Security, Peacekeeping and Other related Article

2011-09-26T02:50:00.000-07:00

Memorandum of Understanding on Academic Cooperation between
National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) New Delhi, India and BGMEA Institute of Fashion and Technology (BIFT) Dhaka-Bangladesh

This Agreement is executed on 6th September, 2011 at New Delhi between National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), New Delhi, India through Ms. Monika Garg, Director General, NIFT, New Delhi who has been duly authorized by the Board of Governors of NIFT vide Resolution No.-----dated ------, hereinafter referred to as NIFT and shall include all its servants, agents and assigns of the FIRST PART
And
BGMEA Institute of Fashion and Technology (BIFT), Dhaka -Bangladesh through, Mr.Muzaffar U. Siddique President, Governing Body-BIFT, Bangladesh who has been duly authorized by the Board of Governors of BIFT vide Resolution No. 78 dated 25th August 2011 hereinafter referred to as BIFT and shall include all its servants, agents and assigns of the SECOND PART
I. About the Agreement
1.1 This agreement defines the principles, policy guidelines & procedures required which BGMEA Institute of Fashion Technology (BIFT) & National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) wish to develop in mutual interest. This co-operation includes exchange of students, training activities, research activities within the area of Design, Management and Technology of the two partner institutes.
1.2 This agreement will be reviewed each year and changes specifying the methods of co-operation and modalities between the partners will be incorporated with mutual consent.
II. Organization and Management
2.1 Each of the two partner institutes shall designate a permanent employee of its teaching staff or management team as a representative for the management of this agreement.
2.2 Each partner institute will endeavor to provide the human, material and financial resource necessary for the running of the co-operation program specified annually. Moreover, the two institutes agree to put forth joint proposal for financial support for the activities undertaken within the framework of this agreement from regional, national and international funding organizations.
III. Objective
3.1 The objective of this agreement is to encourage international cooperation, and strengthening two institutes in the following areas:
a) NIFT will provide a semester study for BIFT students while BIFT will facilitate NIFT student to carry out Internship and Graduation Project/ Research Project in Apparel Industry at Bangladesh.
b) Faculty training program for BIFT c) Exposure to workshops, exhibitions and conducting special lectures d) Joint industrial projects and joint research activities
IV. Scope
4.1 The Agreement will cover the exchange of activities between NIFT India and BIFT Bangladesh.
A. Faculty Development Program
1 On the basis of requirement of BIFT, Faculty Development Program can be offered by the NIFT. The modalities will be worked out on the basis of the duration, gap areas, nature of workshop, place of training etc. at the time of offering the program.
2 BIFT faculty / faculty groups may come to NIFT for training or NIFT may send faculty members to BIFT to train their faculty at BIFT which will be decided in writing from time to time.
3 Detailed modalities will be worked out at the time of training programs.
B. Student Exchange
1. NIFT will offer a semester input to BIFT Students at NIFT India and BIFT will facilitate NIFT students to carry out Internship, Graduation Project and Placement in Apparel Industry at Bangladesh.

1 Semester at NIFT for BIFT Student
=
8 -14 Weeks Apparel Internship for NIFT students
+
12- 16 Weeks Graduation Project Research Project for NIFT students

BIFT student at NIFT:
2. The exchange student (s) from BIFT will undergo for the study of one semester of the Degree Program at NIFT. BIFT student will be issued a complete semester mark sheet indicating the subjects studied, credit, hours of inputs and overall performance. The classes for BIFT student(s) will be held with other students of NIFT.
3. BIFT student (s) shall be responsible for all travel costs, accommodation, meals, health insurance, semester contribution (at their home institute), medical costs, passport and visa costs, course materials (books, and consumables) and other expenses. NIFT shall not provide any financial assistance to exchange students.
Internship and Graduation Project at Bangladesh Apparel Industry for NIFT students:
4. As a part of exchange, NIFT student(s) will carry out an Internship and / or a Graduation Project in the industry at Bangladesh. This complete activity will be organized by BIFT well in advance by 2 months. The duration and timing of internship and Graduation Project/ Research Projects will be communicated well in advance, since the duration of these activities varies from program to program at NIFT. Both the activities, Internship & Graduation Project, will take place in the Industry only. During this period BIFT will appoint one senior faculty as a co-guide / mentor to the student(s) carrying out the Internship / Graduation Project in the Industry. The student who undertakes the internship in the industry will be encouraged to carry out the Graduation Project in the same Industry in Bangladesh. However, in specific cases a different student can be sent to carry out the Graduation project if the student who had opted for the Internship is not willing to go there for Graduation Project.
Internships: 8 to 14 weeks (Depending on Academic Program of NIFT) Graduation Projects : 12 to 16 weeks (Depending on Academic Program of NIFT)
a) Internship at Bangladesh Industry:
For the NIFT student(s) carrying out Internship at Bangladesh Industry, the Industry will provide accommodation and local conveyance between factory & place of accommodation. However student will have to bear all other travel expenses, lodging, health insurance, semester contribution at their home institute, passport & visa cost, course material & other unforeseen expenses. This arrangement between the Industry & NIFT students shall be planned and finalized by BIFT.
b) Graduation Project at Bangladesh
For the NIFT student(s) carrying out Graduation Project in the Apparel Industry at Bangladesh, the Industry in which students are carrying out Graduation project will provide accommodation and local conveyance from place of accommodation to the factory however student will have to bear expenses of all other travel expenses, lodging, health insurance, semester contribution at their home institute, passport & visa cost, course material & other expense. The Industry will also provide a stipend to the students for the duration of Graduation Project. BIFT will work out this arrangement between the Industry and the students and also facilitate the placements for NIFT students.
5. The maximum number of students exchanged under this agreement will be limited to four students per year.
6. Exchange student(s) of BIFT who have successfully completed 6 semesters for UG program / 3rd year of degree course at the home institute will be nominated by BIFT. The applications will be submitted to NIFT & each exchange student will satisfy the admission procedures and requirements of the host department as well as the prerequisites for specific courses and programs. Admission of the student(s) will be entirely at the discretion of NIFT.
7. Language proficiency of exchange students will be gauged and verified by appropriate personnel at the home institute before nominating them. The medium of instruction at NIFT is English.
8. Exchange students will be admitted in a non-degree status by NIFT for a period of one semester.
9. On a reciprocal, NIFT shall waive tuition and related fees for BIFT exchange student(s)
10. Exchange students must carry out medical health insurance that meets the requirements of the host institute and/or the host government. Neither institute will incur liability for illness, injury, financial loss or death of an exchange student at the partner institute. NIFT and BIFT will ensure that exchange students sign liability waivers absolving both institutes of any liability.
11. If an exchange student withdraws before the end of the designated period of that exchange, the status of the other member of the exchange will not be affected. The principle of reciprocity however, must be maintained over time.
12. NIFT will provide services to assist exchange students in locating accommodation and adjusting to the academic, social and cultural life of the host institute. It will also provide instruction, academic evaluation and supervision for exchange students as is maintained for home students.
13. Exchange students are expected to adhere to the rules and regulations of the host institute and respect the cultural norms, national traditions and customs of the host country.
14. Both the institutes reserve their rights to decline the students on academic ground or if any other condition within this agreement is not met.
C. Student Groups
1. Special arrangements for groups of students from one institute to another for the purpose of a short-term visit (workshops, exhibitions, industries exposure) may be negotiated in a separate agreement.
D. Joint Industrial Projects / Research Work
1 Faculties and the staff at both the institutes can take joint industrial projects on mutual consent with the prior written approval of the respective institutes.
2 Both the institutes have equal rights on the joint projects.
3 Prior to the starting of the joint project all the conditions will be worked out. If any faculty leaves in between, the institute will be responsible to provide a substitute
4 In the joint industrial projects / research work, liability will remain with the institute, individual will not be liable for the project.
5. Detailed modalities will be worked out at the time of taking up joint projects.
V. Duration, Conditions and Modifications of the Agreement
5.1 This agreement becomes effective upon the signature of the designated officials of both institutes. The actual implementation will begin as soon as both institutes have identified qualified individuals in each institute ready to participate in the exchange. However, such identification must take place within 30 days of execution/coming into effect of this Agreement.
5.2 This Agreement is valid for five years from the date of signature. However, three years will be recognized as the accounting period. The numbers of the students benefiting from this agreement would be 20 each from either side by the end of 5 years. However, every effort will be made to maintain four students on yearly basis.
5.3 The absence of exchanges during one academic year is possible and does not nullify the Agreement.
5.4 In accordance with the Equal Opportunity Policies of the institutes named above, there will be no discrimination against any person, for any reason, who is qualified as a participant in the program supported by this document.
5.5 Either institute may terminate this Agreement with a notice of six months. Exchanges in progress at the time remain unaffected and will be completed in the agreed period.
5.6 Modifications may be proposed and implemented at any time, effective from the date of written notification mutually agreed upon and signed by both institutes.
5.7 At the end of the penultimate year of the five-year cycle both institutes will conduct an evaluation of the program. Any amendments to be made would be achieved by mutual consent in writing and the agreement will be revised accordingly for a further five-year cycle.
5.8 No amendment or revision of the Agreement shall come into effect unless it has been mutually agreed upon and such agreement is recorded in writing.
VI. Dispute Resolution
6.1 The disputes arising out of and in connection with the present agreement shall be sought to be amicably resolved by conciliation between the Director General, NIFT and the President, Board of Governors-BIFT. In the event there is a failure of resolution of such disputes, it shall be referred to arbitration by a sole arbitrator to be duly appointed and nominated by the Secretary, Ministry of Textiles, Government of India.
6.2 The place and venue of arbitration shall be at New Delhi.
6.3 The applicable proper, substantive and procedural law for arbitration shall be the laws of India and the arbitration proceedings shall be conducted under and as per the provisions of the Indian Arbitration and Conciliation of Disputes Act, 1996 and the Rules framed there under.
VII. Jurisdiction
7.1 All disputes arising out of the present Agreement shall be subject to the jurisdiction of the Indian courts.
VIII. Governing Law
8.1 The present Agreement shall be governed by the laws of India, and in the event of conflict between any laws of Bangladesh and India, the Indian law shall prevail.
IX. Miscellaneous
9.1 Licenses and regulations: In the performance of this Agreement both parties agree that they shall comply and shall cause their personnel to comply with all local laws and regulations, which affect the undertakings to be executed by the parties under this Agreement. Both parties shall have all relevant permits and licenses in place necessary for the proper execution of the Agreement.
9.2 Intellectual property rights: Both Parties undertake that they shall not infringe upon any copyright or other intellectual property rights of the other Party which shall remain in exclusive possession of the respective Parties. Both parties shall obtain permission in writing for the usage of any logo, motif, emblem, or any other intellectual property right vested in the respective Parties to be used in connection with the implementation of the present Agreement from the respective Party.
9.3 Each Party is the sole owner of such intellectual property rights and the other Party shall have no rights thereto if not expressly mentioned in this Agreement. Neither Party may use the other party's intellectual property rights without the prior consent of possessing Party. Nothing contained in this agreement is intended to, or shall be construed to grant to either Party any license or right regarding the other Party's intellectual property rights.
9.4 Waiver: No waiver by either Party of any breach of any condition, covenant or term of this Agreement shall be effective unless it is in writing and no failure or delay by either Party in insisting upon strict performance of any of the terms or conditions of this agreement or in exercising any right, power or privilege hereunder shall operate as a waiver thereof.
9.5 Assignment and subcontracting: Neither Party hereto shall assign any of its rights or obligations or sub-contract the same under this Agreement to any third party without the prior written consent of the other party.
9.6 Entire Agreement: This Agreement constitutes the complete expression of both Parties' agreement and understanding with respect to the subject matter herein and supersedes all other prior agreements, undertakings, obligations, promises, arrangements, communications, negotiations and understandings whether oral or written, by both the Parties with respect to the subject matter hereof.
9.7 Modification: This Agreement and its Annexure may be amended or modified only by a written agreement by both Parties. Any such amendment and modifications will be listed in an Annexure hereto.
9.8 Notices: Any notices required to be sent under this Agreement by one Party to the other shall be in writing and forwarded to the other Party to the following addresses:

