – it is my strength and what brought me to this project – but once you know what you have, now the question is, ‘What can we do about it?’” says Hussam.

That’s when Hussam started looking at ways to build a filter to help provide safe drinking water for his family and neighbors. The challenges required looking at issues such as economy, environment and efficiency. Because Bangladesh is a developing country, the filter had to be inexpensive. Hussam also had to ensure that the materials used were safe for the environment and easy to obtain and reproduce.

After years of research and testing, Hussam and his brothers developed the SONO filter. Simple, inexpensive and made with easily available materials, the filter involves a top bucket, which is filled with locally available coarse river sand and a composite iron matrix (CIM). The sand filters coarse particles and imparts mechanical stability, while the CIM removes inorganic arsenic. The water then flows into a second bucket where it again filters through coarse river sand, then wood charcoal to remove organics, and finally through fine river sand and wet brick chips to remove fine particles and stabilize water flow.

A Distinguished Recognition
When Hussam learned the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) was offering a $1 million Grainger Challenge Award for water filtration systems that removed arsenic from drinking water, he knew his work was perfect for the contest.

After all, the systems had to be affordable, reliable, easy to maintain, socially acceptable and environmentally friendly. They had to meet or exceed the local government guidelines for arsenic removal and require no electricity – everything he had been working on for years.

Last week, he was proven correct. On Feb. 20, Hussam was awarded the Grainger Prize at a gala dinner held in Washington, D.C.

Hussam's water filter is simple, inexpensive and made with easily available materials.
Photos by Evan Cantwell

Three prizes were awarded by the NAE, with the support of the Grainger Foundation, from a field of 70 entries. The Silver Award went to the nonprofit Water for People and the Bronze Award was given to the Children's Safe Drinking Water Program at Procter & Gamble Co. Hussam won the Gold Award.

Hussam’s $1 million prize will go to George Mason Intellectual Properties Inc., (GMIP) a separate nonprofit corporation established to facilitate the transfer of new discoveries made at George Mason University. GMIP will distribute the majority of the award to a Bangladeshi nonprofit organization that will use the funds to increase its production, quality control and training capacities so more SONO filter units can reach Bangladeshi households more quickly. Most of the remainder will fund Hussam’s continuing research in removing toxic cations and anions from drinking water sources. GMIP will keep a small portion of the prize and will pay back the Chemistry Department, which generously funded the tests needed last summer to enable Hussam to enter the contest.

GMIP is also handling potentially still patentable matter in the SONO filter.

Seeing the Difference Firsthand
In 2000, the Hussam family started distributing the SONO filter in Bangladesh. They started with their own village, and donated many of the filters to schools with high arsenic levels in their water.

“At first, the people were not sure if they should listen to us,” said Hussam. But after talking to them about the water and showing them the filter – which cost only $35 and lasts at least five years – people started to believe.

“Now, we hear of women who want to use the filtered water to shampoo their hair because it makes it softer,” says Hussam. “And people say their tea tastes different and their rice is a different color. It’s been very interesting.”

Today, there are more than 30,000 of these filters in homes, schools and businesses in Bangladesh. Hussam hopes that with the prize money they can distribute the filter even more widely and help even more people.

He and his brothers have also seen hospital patients improve dramatically from arsenic poisoning by drinking the clean, filtered water.

“The most satisfying aspect of working on this project is seeing people drinking clean water from the SONO filter and feeling better, and for some, the melanosis [poisoning] has been reversed,” says Hussam. “It is truly gratifying to see results of our scientific knowledge at work in the field for the betterment of human conditions.”

Return to Main Gazette Page

Reverse exodus: High-tech Indian immigrants returning home

2007-06-18T17:29:00.000-07:00

========================
Reverse exodus: High-tech Indian immigrants returning home
By Mira Kamdar
San Jose Mercury News
Article Launched:05/13/2007 01:54:47 AM PDT

Sri Renganathan had made it in America - she owned a lovely home and had a good job with Intel. But three years ago, she and her husband decided to move back to India. They headed to Bangalore, her hometown, where she was able to keep her job with Intel, before moving on to a better position with another high-tech company. Her husband, who'd been laid off in the wake of the tech-bubble bust of 2001, started his own biotech consulting business.

"Ours was a one-way move," says Renganathan of her family's return to India. "We sold the house and packed up and came."

Renganathan and her husband are among the tens of thousands of Indians who, despite having more than achieved the American dream, are voting with their feet to return home.

This is not the mythic immigrant saga most Americans imagine. India's economic boom is now offering returning Indians things that simply didn't exist there when they left: U.S.-level salaries and an American lifestyle, including gated communities with manicured lawns and swimming pools, shopping malls filled with familiar brands, and international schools for their children.

Moreover, a low-cost, English-speaking workforce, a liberalizing economy that just hit a 9.2 percent annual growth rate, and the recent infusion of millions of dollars in venture capital and foreign direct investment have come together to create an environment many Indian entrepreneurs find hard to resist, especially when it is located in their home country.

No region of the United States has been more affected by this trend than Silicon Valley. The Indus Entrepreneur Group, known as TIE, estimated in 2003 that between 15,000 and 20,000 Indians had left Silicon Valley to return home. That strong trend has continued, with about 40,000 more returning in the last four years, according to Vish Mishra, a charter member of TIE and a senior venture partner with Clearstone Venture Partners.

The flow of investment capital to India also has expanded, much of it from Silicon Valley VC firms. Clearstone Venture Partners now has an office in Mumbai, as do many other firms that either are based in or originated in Silicon Valley. During the 12-month period that ended in August 2006, Mishra notes, VC firms invested $2 billion in early- and late-stage companies, and new India-focused VC funds raised a total of $3 billion.

Clearly, the flow of people and money to India from the Silicon Valley was not a one-time response to the tech-bubble bust. Should the valley be worried?

According to a report released earlier this year by Anna-Lee Saxenian of the University of California-Berkeley and by Duke University, Indians founded 15 percent of all Silicon Valley start-ups. The study also found that 53 percent of the science and engineering workforce in the valley is foreign-born, and that one-quarter of immigrant-founded engineering and scientific companies founded in the United States during the past decade were created by Indians. These companies rang up $52 billion in sales and created 450,000 jobs.

No wonder some business and policy leaders are sounding alarm bells about American competitiveness in general and Silicon Valley's future as a technology leader in particular.

There isn't a single major information-technology company in the United States that hasn't set up operations in India. IT companies are attracted by the low-cost, highly skilled workforce; 3.5 million white-collar U.S. jobs, along with $151 billion in wages, are expected to be outsourced by 2015, with India the top outsourcing destination, according to a report by Forrester Research.

But these tech companies also see a market of potentially epic proportions. Half of India's 1.2 billion people are younger than 25. That's 600 million people coming into their peak consuming years in an economy fueled primarily by exploding retail growth.

As Amar Babu of Intel India, where 15 percent of the workforce is made up of Indians who returned from the United States, explained, "Intel views India as a critical research and development site. At the same time, India is a consumption market for IT. A lot of future growth will come from these emerging markets."

In fact, India is moving beyond simply being attractive because of the obvious cost advantage of lower wages. As wages rise on the tide of higher demand for skilled workers, India is shifting its competitive advantage toward more and more sophisticated industry needs. This has led to a trend from call centers to back-office processing to cutting-edge engineering. India is no longer just one of the world's biggest buyers of commercial aircraft and pharmaceuticals; it also is emerging as a center for research and development in scientific and technological areas as diverse as aeronautics and biotechnology.

Yet India also faces a series of serious challenges it must overcome if it is to realize the promise of its renaissance as a global economic power. That China has huge advantages over India when it comes to infrastructure development is common knowledge. Overloaded roads, insufficient airport and port capacity, and woefully inadequate power are all potential roadblocks to India's advancing economic engine.

Education gap

On the human side, the situation is even worse. The information-technology industry in India has created 1 million jobs, which in turn are estimated to generate an additional 3.5 million jobs. But that's a drop in the bucket compared with the hundreds of millions of jobs India needs if it is to give its unemployed and underemployed the financial resources they need to participate in India's booming economy.

A cruel irony in India is that while a small proportion of the population is exquisitely educated and speaks English, the vast majority do not have these skills. Only one in 10,000 Indian students makes it to college. Few of those who get to college obtain a level of education equal to their aspirations - or equal to the needs of companies desperately looking for qualified workers. Of the more than 1 million Indian applicants for jobs at Indian tech giant Infosys last year, for example, less than 2 percent met the company's requirements.

More people live in absolute poverty in India than in any other country in the world. Malnutrition and illiteracy rates are among the world's highest. And India has the largest number of people infected with HIV: 5.7 million. India also is facing an environmental catastrophe, with some of the world's worst air and water pollution. And India, like most of the developing world, will be disproportionately affected by global warming.

In this contradiction between India as exploding tech leader and developing nation lies huge opportunities for Silicon Valley - opportunities it can leverage through its Indian workforce that is returning home to its native land.

There's only one way forward for India: innovation. India needs precisely the skill set Silicon Valley famously nurtures: the ability to think outside the box, and the daring to risk capital on new ideas. These solutions in turn will create products for the great untapped markets of the world. Face it: More people on the planet live in conditions that resemble those in India than those in the Menlo Park. The problems India is facing are global problems. How much the dynamic recirculation of money and talent between Silicon Valley and India focuses on solutions to these problems may determine how much Silicon Valley remains relevant and in the vanguard of a changing world.

In the age of cheap jet travel and digital communication, many of the Indians returning to India from Silicon Valley aren't leaving so much as expanding the sphere of their well-honed talents and networks beyond California. As Clearstone's Vish Mishra put it, "These people are building bridges, not burning them."

For Mishra, Silicon Valley's unique tradition of innovation and educational and research excellence, coupled with a free-wheeling entrepreneurial environment, cannot easily be duplicated. "The whole state of mind here is very difficult to replicate. India will try to come close to it but they don't have all the pieces," he says. "Indian-Americans are playing a big role in what is happening in India, but they are doing it because of what they have learned here and their connections here."

Valley connections

The immigrant talent from Asia that has been so much a part of Silicon Valley's success in the past will be critical to that success in the future, helping turn the valley into the hub of a vast network that relays talent and capital back and forth to new centers of innovation and market growth. The more Indians who leave Silicon Valley and renew linkages with their homeland, the more Silicon Valley will reap the benefits of having fostered an Indian immigrant population.

For Renganathan and her family, the transition back to India has had some bumps along the way. Real estate values shot up 300 percent before she and her husband were able to buy property in Bangalore. The daily commute in the city's famously hideous traffic is wearing. And their young daughter took some time to adjust to life in a country where she had never lived.

Still, Renganathan has no regrets. Her family is enjoying renewed closeness with their Indian relatives. They're building a new house. Their daughter now attends a local school where her best friends are children who, as she did, began their childhoods in America. (For more on Renganathan's experience moving back to India, visit her blog at: http://sribloremusings.blogspot

.com/)

At the same time, Renganathan confesses that "all my close friends are still in the U.S." She keeps up her professional contacts in the high-tech world in the United States and has traveled back to visit friends and family. While her daughter is happily adjusted now to her new life in India, Renganathan considers it temporary. "She thinks she'll go back to the U.S. for college," she says.

Tracking Hasan Elahi : Self-imposed surveillance : trackingtransience

2007-05-31T11:29:00.000-07:00

Hasan Elahi is a Bangladesh-Born New Jersey artist & art professor. He was detained by the FBI and interviewed about every detail of his life. He now developed a web site to track every move of his life, for FBI or anyone else who might be interested. He hacked his cell phone and links it to his web page. Now his webpage show his where about in a GPS supported map. He is also posting photos of what he is seeing, eating and so on as alibi. He is logging every dollars he is spending and where. He turned around the whole situation, at least as it appears now. His biggest shortcoming is now his biggest asset as an artist. Very brilliant, good job!

-x86

=====================================
In the News:

CNN's Kiran Chetry talks to a man who developed software to track his
every move to prove he's not a terrorist. (May 30)

Video Link: http://www.cnn.com/video/partners/clickability/index.html?url=/video/tech/2007/05/30/gps.on.line.alibi.elahi.cnn

ABC News reports:

Artist combats FBI profile by creating online alibi
Rebecca Lee
(5/30/07) - When the FBI started to track to every move of artist Hasan Elahi, he responded by giving his personal information to the whole world.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Elahi, like many minorities across the United States was flagged as a potential terrorist.

The Bangladesh-born, Brooklyn, NY-raised media artist often travels overseas for work, and with his Arab-sounding name and dark skin, Elahi found himself the subject of an FBI interrogation in June 2002.

He was detained and interrogated by airport and government officials while on his way back from a business trip in Dakar, Senegal.

Although he was cleared to enter the country, Elahi's travel nightmare was far from over. From June 2002 until December 2002, he was the subject of an ongoing U.S. government investigation, which included intense questioning, lie-detector tests and documentation of his every move.

"For six months, I had to justify every second my existence, proving to the FBI that I was not a terrorist or a terrorist threat of any kind," Elahi told ABC News. "So, after having to recount every detail of my life to the micro level, I said to myself, 'Why don't I just do this myself?'"

Elahi's experiment started slowly. He initially recorded his coordinates every couple of hours via a cell phone he had implanted with GPS software as a way of keeping the FBI informed of his whereabouts.

He then posted the information on his Web site, www.trackingtransience.net, and created a documentary art exhibition, "Tracking Transience: The Orwell Project," to make all his personal information, from his current location to his bank statements and telephone records available to the public.

"If you think about it, intelligence agencies are all based on the commodity of information and secrecy," said Elahi. "So, I started thinking & what if I just volunteer my information? What that does is make my FBI profile useless because everything you would want to know, now you can just come to me and cut out the middleman. I've basically become my own Big Brother."

'Everything's Out There'

In the past few years, Elahi's site has expanded, thanks in part to technological advances but also as a result of his dedication to this project.

"It's hard to say when this art project started, because it was a very organic process," he said. "It started out as just an image on a computer screen, then a map, then a little more detailed map, and now it's completely full blown to the point where you can dig out any little detail about my life. Everything's out there."

But there are some pieces of information he's keeping private. While Elahi photographs his meals and surroundings, his self-surveillance is not completely without bias.

Like any art project, the artist has the ability to shape the online profile he is creating of himself and does not include his own photo or images of his friends. From the pictures he chooses to post, to the locations he chooses to record, Elahi's "Tracking Transience" is really a reflection of how he would like to be defined.

"By taking matters into my own hands, I decided that I'm going to define myself based on my own information, not based on what someone else thinks I might be and this is really the center of this project. It's really all about identity management," explained Elahi.

Yet, he points out, the places you visit and the things you buy and eat, even when "managed," only show us a certain portion of a person's true self. "When you stitch together all this information you really know everything and nothing about me, because nowhere is my name, nowhere is my face, nowhere is there one actual thing that identifies me," said Elahi.

Ultimately, Elahi hopes his documentary experiment will serve a dual purpose. By keeping track of his records and whereabouts, he hopes to avoid any further involvement with the U.S. government and, second, by supplying the public with all his information, he hopes that people will question the ways in which our society is being tracked and policed, often without our knowledge or our consent.

"I'm hoping to take this [project] to such a point of absurdity that someone somewhere out there realizes, 'Hey, this isn't right. We shouldn't be living in a society where we have to do this,'" Elahi explained. "I'm just hoping that people start questioning, because if we don't, people won't even realize that [this kind of tracking] is even happening."

Source: http://abclocal.go.com/wjrt/story?section=sci_tech&id=5354459&ft=print

RE: Bangladesh parties oppose 33 percent women's quota

2007-05-24T13:06:00.000-07:00

But it will not be possible to accommodate 33 percent female??
Why is this Mr. Jalil? Is it because we don’t have enough female in the country? Don’t we have enough educated female in the country? Can you show some data to support it? What the hell is Mahila League is doing? Who are those women?

"But taking part in field-level programmes and leading an organisation at different tiers are not the same thing". Hmmm.. really? Why not, why not. Let’s look at one interesting data, shall we?