If to NIFT:
Director General NIFT Campus, Near.Gulmohor Park Town, Hauz Khas, New Delhi. India 110016
If to BIFT:
President, Board of Governors BIFT S. R. Tower, 105 Uttara Model Sector #7, Uttara, Dhaka - 1230 Bangladesh
9.9 If statements must be made in writing, they are deemed to having been made in writing when using electronic data communication or any other machine-readable form as long as the originator of the message is identifiable.
9.10 Independent Contractors: Both parties shall not for any purpose, be deemed or represent itself to be an agent or representative of the other Party. The relationship between the Parties shall only be that of independent contractors.
9.11 Severability: In the event that anyone or more of the provisions contained herein, or the application thereof in any circumstance, is held invalid, illegal or unenforceable in any respect, such provision or provisions shall be ineffective only to the extent of such invalidity, illegality or unenforceability, without invalidating the remainder of such provision or provisions or the remaining provisions of this Agreement, and such invalid, illegal or unenforceable provision or portion thereof shall, to the maximum extent possible, be substituted by an enforceable provision(s) that preserve(s) the original intentions position of the parties.

The F Express. 08-09-2011. Sub: BD-India relations

2011-09-26T02:48:00.000-07:00

Memorandum of Understanding between Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India and University of Dhaka, Bangladesh

Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, (hereinafter called JNU) and University of Dhaka (hereinafter called DU) establish hereby a formal understanding of cooperation and friendship which is intended to further the academic objectives of each institution and to promote better understanding between the faculty and students of JNU and the faculty and students of DU. Under this Memorandum of Understanding, the two institutions will proceed to implement the following endeavors and exchanges of materials and personnel.

Areas of Cooperation
Cooperation shall be carried out, subject to availability of funds and the approval of the competent authority of JNU and DU, through such activities or programmes as:
1. Exchange of faculty members
2. Exchange of students
3. Joint research activities
4. Participation in seminars and academic meetings
5. Exchange of academic materials and other information
6. Special short-term academic programmes
7. Exchange of Administrative Managers/ Coordinators
8. Joint cultural Programmes
The terms of such mutual cooperation and necessary budget for each specific programme and activity that is implemented under the terms of this MoU shall be mutually discussed and agreed upon in writing by both parties prior to the initiation of the particular programme or activity and the terms of such programme shall be negotiated on an annual basis. Each university will designate a Liaison Officer to develop and coordinate specific activities or programmes.
Scope of the Cooperation
The areas of cooperation include, subject to mutual consent, any Programme offered at either university as felt desirable and feasible on either side and that both sides feel can contribute to the fostering and development of the cooperative relationships between the two universities.
The assistance to be provided by each of the contracting parties will be teaching, research, exchange of faculty and students, and staff development, etc. as deemed beneficial by the two institutions.
The cooperation will be focussed on the following fields of study initially;
1. International Relations
2. Social Sciences
3. Language, Literature and Culture Studies
4. Computer Sciences
The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) shall remain in force for a period of three years from the date it is signed by the appropriate officials of the two universities. It may further be extended or amended with the written agreement of both parties. This MoU may be terminated by either party subject to the delivery of six months advance notice, in writing.
At JNU the office of the Academic Coordinator will oversee the implementation of the MoU. At DU, the Office of the Vice-Chancellor will oversee the implementation of the MoU.
Both parties understand that all financial arrangements will have to be negotiated and will depend on the availability of funds.

Prof. Sudhir Kumar Sopory Prof. A.A.M.S. Arefin Siddique
Vice Chancellor Vice Chancellor
Jawaharlal Nehru Dhaka University
University Dhaka, Bangladesh
New Delhi, India

The F Express. 08-09-2011. Sub: BD-India relations

2011-09-26T02:45:00.000-07:00

Memorandum of Understanding between Government of the Republic of India and Government of the People's Republic of Bangladesh

The Government of the Republic of India and the Government of the People's Republic of Bangladesh herein after jointly referred as 'Parties';
Desiring to strengthen the friendly relations and co-operation between the broadcasting authorities of two countries:
Have agreed as follows:
Article 1
Programme Exchange
Doordarshan, India and Bangladesh Television (BTV) of National Broadcasting Authority (NBA), will enter into detailed agreement through mutual discussions to make available for mutual broadcast of general programmes. The above would be made available for broadcast in English, along with scripts so that Bangladesh Television (BTV) of National Broadcasting Authority (NBA) may translate and dub the programmes into Bengali and Doordarshan may translate and dub the programmes in Hindi and other Indian language(s) for broadcast as they consider appropriate. The time of broadcast shall be decided by the recipients, who may consult each other for determining, as far as practicable, parity in the total time allocated for broadcasting each other's programmes.
Article 2
Live telecast of News Coverage
Doordarshan and BTV of National Broadcasting Authority (NBA) may broadcast live any specific event such as visit of High Dignitaries or any cultural event of bilateral importance through an arrangement of sharing of signals.
Article 3
Education Programmes
Doordarshan and BTV of National Broadcasting Authority (NBA) may also exchange programmes on Education either free of cost or on financial terms agreed between the Parties.
Article 4
Co-production
Both the Parties shall explore the possibility of executing television co-productions, whether to be done in India or in Bangladesh, as per/on terms and topics to be decided.
Article 5
Training and Consultancy Services
Doordarshan and Bangladesh Television (BTV) of National Broadcasting Authority (NBA) shall cooperate in providing training as well as technical advice with a view to enhancing the capacity of their respective training institutions and the quality of the contents of training. The services so provided may be free or at cost agreed between the Parties.
Article 6
Documentation
The Parties shall keep each other informed of the times, dates, duration and technical characteristics of all re-broadcasts.
Article 7
Term
The conditions of this MoU shall have a term of 5 (five) years if not terminated by one of the Parties. The programmes exchanged prior to termination, whether free or at a price, shall continue to be the property of the recipient for use for the purpose for which the exchange had been made. This MoU is renewable automatically for similar periods, subject to re-agreement of both Parties.
Article 8
Termination
This MoU may be modified or terminated at any time by joint agreement of the Parties. The MoU may be terminated by either Party with thirty (30) days prior notice in writing to the other Party, provided that the Party's duty to fulfill the mutual obligations incurred prior to the termination shall survive termination of this MoU.
Article 9
Miscellaneous
Termination
For legal purposes, nothing in this MoU shall be construed as creating a joint venture, an agency relationship or a legal partnership between the Parties.
Article 10 Effectiveness
Termination
This memorandum shall come into effect on the date of the signature set forth below and will remain valid until terminated.
Done at Dhaka on this Sixth day of September, 2011

For the Government of For The Government of the People's
the Republic of India Republic of Bangladesh

The F Express. 08-09-2011. Sub: BD-India relations

2011-09-26T02:42:00.000-07:00

Memorandum of understanding between the Government of the Republic of India and the Government of the People's Republic of Bangladesh on Co-operation in the Field of Fisheries