Among many other gang-star and top corrupt, these are few known faces who won Mr. Jalil’s party nomination last canceled election:

Narayanganj-4 Shamim Osman
Feni-2 Khodeza Begum (sister of Joynal Hazari)
Barisal-1 Abul Hasnat Abdullah
Dhaka-8 Haji Mohammad Selim
Chandpur-2 Mofazzal Hossain Chowdhury Maya
Chittagong-12 Aktaruzzaman Babu and

We have not seen them in the street, in the public, or in the news conference over last 5 years. Why is that? Were they sick, or they are too shy? No, not really. They were in hiding, running from the law. All of a sudden, they pop up just in time before election, just at the time of nomination submission. And voiala, they win a party ticket!

Too bad, election was canceled. Guess what? Right after election was canceled, they were no where in the horizon. Why is that? They have some important work to do? Their hidden girl friend call to report back. Ohh no no no. They went to hiding because, police were looking for them. They are once again running from the law.

Now how did they won a party ticket? That’s a great mistry. What was the reason one of our begams (I call begam the lesser, but you can call begam the greater if you like) handed out these folks a party nomination?

So yes, “taking part in field-level programmes” is okay for women. But want to “lead an organisation at different tiers”, we need a gang lord, no kidding. Now women being gang lord to get a party ticket or party position, ha ha ha, even the most feminist won’t dream to claim that.

-x86

==============================
::In the news::
Bangladesh parties oppose 33 percent women's quota
Posted May 23rd, 2007 by TariqueMuslim World News By IANS

Dhaka : The two main political parties of Bangladesh have disapproved of the Election Commission's proposal to reserve 33 percent of nominations for women in elections, despite both being headed by women who have ruled the country.

The country's oldest political party the Awami League, headed by Sheikh Hasina, and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), led by Begum Khaleda Zia, expressed their reservations about the proposal, which the Election Commission and the interim government want to implement as part of electoral reforms.

Besides Sheikh Hasina and Begum Khaleda Zia, the two former prime ministers around whose rivalry Bangladesh's politics has revolved since the 1980s, the country has always had a plethora of women in public life. Their role has been relatively better than other South Asian countries, political analysts say.

Another cause of unhappiness is the electoral body's proposal to ban political parties from having youth or student fronts. Both the parties traditionally draw their cadres from these fronts.

"We generally support most of the commission's proposals to bring reforms in political parties. But it will not be possible to accommodate 33 percent female representatives in each and every committee," Awami League general secretary Abdul Jalil was quoted as saying by the New Age newspaper.

Jalil drew a line between women's participation in political activities and their being nominated to contest elections. He argued that the commission might have put forth such a proposal considering the participation of women leaders and activists in street demonstrations.

"But taking part in field-level programmes and leading an organisation at different tiers are not the same thing," he remarked.

Sheikh Hasina has led the Awami League from the front since 1981 and electoral reforms have been high on her political agenda.

M.K. Anwar, vice president of BNP, linked the women's issue to the country's culture and to the urban-rural divide wherein, according to him, rural women do not participate in political activities.

The Communist Party of Bangladesh too found the commission's proposal "unrealistic". Its general secretary, Mujahidul Islam Selim, said the spirit of incorporating women in different committees is appropriate. "But the proposed percentage is unrealistic."

On the idea of banning student fronts, a former student leader pointed out to the role played by youth groups in national movements and said the ban was unreasonable.

"The student community played a pioneering role in different national movements and the initiative taken by a quarter of the interim government (to control student politics) is illogical," said Sultan Mansur, a former vice-president of the Dhaka University Central Students Union (DUCSU).

"Student politics will survive by its own strength and the students will not bow to any external pressure," he said.

Source:
http://www.indianmuslims.info/news/2007/may/23/
bangladesh_parties_oppose_33_percent_womens_quota.html

Banglasesh: Local scientists develop diarrhoea vaccine

2007-04-12T14:15:00.000-07:00

Local scientists develop diarrhoea vaccine
Staff Correspondent

Scientists in Bangladesh have developed a vaccine that can prevent diarrhoea caused by commonly found micro-organisms.

Experts described the achievement as a breakthrough in medical science as the vaccine will provide immunity from two most deadly and common bacteria--Vibrio cholerae and Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC).

These two bacteria cause about 55 percent diarrhoeal cases in the country, experts said at a press conference yesterday morning at the Bangladesh-China Friendship Conference Centre at Agargaon in the capital.

Healthcare Pharmaceutical Ltd and SBL Vaccines of Sweden jointly organised the press conference.

Describing the launching of the vaccine as a milestone event, the experts said researches since 1985 reveal that once taken the vaccine acts as a shield for the body against any further attack of the two bacteria at least for two years.

In 1985, scientists of the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Diseases Research, Bangladesh, (ICDDR,B) began testing the safety and efficacy of the vaccine at the institute's Dhaka hospital popularly known as Cholera Hospital.

ICDDR,B senior scientists Dr Firdousi Qadri, Dr Mohammad Yunus, Dr Abdus Salam, and Executive Director Dr David A Sack conducted the successful trials. Based on the results of their trials, the vaccine is now registered in over 50 countries. The vaccine was registered in Bangladesh in 2006.

The availability of the vaccine brand-named "Dukoral" may eventually save greater number of lives of especially children, the most common victims of the water-borne diseases, researchers said.

Already approved by the World Health Organisation and the country's Drug Administration, the vaccine is now popular among travellers as it prevents even the most severe attacks of the water-borne diseases.

Bangladesh is the only South Asian country where the vaccine has been registered as a therapeutic product.

The vaccine--to be taken in two doses 14 days apart--stops toxic agents released by attacking germs from entering intestine cells and thus averting diarrhoea trigger.

Dr Sack said, "I view the launching of the vaccine as an important event since it is being introduced for the first time in Bangladesh.

"Although its price is high, I am sure one day the vaccine will be within the reach of the general population like the oral saline," he added.

The vaccine, manufactured by Swedish pharmaceutical company SBL Vaccines, will be available only at approved vaccination centres across the country and one cycle or two doses will cost Tk 2,400. It must be preserved at 2-8 degrees Celsius temperature.

The vaccine is presently recommended for adults and children over two years of age. Recent studies in Bangladesh among infants and younger children show that the vaccine is safe and effective.

Source: http://www.thedailystar.net/2007/04/13/d70413012214.htm

Noam Chomsky: The problem lies in the unwillingness to recognize that your own terrorism is terrorism

2006-11-05T19:55:00.000-08:00

‘The problem lies in the unwillingness to recognize that your own terrorism is terrorism'
Noam Chomsky interviewed by Saad Sayeed
Excalibur Online, October 25, 2006

Known in academic circles for his contribution to the field of linguistics, MIT professor Noam Chomsky is widely recognized as one of the most influential political dissidents of our time. In this interview, Chomsky talks about the roots of terrorism and the role of the intellectual in society.
"The problem lies in the unwillingness to recognise that your own terrorism is terrorism"
Excalibur (Ex): How important is an understanding of the role of states such as the U.S. and the U.K. when examining the question of terrorism?
Chomsky (Ch): It depends on whether we want to be honest and truthful or whether we want to just serve state power ( . . . ) We should look at all forms of terrorism.
I have been writing on terrorism for 25 years, ever since the Reagan administration came in 1981 and declared that the leading focus of its foreign policy was going to be a war on terror. A war against state directed terrorism which they called the plague of the modern world because of their barbarism and so on. That was the centre of their foreign policy and ever since I have been writing about terrorism.
But what I write causes extreme anger for the very simple reason that I use the U.S. government's official definition of terrorism from the official U.S. code of laws. If you use that definition, it follows very quickly that the U.S. is the leading terrorist state and a major sponsor of terrorism and since that conclusion is unacceptable, it arouses furious anger. But the problem lies in the unwillingness to recognize that your own terrorism is terrorism. This is not just true of the United States, it's true quite generally. Terrorism is something that they do to us. In both cases, it's terrorism and we have to get over that if we're serious about the question.
Ex: In 1979, Russia invades Afghanistan. The U.S. uses the Ziaul Haq regime in Pakistan to fund the rise of militancy. This gives Zia a green light to fund cross-border terrorism in Kashmir. Now we allegedly have some of those elements setting off bombs in Mumbai. Clearly, these groups are no longer controlled by any government.
Ch: The jihadi movements in their modern form go back before Afghanistan. They were formed primarily in Egypt in the 1970s. Those are the roots of the jihadi movement, the intellectual roots and the activist roots and the terrorism too.
But when the Russians invaded Afghanistan, the Regan administration saw it as an opportunity to pursue their Cold War aims. So they did with the intense cooperation of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and others ( . . . ) so the Reagan administration organized the most radical Islamic extremists it could find anywhere in the world and brought them to Afghanistan to train them, arm them.
Meanwhile, the U.S. supported Ziaul Haq as he was turning Pakistan into a country full of madrassahs and fundamentalists. The Reagan administration even ( . . . ) kept certifying to Congress that Pakistan was not developing nuclear weapons, which of course they were, so that U.S. aid to Pakistan could continue. The end result of these U.S. programs was to seriously harm Pakistan and also to create the international jihadi movement, of which Osama bin Laden is a product. The jihadi movement then spread ( . . . ) they may not like it much but they created it. And now, as you say, it's in Kashmir.
Kashmir, though, is a much more complex story. There are plenty of problems in Kashmir and they go way back, but the major current conflicts come from the 1980s. In 1986, when India blocked the election, it actually stole the election, and that led to an uprising and terrorist violence and atrocities, including atrocities committed by the Indian army.
Ex: The colonial legacy is generally dismissed by the media. What role does this legacy play in the emergence of home-grown terrorists in countries such as the U.S., the U.K. and Canada as well as to the creation of terrorism as a whole?
Ch: It's not brought up in the West because it's inconvenient to think about your own crimes. Just look at the major conflicts going on around the world today, in Africa, the Middle East, in South Asia, most of them are residues of colonial systems.
Colonial systems imposed and created artificial states that had nothing to do with the needs and concerns and relations of the populations involved. They were created in the interests of colonial powers and as old fashioned colonialism turned into modern neo-colonialism, a lot of these conflicts erupted into violence and those are a lot of the atrocities happening in the world today.
How can anyone say colonialism isn't relevant? Of course it is and it's even more directly relevant.
Take the London bombing in 2005. Blair tried to pretend that it had nothing to do with Britain's participation in the invasion of Iraq. That's completely ridiculous. The British intelligence and the reports of the people connected in the bombing, they said that the British participation in the invasion and resulting horrors in Iraq inflamed them and they wanted to do something in reaction.
Ex: What is the role of the intellectual when dealing with imperialism and are the intellectuals doing they job?
Ch: Unfortunately, intellectuals are doing their historic job. The historic role of intellectuals if you look, unfortunately, as far back as you go has been to support power systems and to justify their atrocities. So the article you read in the National Post for the production of vulgar Stalinist connoisseurs, that's what intellectuals usually do as far back as you go.
If you go back to the Bible, there's a category of people who were called prophets, a translation of an obscure word, they were intellectuals, they were what we would call dissident intellectuals; criticising the evil king, giving geopolitical analysis, calling for the moral treatment of orphans, decent behaviour. They were dissident intellectuals. Were they treated well? They were prisoned and driven into the dessert and so on, they were the fringe. The people who were treated well were the ones who centuries later, like in the gospel, were called false prophets. So it goes through history. The actual role of the intellectual has been supportive of power.
Should they do that? Of course not; they should be searching for truth, they should be honest, they should be supporting freedom and justice and there are some who do it. There is a fringe who do it, but they're not treated well. They are performing the task that intellectuals ought to perform.
Ex: And what keeps you motivated?
Ch: I'll just tell you a brief story. I was in Beirut a couple of months ago giving talks at the American university in the city. After a talk, people come up and they want to talk privately or have books signed.
Here I was giving a talk in a downtown theatre, a large group of people were around and a young woman came up to me, in her mid-'20s, and just said this sentence: "I am Kinda" and practically collapsed. You wouldn't know who Kinda is but that's because we live in societies where the truth is kept hidden. I knew who she was. She had a book of mine open to a page on which I had quoted a letter of hers that she wrote when she was seven years old.
It was right after the U.S. bombing of Libya, her family was then living in Libya, and she wrote a letter which was found by a journalist friend of mine who tried to get it published in the United States but couldn't because no one would publish it. He then gave it to me, I published it. The letter said something like this:
"Dear Mr Reagan, I am seven years old. I want to know why you killed my little sister and my friend and my rag doll. Is it because we are Palestinians? Kinda". That's one of the most moving letters I have ever seen and when she walked up to me and said I am Kinda, and, like I say, actually fell over, not only because of the event but because of what it means.
Here's the United States with no pretext at all, bombing another country, killing and destroying, and nobody wants to know what a little seven-year-old girl wrote about the atrocities. That's the kind of thing that keeps me motivated and ought to keep everybody motivated. And you can multiply that by 10,000.

FW: Bangladesh honors Nobel peace laureate Muhammad Yunus

2006-11-05T19:43:00.000-08:00

International Herald Tribune
November 5, 2006

Bangladesh honors Nobel peace laureate Muhammad Yunus

The Associated Press
Bangladesh honored Nobel peace laureate Muhammad Yunus at a ceremony Sunday hosted by the country's president and interim leader Iajuddin Ahmed.

Yunus and his Grameen Bank were awarded the Nobel prize on Oct. 13 for their efforts to lift millions out of poverty. Yunus' idea, known as microcredit, has helped hundreds of millions of people worldwide by handing out small loans to start their own businesses.

Ahmed presented Yunus with an inscribed silver plate and a citation at the Bangabhaban, the presidential palace in the capital, Dhaka.

"Yunus and the Grameen Bank founded by him have brought honor to Bangladesh. As Bangladeshis, we are very proud and delighted," Ahmed said.

The televised ceremony was attended by politicians and prominent citizens.

"This honor is not only for me, but for Grameen Bank, its millions of borrowers and young workers, for all Bangladeshis," Yunus said.

Yunus said the microcredit system challenged the conventional banking system, which "only lends to those who already have plenty."

"Grameen showed that it is possible to lend to those who have nothing — about two-thirds of the world's population. We give loans to the poor, to women ... without collateral or legal documents. We showed that an institution can run on trust," Yunus said.

Ahmed said the Nobel prize opened "a new era for Bangladesh."

"In their citation, the Nobel committee said if the majority cannot come out of poverty, peace cannot prevail. His microcredit concept has won worldwide recognition, and will help to establish a poverty-free world, I believe," Ahmed said.

In Bangladesh, the Grameen Bank provides services in more than 70,000 villages and has loaned US$5.72 billion (€4.56 billion) to 6.7 million Bangladeshis — 97 percent of them women — over the past three decades.

Muhammad Yunus: One man’s war on poverty

2006-11-05T19:18:00.000-08:00

L I F E S T Y L E
Focus
Sunday November 5, 2006

One man’s war on poverty

An unassuming economics professor JUNE H. L. WONG interviewed more than a decade ago suddenly becomes very famous when he wins the most prestigious prize in the world.

ELEVEN years ago, I was privileged to meet a man whose mission was to wipe out poverty from the face of the earth. It seemed very quixotic but he believed he had a way of doing it: Lending very small amounts of money to the very poor to give them a head start in making a living. He called such lending, micro-credit.

This man was Bangladeshi economics professor-turned-banker Dr Muhammad Yunus. After that meeting, I kept track, in a rather desultory way, of this gentle, unassuming man, as he increasingly won international attention and recognition for his work.

Dr Muhammad Yunus – in his trademark kurta – celebrating news of his Nobel Prize win with daughter Dina in Dhaka on Oct 13. He will use his share of the US$1.4mil (RM5.18mil) award money to set up a company to make low-cost, high-nutrition food and an eye hospital for the poor in Bangladesh.
Finally, on Oct 13, he received the most prestigious recognition of all: The Nobel Peace Prize. I was elated when the Norwegian Nobel Committee decided to “award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2006, divided into two equal parts, to Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank for their efforts to create economic and social development from below.”

News of the award brought back memories of my meeting with him in Beijing in September 1995, during the United Nations World Conference on Women.

I had never heard of Dr Yunus before but after hearing him speak about his work and seeing how he won over the likes of World Bank officials and then US First Lady Hillary Clinton, who was also at the conference, I was determined to interview him.

We met in the lobby of a Beijing hotel and we spent a good two hours talking about his work.

Grameen Bank borrower, Banesa Khatun – with son Anis Mia (right) and daughter Seema Khatun – says that when the scheme was introduced in her country, Bangladesh, 30 years ago, it helped lift her from among the poorest of the poor to a respectable, independent woman.
When I returned to Malaysia, I wrote my report and published it in The Star on Oct 27, 1995, to mark International Day for the Eradication of Poverty.

My story on how Dr Yunus, 65, started is now an old one, repeated in countless interviews around the world since he began drawing international attention. This is what I wrote in 1995:

The son of a jeweller in Chittagong, the south-east port of Bangladesh, Dr Yunus earned his basic degree and Masters from Dhaka University. He then won a Fulbright Scholarship to do his doctorate at Vanderbilt University at Nashville, Tennessee, in 1965. He stayed on to take up a teaching position in 1969.

Three years later in 1971, after a bloody civil war, Bangladesh became an independent state. The economy was devastated but there was great hope for rebuilding.

Dr Yunus, eager to help, returned home and joined Chittagong University as head of the Economics Department.

“But then there was a terrible famine in 1974 that killed many people. I felt empty teaching my students beautiful and elegant theories that had nothing to do with the lives of the people.

“I decided I wanted to find why out why people couldn’t find enough food to eat and how to resolve their problems,” he said.

It wasn’t hard since his university was surrounded by poor villages. He visited them every day and began to understand the desperate lives of poor peasants.

“I saw how people suffered for a tiny amount of money because they had to borrow from loan sharks.”

Within two weeks, Dr Yunus compiled a list of 42 people from one village who had taken such loans.

“All they needed was US$30 (RM75). My first response was to give the money to them from my own pocket so that they could pay off the moneylender. I made no conditions.”

In the El Salvadorean city of San Marcos, 51-year-old Nolberta Melara saw her life transformed through a US$30 loan from the Support for the Microbusiness Centre, an NGO based on the Grameen Bank. Melara sews aprons and sells them in markets across the country.
But Dr Yunus soon realised that it couldn’t just end there. “I realised they wouldn’t be able to find me in the university if they needed more loans so I approached the campus branch of a local bank and asked the manager to lend money to villagers.

“He thought I was joking because the bank didn’t give one dollar loans and certainly not to poor people.”

And that was the start of Dr Yunus’ one-man crusade to show that banking on the poor could change their lives for the better and at the same time be profitable for financial institutions.

It took him six years to sign up 200,000 borrowers with a repayment rate of 98%. But bankers remained sceptical, saying that his was a small-scale venture that would not survive if it got any bigger.

It was then Dr Yunus decided to set up his own bank, to be called the Grameen Bank (grameen means “rural”), in 1983 with the support of Bangladesh’s central bank.

Egyptian vegetable vendor Hanem Shaban got her first Grameen Bank-type loan of 250 Egyptian pounds (RM159) six years ago and expanded her vegetable stall in Cairo’s popular Imbaba market. She now earns much more money than before.
Today, according to the Grameen Bank website, as of May, it has 6.67 million borrowers, 97 % of whom are women (see ‘Working wonders with women’). With 2,247 branches, it provides services in 72,096 villages, covering more than 86% of the total number of villages in Bangladesh.

Micro financing has also spread beyond Bangladesh to other parts of the world. Locally, Amanah Ikhtiar Malaysia (AIM), set up in 1987, was among the earliest replications of the Grameen model.

(AIM has 69 branches with 157,000 active members nationwide and has provided loans amounting to RM1.7bil, mostly to finance business activities. It received a boost recently when Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Badawi announced an additional allocation of RM100mil to its coffers.)

I was not the only journalist who took delight in Dr Yunus’s Nobel Prize win. NBC news correspondent Mark Potter posted the following in The Daily Nightly, a blog written by MCNBC journos and producers:

“I had to smile this morning when I read that Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank won the Nobel Peace Prize. Yunus ? was the inspiration for a man we featured earlier this year on a Nightly News ‘Making a Difference’ piece from the island of Samoa, in the South Pacific.

“What might appear to be dry economic and social theory on paper is actually deeply moving when you see it in practice and witness the results – as we were lucky enough to do this spring.

“Our story featured Greg Casagrande, who was a hard-charging executive for Ford and Mazda before he gave it all up to chase his dream of eradicating poverty. After studying Yunus’ principles, he used his own money to start up a loan program for women in impoverished Samoa.”

This is but one inspiring example of how the Grameen model has been copied successfully all over the world.

But Grameen is not without critics, as CNews journalist Farid Hossain pointed out.

The criticisms have focused on the bank’s high interest rates, which, at 20%, are significantly higher than the 10%-15% charged by commercial banks.

“While the poor pay 20% interest for their loan, the rich pay much less. It can’t be called social justice,” Farid quoted S.M. Akash, an economics professor at Dhaka University, as saying.

Dr Yunus’ response, according to journalist Alan Jolis whose The Independent on Sunday article appears in grameen-info.org : If anyone can run a bank for the poor and charge less, please go ahead and do so.

Polio victim S. Thilagavathy (with AIM manager Zubairi Mohd Fadzil and her daughter Reena Devi) earned RM50 by offering sewing services. She was able to increase her earnings to RM350 after receiving a loan from AIM in 2000 to buy a sewing machine.
Despite such criticisms, Dr Yunus is considered a national hero in his country even before he won the Nobel Prize. Indeed, unlike many previous Nobel Peace Prize winners, he is seen as a most deserving recipient and a popular choice among ordinary folk.

A person who responded to Potter’s posting in The Daily Nightly wondered why Dr Yunus didn’t win the prize for economics. The Norwegian Nobel Committee answered that question best when it explained its decision:

“Lasting peace cannot be achieved unless large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty. Micro-credit is one such means. Development from below also serves to advance democracy and human rights.”

To underscore that statement, it’s worthwhile to quote what Dr Yunus told Jolis: “Poverty covers people in a thick crust and makes the poor appear stupid and without initiative.

“Yet if you give them credit, they will slowly come back to life. Even those who seemingly have no conceptual thought, no ability to think of yesterday or tomorrow, are in fact quite intelligent and expert at the art of survival. Credit is the key that unlocks their humanity.”

In 1995, he told me that his mission was to show that a poverty-free world is possible in our lifetime and his goal was to provide credit to the world’s 100 million poorest families through women by 2005.

According to the 2005 State of Microcredit Summit Campaign Report, as of Dec 31, 2004, some 3,200 micro-credit institutions reported reaching more than 92 million clients. Almost 73% of them were living in dire poverty at the time of their first loan.

That would mean Dr Yunus has reached his goal and he may see his ultimate dream realised.

He said to me: “How wonderful if, one day, our grandchildren must visit a museum to see what poverty was all about.”

I concluded my story then by saying: “Wishful thinking?” I won’t make the same mistake twice.

Kinokuniya Bookstores is offering Dr Muhammad Yunus’ critically acclaimed book, ‘Banker to the Poor: Micro-credit and the Battle Against World Poverty’ (ISBN: 1-586-48198-3) at a 25% discount. However, stocks have run out and the book will only be available at Kinokuniya’s Suria KLCC store after Dec 1. The discount is valid between Dec 1 and Dec 31 (or while stocks last).

FW: Sydney Peace Prize goes to Bangladesh’s Irene Khan

2006-11-05T08:29:00.000-08:00

Sydney Peace Prize goes to Bangladesh’s Irene Khan

Neena Bhandari
Wednesday, November 01, 2006 21:37 IST

Khan is the first Asian and first woman to spearhead Amnesty International

SYDNEY: Secretary General of Amnesty International Irene Zubaida Khan has been awarded the 2006 Sydney Peace Prize for “her courageous advocacy of human rights and her skills in identifying violence against women as a massive injustice and therefore a priority in campaigning for peace”.

She said, “I am deeply honoured. Through this award, the Sydney Peace Foundation recognises that there can be no peace without justice and respect for human rights”.

Born in Bangladesh, Khan is the first woman, the first Asian and the first Muslim to guide the world’s largest human rights organisation, bringing a new perspective to it. Deeply concerned about violence against women, she called for better protection of women’s human rights and initiated a process of consultations with women activists to design a global campaign by Amnesty International against violence on women.

On the current debate raging over women’s clothes, Khan said, “Violence against women has less to do with how women dress and far more to do with the inequality of women, the impunity of those who commit gender crimes and the apathy of state and society that condone and encourage attitudes that facilitate gender violence. Women have the right to freedom of expression, and that includes what they choose to wear. Governments have a duty to create a safe environment in which every woman can make that choice without fear of violence or coercion...”

A recipient of several academic awards, including a Ford Foundation Fellowship and the Pilkington Woman of the Year Award 2002, she recognises that at a time when fear and failed leadership threaten peace and human rights, there is a greater than ever need for individual activism.

Delivering the Sydney Peace Prize lecture she said, “Discrimination and racial profiling have become an accepted element of anti-terrorism strategies in many countries, undermining both human rights and trust between communities”

Khan, who studied law at the University of Manchester and Harvard Law School emphasised, “We should avoid simplifying multiple identities of people into a single religious one. When you identify me only by my faith, you exclude all my identity as a woman, a mother, a lawyer, a citizen of Bangladesh, a resident of London, a lover of French cuisine and English theatre. The plurality and not the singularity of our identities is the way in which to overcome fear and create social harmony in a troubled world”.

Each year the Sydney Peace Foundation awards the prize to an individual who has made significant contributions to ‘peace with justice’.

The only other winner from the sub-continent has been novelist and human rights activist Arundhati Roy, who was awarded the prize in 2004 for her work in social campaigns and advocacy of non-violence.

Source: http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1061529

FW: What Israel can learn from Muhammad Yunus

2006-10-29T09:39:00.000-08:00

What Israel can learn from Muhammad Yunus
IDA NUDEL, THE JERUSALEM POST Oct. 23, 2006
--------------------------------------------

I arrived in Israel almost 19 years ago to the day. I had left a Soviet Union where Zionist life was actually thriving. I came to the land of my dreams not as a refugee seeking just any place under the sun.

I knew why I had embarked on my journey of more than 17 years, often at great personal risk. I knew why I came to Israel as did so many other Russian Jews who shared my feelings and aspirations.

We had been led to believe, through the media, by the Jewish Agency and via the Voice of Israel that every Jewish citizen of Israel lives in his homeland in dignity. Sadly, very soon after I arrived, I discovered that most of the claimed advantages of the Jewish state belonged to its glorious past.

Even the word "Zionism" acquired a negative connotation in some Israeli circles.

The mass media and the country's intellectual elite inspire acrimony between different Jewish immigrant groups. They've obstructed the revival of a homogeneous Jewish people after 2,000 years of dispersion.

The media actively and cynically cultivate disdain of the weak and poor. Schools unbelievably select children according to their families' material means.

The-powers-that-be hinder the economic integration of young people, thus encouraging them to leave the country. After 2001, reference to national identity was removed from our Israeli IDs; the word "Jewish" has virtually disappeared not only from our official documents but also from the Hebrew press.

Even the anti-Semitic Soviet Union wouldn't dare strike such a blow to the national dignity of the Jews.

IN THE last decades of the 20th century the interests of the Jewish national revival and those of Israel's powers-that-be came into real conflict, thus endangering the idea of the Jewish national home. We have witnessed how a persecuted and humiliated people's dream of a resurrected Israel has been reduced by these forces to one of nurturing as many millionaires as possible.

The same people sit in the Knesset - for decades. Intellectuals appear concerned only with their personal success, while the media has turned into a mass brainwashing machine targeting poor, semi-literate and politically na ve citizens. New millionaires are appearing at a striking rate, while the reverse process of mass impoverishment is also accelerating. The middle class is gradually being squeezed out of the country's economic life.

At the same time, a new trend is gaining momentum among well-to-do population groups: acquiring alternative citizenship for themselves and their children. These "lucky" characters can now cynically look down at their former country assured of their own future.

LAST WEEK, Muhammad Yunus, a millionaire banker, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for pioneering a micro-credit scheme and his continuing efforts to eradicate poverty in his native Bangladesh.

He did this at his own initiative and in spite of the powers-that-be in his country. He was determined to defeat poverty and illiteracy in Bangladesh. His hard work and devotion have won him well-deserved international acclaim.

This great citizen of a very poor country has already saved 6 million of his compatriots from impoverishment and has given them a chance for a dignified life.

It sounds like a fairy tale - this story of a kind and resourceful wizard who makes poor people happy. But it demonstrates that even a lone millionaire - providing he is a genuine patriot - can begin to solve a problem of national proportions.

Instead of making money on the misfortune of poor people, as is often the case in our country, Muhammad Yunus disdainfully put bureaucracy aside and addressed the problem himself.

The myth that unemployment is impossible to eliminate has thus been finished off by this one-man initiative.

Now, in all likelihood, we cannot change the indifference and cynicism toward the people by our own powers-that-be, but perhaps we can aspire to do what needs to be done without them.

I wonder.

Can something like what Muhammad Yunus did happen in our country, among our people who have long dedicated themselves to being a light onto the nations?

Can it be done in a country in which one bank is profiteering - and perfectly legally, too - to the tune of almost 400 percent? Can it be done in a country in which new immigrants get saddled with huge montages? In which basic housing is sometimes unaffordable? Can it be done in a country that virtually sanctions childhood illiteracy, thus destroying an entire generation's chances for obtaining professional advancement?

After almost 60 years of national independence, the family and social fabric in this land seems governed by outdated laws and red tape.

Against the achievements of Muhammad Yunus in Bangladesh, and given the economic and moral travails in Israel, our powers-that-be have a lot to answer for.

The writer, a former Soviet Prisoner of Zion, is a Jabotinsky Prize winner.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=
1159193504509&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter

Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) : a new party in Bangladesh

2006-10-27T19:06:00.000-07:00

----------------------------------------------
Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)president Badruddoza Chowdhury declared:
“From today, a new journey has begun against corruption, injustice, terrorism and failure. The prime minister's family members have amassed hundreds of crores of taka while corruption and essential prices remained unchecked. Her family has disgraced democracy. We have united today, but the alliance government has been clinically dead long since.”
-----------------------------------------------
executive president of Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)Oli Ahmed in his speech said:
Fourteen members of the prime minister's family have looted the wealth of the country. We have to recover the country's lost wealth.
-----------------------------------------------

Financial Express
LDP leaders say in their letters to Khaleda
Corruption of ministers, MPs, led by Tarique, has broken all records

10/28/2006

Before the formal declaration came, the ministers and MPs, who formed the new party Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), wrote letters to BNP chief Khaleda Zia and resigned from the party. The constitution stipulates that the MPs lose their membership after resigning from the party they are elected from, reports BDNews.
In the resignation letters, the leaders said: "The corruption of some ministers, MPs and leaders, led by your son Tarique Rahman, has broken all previous records. This has tarnished image of the party. It is not possible for any person having personal dignity to continue with the party. The BNP established by President Ziaur Rahman is now controlled by Razakars, autocrats and corrupts. Against the principle of democracy, Tarique, without having any protocol, has been abusing the state power."
Oli, one of the founders of the party, said he floated the new platform in protest against the Khaleda-Tarique Rahman-led "unbridled corruption".
He blamed Tarique, some legislators and BNP leaders for damaging the party image by indulging in pervasive corruption.
"Tarique Rahman compelled the BNP lawmakers and leaders to work according to his [Tarique] whims although he has no government protocol," Oli said.
He also blamed the government for its failure to control the price hike of essentials.
Secretary-general of the LDP Abdul Mannan, a retired Major, read out the declaration that said the new party was floated "to protect the country from uncertainty and protest unbridled corruption, failure in running the country, state-sponsored terrorism, misrule, and price hike of essentials".
Some of the former MPs joining the LDP are: Salauddin Kamran, Arif Moinuddin, Nazim Uddin Al Azad, Syed Didar Bakht and Nurul Alam. Ainuddin, M A Salam, Mainul Islam and Didarul Alam are among retired officers of the armed forces. Political leader Noim Jahangir and Sanaul Haq Niru and former secretary Nazmul Alam Siddiqui also joined the party.
Badruddoza Chowdhury's Bikalpa Dhara Bangladesh has now merged with the LDP.
He and Oli jointly announced the launch of the party at around 10:45am amid raucous applause from hundreds of supporters carrying the party's symbol 'winnow'.

http://www.financialexpress-bd.com/index3.asp?
cnd=10/28/2006§ion_id=2&newsid=41743&spcl=no

FW: Europe's Muslims

2006-10-26T22:21:00.000-07:00

washingtonpost.com
Editorial

Europe's Muslims
A year after the French riots, their alienation is growing.