The Government of the Republic of India represented by the Ministry of Agriculture and the Government of the People's Republic of Bangladesh represented by the Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock, hereinafter referred to as the "Contracting Parties",
Mindful of the need to strengthen the existing friendly relations between the two countries through development of co-operation in the fields of fisheries and aquaculture and allied activities.
Considering that the advantage to be derived from development of co-operation in fisheries and aquaculture and allied activities;
Have reached the following understanding:
Article-I
The Contracting Parties shall promote development of co-operation in fisheries and aquaculture and allied activities between the two countries through joint activities, programmes, exchange of scientific materials, information and personnel.
Article-II
The joint activities will be determined by the Contracting Parties and implemented through mutually agreed procedures.
Such joint activities should be environmentally sound and sustainable and may include the areas of aquaculture germplasm exchange and training in fish stock assessment, post harvest technology, freshwater pearl culture, Hilsa fisheries management, protection of biological diversity related to fisheries development, fish production, distribution, trade and international protocol on Biosafety.
Article-Iii
The Contracting Parties shall jointly promote co-operation within this framework of the activities mentioned in Article II. Biennial Work Plans will be drawn up by mutual agreement between the contracting parties to give effect to the objectives of this MOU.
Article-IV
A Joint Working Group (JWG) shall be formed to provide guidance, review the progress of activities and to facilitate co-operation under this Memorandum. The Joint Working Group Meeting shall be arranged every year alternately in India and Bangladesh.
Each Contracting Party shall designate an Executive Secretary who shall be responsible for coordinating and monitoring all activities to be carried out under the auspices of this Memorandum. The Executive Secretaries will either meet in person or correspond with each other to develop a work programme and coordinate administrative details.
Article-V
Under this Memorandum, the designated coordinating authorities will be the Ministry of Agriculture for the Government of the Republic of India and the Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock for the Government of the People's Republic of Bangladesh.
Article-VI
The Memorandum authorizes the involvement of other interested Government agencies, the scientific and business communities as well as the private sectors of both countries in such co-operation.
Article-VII
The sending party will bear the costs of travel(s) and the receiving party will provide local hospitality. Activities pursuant to this Memorandum are subject to the availability of funds and personnel and to the laws and regulations of the respective counties of the parties.
Article-VIII
The Memorandum shall not in any way affect the commitments of the Contracting Parties under existing bilateral agreements between the two countries.
Article-IX
The Memorandum shall enter into force upon signature by both parties and shall remain valid for a period of 5(five) years. This MOU may be extended for further period as may be mutually agreed upon. Either of the parties may terminate the MOU by giving at least 6(six) months notice in advance of its intention to terminate the MOU. The termination of this Memorandum shall not affect the validity or duration of any implementing arrangement/ project executed and commenced thereunder and the activities in progress shall continue until completed.
Article-X
This MOU may be modified or amended by mutual consent.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, the undersigned, being duly authorized by their respective Governments, have hereto signed this Memorandum and affixed hereto their seals.

Done at Dhaka on this Sixth day of September, 2011 two originals in English language.

For and on behalf of the For and on behalf of the
Government of the Government of the People's Republic of India Republic of Bangladesh

The F Express. 08-09-2011. Sub: BD-India relations

2011-09-26T02:40:00.000-07:00

Protocol on Conservation of the Royal Bengal Tiger of the Sunderban between the Government of the Republic of India (the "India") and Government of the People's Republic of Bangladesh (the "Bangladesh")

WHEREAS:
Sunderban, which is an excellent tiger habitat and the largest sanctuary for the Royal Bengal Tiger in the world, stands across the common boundary of India and Bangladesh; and
India and Bangladesh have a shared and common concern of the Royal Bengal Tiger and accordingly wish to take certain bilateral initiatives for ensuring the survival and conservation of the tiger in the unique ecosystem of Sunderban; and
It is necessary to intensify the efforts for the safety of the Royal Bengal Tiger.
Now, therefore, India and Bangladesh hereby agree as following:
Article I
1. Both countries
(a) will undertake bilateral scientific and research projects to promote their understanding and knowledge of the Sunderban's Royal Bengal Tiger and including habitat will develop information systems, share research data and conduct joint research;
(b) will exchange personnel for training and promotion of education;
(c) will undertake patrolling of the Sunderban waterways on their respective sides to prevent poaching or smuggling of derivatives from wildlife;
(d) agree that either party will not undertake any activity, which will have adverse effect on the biodiversity and the unique ecosystem of Sunderban. However, no restriction on border domination activities be imposed;
(e) will include the safety of Royal Bengal Tiger as an agenda in all border meetings involving the habitat of the tiger.
Article II
2. For the purpose of training and promotion of education referred to in clause (b) of Article I of this Protocol, the Government of India, at the request of the Government of Bangladesh, will reserve at least four seats for personnel from Bangladesh in the nine months Diploma Course in the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun.
Article III
A special committee will be constituted in each country to examine human casualties that take place in the Sunderban by tiger attacks with a view to sharing experiences from either side, and to act in consultation with the other side, if necessary.
Article IV
Forest Officers or Park Directors from both the countries will hold periodic meetings on either side of the Sunderban alternately, with a view to sharing management strategies and creating innovative and common management approaches.
Article V
High level Ministerial level meetings will be held to follow up all the recommended actions between the two countries.
Article VI
The Protocol can be amended by mutual consent.
Article VII
The Protocol shall remain valid for 5 (five) years and shall be automatically renewed at the expiry of each period, unless terminated by mutual consent for which the Party desiring to terminate shall serve on the other Party a notice 90 (ninety) days prior to the date from which termination becomes effective. The termination of this Protocol shall not affect completion of any project which has made substantial progress.

Signed at Dhaka on the Sixth day of September, 2011 in two originals in English language, each of which is equally authentic.

For and on behalf of the For and on behalf of the
Government of the Government of the People's Republic of India Republic of Bangladesh

The F Express. 08-09-2011. Sub: BD-India relations

2011-09-26T02:38:00.000-07:00

Agreements/MOUs signed during PM's visit to Bangladesh

(i) Framework Agreement on Cooperation for Develop-ment

(ii) Protocol to the Agree-ment concerning the demarcation of the Land Boundary between India and Bangladesh and related matters

(iii) Addendum to the MOU between India and Bangladesh to facilitate Overland Transit Traffic between Bangladesh and Nepal

(iv) Memorandum of Understanding for Coopera-tion in Renewable Energy

(v) Memorandum of Understanding on Conser-vation of the Sunderban

(vi) Protocol on Conser-vation of the Royal Bengal Tiger of the Sunderban

(vii) Memorandum of Understanding on Coopera-tion in Fisheries

(viii) Memorandum of Understanding on Coopera-tion between Doordarshan and Bangladesh Television

(ix) Memorandum of Understanding on Coopera-tion between Jawaharlal Nehru University and Dhaka University

(x) Agreement of Coope-ration between National Institute of Fashion Design (NIFT), India and BGMEA Institute of Fashion Technology (BIFT),

Bangladesh Dhaka

September 6, 2011

The F Express. 08-09-2011. Sub: BD-India relations

2011-09-26T02:34:00.000-07:00

Framework Agreement on Cooperation for Development between Government of the Republic of India and Government of the People's Republic of Bangladesh

Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohon Singh and Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina exchanging documents on framework accords on bilateral cooperation

The Government of the Republic of India (hereinafter Government of India) and the Government of the People's Republic of Bangladesh (hereinafter Government of Bangladesh)

Recalling the two countries' shared bonds of history, culture and common values;

Desirous of living in peace and harmony with each other and fostering good neighbourly relations based on sovereign equality, non-interference in each other's internal affairs, and mutual respect and mutual benefit;

Inspired by an abiding faith in and total commitment to democracy, development, pluralism and peaceful co-existence;

Reiterating their common objective of eradicating poverty, hunger, illiteracy and disease and promoting social justice and inclusive growth with a view to enabling their peoples to realize their potential to the full;

Desirous of promoting trans-border cooperation in the management of shared water resources, hydropower potentials and eco-systems and in the areas of connectivity and trade and economic cooperation;

Convinced that cooperation at the bilateral, sub-regional and regional levels will accelerate development and enable the two countries to realise their developmental aspirations, shared destiny and common vision of a peaceful and prosperous South Asia;

Have Agreed as under:

Article 1

To promote trade, investment and economic cooperation, which is balanced, sustainable and builds prosperity in both countries. Both Parties shall take steps to narrow trade imbalances, remove progressively tariff and non-tariff barriers and facilitate trade, by road, rail, inland waterways, air and shipping. Both Parties will encourage the development of appropriate infrastructure, use of sea ports, multi-modal transportation and standardization of means of transport for bilateral as well as sub-regional use.

Article 2

To enhance cooperation in sharing of the waters of common rivers, both Parties will explore the possibilities of common basin management of common rivers for mutual benefit. The Parties will cooperate in flood forecasting and control. They will cooperate and provide necessary assistance to each other to enhance navigability and accessibility of river routes and ports.

Article 3

To develop mechanisms for technical cooperation and exchange of advance information with respect to natural disasters. The Parties shall also promote training and capacity building initiatives and cooperation between respective disaster management authorities, with a view to upgrading response mechanism.

Article 4

To establish arrangements for cooperation in generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity, including electricity from renewable or other sources. The Parties also agree to use power grid connectivity to promote power exchanges to mutual economic advantage.

Article 5

To promote scientific, educational, cultural and people to people exchanges and cooperation between the two countries. These shall be implemented through programmes and joint initiatives in areas such as agriculture, education and culture, health, tourism, sports, science & technology and any other area that the Parties may agree. The Parties shall cooperate by means of exchange of data, scientific knowledge, collaborative research, training, common programmes and in any other manner as may be agreed between the two Parties.

Article 6

To develop and implement programmes for environmental protection and responding to the challenges of climate change through adaptation. The Parties shall collaborate on projects of mutual interest to preserve common eco-systems and, as far as practicable, coordinate their response in international fora.

Article 7

To harness the advantages of sub-regional cooperation in the power sector, water resources management, physical connectivity, environment and sustainable development for mutual advantage, including jointly developing and financing projects.

Article 8

To cooperate closely on issues relating to their national interests. Both parties shall work together to create a peaceful environment conducive for inclusive economic growth and development.

Article 9

To cooperate on security issues of concern to each other while fully respecting each other's sovereignty. Neither party shall allow the use of its territory for activities harmful to the other.

Article 10

To establish a Joint Consultative Commission for effective and smooth implementation of this Agreement that shall meet once a year.

Article 11

The Agreement may be amended by mutual consent in order to enhance, deepen and widen the scope of cooperation, including regional / sub-regional expansion.

Article 12

This Agreement shall come into force on the date of its signing by the two Parties and shall remain in force until terminated by mutual consent in accordance with Para 2 of this Article.

Either Party may seek termination of this Agreement by giving a written notice to the other Party providing the reasons for seeking such termination. Before this Agreement is terminated, the Parties shall consider the relevant circumstances and hold consultations to address the reasons cited by the Party seeking termination in the Joint Consultative Commission.

Actions taken or agreements reached pursuant to this Agreement shall not be affected by its expiry or termination.

Done in Dhaka o n the Sixth day of September, 2011, in two originals in English Language.