Wednesday, October 25, 2006; A16

AYEAR AGO this week, riots erupted in mostly Muslim suburbs of Paris and other French cities, underlining the alienation of a subculture that makes up 8 percent of the country's population but has suffered from chronic unemployment and discrimination. One year later, that alienation -- and the threat of violence that comes with it -- appears to have worsened, not only in France but across Western Europe. French police are facing what some call a "permanent intifada" in Muslim neighborhoods, with nearly 2,500 incidents of violence against officers recorded in the first six months of the year. Some of these now take the form of planned ambushes: On Sunday a gang of youths emptied a bus of its passengers, set it on fire, and then stoned the firefighters who responded.

In Britain, the London bombings of 2005, which were executed in part by native-born Muslims, have been succeeded by this summer's arrest of another group of native extremists who allegedly plotted to blow up airliners. Two Lebanese residents of Germany were accused of trying to bomb passenger trains. The threat of violence by Muslims angered by perceived insults, whether from the German-born pope or the director of a Mozart opera, has become more frequent.

Europeans are slowly growing more aware that a major part of the global struggle against Islamic extremism must take place in their own countries -- and not just in faraway Afghanistan or Iraq. But their governments, media and political elites still appear to be a long way from coming to grips with the challenge. Rather than seeking to address the larger alienation of mainstream Muslims, European leaders often appear to do the opposite -- by challenging the culture of Muslims and defending gratuitous insults of Islam.

One recent but hardly isolated example came from Britain's House of Commons leader, Jack Straw, who criticized Muslim women for wearing veils and said he asked those who visited his office to remove them, on the grounds that they impede "communication." It's hard to believe that veils are the biggest obstacle to communication between British politicians and the country's Muslims; and it's even harder to imagine Mr. Straw raising similar objections about Sikh turbans or Orthodox Jewish dress. True, the Labor Party MP was reflecting -- or maybe pandering to -- the concern of many in Britain about the self-segregation of some Muslims. But veils -- which are also under government attack in France and Italy -- are not the cause of that segregation, much less of terrorism. Attacks on Muslim custom by public officials are more likely to reinforce than to ease the community's alienation.

Mr. Straw and other European politicians could contribute far more to combating radical Islam if they focused on those who actually foment intolerance among European Muslims -- as well as those in the mainstream community who promote prejudice against Arabs and South Asians and their descendants. Muslims in Europe should be invited to embrace the countries where they live on their own terms. They should be expected to respect laws and freedoms. But politicians would do better to work on dismantling the barriers Muslims face in getting educations and jobs rather than those that distinguish Islam from the secular majority.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn
/content/article/2006/10/24/AR2006102401148_pf.html

FW: Single-Sex Schooling

2006-10-26T22:17:00.000-07:00

washingtonpost.com
Editorial
Single-Sex Schooling
Public education needs to look at all choices.

Friday, October 27, 2006; A22

STUDIES OF single-sex education are all over the map, with no one really knowing how effective it is. Still, the decision giving public schools greater freedom to offer all-boys and all-girls instruction is right because of one known certainty: Traditional schools just are not working for a large number of children.

Single-sex education largely disappeared from public schools as a result of the landmark 1972 Title IX law that banned sex discrimination in federally funded education programs. Single-sex instruction was largely limited to gym and sex education classes. Schools for one sex were allowed if a similar school existed for the other sex. The Education Department, in rules announced this week, opened up the field by saying schools can offer single-sex education as long as enrollment is voluntary and if "substantially equal" coeducation is offered to the excluded sex.

Civil rights groups and women's advocates are right to be concerned about possible abuses that could arise from differing assessments of what is "substantially equal," a phrase that, in truth, does give one pause. The past is rife with instances of separate not being equal. But with appropriate safeguards and oversight, communities should have the option to meet the growing demand for single-sex schools. Parents should be able to obtain the appropriate schooling for their children without always having to pay the high tab for private school.

No doubt same-sex schooling is not for everyone and should be offered only under well-thought-out conditions. There is, for example, serious dispute over who would benefit most. Some believe that girls are disadvantaged in traditional classrooms and perform better by themselves. Others contend that low-income children would be helped, while another school of thought argues that high school boys would do better if separated from girls. Such uncertainty points up the need for better research.

Local school districts that want to experiment with single-sex instruction should be encouraged to adopt a meticulous research protocol to demonstrate what works or doesn't work. Then a serious discussion can begin.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/
2006/10/26/AR2006102601507.html?nav=rss_opinion

A Hand Up, Not a Handout (By Muhammad Yunus)

2006-10-18T11:52:00.000-07:00

(from THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Editorial Page)

NOBEL MEN

A Hand Up, Not a Handout
Why not microloans for Katrina victims?

BY MUHAMMAD YUNUS
Saturday, October 14, 2006 1:00 p.m. EDT

America's government and people brought charity to a new level last year in their response to Hurricane Katrina. The rebuilding has been particularly difficult, however, because it has involved lives as well as bricks and mortar. Many victims had been desperately poor all their lives. Helping them to self-sufficiency has proved just as difficult, if not harder, than putting homes and businesses back up again.

Having many very poor citizens, and more than its share of natural disasters, Bangladesh--my own country--has a great deal of experience facing both these challenges. We have a per capita gross national income of $440, with half the population living below the poverty line. We've little to start with, and much of that is repeatedly snatched away. In 1998, floods covered much of the country for over two months, affecting 30 million people; and a single cyclone killed 300,000 in 1970. Despite these catastrophes, more of our people are climbing out of poverty.

So at the risk of sounding presumptuous: What can the U.S. learn from Bangladesh about post-disaster economic recovery? Like many other countries, even Bangladeshis were quick with a handout after Katrina, giving the U.S. $1 million for the victims. But Americans might be surprised to learn that one of our most successful tools for rebuilding businesses is not government handouts, but rather, small loans packaged with practical business and social advice.

Microfinance is one of the biggest success stories of the developing world, and proponents like me believe it could be just as successful in helping the poor in wealthy countries such as the U.S. The basic philosophy behind microfinance is that the poor, although spurned by traditional banks because they can't provide collateral, are actually a great investment: No one works harder than someone who is striving to achieve life's basic necessities, particularly a woman with children to support. Sadly, it is also true that in catastrophic circumstances, very little of the cash so generously given ever gets all the way down to the very poor. There are too many "professionals" ahead of them in line, highly skilled at diverting funds into their own pockets. This is particularly regrettable because very poor people need only a little money to set up a business that can make a dramatic difference in the quality of their lives.

I started the Grameen Bank 30 years ago by distributing about $27 (no typo here!) worth of loans among 40 extremely poor Bangladeshis. Since the bank officially opened in 1983, it has loaned $5.7 billion in microfinance. Today, Grameen has 6.6 million borrowers in Bangladesh alone, borrowing $500 million a year in loans that average just over $100 each. The loans are entirely financed by borrowers' deposits and the bank recovers 98.85% of all money loaned. Notably, Grameen Bank has been profitable in all but three years since its launch. Our largely poor customers save $1.008 for every dollar they borrow, so the poor are truly funding the poor.

The bank supports businesses such as small services, stores, direct sales, furniture-making, cell phone stations and milling, all of which support the local economy. And it works. More than half of our borrowers have moved out of poverty, mainly through their own efforts. Most importantly, when you lend money to disadvantaged people, it gives them a sense of pride, rather than the humiliation they may feel over a handout. And just as helpful as the money is the guidance they get from the bank. Training and connecting poor, inexperienced workers to a reliable and ethical lending and savings service is a huge advantage for them that only gets stronger after a disaster. This is particularly true of women, who are often constrained by social and financial barriers. Grameen communities have also made tremendous strides on health and social issues, such as sanitation, and pushed aside discriminatory practices such as bridal dowries.

The impact of microfinance is spreading world-wide. As of December 2004, 3,100 microcredit institutions reported reaching 92,270,289 clients, 66,614,871 of whom were among the world's poorest when they took their first loan. Assuming five persons per family, the loans to the 54.8 million poorest clients affected some 330 million family members by the end of 2004.
Microfinance has worked so well that it has become a major instrument of reconstruction in post-tsunami Asia as well. A Sri Lankan conglomerate, Ceylinco, partnered with Grameen to provide small loans to 10,000 tsunami victims. These range from $300 to $10,000 and carry an interest rate of 6%, less than half the rate for similar small loans in Sri Lanka. The loans have a one-year grace-period, and Ceylinco takes no collateral, thereby heaping all the risk onto itself. But the company felt this was still a wise investment.

Because some countries that rely heavily on microfinance also happen to be disaster-prone, Grameen now has special disaster loan funds (DLFs) to help meet the urgent need for cash after a catastrophe. These funds also aim to offset the microlender's own losses. The funds were established in Bangladesh after the record flooding of 1998, which affected 20% of the population. Similar funds were set up in Central America in the wake of Hurricane Mitch, and in Poland after the floods of 1997. The DLFs are financial reserves and usually derived from the initial donor grant to the micro-credit lender.

Many people ask, Why not just give free cash, especially under such dire circumstances? In Bangladesh, we've learned that when aid is free, not only do the poor get the least of it, but everyone inflates their needs. While some handouts are clearly necessary in such times, we focus on lending small amounts of money. This lets us keep costs down and rebuild funds for the next disaster. Most importantly, our Grameen banks are ready to act at a moment's notice. They can respond to a disaster without waiting for anyone's permission, immediately becoming like humanitarian agencies by suspending loan payments, and providing cash, food and medicines. Once rebuilding starts, the bankers keep detailed records of the money lent, and people are allowed to repay bit by bit.

That is the strategy we followed after the 1998 flooding, which covered 50% of Bangladesh's land and affected customers at about 70% of our branches. More than 700 Grameen borrowers or their family members were killed and just over half (a million borrowers) were affected by the flooding. That represents a small percentage of the overall population affected, but the Bank and its staff where there right away to help with immediate needs. Later, microlenders helped people restructure their loans or gave out new loans on more favorable terms.

Microlending has already helped millions reach a better life through their own initiative. It has also given them valuable skills as well as crucial financial back-up in case they ever face a natural disaster like Katrina. So it might be time to think about another type of support for Katrina's victims: the microloan. As our small, flood-battered country has learned, giving someone a hand up doesn't always require a handout. The most important thing is to help people get back to work while letting them hold on to their self-respect. Microloans can do just that.

Mr. Yunus, who yesterday won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, is founder and managing director of the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh.

Muhammad Yunus wins Nobel Peace Prize

2006-10-17T12:48:00.000-07:00

From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Yunus

CNN Money
Bangladeshi banker wins Nobel Peace Prize
Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank awarded prestigious prize for lending efforts to very poorest citizens of Bangladesh.

October 13 2006: 7:04 AM EDT
OSLO (Reuters) -- Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank he founded won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for grassroots efforts to lift millions out of poverty that earned him the nickname of "banker to the poor."

Yunus, 66, set up a new kind of bank in the 1976 to give credit to the very poorest in his native Bangladesh, particularly women, enabling them to start up small businesses without collateral.

In doing so, he invented microcredit, a system that has been copied in more than 100 nations from the United States to Uganda.

"In Bangladesh, where nothing works and there's no electricity," Yunus once said, "microcredit works like clockwork."

The Nobel committee awarded the prize to Yunus and Grameen Bank "for their efforts to create economic and social development from below," it said in its citation.

"Lasting peace cannot be achieved unless large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty. Microcredit is one such means. Development from below also serves to advance democracy and human rights," it said.

Yunus and Grameen were surprise winners of the 10 million Swedish crown ($1.36 million) award from a field of 191 candidates. The prize will be handed out in Oslo on Dec. 10.

"This is fantastic, unbelievable. Thank you," Yunus, whose autobiography is called "Banker to the Poor," told Norway's NRK television after the announcement.

Returning from a Fulbright scholarship in the United States, Yunus was shocked by the 1974 Bangladesh famine and headed out into the villages to see what he could do.

He discovered the women were in severe debt to extortionate moneylenders, and Yunus's initial aim was simply to persuade a local bank manager to step in and offer the villagers regular credit. The banker said it was impossible without a guarantee.

Yunus set out to prove him wrong and has never looked back. Grameen - the word means village in Bengali - has now disbursed $5.72 billion since its inception. Of this $5.07 billion has been repaid -- a loan recovery rate of 98.85 per cent.

"Across cultures and civilizations, Yunus and Grameen Bank have shown that even the poorest of the poor can work to bring about their own development," the secretive five-member Nobel committee said in announcing the award.

FW: REFLECTIONS ON HISTORY AND RELIGION: Muhammad's Sword

2006-10-13T00:23:00.000-07:00

(http://baltimorechronicle.com/2006/092506AVNERY.html)

REFLECTIONS ON HISTORY AND RELIGION:
Muhammad's Sword
by URI AVNERY

Every honest Jew who knows the history of his people cannot but feel a deep sense of gratitude to Islam, which has protected the Jews for fifty generations, while the Christian world persecuted the Jews and tried many times "by the sword" to get them to abandon their faith.SEPT. 23, 2006--Since the days when Roman Emperors threw Christians to the lions, the relations between the emperors and the heads of the church have undergone many changes.

Constantine the Great, who became Emperor in the year 306—exactly 1700 years ago—encouraged the practice of Christianity in the empire, which included Palestine. Centuries later, the church split into an Eastern (Orthodox) and a Western (Catholic) part. In the West, the Bishop of Rome, who acquired the title of Pope, demanded that the Emperor accept his superiority.

The struggle between the Emperors and the Popes played a central role in European history and divided the peoples. It knew ups and downs. Some Emperors dismissed or expelled a Pope, some Popes dismissed or excommunicated an Emperor. One of the Emperors, Henry IV, "walked to Canossa," standing for three days barefoot in the snow in front of the Pope's castle, until the Pope deigned to annul his excommunication.

But there were times when Emperors and Popes lived in peace with each other. We are witnessing such a period today. Between the present Pope, Benedict XVI, and the present Emperor, George Bush II, there exists a wonderful harmony. Last week's speech by the Pope, which aroused a world-wide storm, went well with Bush's crusade against "Islamofascism," in the context of the "Clash of Civilizations."

IN HIS lecture at a German university, the 265th Pope described what he sees as a huge difference between Christianity and Islam: while Christianity is based on reason, Islam denies it. While Christians see the logic of God's actions, Muslims deny that there is any such logic in the actions of Allah.

As a Jewish atheist, I do not intend to enter the fray of this debate. It is much beyond my humble abilities to understand the logic of the Pope. But I cannot overlook one passage, which concerns me too, as an Israeli living near the fault-line of this "war of civilizations."

* * *

In order to prove the lack of reason in Islam, the Pope asserts that the prophet Muhammad ordered his followers to spread their religion by the sword. According to the Pope, that is unreasonable, because faith is born of the soul, not of the body. How can the sword influence the soul?

To support his case, the Pope quoted—of all people—a Byzantine Emperor, who belonged, of course, to the competing Eastern Church. At the end of the 14th century, the Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus told of a debate he had—or so he said (its occurrence is in doubt)—with an unnamed Persian Muslim scholar. In the heat of the argument, the Emperor (according to himself) flung the following words at his adversary:

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." These words give rise to three questions:
Why did the Emperor say them?

Are they true?

Why did the present Pope quote them?
* * *

WHEN MANUEL II wrote his treatise, he was the head of a dying empire. He assumed power in 1391, when only a few provinces of the once illustrious empire remained. These, too, were already under Turkish threat.

At that point in time, the Ottoman Turks had reached the banks of the Danube. They had conquered Bulgaria and the north of Greece, and had twice defeated relieving armies sent by Europe to save the Eastern Empire. In 1453, only a few years after Manuel's death, his capital, Constantinople (the present Istanbul) fell to the Turks, putting an end to the Empire that had lasted for more than a thousand years.

During his reign, Manuel made the rounds of the capitals of Europe in an attempt to drum up support. He promised to reunite the church. There is no doubt that he wrote his religious treatise in order to incite the Christian countries against the Turks and convince them to start a new crusade. The aim was practical, theology was serving politics.

In this sense, the quote serves exactly the requirements of the present Emperor, George Bush II. He, too, wants to unite the Christian world against the mainly Muslim "Axis of Evil." Moreover, the Turks are again knocking on the doors of Europe, this time peacefully. It is well known that the Pope supports the forces that object to the entry of Turkey into the European Union.

* * *

IS THERE any truth in Manuel's argument?

Verse 257 of the Qu'ran says unequivocally: "There must be no coercion in matters of faith."The pope himself threw in a word of caution. As a serious and renowned theologian, he could not afford to falsify written texts. Therefore, he admitted that the Qur'an specifically forbade the spreading of the faith by force. He quoted the second Sura, verse 256 (strangely fallible, for a pope, he meant verse 257) which says: "There must be no coercion in matters of faith."

How can one ignore such an unequivocal statement? The Pope simply argues that this commandment was laid down by the prophet when he was at the beginning of his career, still weak and powerless, but that later on he ordered the use of the sword in the service of the faith. Such an order does not exist in the Qur'an. True, Muhammad called for the use of the sword in his war against opposing tribes—Christian, Jewish and others—in Arabia, when he was building his state. But that was a political act, not a religious one; basically a fight for territory, not for the spreading of the faith.

The treatment of other religions by Islam must be judged by a simple test: How did the Muslim rulers behave for more than a thousand years, when they had the power to "spread the faith by the sword"?Jesus said: "You will recognize them by their fruits." The treatment of other religions by Islam must be judged by a simple test: How did the Muslim rulers behave for more than a thousand years, when they had the power to "spread the faith by the sword"?

Well, they just did not.

For many centuries, the Muslims ruled Greece. Did the Greeks become Muslims? Did anyone even try to Islamize them? On the contrary, Christian Greeks held the highest positions in the Ottoman administration. The Bulgarians, Serbs, Romanians, Hungarians and other European nations lived at one time or another under Ottoman rule and clung to their Christian faith. Nobody compelled them to become Muslims and all of them remained devoutly Christian.

True, the Albanians did convert to Islam, and so did the Bosniaks. But nobody argues that they did this under duress. They adopted Islam in order to become favorites of the government and enjoy the fruits.

In 1099, the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem and massacred its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants indiscriminately, in the name of the gentle Jesus.In 1099, the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem and massacred its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants indiscriminately, in the name of the gentle Jesus. At that time, 400 years into the occupation of Palestine by the Muslims, Christians were still the majority in the country. Throughout this long period, no effort was made to impose Islam on them. Only after the expulsion of the Crusaders from the country, did the majority of the inhabitants start to adopt the Arabic language and the Muslim faith—and they were the forefathers of most of today's Palestinians.

* * *

THERE IS no evidence whatsoever of any attempt to impose Islam on the Jews. As is well known, under Muslim rule the Jews of Spain enjoyed a bloom the like of which the Jews did not enjoy anywhere else until almost our time. Poets like Yehuda Halevy wrote in Arabic, as did the great Maimonides. In Muslim Spain, Jews were ministers, poets, scientists. In Muslim Toledo, Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholars worked together and translated the ancient Greek philosophical and scientific texts. That was, indeed, the Golden Age. How would this have been possible, had the Prophet decreed the "spreading of the faith by the sword"?

When the Catholics instituted a reign of religious terror in Spain, the Jews and the Muslims were presented with a cruel choice: to become Christians, to be massacred or to leave. Almost all who escaped were received with open arms in the Muslim countries.What happened afterwards is even more telling. When the Catholics re-conquered Spain from the Muslims, they instituted a reign of religious terror. The Jews and the Muslims were presented with a cruel choice: to become Christians, to be massacred or to leave. And where did the hundreds of thousand of Jews, who refused to abandon their faith, escape? Almost all of them were received with open arms in the Muslim countries. The Sephardi ("Spanish") Jews settled all over the Muslim world, from Morocco in the west to Iraq in the east, from Bulgaria (then part of the Ottoman Empire) in the north to Sudan in the south. Nowhere were they persecuted. They knew nothing like the tortures of the Inquisition, the flames of the auto-da-fe, the pogroms, the terrible mass-expulsions that took place in almost all Christian countries, up to the Holocaust.

WHY? Because Islam expressly prohibited any persecution of the "peoples of the book." In Islamic society, a special place was reserved for Jews and Christians. They did not enjoy completely equal rights, but almost. They had to pay a special poll-tax, but were exempted from military service—a trade-off that was quite welcome to many Jews. It has been said that Muslim rulers frowned upon any attempt to convert Jews to Islam even by gentle persuasion—because it entailed the loss of taxes.

Every honest Jew who knows the history of his people cannot but feel a deep sense of gratitude to Islam, which has protected the Jews for fifty generations, while the Christian world persecuted the Jews and tried many times "by the sword" to get them to abandon their faith.

* * *

THE STORY about "spreading the faith by the sword" is an evil legend, one of the myths that grew up in Europe during the great wars against the Muslims—the reconquista of Spain by the Christians, the Crusades and the repulsion of the Turks, who almost conquered Vienna. I suspect that the German Pope, too, honestly believes in these fables. That means that the leader of the Catholic world, who is a Christian theologian in his own right, did not make the effort to study the history of other religions.

Why did he utter these words in public? And why now?

Not for the first time in history, a religious robe is spread to cover the nakedness of economic interests; not for the first time, a robbers' expedition becomes a Crusade.There is no escape from viewing them against the background of the new Crusade of Bush and his evangelist supporters, with his slogans of "Islamofascism" and the "Global War on Terrorism"—when "terrorism" has become a synonym for Muslims. For Bush's handlers, this is a cynical attempt to justify the domination of the world's oil resources. Not for the first time in history, a religious robe is spread to cover the nakedness of economic interests; not for the first time, a robbers' expedition becomes a Crusade.

The speech of the Pope blends into this effort. Who can foretell the dire consequences?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is one of the writers featured in The Other Israel: Voices of Dissent and Refusal. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's hot new book The Politics of Anti-Semitism. He can be reached at: avnery@counterpunch.org. This story is published in the Baltimore Chronicle with permission of the author.

Rebiya Kadeer, Chinese Muslim activist, among candidates for Nobel

2006-10-13T00:09:00.000-07:00

============ =========
---In the news---
============ =========
International Herald Tribune
Chinese Muslim activist, among candidates for Nobel, says prize would honor her people
The Associated Press
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2006

WASHINGTON A Chinese Muslim businesswoman who spent almost six years in prison without ever being told why says if she were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize it might help her people against "cultural genocide" that China is waging on her people.

Rebiya Kadeer is among an undisclosed number of nominees for the prize to be announced Friday in Oslo, Norway. While the five-member awards committee never gives clues to its thinking, even to confirming names of nominees, there has been speculation in Oslo that the award might go this year to Kadeer or another human rights figure.

"If I were given this Nobel Peace Prize it means so much to my people because my people are facing cultural genocide in this world," Kadeer said Thursday. It would be "recognition of the plight of my people," she said in an interview with Associated Press Television.

Kadeer is a member of the Uighur minority, Muslims from the Xinjiang autonomous region of northwestern China. They are ethnically related to Central Asians, not Chinese.

Kadeer was arrested in 1999 as she approached a hotel where staff members of the U.S. Congressional Research Service waited to meet with her. She was held in solitary confinement for three years and was released only last year after the United States and others agitated for her.

She said the only reason she was given for her arrest was that she had sent Chinese-language newspapers to her husband in the United States. She said, however, the reason probably had more to do with documents she had for the American officials.

"I have been campaigning for the human rights and freedom of the Uighur people peacefully and patiently. My hope is to conduct a dialogue directly with the Chinese government so that the Uighur problem will be resolved," she said in Thursday's television interview.

She said she believed that if her work were to be honored with the Nobel Peace Prize, it would "help the Uighur people to have freedom of speech and live like a human being."

(http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/10/13/
america/NA_GEN_Activist_Nobel_Candidate.php)

============ ========= ========
---Who is Rebiya---
============ ========= ========

Profile: Rebiya Kadeer
Rebiya Kadeer was a successful businesswoman and philanthropist in China's restive Xinjiang until her arrest in 1999 for allegedly endangering national security.
Her crime, the authorities said, was to send local newspaper reports about the activities of Xinjiang's ethnic Turkish-speaking Uighurs to her US-based husband, even though these were freely available.

It was a sharp reversal in fortunes for someone whose local achievements the Communist government had until then trumpeted.

Mrs Kadeer, twice-married and the mother of at least 11 children, grew up in poverty but at the time of her release was known locally as "the millionairess".

Human Rights Watch researcher Mickey Spiegel, who has met Mrs Kadeer's family several times, described her as "a very enterprising woman, who was able to bring herself up, in a sense, by her bootstraps".

After working as a laundress, Mrs Kadeer founded and directed a large trading company in Xinjiang, and used her wealth to provide fellow Uighurs with employment and training.

CHINA'S UIGHURS
Ethnically Turkic Muslims, mainly live in Xinjiang
Made bid for independent state in 1940s
Sporadic violence in Xinjiang since 1991
Uighurs worried about Chinese immigration and erosion of traditional culture

Partly as a result, she was appointed to China's national advisory group, the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), and sent as one of the country's delegates to the United Nations World Conference on Women in 1995.

But her treatment by the authorities changed, rights organisations say, when her Uighur husband and former political prisoner Sidik Rouzi fled China for the US in 1996.

He had previously been imprisoned for campaigning against China's treatment of the ethnic minority, which make up more than half the mainly Muslim population of Xinjiang.

Mrs Kadeer's passport was seized, she was harassed by police and, in 1998, barred from reappointment to the CPPCC.

Before her arrest, Mrs Kadeer was running the 1,000 Families Mothers' Project, which helped Uighur women start businesses.

Arrest

She was detained in August 1999, on her way to meet a visiting delegation from the United States Congressional Research Service to complain about political prisoners in Xinjiang.

She was convicted of endangering state security by the Urumqi Intermediate People's Court on 10 March, 2000.

Her eight-year sentence was set to expire on 12 August, 2007, but was cut by 12 months last year for good behaviour.

Her health had reported to have deteriorated in prison.

Her children who had visited her there have frequently commented on "how quiet, how morose she had become," Ms Spiegel said.

Mrs Kadeer was in hospital at the time of her release, though it is not clear what she was being treated for.

The US Congress had repeatedly voiced its concerns about Mrs Kadeer's imprisonment to the Chinese authorities.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/4357607.stm

Published: 2005/03/17 13:13:16 GMT

==================================
---In her own words---
==================================

National Review Online
September 14, 2005, 11:41 a.m.
Beijing & I
The Chinese government says I am a terrorist.

By Rebiya Kadeer

I am a terrorist. I would argue that I'm not, but because the Chinese government says I am a terrorist, it must be true. It will be interesting to see whether President Hu Jintao repeats this accusation against me — and by extension, tars all Uyghur people with the same brush — when he speaks at the United Nations on Thursday.

The Chinese government tries so hard to convince the world of its own infallibility that it must be terrifying when people dare to pull back the veil. And to that extent, if I terrify the Chinese government, then yes, I am a terrorist, and long may it last. I'm by no means the first — they've even called the Dalai Lama a terrorist — and I'm sure I won't be the last.

The Chinese authorities sent me to prison for eight years in 1999 because I'd sent newspaper articles to my husband in America about the plight of the Uyghur people. They accused me of "leaking state secrets to foreign organizations." I'd used my status as a successful businesswoman — once lauded by the same people who later imprisoned me — to work for the protection of Uyghurs' human rights. The Chinese government was so terrified I might say something that impugned their infallibility, they arrested me just as I was about to meet a U.S. congressional research committee in my hometown of Urumchi.

The U.S. government was instrumental in securing my early release from prison in March of this year — a fact that has forever indebted me and my family to the American officials and the people from all over the world who worked on my behalf. Most of all, my early release allowed the Uyghur people to hope that they haven't been overlooked or forgotten by those who believe in human rights and democracy for all.

When I was released, I was warned not to speak on behalf of the Uyghur people when I came to America, or my children and by business would be "finished." I think they were trying to scare me, and to give credit where credit is due, they did. True to their word, they consequently ransacked my office and dragged away two former colleagues who are still in detention. They accused me of owing millions in debts and taxes, and threatened to break every one of my son's ribs if he didn't sign a statement saying this was "true." Who wouldn't be scared by that?

I'm sure this has been said before, but there is a distinction between terror and horror. Terror is felt when we anticipate an horrific event; horror is felt when it actually happens. I am keenly aware of this difference: I have lived with a sense of terror for the fate of Uyghurs for the past few decades; and I have watched in horror as my worst fears have come true.

I have been terrified for young Uyghur mothers who become pregnant when the Chinese government say they shouldn't; and I have been horrified when their pregnancies have been forcibly terminated. I have been terrified for the Uyghurs' ancient culture; and watched horrified as the Chinese authorities have stooped to burning Uyghur books. I have been terrified for those Uyghurs who have stood up and objected; and been horrified when they have been executed as "terrorists." And yes, I have been horrified by the treatment of my friends and family.

And what of the Chinese government? I think the Chinese government is terrified of the day when their corruption, their brutality, their wanton destruction of the environment and neglect of the physical and spiritual health of the people will no longer be tolerated. The Chinese government has every reason to be terrified — it is a terrifying prospect for us all.

And so what can be done to avoid the horror? It will probably seem naïve to suggest that the most important step the Chinese government could take is to start telling the truth, and not "the truth with Chinese characteristics," to coin a phrase. The constant denial of any wrongdoing serves no one: It is common knowledge from Beijing to Geneva to Washington, D.C., that the human rights of people living under Chinese administration are poor to say the least; for Beijing to say otherwise is to dig an ever-deeper moat around itself and to delay the time when human rights will genuinely be protected.

President Hu Jintao must set an urgent example to his administration, and speak the truth on Thursday. Such a top-down approach is far less terrifying than the prospect of more than a billion angry souls demanding the truth.

— Rebiya Kadeer is a businesswoman and human-rights advocate from the Muslim Uighur region in China.

(http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/kadeer200509141141.asp)

FW: Kiran Desai is youngest woman winner of Booker Prize

2006-10-13T00:02:00.000-07:00

"Kiran Desai, daughter of prominent Indian origin writer Anita Desai, created literary history Tuesday night by becoming the youngest ever woman to win the prestigious Man Booker Prize for Fiction at the age of 35."

============================
--from wikipedia---
============================
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiran_Desai)
Kiran Desai was born in New Delhi. She spent her childhood in India before moving to England at the age of 14. One year later, the family relocated to the United States, where Desai completed her schooling in the state of Massachusetts.[2][3] She later attended Bennington College, Hollins University, and then Columbia University, where she took two years off to write her first book, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard

Her first novel,Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, was published in 1998 and received accolades from such notable figures as Salman Rushdie.[5] It went on to win the Betty Trask Award,[6] a prize given by the Society of Authors for the best new novels by citizens of the Commonwealth of Nations under the age of 35.[7]
Her second book, The Inheritance of Loss, has been widely praised by critics throughout Asia, Europe and the United States and won the 2006 Man Booker Prize.[1] It has been translated into Dutch and German.
She was born in Chandigarh, not in Delhi.

============================
---NYT book review---
============================

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/books/review/
12mishra.html?ex=1297400400&en=a3d469a1782b2d59&ei
=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

February 12, 2006
'The Inheritance of Loss,' by Kiran Desai
Wounded by the West
Review by PANKAJ MISHRA
ALTHOUGH it focuses on the fate of a few powerless individuals, Kiran Desai's extraordinary new novel manages to explore, with intimacy and insight, just about every contemporary international issue: globalization, multiculturalism, economic inequality, fundamentalism and terrorist violence. Despite being set in the mid-1980's, it seems the best kind of post-9/11 novel.

"The Inheritance of Loss" opens with a teenage Indian girl, an orphan called Sai, living with her Cambridge-educated Anglophile grandfather, a retired judge, in the town of Kalimpong on the Indian side of the Himalayas. Sai is romantically involved with her math tutor, Gyan, the descendant of a Nepali Gurkha mercenary, but he eventually recoils from her obvious privilege and falls in with a group of ethnic Nepalese insurgents. In a parallel narrative, we are shown the life of Biju, the son of Sai's grandfather's cook, who belongs to the "shadow class" of illegal immigrants in New York and spends much of his time dodging the authorities, moving from one ill-paid job to another.