Dr. Manmohan Singh Sheikh Hasina

Prime Minister Prime Minister

Government of the Government of the
Republic of India People's Republic Bangladesh

The F Express. 08-09-2011. Sub: BD-India relations

2011-07-18T21:29:00.000-07:00

Authorities lack capacity to enforce food safety laws

Khursheed Jahan

Nutritionist Khursheed Jahan tells New Age

by Shahidul Islam Chowdhury

RELEVANT authorities lack the capacity to enforce laws and regulations in ensuring food safety, says Khursheed Jahan of the Institute of Nutrition and Food Science under Dhaka University.

Most of the importers, producers and sellers of food items continue to repeat the offences for what they have been penalised in the past, she said in an exclusive interview with New Age on Tuesday.

‘The government must bring the food producers, public or private, importers and sellers within the legal framework,’ she added.

A medical graduate, Khursheed Jahan said most people in the low-, lower-middle- and middle-income brackets were struggling to ensure even two square meals a day amidst a sustained surge in the prices of essential commodities.

Nearly 40 per cent of the under-5 children are suffering from nutrition deficiency and 40 per cent of the adult population is suffering from energy deficiency, she said. ‘It is dangerous for a nation.’

People are increasingly becoming dependent on mushrooming roadside shops, which are set up under an open sky and serve food prepared in unhygienic condition, said Khursheed Jahan, who obtained a postgraduate degree in public from Harvard University.

As a result, viral hepatitis, gastrointestinal problem, lever and kidney failure, dementia, diarrhoea, acute food poisoning and other food-borne diseases have become widespread, she added.

Excerpts:

What is your assessment on the current state of food safety in Bangladesh?

Many surveys on nutrition have been conducted in the past 40 years. Each of these surveys show deficiency disorder in people as they are not maintaining required food intake. About 40 per cent of the under-5 children suffer from nutrition deficiency and 40 per cent of the adult population suffers from energy deficiency. It is dangerous for a nation.

A human being requires a balanced diet of 2,150 to 2,200 calories every day. About 60 per cent should come from carbohydrate, 12 to 14 per cent protein and the rest should be fat. Now, 75 to 80 per cent of the total calorie intake comes from carbohydrate as rice is a staple food in Bangladesh. Most people in Bangladesh cannot afford vegetable, fruits and animal protein and fat because of limited purchasing power.

Most people in the low, lower-middle- and middle-income groups struggle to ensure two proper meals a day, let alone three quality meals, due to soaring prices of essentials. They take whatever they can manage. Many children do not get proper breakfast before going to school.

In many families, busy parents cannot manage time to prepare snacks for school-going children. Those who can afford give money to their children to buy calorie- and fat-dense junk food from school canteen. These are not balanced diet on any consideration.

That’s how people’s food habit is changing.

Another important thing is that children cannot manage time to play at open spaces. As such, they have become dependent on television, computer, internet, mobile phone for entertainment. In fact, most of them do not lead an active life.

Poorer sections of society, especially the children, have to bear a double burden. Many of them take one meal a day and are heavily dependent on street food. People taking sugarcane juice and sliced fruits and vegetables including papaya, pineapple, watermelon, cucumber and carrot are common scene in cities. Sellers of these products use dirty utensils, knife, bucket and glasses. They do not wash their hands properly and many of them spread pathogenic bacteria from skin infections.

Middle-class people are becoming dependent on mushrooming roadside shops, which are set up under an open sky and serve food prepared in unhygienic condition.

That’s why viral hepatitis, gastrointestinal problem, lever and kidney failure, dementia, diarrhoea, acute food poisoning and other food-borne diseases have become widespread.

How do soaring food prices adversely affect food safety in general and level of nutrition in particular?

Certainly. People compromise on both the quantity and quality of food due to soaring prices of essential commodities including rice, flour, vegetables, fish, meat, fruits and milk. Thousands families cannot afford two meals a day or vegetables, fish, meat, fruits and milk regularly in their menu. They are becoming dependent on alternative and unsafe food. That’s how soaring prices of essentials are compounding chronic energy deficiency among people in general and low-income people in particular.

What role should the state play to ensure food security and safety?
The government should take pragmatic steps to increase the purchasing power of the people. It should also make food available at affordable prices and ensure the quality of food. Sustainable distribution chains with storage capacity in remote districts are also essential for ensuring food security.

How widespread do you think adulteration has become?
Adulteration was there in the past but now it has become extensive. For example, applying calcium carbide for ripening green mangos is very common every summer. Applying colours, essences and taste enhancers, including sodium salt in chips are common. The paediatric units of different hospitals are getting more patients with gastrointestinal and other problems.

How severe is the impact of rampant use of chemical pesticide and fattener in growing crops, vegetables and fruits?
Now, almost all growers apply chemicals as pesticides and fatteners—from the very beginning of plantation to harvesting. The government agencies conduct drives in name only. Many government employees and officials do not have proper knowledge and training to stop the use of chemicals as pesticides and fatteners. The government needs to establish a toxicity testing laboratory under a university to properly face the hazard.

How about artificial food?
Supply of artificial food including juice, jelly and carbonated drinks are also common. Producers of these products apply flavour and low-cost textile colour in foods that make children hyperactive. Many of them suffer from hypertension. In fact, additional colour in food is not good even if the colour is food-grade.

What is your view about the quality of packaging? Are they really food-grade?
Food-grade packaging and coating are very important for maintaining the quality of food in general and the pre-processed and pre-packed food in particular. Another important aspect is shelf life of a product. Unfortunately, many big department stores here do not properly maintain shelf life of products, let alone quality of packaging. The government agencies are not properly taking care of the issues of packaging and shelf life. So consumers must check whether the packaging is scratched or the composition of a product is right or the product is damp.

What is your view about genetically modified food and hybrid food?
Generally nutritional values are kept intact in hybrid foods. But we need to be careful about genetically modified food.

Do you think there is a necessity for investing in ensuring food safety and nutrition?
The authorities need to take food security and food safety in consideration together. So quality food must be made available at an affordable price for people in general and low-income people in particular.

What is the current state of laboratory facilities and research on food safety in Bangladesh?
A very limited number of tests and researches are done here on food safety. The government should invest more in research.

You are for establishing a laboratory under a university. How would you evaluate the performance of the Bangladesh Standards Testing Institution and its laboratory in ensuring food safety?
It does some tests. Does it really do all tests necessary for ensuring food safety when chemical contamination, pollution and adulteration are rampant? That’s why I feel there is the necessity for establishing a central toxicological laboratory preferably under a university.

Why under a university?
For credibility of the tests as most public universities still do credible tests and research works.

There are laws on food safety. Are they enforced effectively?
There is enforcement in name only. Food producers and shops continue to repeat the offences for what they were punished or fined by magistrates during anti-adulteration drives. Thousands of street shops are still unregistered. The government must bring the food producers, public or private, importers and sellers within the legal framework.

Do you think climate change has had adverse impacts on food safety?
Draught, salinity intrusion into soil and inland waters, no matter surface or underground water, and stagnation of waters for longer period adversely affect food safety and security.

How would you evaluate the preparation for emergency situations?
There is hardly any mechanism to ensure food security let alone food safety in
emergency situations. We must develop a mechanism for the people in disaster-
prone areas.

New Age 19-05-011

2011-04-18T02:18:00.001-07:00

Rich countries need to take responsibility to mitigate climate change effects seriously

Former Irish president and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson tells New Age

by Saiful Huda

THE first woman president of Ireland (1990-97) and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (1997-2002), Mary Robinson was recently in Dhaka to attend the convocation of BRAC University and deliver a public lecture on climate justice at the BRAC Centre.

Robinson, who currently runs the Mary Robinson Foundation, which works for climate justice around the world, took the opportunity of her maiden visit to Bangladesh to see the ground realities of climate change adaptation. She flew in a seaplane to Koira, an upazila in Satkhira, which was devastated by cyclone Aila-induced tidal surge on May 25, 2009.

In an exclusive interview with New Age, after her visit to Koira, Robinson lauded the resilience of people there in coping with, and adapting to, the adversities of climate and also talked about climate justice for which her organisation is campaigning. Excerpts:

What is your view about unwarranted infringement of individual freedom by the government and private organisations, which is common in almost all countries?
Every culture has its own problems. The most important and best way is to integrate. Civil society and parliament have to play their respective roles to ensure people’s rights.

But, in many countries, the role of civil society is often criticised.
There is confusion in many countries about the role of civil society. Civil society has the role to check policymakers when they make mistakes as well as support the government.

Do you think all countries that signed and ratified the UN charter on human rights ensure their citizens’ rights to enjoy civil and political life without discrimination or repression?
I wish they did. But no. Every country has citizen rights problem. It is not fair that one country lectures some other country without looking into its own violations. Human right in China has different perspective than that in the United States.

The United Nations has been talking about upholding human rights at the international and national levels. But most of the states have become coercive machineries where governments fail to uphold human rights for their citizens. Why has the UN failed to ensure that the states uphold the universal human rights?
There is a danger of lowering the role of the UN. But the standards have not changed.

One of the responsibilities of the UN is to respond to serious violations of human rights. Do you think that extrajudicial killing by law enforcement agencies and killing of unarmed and innocent persons on borders between two countries, like in the case of Bangladesh, are serious violations of human rights?
I am not specifically aware of the situation here. The UN has specialist rapporteurs whose task is to look into such incidents and report to the human rights counter at the UN.

Most of the rich countries generally use their development aids as ‘political tool’ and many countries do not uphold their commitments on development aid meant to support the poorer sections of the people. How do you see the situation?
Ireland has never worked on tied aid. It is true that some countries do have tied aids. This affects aid effectiveness.
We don’t think of climate justice anyway like trade justice. Climate justice isn’t just about mitigation and adaptation; it is also about transfer of locally sustainable tangible technology. Light, probably solar, clean cooking and water distillation for the poor people. It’s a bottom-up approach. We need to focus on enhancing access to technology. There is actually a website which is tracking reasonably and effectively the contribution of governments to the climate fund but there is no comprehensive website to put all the funds — the LDC fund, the adaptation fund, the fast-rack fund, the green fund.
If we have transparency on exactly what governments are committing to and a way of tracking it in one source, I think we would see that governments are not fulfilling their pledges and utilising the money which they commit for adapting and mitigating climate change.

Leaders in the developed countries are talking about climate justice. But most of them are unwilling to transfer good, green, low-carbon technologies to the poorest to support their right to development. How do you regard this situation?

Climate justice isn’t just about mitigation and adaptation but is also about financial support. It deals with who will be the representative of the green fund. There must be a gender perspective. What will be the role of the World Bank and the trustee? And all these things are extremely important.

The other thing is access to technologies. I think we have to address how this will come about. And it is not just feeding the market, rather bottom-up application of appropriate technologies. And then how to bring innovativeness in securing a transfer; to some extent, it has to be locally sustainable and tangible technologies.

For example, it was mentioned in the Global Alliance for Vaccination and Immunisation, where I was representing civil society as a chair of the board, that if you stand back from this alliance to immunise the poor children, those who are just over 10 years old will not be reached.

Just looking back very briefly, the Gates Foundation put up about $700 million in the year 2000 and UNICEF, WHO and the World Bank came together saying that we are not reaching the poor children and we have to do better. Donors, partner developing countries and governments then got involved in identification of what is to be put in place by the developing countries. The pharmaceutical companies got involved.

What the GAVI alliance did was create a market of immunising the poorest children. This philosophy has to be implemented in the case of climate change to make green technologies affordable for people in developing countries. What I have been trying to tease out of my head, but I don’t have an answer to, is how we create initial market for getting to the poorest.

I am very keen to transfer green technology for adaptation and mitigation to the developing countries. The private sector will play a very strong role here. There is lack of innovativeness and thinking in how to do it and how to do it well. How do we create an affordable product? How do we create an affordable market? Mobile phone is a glaring example of how products can be made affordable and technologies reachable to all segments of society for a better living. We need to learn lessons from these.

How do you look at the global role of the United States, especially in developing countries?
In the past, the role of the United States was obvious. It is no longer a unipolar world. There are emerging economies in the world, countries which are strong now.

Do you think that the UN in general and the Security Council in particular reflect the power balance and economic balance in the world today?
I would welcome reform of the Security Council. The 15-member council does not reflect the world forum.

What is your reaction to the US and UK governments’ moves to try WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange?
It has got long-term impacts. My own observation is that if countries say one thing and do something else, it is not fair. There seems to be a credibility gap. You have to be more frank.

What has been your experience in the field during your visit to Koira?
I have to start on a personal note. My first time in a seaplane was exciting and a very good way to see just how water-logged the areas are as we were getting closer Koira.
I wanted to have an opportunity to see the community in practice to adapt with climate change.
I was very shocked by so many people living in such fragile condition and some of them still on the embankment two years after cyclone Aila. I talked to one elderly woman, she used to have her own house and a reasonable income and now she is tucked in a very inadequate shelter with her husband and son. You could see she was very traumatised by the period as two years have passed. It has struck me.
I was happy to start with a visit to a primary school BRAC is involved in and to see the children’s school having a bench of tree knocked by wind. I think every primary school in every part of the world should have their children becoming aware of those children.
For some in the rich world it won’t be a realistic threat, but they should know that there are children for whom it is absolute reality. Those children have been four years in primary school and they will have the experience of Aila. They have seen the flooding.
The American children, the Irish children, they don’t have the experience, but we should know that is what children are already living through. It is part of creating awareness that climate change is affecting people already.
Then we met farmers and fishermen, men and women who had to adapt, had to feed crabs because crabs don’t mind the saline water. Then gift Telapia fish providing livelihood for women and their men folk. Women took a big involvement in it.
It’s not easy to adapt with something you have never done before. They had to learn new ways of how much food is needed, the technical side which BRAC has been supporting as they have to be sustainable in future.

It is the same thing with the farmers I met. Because of the salinity of the ground they were learning to grow maize and a type of rice to grow on saline land. What really impressed me, I must say, was these farmers knew exactly what the issues were. They had made the decisions. They had come away from sticking to the old rice which had not done so well. Others had grown maize for the first time.

I even joked with them because in the west of Ireland, where I grew up, small farmers are not very adaptable. But these farmers were very resilient and they were obviously benefiting.

The last thing which we saw was houses constructed to show climate resilience. One was on concrete pillars not quite high and tile roofs looked very sturdy, obviously a very impressive structure, but it is more expensive. And the other one was a home built entirely of local materials. If it is destroyed by a future strong surge or cyclone, it would be replaceable.

Local people were being given options other than being told you have to do it this way. And the whole thing was being about empowering local people. That’s a very human rights approach and it was a very generous thing to do.

Just again flying back in the seaplane, thinking of the scale when I understood what was going on down on the ground. The dykes have been damaged and need to be rehabilitated. What was missing to me, I think, was an effective strategic local government.

I have a sense that if there was a well-functioning local authority that was planning, and should have been planning, immediately after the cyclone, the rebuilding, things would have been much easier for these people. But in the absence of that, NGOs, BRAC and others, are struggling to help the people and make them very resilient. But there is a missing element that I think needs to be worked on. More evaluation part of local authority, more responsibility, more capacity to deal at local level and create enabling environment for what is going on.

What is your view about climate justice and responsibility of developing countries regarding compensation for causing climate change?

I very much take the justice view. The people I was meeting cannot be at all responsible for greenhouse gas emission. But the impact on them is more severe, and we are undermining their already fragile development, already difficult development.

As far as that is the case, I think countries like Bangladesh should be enabled effectively to address that. I don’t care whether you call it compensation or anything else; definitely there should be financial support for adaptation. There should be a better balance between mitigation and adaptation funding. And I strongly support that and I supported that in Cancun. Responsibility to mitigate has to be taken much more seriously by the rich countries that are responsible. It could be by debt relief or it could be by a number of measures. I personally have no problem with the word ‘compensation’ but I know it can lock any further discussion. So, tactically I would be inclined to try to be clever to get the same results no matter what it is called.

Source - The New Age. Bangladesh daily newspaper Date: 24.02.11.

2011-04-18T02:15:00.000-07:00

Beginning of the end of US hegemony in Middle East

by Dr Anwar Islam

FOLLOWING the successful uprising in Tunisia that saw the removal of one of the most corrupt and authoritarian regimes headed by President Ben Ali, it was apparent that a wind of profound change is blowing through much of the Middle East. The revolution in Egypt, obviously the biggest and the most important/influential country in this volatile region, is sure to bring fundamental change in the Middle East and beyond. The people of Egypt surely deserve our salute. Through their unity, perseverance and determination, they have changed the course of history. The young men and women and girls and boys of Egypt have shown what non-violent heroism can accomplish. The masses in Tahrir Square have finally liberated the ancient land of Egypt, the reverberations of which will be felt all over the world.

I am sure that the Americans never thought of such a change in the Middle East when they invaded Iraq, first in the name of destroying its fictional ‘weapons of mass destruction’ and later ‘to restore democracy and freedom’. Alas, after the brutal killing of almost 200,000 Iraqis (not counting the hundreds of thousands who succumbed to the inhuman sanctions imposed by the West following the first Gulf War in 1991) and deaths of more than 4,000 American soldiers, Iraq is neither stable nor peaceful and the American are in search of an ‘honourable’ exit. With its Iraq policy in tatters, the United States has lately concentrated on Afghanistan and, by extension, on Pakistan with the mission of ‘defeating’ the Taliban. While achieving the ill-defined mission of defeating the Taliban is becoming increasingly difficult, the US is faced with a new and profoundly more important challenge — the challenge of facing a new Middle East where freedom, human rights, democracy, inclusive development, individual and national dignity and transparent and accountable government are not only rhetoric but forceful demands. The Egyptians have once again demonstrated the power of the philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. The US will surely find it difficult to understand and, more so, appreciate, the idea of peaceful ‘regime change’ through a bottom-up approach.

Why the Middle Eastern countries had to (and in many cases continue to) suffer from the rule autocratic tyrants? The simple answer is oil and Israel. The United States, as a superpower and lately the only one, cannot think of losing control of this vital strategic resource. Tyrants can be bribed and cajoled to keep control over the oil; democratic governments that have to go back to their people every few years to renew their mandates cannot. Democracies, where the people are supreme, are likely to uphold the interest their people rather than that of the superpower. The United States, by its very nature, therefore, cannot support democracy—the supremacy of the people—or sustain good relationship with democratic governments.

It should be noted that the US, although a democracy in itself, its domestic and foreign policy agenda is shaped and determined by its military-industrial complex. The military-industrial complex thrives on weapons trade and war. The United States, therefore, is the largest manufacturer and trader of weapons of mass destruction. Needless to say, tyrants, autocrats, kings and emirs are the biggest buyers of these weapons — advanced fighter jets, missiles, and the like. The US is fond of selling such advanced weapons to oil-rich Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan, all autocratic states, with much fanfare. This is a sure way to keep the tyrants happy and, at the same time, to keep some of the petrodollars at home. However, it should be noted that even in such sales of so-called ‘advanced weapons’, the US is careful not to jeopardise the supremacy of the Israeli armed forces as the finest killing machine in the Middle East.

The second factor behind American support for these tyrants is Israel, preserving the safety and security of the only state without borders and the only colonial state that refuses to recognise the inalienable right of self-determination of its subjugated people — the Palestinians. Like the United States, Israel is also a democracy, and a vibrant one, but founded on an ideology rooted in religious fanaticism (Israelis as God’s chosen people and the land between the Euphrates and the Jordan river being given to the Israelites by God) and haunted by the collective memory of the Holocaust — the most brutal and inhumane genocide in human history. For the US Israel is indispensable to maintain its hegemony over the Middle East and, by extension, control over the strategic resource of oil. Palestinians and their human rights are, therefore, easily forgotten.