What binds these seemingly disparate characters is a shared historical legacy and a common experience of impotence and humiliation. "Certain moves made long ago had produced all of them," Desai writes, referring to centuries of subjection by the economic and cultural power of the West. But the beginnings of an apparently leveled field in a late-20th-century global economy serve merely to scratch those wounds rather than heal them.

Almost all of Desai's characters have been stunted by their encounters with the West. As a student, isolated in racist England, the future judge feels "barely human at all" and leaps "when touched on the arm as if from an unbearable intimacy." Yet on his return to India, he finds himself despising his apparently backward Indian wife.

The judge is one of those "ridiculous Indians," as the novel puts it, "who couldn't rid themselves of what they had broken their souls to learn" and whose Anglophilia can only turn into self-hatred. These Indians are also an unwanted anachronism in postcolonial India, where long-suppressed peoples have begun to awaken to their dereliction, to express their anger and despair. For some of Desai's characters, including one of the judge's neighbors in Kalimpong, this comes as a distinct shock: "Just when Lola had thought it would continue, a hundred years like the one past — Trollope, BBC, a burst of hilarity at Christmas — all of a sudden, all that they had claimed innocent, fun, funny, not really to matter, was proven wrong."

There is no mistaking the literary influences on Desai's exploration of postcolonial chaos and despair. Early in the novel, she sets two Anglophilic Indian women to discussing "A Bend in the River," V. S. Naipaul's powerfully bleak novel about traditional Africa's encounter with the modern world. Lola, whose clothesline sags "under a load of Marks and Spencer's panties," thinks Naipaul is "strange. Stuck in the past. . . . He has not progressed. Colonial neurosis, he's never freed himself from it." Lola goes on to accuse Naipaul of ignoring the fact that there is a "new England," a "completely cosmopolitan society" where "chicken tikka masala has replaced fish and chips as the No. 1 takeout dinner." As further evidence, she mentions her own daughter, a newsreader for BBC radio, who "doesn't have a chip on her shoulder."

Desai takes a skeptical view of the West's consumer-driven multiculturalism, noting the "sanitized elegance" of Lola's daughter's British-accented voice, which is "triumphant over any horrors the world might thrust upon others." At such moments, Desai seems far from writers like Zadie Smith and Hari Kunzru, whose fiction takes a generally optimistic view of what Salman Rushdie has called "hybridity, impurity, intermingling, the transformation that comes of new and unexpected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies, songs."

In fact, Desai's novel seems to argue that such multiculturalism, confined to the Western metropolis and academe, doesn't begin to address the causes of extremism and violence in the modern world. Nor, it suggests, can economic globalization become a route to prosperity for the downtrodden. "Profit," Desai observes at one point, "could only be harvested in the gap between nations, working one against the other."

This leaves most people in the postcolonial world with only the promise of a shabby modernity — modernity, as Desai puts it, "in its meanest form, brand-new one day, in ruin the next." Not surprisingly, half-educated, uprooted men like Gyan gravitate to the first available political cause in their search for a better way. He joins what sounds like an ethnic nationalist movement largely as an opportunity to vent his rage and frustration. "Old hatreds are endlessly retrievable," Desai reminds us, and they are "purer . . . because the grief of the past was gone. Just the fury remained, distilled, liberating."

Unlike Gyan, others try to escape. In scene after scene depicting this process — a boarding house in England, derelict bungalows in Kalimpong, immigrant-packed basements in New York — Desai's novel seems lit by a moral intelligence at once fierce and tender. But no scene is more harrowing than the one in which Biju joins a crowd of Indians scrambling to reach the visa counter at the United States Embassy: "Biggest pusher, first place; how self-contented and smiling he was; he dusted himself off, presenting himself with the exquisite manners of a cat. I'm civilized, sir, ready for the U.S., I'm civilized, mam. Biju noticed that his eyes, so alive to the foreigners, looked back at his own countrymen and women, immediately glazed over, and went dead."

Desai's prose has uncanny flexibility and poise. She can describe the onset of the monsoon in the Himalayas and a rat in the slums of Manhattan with equal skill. She is also adept at using physical descriptions to evoke complex states of mind, as when Biju gazes at a park while celebrating the great luck of being granted his American visa: "Raw sewage was being used to water a patch of grass that was lush and stinking, grinning brilliantly in the dusk."

Poor and lonely in New York, Biju eavesdrops on businessmen eating steak and exulting over the wealth to be gained in the new markets of Asia. Not surprisingly, he eventually becomes "a man full to the brim with a wish to live within a narrow purity." For him, the city's endless possibilities for self-invention become a source of pain. Though "another part of him had expanded: his self-consciousness, his self-pity," this awareness only makes him long to fade into insignificance, to return "to where he might relinquish this overrated control over his own destiny."

Arriving back in India in the climactic scenes of the novel, Biju is immediately engulfed by the local eruptions of rage and frustration from which he had been physically remote in New York. For him and the others, Desai suggests, withdrawal or escape are no longer possible. "Never again," Sai concludes, "could she think there was but one narrative and that this narrative belonged only to herself, that she might create her own mean little happiness and live safely within it."

Apart from this abstraction, Desai offers her characters no possibility of growth or redemption. Though relieved by much humor, "The Inheritance of Loss" may strike many readers as offering an unrelentingly bitter view. But then, as Orhan Pamuk wrote soon after 9/11, people in the West are "scarcely aware of this overwhelming feeling of humiliation that is experienced by most of the world's population," which "neither magical realistic novels that endow poverty and foolishness with charm nor the exoticism of popular travel literature manages to fathom." This is the invisible emotional reality Desai uncovers as she describes the lives of people fated to experience modern life as a continuous affront to their notions of order, dignity and justice. We do not need to agree with this vision in order to marvel at Desai's artistic power in expressing it.

Pankaj Mishra is the author of "An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World. " His latest book, "Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet, and Beyond," will be published this spring.

FW: Jawed Karim:: Co-founder of YouTubes.com [with a Bangladeshi Link]!!

2006-10-12T23:54:00.000-07:00

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jawed_Karim)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jawed Karim is the co-founder of the popular video sharing website YouTube. His father is Bangladeshi and his mother German. He grew up in Germany, but graduated from Central High School (Saint Paul, Minnesota), and went on to attend the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.[1] He was an early employee at PayPal, where he met Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. The three later founded the YouTube video sharing website in 2005.[2] Karim continued his coursework with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, earning his bachelor's degree in computer science in 2004.

Karim acted as an advisor to YouTube and is a graduate student in computer science at Stanford University.

(http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/12/technology/12tube.html?_r=1&hp&ex=1160712000&en=c6ddbc2fdb0a4dea&ei=
5094&partner=homepage&oref=slogin)

New York Times
October 12, 2006
With YouTube, Student Hits Jackpot Again
By MIGUEL HELFT
Correction Appended

PALO ALTO, Calif., Oct. 11 — For Jawed Karim, the $100,000 or so he would have to spend on a master’s degree at Stanford was never daunting. He hit an Internet jackpot in 2002 when PayPal, the online payment company he had joined early on, was bought by eBay.

On Monday, still early in his studies for the fall term, he got lucky again. This time he may have hit the Internet equivalent of the multistate PowerBall.

Mr. Karim is the third of the three founders of the video site YouTube, which Google has agreed to buy for $1.65 billion. He was present at YouTube’s creation, contributing some crucial ideas about a Web site where users could share video. But academia had more allure than the details of turning that idea into a business.

So while his partners Chad Hurley and Steven Chen built the company and went on to become Internet and media celebrities, he quietly went back to class, working toward a degree in computer science.

Mr. Karim, who is 27, became visibly uncomfortable when the subject turned to money, and he would not say what he stands to make when Google’s purchase of YouTube is completed. He said only that he is one of the company’s largest individual shareholders, though he owns less of the company than his two partners, whose stakes in the company are likely to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, according to some estimates. The deal was so enormous, he says, that his share was still plenty big.

“The sheer size of the acquisition almost makes the details irrelevant,” Mr. Karim said.

On Wednesday, during a walk across campus and a visit to his dorm room and the computer sciences building where he takes classes, Mr. Karim described himself as a nerd who gets excited about learning. Nothing in his understated demeanor suggests he is anything other than an ordinary graduate student, and he attracted little attention on campus in jeans, a blue polo shirt, a tan jacket and black Puma sneakers.

Mr. Karim said he might keep a hand in entrepreneurship, and he dreams of having an impact on the way people use the Internet — something he has already done. Philanthropy may have some appeal, down the road. But mostly he just wants to be a professor. He said he simply hopes to follow in the footsteps of other Stanford academics who struck it rich in Silicon Valley and went back to teaching.

“There’s a few billionaires in that building,” he said, standing in front of the William Gates Computer Science Building. But his chosen path will not preclude another stint at a start-up. “If I see another opportunity like YouTube, I can always do that,” he said.

David L. Dill, a professor of computer science at Stanford, said Mr. Karim’s choice was unusual.

“I’m impressed that given his success in business he decided to do the master’s program here,” Mr. Dill said. “The tradition here has been in the other direction,” he said, pointing to the founders of Google and Yahoo, who left Stanford for the business world.

Mr. Karim met Mr. Hurley and Mr. Chen when all three of them worked at PayPal. After the company was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion, netting Mr. Karim a few million dollars, they often talked about starting another company.

By early 2005, all three had left PayPal. They would often meet late at night for brainstorming sessions at Max’s Opera Café, near Stanford, Mr. Karim said. Sometimes they met at Mr. Hurley’s place in Menlo Park or Mr. Karim’s apartment on Sand Hill Road, down the street from Sequoia Capital, the venture firm that would become YouTube’s financial backer.

Mr. Karim said he pitched the idea of a video-sharing Web site to the group. But he made it clear that contributions from Mr. Chen and Mr. Hurley were essential in turning his raw idea into what eventually became YouTube.

A YouTube spokeswoman said that the genesis of YouTube involved efforts by all three founders.

As early as February 2005, when the site was introduced, Mr. Karim said he and his partners had agreed that he would not become an employee, but rather an informal adviser to YouTube. He did not take a salary, benefits or even a formal title. “I was focused on school,” he said.

The decision meant that his stake in the company would be reduced, Mr. Karim said. “We negotiated something that we thought was fair.”

Roelof Botha, the Sequoia partner who led the investment in YouTube, said he would have preferred if Mr. Karim had stayed.

“I wish we could have kept him as part of the company,” Mr. Botha said. “He was very, very creative. We were doing everything we could to convince him to defer.”

Mr. Karim was born in East Germany in 1979. The family moved to West Germany a year later and to St. Paul, Minn., in 1992. His father, Naimul Karim, is a researcher at 3M and his mother, Christine Karim, is a research assistant professor of biochemistry at the University of Minnesota.

“To develop new things and be aware of new things, this is our life,” Ms. Karim said, explaining her son’s interest in technology and learning.

After graduating from high school, Jawed Karim chose to go to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in part because it was the school that the co-founder of Netscape, Marc Andreessen, and others who gave birth to the first popular Web browser attended.

“It wasn’t like I wanted to be the next Marc Andreessen, but it would be cool to be in the same place,” Mr. Karim said. In 2000, during his junior year, he dropped out to head to Silicon Valley, where he joined PayPal. He later finished his undergraduate degree by taking some courses online and some at Santa Clara University.

Armed with a video camera, Mr. Karim documented much of YouTube’s early life, including the meetings when the three discussed financing strategies and the brainstorming sessions in Mr. Hurley’s garage, where the company was hatched.

In his studio apartment in a residence hall for graduate students, he showed one of them, which he said was filmed in April 2005. In it, Mr. Chen talked about “getting pretty depressed” because there were only 50 or 60 videos on the YouTube site. Also, he said, “there’s not that many videos I’d want to watch.” The camera then turns to Mr. Hurley, who grins and says “Videos like these,” referring to the one Mr. Karim is filming.

Mr. Karim, who has remained in frequent contact with the other co-founders, said he was first informed of the talks with Google last week. On Monday, he was called in to the Palo Alto law offices of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati to sign acquisition papers, and he briefly got to congratulate Mr. Chen and Mr. Hurley, he said.

Asked what he thought of the acquisition price, Mr. Karim said: “It sounded good to me.” When a reporter looked puzzled, he raised his eyebrows and added: “I was amazed.”

Correction: Oct. 13, 2006

An article in Business Day yesterday about the newfound fortunes of Jawed Karim, the third founder of the Web site YouTube, which was acquired by Google for $1.65 billion, misstated the year of his birth. Mr. Karim, 27, was born in 1979, not 1972.

FW: Invasion of the managers

2006-10-12T23:53:00.000-07:00

Daily Star
http://www.thedaily star.net/ 2006/09/14/ d609141502134. htm

Invasion of the managers
Munim Chowdhury

INDIA has achieved global respect for its managerial talents and many Indians are enjoying top positions in the American corporate world. At least half a dozen Indians are CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, including Pepsi Co. Even conservative British companies are filling up top posts with Indian talent. A few years ago, one of the best known marketing schools in the world, the Kellogg School of Business of Northwestern University, after a global search for many months found a dean for the business school, an Indian from Gauhati. No one can deny the fact that India is a major producer of highly talented management and technical personnel today.

India produced Hinduism for domestic consumption and non-violent Buddhism for export. Today India is exporting bifurcated talent to the two worlds. A grade, highly talented people are exported to the western world, B and C grade to the developing countries, and the least talented D grade find their way to Bangladesh. The Bangladeshi entrepreneurs appear to be impressed by the English speaking abilities of the Indian managers.

The wide-scale Indian invasion of Bangladeshi industrial and commercial management is unhealthy and detrimental to the growth of management skill of the younger generation of the educated youth of Bangladesh. Even some of the trading houses are hiring low calibre Indian managers at salaries and benefits 8 to10 times higher than those normally offered to a Bangladeshi with similar talent. They live in Gulshan and Baridhara's posh apartments, enjoy chauffer-driven cars, and employ armies of domestic help.

This is certainly unfair and unjust.

The majority of these managers come to Bangladesh without work permits. They remit home their earnings through unofficial channels. A Bangladeshi owner of a distribution house (distributor of imported products) boastfully told me: "I have 30 expatriate managers." Further enquiry revealed that all thirty are Indians, mostly without work permits. Many of those managers do not appear to have the type of skills unavailable in Bangladesh, which would have made them deserving of the kind of compensation they are being paid.

A result of hiring Indian managers in this manner, when we have some educated Bangladeshi youth with comparable talent whose skills can be easily developed, is that we are destroying the hopes and aspiration of our own talented younger generation.

The multi-national company, British American Tobacco, managed its business most professionally in Bangladesh over the last 36 years without having to import Indian managers. Rather, BAT exported dozens of talented Bangladeshi managers to associated companies overseas, including to the position of director and managing director. By training and allowing Bangladeshi managers to develop and exercise their skills, they have also contributed to filling many top positions in other multi-national companies here in Bangladesh and overseas. Four of its managers served as ministers to the government of Bangladesh and Pakistan (prior to 1971). If the opportunity is provided to educated Bangladeshis with talent and aptitude, their managerial skills can be developed at a much faster rate.

In not just the developed countries of Western Europe and North America, but in many African nations also there is legitimate need for expatriate talents where the rules of engagement of foreign workers are strictly enforced; justification for employment is scrutinized, and work permits issued only when legitimate need, lack of local talent, and the professional capabilities of the foreign worker in question are demonstrated.

If the developing countries of Africa can apply legal rules in employing foreign workers, then what prevents Bangladesh, also a developing country, from enforcing its own rules? Can any Bangladeshi work in a professional job in India without a work permit (other than domestic help and as the sex workers in Bombay and Delhi)?

It will only be fair and just for the government to look seriously into the matter and prevent illegal engagement of foreign nationals for non-essential jobs in Bangladesh. It will require a little patience and sympathetic attention from our business community, too.