Not surprisingly, successive US governments looked the other way as Israeli settlements continued to expand and multiply in captured Palestinian lands in clear violation of all international laws and Geneva conventions. Tyrants could be relied on to condone the oppression of Palestinians and continue to support Israeli expansion. Hosni Mubarak went a step further and participated equally with the Israelis in blockading Gaza—home to 1.5 million hapless Palestinians crammed within a space of hardly 360 square kilometres—while continuing with the so-called Israeli-Palestinian dialogue masquerading as a ‘peace process’. The United States nurtured and protected two kings (Saudi Arabia and Jordan) and a brutal tyrant (Egypt) in order to bring ‘stability’ to the Middle East. The word ‘stability’ in this context means the security and safety of Israel and, therefore, the denial of fundamental human rights of the colonised, subjugated Palestinians. True, the US is doling out more than three billion dollars a year in aid (primarily military aid) to Egypt and Jordan to keep the ‘peace and stability’ in the Middle East. But that is a small price for securing the security of Israel and upholding its hegemony over the Middle East. The other tyrants like Ben Ali (Tunisia) and President Abdullah Saleh (Yemen) came as a bonus helping the hegemonic apparatus. The tyrants also benefited from this ‘exchange’ of mutual gifts. While Hosni Mubarak seemed to have emerged as one of the richest persons in the world with an estimated wealth of over $7 billion, his Tunisian counterpart Ben Ali is not far behind. Once Swiss banks and other Western governments go after their ill-gotten wealth, the extent of their corruption will be clearer.

The tyrants in the Middle East were allowed to create police states in their countries complete with layers of secret police and torture. It is reported that under Hosni Mubarak Egypt had a police force of more than 1.5 million people including the much hated secret police. Torture on detained suspects while in custody was a routine affair known to the Western powers as much of the gadgets used for torture were manufactured in and given by the United States. It is surprising that much of the Western world, including the United States, now seems to pretend ignorance about torture and human rights violations in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East headed by autocratic despots. These tyrants also had an easy pretext to get Western support, the fear of Islamic parties — the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Salvation Front (better known with the French acronym FIS) in Algeria and the Al-Nahda in Tunisia. Although these parties had always been eager to participate in elections and follow the democratic norms, they were viewed as ‘enemies’ of the state. It should be noted that in 1989 Al-Nahda came second to the ruling party in elections, officially winning almost 17 per cent of the votes. However, widespread fraud marred the election and some estimates put Al-Nahda’s tally as more than double the official figure. Similar is the case with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Rigged elections never allowed the Muslim Brotherhood to effectively demonstrate its electoral strength. The case of Algeria is perhaps the worst example of denying electoral victory to an opposition party. In 1992 the Algerian military-political elites postponed an ongoing election when it was evident that the Salvation Front is about to sweep to victory. In the ensuing conflict between the military and the FIS, some factions of which turned to violence, more than 200,000 Algerians lost their lives. Shockingly, but not surprisingly, in denying victory to the Salvation Front and thus subverting democracy the Algerian military received full support from the Western countries, most notably from its ex-colonial master the French government. Why deny victory to the FIS? The only reason was its Islamic orientation! In other words, for the West democracy is fine as long as it brings like-minded parties to power. The fact that for Western countries democracy must be so controlled as not to allow any Islamist party to power became evident again when Hamas won the free election in the Palestinian territories in 2005. Led by the United States the Western countries not only rejected the democratic outcome, but also isolated Hamas as a terrorist organisation. On the other hand despite accepting democracy, Hamas continues to resort to violence and attack Israeli communities closer to Gaza. However, these attacks, largely inconsequential, receive greater attention and condemnation from the West than Israeli brutalities that kill thousands of Palestinians each year.

The Palestinian issue has dominated the discourse on the Middle East since the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. The initial Arab rejection of Israel that created more than a million Palestinian refugees started the problem. The six-day war of 1967 in which Israel occupied the Sinai and the Gaza (administered by Egypt) from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria and East Jerusalem from Jordan (East Jerusalem was under Jordanian administration) changed the entire Middle Eastern dynamics. Israel saw this as an opportunity to create a greater Israel promised to them by God and the West saw this as an opportunity to exert and solidify its hegemony over the entire Middle East through Israel. By then Middle East has emerged as the biggest reservoir, producer and exporter of oil, the vital non-renewable resource that runs the engine of world capitalism. For oil, or more precisely to be able to control the flow of oil, the West was and is prepared to overlook almost everything — from tyrannical rules to human rights violations and police states to colonialism and apartheid.

In the twenty-first century except Middle East nowhere else one would find despots ruling for three or four decades, or absolute Kings and Emirs ruling over their subjects like the Middle Ages. They could survive as long as they support the US policy the ultimate object of which is the safety and security of Israel. Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel and acquiescence to Israeli occupation and colonial rule over Palestine made Hosni Mubarak a hero to the West. The same is the case with Jordan. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, despite its dubious relationship with ultra-orthodox Wahabism, never failed to serve the interests of the United States. It is their support to Israeli occupation that made them ‘moderate’ states to the US and the West. Anyone or any state that dares to challenge the Israeli occupation and total subjugation of Palestine is termed as ‘extremist’ and subjected to Western criticism, boycott and sanctions. Although resistance to occupation is a universal right recognised by the United Nations, Palestinians are not accorded that right.

The US hegemony over the Middle East reached its zenith during the invasion and occupation of Iraq. None of the Middle Eastern countries dared to question the legality of the invasion of Iraq, a country that was suffering from ten years of Western sanctions and no-flying zones since the first Gulf War in 1991. The so-called moderate states of the Middle East actively supported the invasion. Given the US mood following the brutal terrorist attack on New York and Washington DC in September 2001, many of these despotic rulers termed any opposition to their rules as the work of al-Qaeda. Sure enough, that was enough to receive US support to crush the opposition. Some of these tyrants even invited the US to initiate its own action against the opposition (always termed al-Qaeda operatives). That’s how the long-term president of Yemen allowed the US drone attack against his opposition, some minority ethnic/religious groups fighting for their democratic and human rights. Similarly, by participating in all illegal activities of the US during the early phase of its ‘war on terror’ (during the reign of President George W Bush) that the Egyptian regime of Hosni Mubarak secured unequivocal US support to its human rights violations and rigged elections.

The demise of Hosni Mubarak through a people’s movement and its highly likely domino effects on other Middle Eastern countries long ruled by tyrants and despots will once again challenge the US hegemony in the strategically important oil-rich Middle East. By the same token, it will also once again bring to focus the brutal Israeli occupation of Palestine. The stakes are too high. Real democracy in the Middle East could usher in freedom for a whole range of people including the Palestinians. Will the West allow that to happen? Let us take an in-depth look into the dynamics at play in the Middle East including its demographic transition, economic inequity, and political un-freedom coupled with the information-communication revolution and the forces of globalisation that metamorphosed as a catalyst for change.

Source - The New Age. Bangladesh daily newspaper Date: 24.02.11.

2011-01-31T00:18:00.003-08:00

Obama’s two-year economic report card – Nomi Prins

Obama’s economic policies have either been continuations of his predecessor’s, as in the case of taxes and bank bailouts, or bills so watered down to appease corporations, notably banks and insurance companies, that they are ineffective. In the process, he continues to alienate his supporters—individual voters, not the companies that funded his candidacy—leaving their economy in shambles, writes Nomi Prins

by Nomi Prins

THERE are two potential ways to measure the economic performance of a political leader. One is by the profitability, stock prices and executive bonuses of a nation’s corporations. The other is by the financial condition of the majority of its population. Since he came to power, President Obama and his economic team have propped up the former and failed miserably to aid the latter. (For the record, ever since the first paragraph of Obama’s pre-primary website economics plan put free markets before people, this is where we were going, but it still hurts to get there.)

The S&P 500 index is up 50 per cent since Obama took office. But unemployment remains higher than it was when he entered the White House, home foreclosures continue to mount to the detriment of borrowers and entire neighbourhoods, health insurance companies responded to his healthcare ‘reform’ bill by raising premiums, and the financial system’s largest banks continue to prosper in the wake of a multi-trillion dollar bailout with no strings attached to share their subsidisations with the rest of American citizens. To top it all off, as he approaches the midpoint of his first, and likely last, term, Obama bowed to the pressure of the Republican Party and extended tax cuts for the richest Americans in order to be able to also extend them for everyone else more sorely in need. There’s only so long you can blame another administration for your actions.

Taxes

JUST in time for Christmas, we got Obama’s big tax-cut compromise. Obama’s reverse Robin Hood deal with the Republicans disproportionally takes from the poor to give to the rich. The plan adds another $1 trillion to the record United States deficit, $700 billion of which would be the cost of extending tax breaks to the wealthiest 2 per cent of the country, the rest going toward jobless benefits—necessary to help those victims of the wider economic problems, but not complemented with a job-creation program.

According to the Centre on Budget and Policy Priorities, American millionaires would get 22 per cent (or $200 billion over two years) of the benefits of the deal, while the bottom 20 per cent of American workers would get less than one-half of one per cent. According to David Cay Johnston, the 45 million households that make less than $20,000 a year will be slapped with a tax increase of $150 to $200.

Even though the majority of his own Democratic Party supported extending cuts only to Americans making less than $250,000 a year (on TV anyway, apparently not at their seats once the compromise was inked, notables with balls like Senator Bernie Sanders aside), Republican ‘all-or-nothing’ pressure was met by Obama’s capitulation. He could have bargained harder—say by suggesting that tax cuts not be extended for people making more than a million dollars, rather than punting the tax cut issue into the 2012 presidential election period.

What Obama effectively did was adopt George W Bush’s tax policy in total rather than come up with a better deal, even though the Bush tax cuts increased the net worth of the wealthiest Americans while the wages of the rest of Americans (the ones that had jobs) stagnated or decreased per hour worked. The Republicans obviously considered the deal a victory, to hell with any Republican voters in the bottom 98 per cent of the country. Wall Street thought it was better than expected. Jamie Dimon was all but salivating. Even though the majority of Americans wanted to end tax breaks for the wealthiest, plus extend unemployment benefits, Obama couldn’t pull it off.

Housing

OBAMA’S $75 billion Home Affordable Modification Programme was an unmitigated disaster for the borrowers who tried to take part, despite his promises that it would help 3 to 4 million struggling borrowers keep their homes.