Immediately after the creation of Bangladesh in December l971, some Indians in professional fields in New York expressed their opinion that "this is the right time for Indians to move into Bangladesh and help run business and industry." Maybe they thought it was the right time to replace our Pakistani masters. However, it took another 25 years and the process started slowly about 10 years ago. It will take its toll on the new generation of Bangladeshi boys and girls, maybe in the same way as it did prior to 1971, unless we wake up to the reality and guard the interests of our younger generation.

The Bangladesh government should not allow needless engagement of Indian managers or for that matter any other foreign nationals in Bangladeshi industrial and commercial houses. If these Indians were top-rated talents, they would not come to Bangladesh, at the very least they would find their way to Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Dubai, if not North America and Europe.

A little research and discussion with Indian managers will confirm that they certainly do not enjoy life in Dhaka but they are here for the money and its associated comforts. Why not give our own youth with similar education and aptitude the same opportunity and dignity that are being provided to Indians, to develop their management skills? Our industries, business houses and country would benefit more in the long run as a result.

Munim Chowdhury writes from New York and is a freelance contributor to The Daily Star.

FW: "Give war a chance!" ?

2006-10-12T23:48:00.000-07:00

Interesting comments reader posted in a major non-us newspaper.

News "Cabinet rejects IDF call to expand war"

Talkbacks:

11. Politicians the problem
Darren - USA
07/27/2006 13:55
The politicians need to get out of the way and let the IDF prosecute this war. Sometimes the politicians are more the problem than the solution. Give war a chance!

13. Air Power and Civilians
Michael - USA
07/27/2006 14:00
Use the air power and bomb the village to smithereens. The civilians who remain are not more worthy of life than our boys. It is wrong to risk the lives of Jewish boys for the remaining civilians who hate us and wish us dead anyway. Bring overwhelming air power and blow the terrorists out of their lairs.

14. Do not send soldiers, strike form the air.
Mila - Finland
07/27/2006 14:02
IDF needs to strike this village from the air, not sending it's soldiers on the grownd. You try to rescue civilians and as the result Israely soldiers get killed. These civilians have taked the cide with hisbullah, that mens they need to pay the price. It is wrong to rescue the ones who take side with hisbullah and have Israely soldiers die on the ground.

15. security
catherine adam - USA
07/27/2006 14:04
Please do not commit the same mistake as the US did and does; not to follow the lesson learns during WWII: 'overhelming force'. If we are concern what the 'people' are saying Israel is doomed. Please be note, that we Jews will be hated anuhow. ONLY if we show strenght will be we saved.

19. Change the tactics
Rudik - Australia
07/27/2006 14:15
I do believe in trying to minimise the civilian casualties (so called collateral damage). And I really cannot describe my feelings when I learned that so many fine young Israeli warriors lost their lives during the battle, trying to avoid the Lebanese civilians being harmed at the expense of their own lives. What I do not understand is why Israel cannot do what it quite successfully performed in the southern Beirut - warn the locals of the imminent strike (a few times) and then
level the villages with all the terrorists in them.

24. Security Canbinet Opposes Expanded Ground Operation
Joe Farbowitz - USA
07/27/2006 14:50
When will Israel learn that the only way to make their Arab enemies understand and respect the IDF is to hit them hard, very hard, when given the opportunity to so. When a cancerous tumor exists it must be completely removed ( including surrounding tissue) or it will grow back-perhaps larger and more agressive. Hasn't 58 years of fighting the Arabs taught them anything?

25. This might be a major mistake
Bernard Ross - jamaica
07/27/2006 14:56
If Hezbullah is not soundly beaten before a cease fire is declared those htat died may have died
in vain. As civilians have been warned to leave south lebanon buildings should be leveled prior
to
IDF gioing into villages. It is important that the enemies of Israel see that Israel is willing
to
make massive retaliations causing great loss. Without great loss there will be no lesson learned.
The japanese became US ally after hisroshima.

29. Protecting Lebanese civilians costing Israeli lives
Bernard Ross - jamaica
07/27/2006 15:01
" Bint Jbail could not be attacked by air since there were still several hundred civilians there.
This is wrong, civilians have been warned, level the buildings first. Lebanese civilians are
hezbullah they are all one. They are sending rockets to kill Israeli civilians. The enemy cannot
be protected at expense of Israelis in order to satisfy the EU supporters of the murderers of
Jews.

36. THERE ARE NO "CIVILIANS" IN BINT JABAIL
Steve
07/27/2006 15:39
What is this reluctance in attacking by air. The civilians were given ample time and several days
to evacuate. Those that didn't are responsible for their persons, not us. Devastate the villiage
and spare our ground forces!

43. Civilians
Harold - USA
07/27/2006 15:54
You are receiving rockets on your civilian population and you're worried about the civilians in
Bint Jbail. The civilians in Bint Jbail are your enemy. Wake up.

44. Ari #21 and Uzi # 23 are right !
John from Northern Ireland
07/27/2006 15:55
Israel's leaders need to get real. They need to bring out everything in the arsenal to smash
Hezbollah. If that means carpet bombing Bint Jbail, so be it. Napalm the Hezbollah positions,
level the entire town - but stop wasting Israeli lives playing to world opinion.

49. dumb misstakes of idf
david - holland
07/27/2006 16:06
Damn, i don't get it! Why sacrifice our soldiers for some people who willingly serve as a shield
and are thus allies of hezbollah? Is that really true?? That idf deliberately sacrifices their
own
people to rescue this hezbollah allies? That's the most retarded tactics ever. And after that
they
shoot some UN people, to make sure that we do not only get killed, but get hated in the same
instance. I'd say do as the u.s. if you know where the terrorists are, flatten them from the air.
And civilians that die in the process, well i'm sure they'll be happy to meet the countless
virgins undoubtedly waiting for them

50. Delay at Israel's peril
Zachary Walusimbi - Uganda
07/27/2006 16:09
Russions tried the first time, failed with so may casualities in war against the Chechen rebels.
Second time, they had learnt. Take advantage of massive fire power against these international
lawness organisations. They won. Israel needs to do just that. Level villages and town after
warning civilians to free. Time is not on Israel's side as international pressure is mounting.

58. I agree with Mr.Ross
michael bergin - USA
07/27/2006 16:28
I completely agree with Bernard. While both Israel and the US continue to take civilian casulties
our enemies hide within civilian populations. In the case of the battle of Bint Jbail you drop
warnings and then you drop bombs. When the village is gone you move on to the next with the same
startegy not allowing IDF forces to be killed. By the time you get to the third village ... no
one
will be there as they will get the message. It sounds hash and inhuman but the enemy has no rules
and are fanatics willing and wanting to kill every citizen of Israel and the US. We are making
the
same mistake in Iraq with the same results. God bless Israel!

65. Tactical Mistake
Tadeu Mendes - USA
07/27/2006 16:42
With due respect to the IDF soldiers and their loss of life in this operation, I think it was a
mistake to send infantry troops to an area where the enemy is willing to die at any cost. If the
IAF bombed Beirut, why not carpet bomb Bint Jbail and then enter the area and finish the job.

69. Israel must obliterate Southern Lebanon
Hector-Michael - Canada
07/27/2006 16:45
By luring Israeli troops into their rat-holes, Hezbollah is scoring big time. Guerrilla warfare
is
the downfall of any army that follows an enemy into its ground turf. In the case of Israel in
Southern Lebanon, the enemy has been preparing deadly traps for years. Now it has lured Israel to
fight in the ground, and Israel has fallen for it. The results are Jewish lives been wasted in
death traps that can be bombed from the air. Why is Israel sending its soldiers into those traps,
is beyond me. Israel gave plenty of warning urging the civilian population to get out of the war
zone. If civilians are still there, it can be assumed they are part of what they call resistance.
That makes them the enemy too. Israel, your troops are the cream of the crop of Jewish youth.
Stop
wasting them for the sake of Muslim garbage. Hezbollah is cancer and will only be stopped by
annihilation. That s what they want for you. So give it to them now while you are in control! It
ll only take one bomb!

74. Change tactics. #19 Rudic
Kathy
07/27/2006 16:55
Rudic Well,they did warn the inhabitants and even with fliers. You must understand that they are
all part and parcel of Hisbullah also paticularly this town with I believe of 25.000 are all
Hizbullah followers.That is one of the reasons that our boys have encountered the fierce counter
attacks. Well,if that is the case,I think it is the life of our servicemen and our civilians
getting pounded daily by the missiles that should be concidered more importantly and if those
civilians who aid and abbet are killed is something that should not deter us from finish them
off!
Civilians or not,THEY ARE ALL TERRORISTS AGAINST ISRAEL. THIS SHOULD BE OUR OBJECTIVE AND DAMN
THEM TO HELL...

83. don't be so nice
n
07/27/2006 17:23
Israel has to learn something-the world hates us whether we act humanely or not. That being said,
it is time for the IDF to pick some towns that are hizbollah strongholds and turn them into
modern
day Dresdens, ala the Allied bombing there in 1945. Sure, the UN and all the other predictable
anti Israel, liberal coddle-the-terrorist-till-he-cuts-your-throat crowd will howl and scream,
but
maybe Hizbollah and their ilk will sit up and realize that we will destroy them even if they hide
behind women and children in hospitals and schools. And when the Arab on the street wakes up to
such a reality, watch how quickly they rise up and destroy terror from their midst and stop
bellyaching about how they can't take out the terror because of fear of a civil war.

86. Attack on all fronts
Rob - U.S.A.
07/27/2006 17:24
Israel has our full support. Attack by air and land. You must win this fight and eliminate the
ruthless enemy. Use tactics that will save Israeli soldiers regardless of the collateral damage.
Now that al-Qaeda says they support Hezbullah & will attack again, it is WW III. Take them out.

111. Destroy the enemy once and for all
Michael Walter - Canada
07/27/2006 19:17
I am a grade seven boy from Canada. My dad says it is okay for me to send you this letter. I love
Israel very much and would hate to see your soldiers die for the sake of stupid terrorists.
Israel, don t send your soldiers into a hellhole just to be killed by evil men full of hatred.
Your soldiers are the best in the world; no offense to America. Just drop a bomb in their place,
and problem solved! Blow those cowards out of their hiding places. God bless Israel!

118. Playing nice wont win wars
RA
07/27/2006 19:45
Israel needs to stop worrying about "civilians" and do the job right! As far as public relations
is concerned, it wont matter anyways. If Israel kills 10 civlians or 100000, Israel will always
have a negative PR in the antisemitic world. The IDF just needs to do the job no matter what.

Arundhati Roy on Palestinian / Israeli Conflict

2006-10-12T23:45:00.000-07:00

An interesting & informative video.

http://www.weroy.org/video_middle_east.shtml

"Either way, change will come. It could be bloody, or it could be beautiful. It depends on us."
- Arundhati Roy

On the US-Israeli Invasion of Lebanon -- Noam Chomsky

2006-10-12T23:41:00.000-07:00

(http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20060819.htm)

On the US-Israeli Invasion of Lebanon
Noam Chomsky
Al-Adab, August 19, 2006

Though there are many interacting factors, the immediate issue that lies behind the latest US-Israeli invasion of Lebanon remains, I believe, what it was in the four preceding invasions: the Israel-Palestine conflict. In the most important case, the devastating US-backed 1982 Israeli invasion was openly described in Israel as a war for the West Bank, undertaken to put an end to annoying PLO calls for a diplomatic settlement (with the secondary goal of imposing a client regime in Lebanon). There are numerous other illustrations. Despite the many differences in circumstances, the July 2006 invasion falls generally into the same pattern.
Among mainstream American critics of Bush administration policies, the favored version is that “We had always approached [conflict between Israel and its neighbors] in a balanced way, assuming that we could be the catalyst for an agreement,” but Bush II regrettably abandoned that neutral stance, causing great problems for the United States (Middle East specialist and former diplomat Edward Walker, a leading moderate). The actual record is quite different: For over 30 years, Washington has unilaterally barred a peaceful political settlement, with only slight and brief deviations.

The consistent rejectionism can be traced back to the February 1971 Egyptian offer of a full peace treaty with Israel, in the terms of official US policy, offering nothing for the Palestinians. Israel understood that this peace offer would put an end to any security threat, but the government decided to reject security in favor of expansion, then mostly into northeastern Sinai. Washington supported Israel’s stand, adhering to Kissinger’s principle of “stalemate”: force, not diplomacy. It was only 8 years later, after a terrible war and great suffering, that Washington agreed to Egypt’s demand for withdrawal from its territory.

Meanwhile the Palestinian issue had entered the international agenda, and a broad international consensus had crystallized in favor of a two-state settlement on the pre-June 1967 border, perhaps with minor and mutual adjustments. In December 1975, the UN Security Council agreed to consider a resolution proposed by the Arab “confrontation states” with these provisions, also incorporating the basic wording of UN 242. The US vetoed the resolution. Israel’s reaction was to bomb Lebanon, killing over 50 people in Nabatiye, calling the attack “preventive” – presumably to “prevent” the UN session, which Israel boycotted.

The only significant exception to consistent US-Israeli rejectionism was in January 2001, when Israeli and Palestinian negotiators came close to agreement in Taba. But the negotiations were called off by Israeli Prime Minister Barak four days early, ending that promising effort. Unofficial but high-level negotiations continued, leading to the Geneva Accord of December 2002, with similar proposals. It was welcomed by most of the world, but rejected by Israel and dismissed by Washington (and, reflexively, the US media and intellectual classes).

Meanwhile US-backed Israeli settlement and infrastructure programs have been “creating facts on the ground” in order to undermine potential realization of Palestinian national rights. Throughout the Oslo years, these programs continued steadily, with a sharp peak in 2000: Clinton’s final year, and Barak’s. The current euphemism for these programs is “disengagement” from Gaza and “convergence” in the West Bank – in Western rhetoric, Ehud Olmert’s courageous program of withdrawal from the occupied territories. The reality, as usual, is quite different.

The Gaza “disengagement” was openly announced as a West Bank expansion plan. Having turned Gaza into a disaster area, sane Israeli hawks realized that there was no point leaving a few thousand settlers taking the best land and scarce resources, protected by a large part of the IDF. It made more sense to send them to the West Bank and Golan Heights, where new settlement programs were announced, while turning Gaza into “the world’s largest prison,” as Israeli human rights groups accurately call it. West Bank “Convergence” formalizes these programs of annexation, cantonization, and imprisonment. With decisive US support, Israel is annexing valuable lands and the most important resources of the West Bank (primarily water), while carrying out settlement and infrastructure projects that divide the shrinking Palestinian territories into unviable cantons, virtually separated from one another and from whatever pitiful corner of Jerusalem will be left to Palestinians. All are to be imprisoned as Israel takes over the Jordan Valley, and of course any other access to the outside world.

All of these programs are recognized to be illegal, in violation of numerous Security Council resolutions and the unanimous decision of the World Court any part of the "separation wall" that is built to “defend” the settlements is “ipso facto” illegal (U.S. Justice Buergenthal, in a separate declaration). Hence about 80-85% of the wall is illegal, as is the entire “convergence” program. But for a self-designated outlaw state and its clients, such facts are minor irrelevancies.

Currently, the US and Israel demand that Hamas accept the 2002 Arab League Beirut proposal for full normalization of relations with Israel after withdrawal in accord with the international consensus. The proposal has long been accepted by the PLO, and it has also been formally accepted by the “supreme leader” of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei. Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has made it clear that Hezbollah would not disrupt such an agreement if it is accepted by Palestinians. Hamas has repeatedly indicated its willingness to negotiate in these terms.

The facts are doctrinally unacceptable, hence mostly suppressed. What we see, instead, is the stern warning to Hamas by the editors of the New York Times that their formal agreement to the Beirut peace plan is “an admission ticket to the real world, a necessary rite of passage in the progression from a lawless opposition to a lawful government.” Like others, the NYT editors fail to mention that the US and Israel forcefully reject this proposal, and are alone in doing so among relevant actors. Furthermore, they reject it not merely in rhetoric, but far more importantly, in deeds. We see at once who constitutes the “lawless opposition” and who speaks for them. But that conclusion cannot be expressed, even entertained, in respectable circles.

The only meaningful support for Palestinians facing national destruction is from Hezbollah. For this reason alone it follows that Hezbollah must be severely weakened or destroyed, just as the PLO had to be evicted from Lebanon in 1982. But Hezbollah is too deeply embedded within Lebanese society to be eradicated, so Lebanon too must be largely destroyed. An expected benefit for the US and Israel was to enhance the credibility of threats against Iran by eliminating a Lebanese-based deterrent to a possible attack. But none of this turned out as planned. Much as in Iraq, and elsewhere, Bush administration planners have created catastrophes, even for the interests they represent. That is the primary reason for the unprecedented criticism of the administration among the foreign policy elite, even before the invasion of Iraq.

In the background lie more far-reaching and lasting concerns: to ensure what is called “stability” in the reigning ideology. “Stability,” in simple words, means obedience. “Stability” is undermined by states that do not strictly follow orders, secular nationalists, Islamists who are not under control (in contrast, the Saudi monarchy, the oldest and most valuable US ally, is fine), etc. Such “destabilizing” forces are particularly dangerous when their programs are attractive to others, in which case they are called “viruses” that must be destroyed. “Stability” is enhanced by loyal client states. Since 1967, it has been assumed that Israel can play this role, along with other “peripheral” states. Israel has become virtually an off-shore US military base and high-tech center, the natural consequence of its rejection of security in favor of expansion in 1971, and repeatedly since. These policies are subject to little internal debate, whoever holds state power. The policies extend world-wide, and in the Middle East, their significance is enhanced by one of the leading principles of foreign policy since World War II (and for Britain before that): to ensure control over Middle East energy resources, recognized for 60 years to be “a stupendous source of strategic power” and “one of the greatest material prizes in world history.”

The standard Western version is that the July 2006 invasion was justified by legitimate outrage over capture of two Israeli soldiers at the border. The posture is cynical fraud. The US and Israel, and the West generally, have little objection to capture of soldiers, or even to the far more severe crime of kidnapping civilians (or of course to killing civilians). That had been Israeli practice in Lebanon for many years, and no one ever suggested that Israel should therefore be invaded and largely destroyed. Western cynicism was revealed with even more dramatic clarity as the current upsurge of violence erupted after Palestinian militants captured an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, on June 25. That too elicited huge outrage, and support for Israel's sharp escalation of its murderous assault on Gaza. The scale is reflected in casualties: in June, 36 Palestinian civilians were killed in Gaza; in July, the numbers more than quadrupled to over 170, dozens of them children. The posture of outrage was, again, cynical fraud, as demonstrated dramatically, and conclusively, by the reaction to Israel's kidnapping of two Gaza civilians, the Muamar brothers, one day before, on June 24. They disappeared into Israel's prison system, joining the hundreds of others imprisoned without charge -- hence kidnapped, as are many of those sentenced on dubious charges. There was some brief and dismissive mention of the kidnapping of the Muamar brothers, but no reaction, because such crimes are considered legitimate when carried out by “our side.” The idea that this crime would justify a murderous assault on Israel would have been regarded as a reversion to Nazism.

The distinction is clear, and familiar throughout history: to paraphrase Thucydides, the powerful are entitled to do as they wish, while the weak suffer as they must.

We should not overlook the progress that has been made in undermining the imperial mentality that is so deeply rooted in Western moral and intellectual culture as to be beyond awareness. Nor should we forget the scale of what remains to be achieved, tasks that must be undertaken in solidarity and cooperation by people in North and South who hope to see a more decent and civilized world.

FW: Too much food, guilt to stomach

2006-10-07T14:01:00.000-07:00

I find this article very interesting. It was good to hear his side of the story. I mean he is talking about his country (Malaysia) and I live way far from that. Yet it is very similar to the place where I brought up and to where I live now. So it's not just me, it's not just us. Folks there too have similar reality, interesting!

-x86

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http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/nst/Wednesday/Columns/
20061004083413/Article/index_html

Zainul Arifin on Wednesday: Too much food, guilt to stomach
By Zainul Arifin

08 October, 2006

FOR Muslims, Ramadan is a month of prayer and solemn reflection. But the reality is, it is also a month of conspicuous consumption, which kicked off a month or so before with the nationwide officially-sanctioned annual Mega Sales Carnival. The rumblings in the tummy and the dry, parched throat are to remind us of the unfortunate. But they have also become convenient excuses to indulge, and not just in food.

Resistance is futile. The mind is weak and so is resolve when the body is deprived of what it is used to. Maybe we don’t try hard enough, or life generally does not try most of us hard enough these days. Hardship in Ramadan is running out of ice cubes during the breaking of fast.

Those who fast tend to spend much more, realising only too late that a dish here and another there, a kueh or two, the sugar cane juice, and suddenly it’s a third of your weekly marketing money gone.

It seems that because Muslims are deprived of food and drink during the day, they find it acceptable to splurge, and retailers know this very well.

Ramadan has also turned out to be the most profitable month in the year for hotel food and beverage outlets. It is no wonder they spare little when promoting their buka puasa fares, hence the extra tables in lobbies and walkways.

After all, the multi-coloured dessert and dishes of old have brought about the path of least resistance for the faithful to loosen the purse strings.

But looking at the amount charged and the food often left to waste, I can’t help feeling rather at odds with the feasting at sundown. I can think of a charity or two that could use some of the money spent.

At times greed has showed its ugly head in this holy month, too. I am not sure how much the prices of food this Ramadan had to do with the recent hike in fuel prices, but I am inclined to believe that a large part of it could also be attributed to greed.

A hawker in Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur, just lost a customer for the rest of the month when she refused to sell me RM1 worth of cooked vegetables. The minimum purchase she told me was RM2. I would have bought it but for the fact that there are only three of us; my daughter hates vegetables and I do not want to waste.

She declined my logical suggestion to halve the RM2 portion, so I walked off. It was 15 minutes to breaking fast and she had quite a lot left in her tray; still she refused. I suspect greed got the better of her.

We also break a lot of rules and regulations on food handling every Ramadan. Why are almost all food sold at pasar Ramadan uncovered?

Often located by the roadside and exposed to the elements, the makeshift stalls and their wares often bring hygiene issues to mind. But we do not seem to mind. In fact we are oblivious to it.

Also, I am not sure if the guys selling or handling food have been given jabs against communicable diseases, as required by our laws for food operators and handlers. There are no statistics to back my claim, but I do believe Ramadan has the highest number of cases of food poisoning compared with any other period in the year. This month, food is often prepared early. It is likely to turn bad by the time it comes to breaking fast.

Ramadan also makes me feel guilty about the number of plastic bags I bring home from the pasar Ramadan. I have to decline bags and return some of them since hawkers tend to put even a single kuih inside a single plastic bag. Apparently, we the consumers want it that way.

Meanwhile, I do believe that there should be at least some show of decorum even in the commercialisation of Hari Raya. I am not sure how it works, but shopping centres and department stores should not be playing Hari Raya songs in the first few days of Ramadan, which after all is a month of prayer and reflection.

But crass commercialisation has taken hold of us. As discomfited as I may have been over the weekend about the Raya songs played in the mall I was in, I could not resist humming to the tunes. I am after all hungry, and weak.

However, I am rather perplexed that I saw little reference, either visual or audio, to Deepavali, which will be celebrated a few days ahead of Hari Raya. Come on now, retailers and mall owners. But I digress.

I sometimes fail in my mission for a more meaningful Ramadan. I head to pasar Ramadan with a clear plan and strategy, but often leave with more food, drinks and guilt than I can nibble through.
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What’s happening and not happening in BUET?

2006-09-12T14:07:00.000-07:00

What’s happening and not happening in BUET?
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August 14, 2006

We all know that authorities of the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (Buet)announced the university closed sine die following a violent student movement demanding deferment of examinations. Following that, we are having lot of discussion is going on in all sorts of BUET student and alumni forums all over the world. Here are some points that I believe worth our consideration.

1. Some argue that BUET academic system need to be changed. We need more distribution of marks that reflects in the final grade. Final exam have too much emphasis. It should not be more than 50%. Not that I disagree. But did you remember those all time super heroes in BUET? You know the famous “class test andolon” warriors? How about that? How much time buet students lost for that? BUET teachers knew this long ago but THEY did not let that happen. THEY were proud of that. And oh
yeah, we (means you & me) awarded them few seats in BUET “chatra songshod” for that. Did not we? Where are those heroes now? I believe some of them are actually in USA. Let’s draw a line from Silicon Valley to Austin and make them do a nake-khoth? Shouldn’t we? How about those teachers who were making every effort to make them & us understand? Should we make those HEROES eat the shoes of the teachers? I hope that some teachers are saving one of their old shoes for this very occasion. THIS needs to be done FIRST before we go to the teachers and ask for diversify the
grade.

2. You think all this is happens because we have 70-80% mark on final exam and BUET student chicken out. That’s funny. There was three months between the end of class and exam date. That was not enough? You guys are right; we must change lot of things in BUET administration. I mean, who admitted these morons in the first place? In my opinion this problem has nothing to do with 70-80% mark on final exam. I don’t go to school anymore, but my wife does. She never had a concept of PL here. She got two 50% weight final exams in the same day, back-to-back or 2 hour apart most of the
time. That gives you 50%+50% i.e. 100%. And oh yes, finals are on full syllabus of the class materials. They just had to obey the teachers & school administration. They never thought of an “andolon”. Her American classmates are not as democratic as BUET students are. Are you saying she is far more smatter than me? She will be flattered though. But all those students in USA school are smarter than BUET students? Students all over the world are smarter? Only we are stupid, hah?

4. If you are in Rome, do what Romans do. Well I am in USA. While attending school in USA, I knew and accept that I am in the class room for one and only one reason: get education. All my white, African American, Hispanic who are American citizen were there for the same reason. So I did what American did, which was get my study. American student were not there to change university policy, fix school exam schedule, decide or stop when the next batch of new student should be admitted. Me
neither. Hello?? Are those students in BUET trying to be more Christian than Jesus himself? May be my American classmates need to go visit BUET to learn "Democracy". I recently read some students response in Protom-Alo newspaper. They said that they had to do it to stop authority’s decision of admitting a new batch in next semester. Why that is concern of students? That’s none of your business. Students have no business on deciding this. If you like to influence those kind of decision, you batter finish your study as early as possible. Then join BUET as a teacher, get into
the decision making body. Who will make decision in a democratic society? Is it some democratic institute and entity with ability and responsibility or is it some kids with stone in their hand? We invested heavily to some how build a democratic society. But did we forget to tell these kids the definition of democracy? As a student in USA, we never have been in decision making of University. Why we should be in BUET?

5. BUET semesters; why can’t they be like any other world class university? Why can’t we have academic year 2006 exam in calendar year 2006? Why can’t we have one semester final in May and the other one in December? You know, like any other University in the world. Final exam of 1992-93 held in 1996? I must be a genius. Otherwise how could I explain this fact? What exactly happened in your country that make your academic calendar screwed for three years?

6. Some argue that BUET is not a distant island. BUET will go the same way education system in Bangladesh go. Well did you ever see that SSC exam of 2005 happened in 2006? How about HSC exam? How come we are okay to complete all the class 1-10 final exam by end of December and start new class in January? Are we were outside of Bangladesh all these time. Suddenly, once we get admission in BUET, we enter in Bangladesh? One current student told me “Hey we never knew that class could be skipped by taking so called auto vacation. We never knew that the final exam date
could be changed by mass movement. Who teaches us this? BUET teaches us this, isn’t it?” Well, good argument. But the point is that one batch made a mistake does not mean others have to repeat that mistake over and over. It needs to end, and NOW.

7. How can you explain some students hit and injured a teacher’s wife? How can you explain some students climb up to 4th floor in the teacher residence, kick and slammed the door, and call words like “haramzada”? No jobs after graduation, not enough TA, too much pressure in final exam, father kicked you out home, GF didn’t let you do it, Kala Farooq eloped with your mom, what else? Nothing, NOTHING is enough of a cause. This is beyond any imagination. THIS IS THE PROBLEM. We need to solve this, otherwise all bets are off.

8. If BUET authority punishes those who are responsible to those: Will we the Alumni stand farm on that decision? Will we be able to avoid dividing in party line and start criticizing them depending who is in power at that time? Will the current students be wise, and avoid having more loss of time & money with another andolon for reverting that decision?

9. “Campus a police keno, kortipokkh jobab chai”. I don’t know students use this phrase or not, now a days. But I was used a lot when I was a student. This resonated in the response of few students in prothom-alo. They said they only broke some glasses in cafeteria. And then police attack the students with no notice. They also said, VC will have to pay the price for using police. Let me tell you a story. I was doing my MS then. We lived in an apartment just attached to campus. One day, one of my friends wife, a neighbor, was listening to music, may be with little loud volume. Next thing you know, police is knocking her door. Her husband was not at home, and
she was crying. She (and we all) had no idea that police can come for this. Or police can come inside a campus in the first place. Later we found that city police department actually put a police station in the campus. Police car are visible in the campus road most of the time. Mostly they trying to catch you in fault and give you driving ticket. So she had to obey the policeman. All of us, the students were stood there; think how different things are hear. Back home, police in our campus? Our BUET? Oh boy. “Janta hate nia ashte hoito”. Does USA have democracy? Is it
really the free world?

10. In my opinion, diversifying marks too much is risky for BUET. We do not have infrastructure to support that. Hiring lots of TA will not solve the problem, rather make it worst. Girls (and boys of BUET) are behaving badly even with teachers. What about TA? Good luck on that. Beside, in BUET we are hiring fresh bachelors as teachers and give them lots of classes. They are in no way capable of handling USA style full control over grade distribution. It will leads to a complete disaster. In USA style teaching strategy, syllabus only has an outline and teacher decides what to
teach, how he divides the total mark, how the final grade is calculated, when will be the mid term exam, when will be the final exams, even a final exam is required at all or not. Sometimes they make the final exam optional. But to get to that level, all the teachers have to be either has a PhD or pursuing their PhD with few exceptions. BUET is no way close to that yet. Well, having said that, I believe this is where BUET Alumni can lend a hand. You guys need to go back to BUET and teach. I am sure BUET can make to the top 500 lists very easily. Give it a thought.

11. If we have teachers with PhD, than sure, in that case, we can hire graduate student as TA. Note that this TAs will have higher qualification than the fresh undergraduate that we are hiring today. Huge emphasis in the final exam is the only way BUET can survive without ex-faculty coming back with higher degree. (I know the reason & background behind that, but let’s not go there). Well may be we can have a similar style midterm exam. But than again PL for the midterm, movement for extension, oh boy, thing could get ugly down there. We don’t need to solve world’s problem in a school picnic. I am proud with the BUET standard and never felt that I wasn’t ready for higher education with the knowledge that I got from BUET. I like to congratulate our ex and current teachers and authority for maintaining the standard on final grades that a students receive from BUET with very little resource and experience. I am not saying that we should not change the academic system in BUET. In fact, I am for the change. But we need to evaluate the environment carefully and change such a way that we have infrastructure to support and sustain the changes.
And before making any rule, we need to find people who will obey that rule. That is true for any rule. If you not going to obey it, why bother making it? Change is an ongoing process. We always have to make change for making existing things batter. It will never be perfect, and it is okay to have dissatisfaction. But that does not mean we will disobey what ever there is and broke down every thing. There will be a proper way to make changes. There will be a proper responsible entity to make change. That will be part of already existing system. Without that proper channel
(way+entity), rest of the system must follow & obey the existing system. Breaking it will only make your progress slower.

12. You have to listen, in order to speak and expect that other will listen to you. When you are a leader, go ahead and lead. When you are not a leader, follow your leader. If you are in a deciding body, go ahead and decide. If you are not in a deciding body, accept the decision. It is okay to disagree. It is part of democracy. But there is a thing call “disagree and commit”. You express your disagreement with the decision, but than you accept the decision. Chaotic behavior and bring down the system attitude will only destroy what ever you already have. This is not specific to
BUET though. As a nation, we have this problem like cancer. You have to keep the cycle running, it will purify itself one step at a time. You have to keep the system standing, and use only the proper channel to make changes that will make it batter. It will not happen overnight. All the people will not be changed at a time. But it need to be started at some time, someone need to start it. Why can’t that be now? Why can’t that be BUET? After all, we BUET alumni think, we are the best of the best in Bangladesh. BUET is the top educational institute in Bangladesh. So why can’t BUET start it today, and rest of Bangladesh will follow it tomorrow? Am I shooting it too high?

Thanks,