On December 15, I spoke at a mortgage fraud seminar in Ontario, California, and, let me tell you, there’s more fraud going on in modification-land than there was in loan-origination-land. The next day, over in Washington, Tim Geithner spoke glowingly of everything the administration has done to help the financial system, gloating laboriously over the bells and whistles of the various asset purchase and loan extension bank bailout programs and how much money we taxpayers made as a result. As for borrowers—you know, the little people—he stressed the number of modification applications in the pipeline instead of actual permanent modifications. This was primarily because it was a voluntary program on the part of the banks, which had no incentive, economic or legal, to work with borrowers. In the meantime, 8 million to 13 million foreclosures are expected to have taken place from the time the banks got their bailouts until 2012. If you figure on average there are three people living in each home, we’re talking 24 million to 39 million displaced people.

I really wish Geithner could have been standing in front of the borrowers at the seminar I attended, if only to get a clue.

Half of the 1.4 million borrowers that entered the HAMP were kicked out. Only 2 per cent of the loan modifications so far have involved lasting principal reductions. Most of the rest were given temporary reprieve, only to see their payments rise at the end of their trial periods or their banks rush to foreclose on them anyway.

To fix this problem, Obama has just created a $14 billion principal reduction programme—something that should have been done on a far grander scale about two years ago. It remains to be seen whether this will be any more effective than the larger initial program, since participation is equally voluntary on the part of lenders, notably the biggest five banks that control two-thirds of the nation’s mortgages. I’m not holding my breath.

Unreformed banking system

THROUGHOUT his presidential campaign and his first 18 months in office leading up to the passing of the Dodd-Frank so-called financial reform bill this summer, President Obama asserted that the crippled economy was predominantly the result of failures in the banking system.

He admonished bankers for their greed and vowed that those days were over. Never again. Blah, blah, blah. But, the financial reform bill that he championed stopped none of the risky practices of the most powerful banks. (If you want to buy a package of distressed mortgages, call any of them today.) Nor did it break them up into smaller, more easily regulatable entities. Indeed, the largest banks in the United States are now bigger and stronger than they were before the bailout, even as smaller banks continue to close, creating a far less stable banking environment than before the crisis.

Geithner, as Obama’s treasury secretary, remains an apologist for the bailout, and it was Obama who moved to reconfirm Ben Bernanke as head of the Federal Reserve instead of making good on his major promise of ‘change’ in the financial system. That’s why Wall Street bonuses this year are expected to be 5 to 10 per cent higher than last year, even though bank profits are lower and lending remains muted. Because things have changed so much.

Jobs

ON THE job front, the picture remains bleak, as everyone is keenly aware. Nearly 11.5 million people have lost their jobs since Obama took office, despite claims that the $787 billion stimulus package saved 3 million to 4 million jobs. The unemployment rate of 9.8 per cent is 32 per cent higher than the 7.4 per cent rate it was before Obama was inaugurated, and it has steadfastly stood at that level throughout his term.

Even worse, the number of workers who have been unemployed for over six months remains the seventh-highest on record at 6.1 million. There are still 4.4 unemployed workers for every available job (compared to 2.8 workers per job during the early 2000s recession). Thus, one in six US workers is either unemployed or underemployed, which amounts to nearly 26.8 million workers.

Meanwhile, corporate profits have jumped back to near-historical highs, and banks are hoarding an extra $1 trillion in reserve at the Fed instead of using it to restructure mortgages or lend to small businesses that could create jobs with the money. Obama’s administration has been unable to find a way to force more job creation by tying corporate and bank well-being to that of the greater economy, either because it can’t or doesn’t want to.

Health insurance

THERE were 59 million Americans without any health insurance in 2010, up from 46.3 million, or about 15.4 per cent of the population in 2009, which was a slight increase from 2008. That 27 per cent increase in 2010 is the highest per year under any presidency.

Sure, Obama promised that his new health-care-so-called-reform bill would help when it takes effect in 2014 and expand coverage to more than 32 million uninsured Americans. Meanwhile, health insurance companies hiked premiums by 14 per cent this year and dropped the amount of coverage they provide for those increases. Why? Because they can. At that rate, even people that do have insurance coverage will see their costs nearly double by the time the reform bill takes effect, because ‘reform’ never capped the premiums insurance companies can charge, which is not a tiny omission. This while attempting to mandate that everyone purchase health insurance, a double gift for insurance companies, now being battled out in the courts for the constitutionality of the mandate, not the extortionist cost of health care and insurance.

Meanwhile, the top 10 health insurance company CEOs bagged $228 million in 2009, up nearly 162 per cent from the year before Obama took office, and they anticipate even more for 2010—and yet there are no major audits of their business practices on the horizon.

Citizen sentiment

DESPITE his rhetoric to the contrary, Obama’s policies are far more pro-corporate than pro-populace, not a huge surprise, but still the reason that the Main Street economy isn’t improving. According to a Bloomberg survey from early December, more than 50 per cent of Americans say they are now worse off economically than they were when Obama took office, a third think they are doing better, and two-thirds believe the country is headed in the wrong direction.

Those poll numbers, considering the weakness in the economy, aren’t necessarily horrible. President Ronald Reagan’s numbers were even worse after his first two years, and he still won his second term decisively. Plus, Obama inherited an abysmal economy, as he continues to remind us.

But just because you get on the train after it’s already rushing out of the station doesn’t mean you can’t find a way to stop it before it decimates a town or something bigger. The guys in the film ‘Unstoppable’ ignored the dumb ranting of their suited bosses and saved the day. It can be done. (Go see the film; it’ll make you smile.)

A higher stock market is of little comfort to the millions of Americans who don’t have jobs, are facing foreclosure, fraudulent or otherwise, or have no health coverage. Equally, it’s of little comfort that, rather than finding the money to help this swath of citizens, the Obama administration added $700 billion to the deficit by giving the wealthiest Americans more tax breaks. Hell, if you’re gonna go for broke on the deficit, why not fight to spread that same $700 billion over the rest of the citizenry instead?

Obama’s economic priorities are primarily benefiting a small and influential part of the population, but they have not provided the rest of the country with anything to be optimistic about this holiday season. In that regard, he’s more Scrooge than George Bailey.

The New Age.(Bangladeshi newspaper) Date: 03-01-11. Sub:

USA

2011-01-31T00:09:00.000-08:00

Wikileaks Bangladesh – II, RAB, counter-terrorism and pursuit of democracy-Rahnuma Ahmed
by Rahnuma Ahmed

IT HAS been nearly two weeks since the WikiLeaks leak of diplomatic cables from US Embassy, Dhaka revealed that US ambassador James F Moriarty had urged the prime minister’s energy adviser, Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury, to award contracts to Asia Energy, Conoco Philips and Chevron.
As I argued in ‘WikiLeaks Bangladesh – I: People’s resistance to global capital, govt collaboration is vindicated’ (December 27, 2010), subsequent events reveal that those in position, i.e. those within the government, complied. So did the opposition, by remaining silent. By not publicly disavowing policy decisions taken earlier.
A critical analysis of WikiLeaked diplomatic cables reveal a shared interest between the two major political parties and their respective leaders, Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia, whose bitter political rivalry has led influential sections of both national and international media to dub them ‘battling begums’.
They reveal a shared interest between—and this probably evokes a sense of deep shame for the nation—the party which leads the nation’s desire for trying war criminals of 1971 (the Awami League), and leaders belonging to the party who are to be tried for having committed these crimes (the Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh).
The public is given to understand that the Awami League, Bangladesh Nationalist Party, and Jamaat-e-Islami are unlikely bed-fellows, but closer analysis reveals their unity in serving the interests of global capital, against the interests of impoverished, oppressed local communities in Phulbari, against asserting national control and ownership of mineral resources.
No official reaction to the WikiLeaked energy cable, still. Other exposés seem more pressing. The creature comforts in Khaleda Zia’s Dhaka Cantonment home from which she was evicted. Signs of ‘opulence’, says Sheikh Hasina.
Meanwhile, the National Committee for the Protection of Oil, Gas and Mineral Resources, Power and Ports demands that the US ambassador be declared persona non grata, that the prime minister’s energy adviser be sacked (December 30, 2010).
WikiLeaked diplomatic cables further reveal that the British government has been training the Rapid Action Battalion, Bangladesh’s paramilitary force, described as a ‘government death squad’ by Human Rights Watch, in ‘investigative interviewing techniques’ and ‘rules of engagement’ (Guardian, December 21, 2010). That Moriarty thinks RAB is ‘best positioned to one day become a Bangladeshi version of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.’ Since the revelations, the British government maintains it has provided ‘a range of human rights assistance’ to RAB, while the head of RAB’s training Mejbahuddin says, no. Not to his knowledge. At least not since he took charge last summer.
The BNP-Jamaat-led four-party alliance government established RAB in 2004. Barrister Moudud Ahmed, minister for law and parliamentary affairs, dismissed extrajudicial deaths as ‘technicalities’, not ‘killings’. They make people ‘happy’. The trial of extrajudicial killings was an Awami League electoral pledge but since coming to power, its position has veered between denial (home minister Sahara Khatun, former state minister for home Tanjim Ahmad Sohel Taj), and necessity. Shipping minister Shahjahan Khan said, some incidents of trial are not possible under the laws. Extrajudicial killings will have to continue.
The Awami League has obviously forgotten those who were earlier cross-fired. It has forgotten Mohammad Mohimuddin Mohim, a central Bangladesh Chhatra League leader, ‘encounter’ed in November 2004. It has forgotten what Mohim’s sister asked Lieutenant Colonel Emdad, commander of RAB-7 Chittagong, ‘My brother, before you murdered him, did he have any last wish, any last word?’ Caught off guard and visibly shaken, he replied, ‘Our politicians, for them, we have to kill our children’ (Forum, December 15, 2006). The WikiLeaked cables help further our understanding: our politicians, bolstered by the support of US, UK (and Indian) governments, for them, ‘our children’ have to be killed.
Moriarty did express reservations about RAB because of its gross violation of human rights. Fake reservations, given the US-led occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, its escalation, the Af-Pak war, under Obama. Millions killed, nations ravaged. Fake, given Moriarty’s own track record. As the US ambassador to Nepal (2004-2007), in response to paramilitary death squad killings in Terai, he said, it was a reason for ‘optimism’. His main concern? The Royal Nepalese Army was ‘running out of bullets’ (Reconstructing the Nation. Imperial Designers at Work, New Age, December 22, 2008).
Bolstering RAB would further strengthen counter-terrorism operations in Bangladesh; shared concerns, as WikiLeaks reveals, of Indian, American and British governments (January 14, 2009). Pleased at the Awami League’s landslide victory, the Indian high commissioner reportedly said, ‘improving security cooperation would be the top Indian priority.’ RAB should not be ‘disband[ed]’.
But as Jude McCulloch points out, terrorism is notoriously difficult to define, it’s definitions are selectively applied, what we view as terrorism is largely shaped by counter-measures (International State Crime Initiative 2010). During the past decade, counter-terrorism in the ‘war on terror’ has been linked to state crimes: crimes of aggression, torture, police crime, corruption, state corporate crime. Counter-terrorism frequently causes more harm than the violence it purportedly addresses. It fuels political divisions and conflicts which underpin the violence it is said to be countering. It becomes part of an escalating cycle of violence as violent expressions by non-state actors are justified by the state’s response through counter-terrorism measures.
Counter-terrorism laws have served as a pretext for imposing far-reaching restrictions on civil liberties, cracking down on political dissent, pervasive secrecy, indiscriminate detention, arrests and torture. Since September 11, 2001, Chinese authorities have re-categorised separatist acts involving the use of force as ‘international terrorism’, not simply criminal actions. Repression has intensified in Egypt, hundreds arrested or detained on suspicion of being opposed to the government, possessing ‘suspicious’ literature, or, for peacefully demonstrating against the occupation of Iraq, Israel’s occupation of Palestine. Civilians, including professors, medical doctors, other professionals, are tried in military courts, or emergency and regular state security courts. Many are accused of ‘terrorism’.
In liberal democracies, ‘war on terror’ policies have been aimed at undoing workers’ power in the workplace, forbidding airport security personnel the right of unionisation, branding workers who refuse to accept wage and benefit cuts as ‘unpatriotic’; targeting environmental activists, anti-globalisation movements. Former British prime minister Gordon Brown invoked ‘anti-terror legislation’ to freeze assets of bankrupt bank Icesave, when Ireland initially refused to compensate British customers’ who lost savings due to bankruptcy (Aradau and van Munster 2010). Analysts speak of a fascist shift in the US, in the context of what Naomi Wolf describes as, being ‘at war’ in a ‘long war’, a war without end, on a battlefield described as the globe (Guardian, April 24, 2007). Sweden, long upheld as a model liberal democracy, adopted wiretapping laws in 2008 allowing authorities to spy on international calls, faxes and e-mails. Ironical, writes journalist Tasneem Khalil, since he had fled to Sweden, away from the police state of Bangladesh after being detained and tortured by DGFI (Directorate General of Forces Intelligence) personnel during the military-installed caretaker government (2007-2008).
The DGFI has been implicated in torturing Jamil Rahman, a British citizen, in December 2005. He and his wife were taken to the DGFI headquarters, held in separate cells (Guardian, May 26, 2009). Rahman was stripped naked and beaten. He was threatened, his wife would be raped and murdered, her body would be burned. Released after confessing to being the mastermind behind July 2005 underground and bus bombings in London, Rahman alleges, two well-spoken Britons, claiming to be MI5 officers would be present during interrogations, leaving the room when he was tortured. On occasions, three men, allegedly from Scotland Yard, an American woman named Mary, were present during interrogations. A Bangladeshi intelligence officer told Rahman, they were ‘only doing this for the British.’ Rahman’s two-year long ordeal began during the BNP-Jamaat coalition rule, it continued into the Fakhruddin-led emergency period. In June 2009, Lord West, UK state minister for security and counter-terrorism, while launching first UK-Bangladesh Joint Working Group on Counter Terrorism in Dhaka, said ‘we have worked to build the capacity of Bangladeshi agencies involved in counter-terrorism work...’ Is capacity-building a euphemism for out-sourced torture? (On Forced Marriage and Insourced Torture. The Loving Face of British Imperialism, New Age, July 20, 2009).
DGFI features in WikiLeaked cables too. The military’s intelligence agency reportedly supported the idea of the Islamist terrorist group Harkatul Jihad Al Islami (HuJi) joining mainstream politics through forming the Islamic Democratic Party before the 2008 general elections. According to a news report, at an IDP-held iftar party, guests included Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, editor, weekly Blitz and a campaigner for awarding official recognition to Israel. ‘If Hizb-ut Tahrir,’ said Choudhury, ‘banned across the countries and had role in the Bali blasts, and anti-Liberation forces like Jamaat-e-Islami can operate openly, why can’t IDP?’ (The Daily Star, September 29, 2008).
WikiLeaked cables, cautions Andrew Gavin Marshall, must not be taken at face value. They should be placed within a wider context and understanding, so that we can better inform the information itself. We must remain critical of all sides and all actors (Global Research, December 6, 2010).
Three bombs went off on the Indonesian island of Bali on October 12, 2002 causing the deaths of 88 Australians, 38 Indonesians. A radical Islamic group Jemaah Islamiyah was blamed. Some of its members were convicted, 3 were sentenced to death. Indonesia’s former president, Abdurrahman Wahid, in a television interview in October 2005 said, he has ‘grave concerns about links between Indonesian authorities and terrorist groups.’ The JI had placed the original bomb in the nightclub, but the second, larger car bomb outside, ‘had been organised by authorities,’ suggesting that either ‘the police...or the armed forces’ may have planted the bomb. He also stated, ‘the orders to do this or that came from within our armed forces, not from the fundamentalist people.’ The TV programme also reported that one of JI’s key individuals behind its formation was an Indonesian spy; the president continued, ‘there is not a single Islamic group either in the movement or the political groups that is not controlled by (Indonesian) intelligence’ (Andrew G Marshall, GeoPolitical Monitor, November 15, 2008). (Is it irrelevant to mention that another former president, Francesco Cossiga of Italy, thinks that 9/11 was an inside job?)
According to Sayed Abdullah, Indonesian intelligence expert, the CIA and Israeli Mossad had infiltrated JI. Assisted by the Australian Special Action Police and the MI5 of England, they worked jointly to ‘undermine Muslim organisations in an attempt to weaken Muslims globally.’ The 2002 Bali bombings was ‘an operation clearly financed and assisted by the CIA and Mossad, [which] made use of Muslims to carry out the final act,’ who were not innocent either as they ‘took [their] bait’ to ‘avenge against the US war on the Muslims in Afghanistan.’ Abu Bakr, spiritual leader of JI, linked to the Bali bombings, later executed, said, it was the work of the CIA; a belief confirmed by several senior Indonesian National Intelligence Agency officials.
The repercussion of the bombings? It ensured Australia’s support of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the wider ‘war on terror’. After the bombings, the Australian government said, ‘Australians may have to sacrifice some freedoms to help fight terrorism.’ The executions led JI leaders to say, there would be ‘retaliation’. Marshall writes, it’s also likely to increase recruitment into radical Islamic groups.
Siddique ul-Islam, widely known as Bangla Bhai, leader of Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (formed in 2003) was finally captured by RAB on March 6, 2006. Nationwide bomb attacks on August 17, 2005, and successive suicide bomb attacks had shocked and outraged the nation. He was executed on March 30, 2007. He told the judge, ‘The government had engaged us to invite the ulema community for establishing Islamic laws. But now it [has] punished us under worldly laws. What is the punishment this government deserves?... Our trial has been conducted hastily... Why the government is hurrying and why it is afraid? (The Daily Star, May 30, 2006)’
Bangla Bhai had wanted to speak to the media, a request denied. I wonder what tale he would have told us. I wonder how many directions his fingers would have pointed at. Maybe he had to be executed to cover up the real relations of ruling, irrespective of who governs, whether the Awami League, or the BNP, or the military-installed caretaker government, and to conceal their global backers, who increasingly feel threatened by our aspirations for democracy.

The New Age. (Bangladeshi newspaper) Date: 03-01-11. Sub: RAB/ Crossfire

2011-01-31T00:03:00.000-08:00

Govt makes limited progress in power sector

Manjurul Ahsan
The Awami League-led government has made very limited progress in the development of either its long- or short-term power generation projects considered essential for the overall economic development.
As a result, people in the summer faced power outages for 10 to 12 hours a day even though the government in April had stopped giving new power connections for seven months.
The government in the budget forecast that it would add 2,000MW to the national grid by the end of the year but it has only added 1,000MW.
Moreover, because of the high cost of the diesel and furnace oil used in such plants, the rental plant power costs more than three times the cost of power generated by other power stations.
The government has also not yet signed a contract for the construction of any long-term power station other than 10 small peaking power plants (only used during peak hours) which will have a total capacity of about 740MW.
Six long-term projects in the private sector which will have a capacity of 1,250MW to 1,725MW and three projects in the public sector with a capacity of 1,170MW are either in only the planning or tender stages.
Once contracts for the construction of these power stations have been signed, it can still take many years before the power stations are operational.
The government also has a memorandum of understanding with India to produce 2,600MW of power in a joint venture project with the construction of a coal-fired power station but a feasibility study is yet to be completed.
Experts say that if the government fails to introduce such long-term power plants in three to five years, the high costs of the short-term fuel oil-fired rental power will become a very heavy burden on both the consumers and the economy.
M Tamim, a former special assistant to the chief adviser to the previous interim government, told New Age that continuing with the fuel oil-fired rental and dual-fuel power projects would be ‘suicidal’ for the country if the government fails to replace them with low-cost gas or coal-fired power plants in the next few years.
According to PDB statistics, by 2012, the government will buy about 2,000MW of electricity from such rental power plants for Tk 8 to Tk 14 a unit. The government has already started buying a half of this at this price.
This compares with an average price of about Tk 2 for the cost of power from gas-fired power plants in the public sector.
Tamim is, however, also concerned that the government must find alternative cheap fuel, whether gas or coal, so that the new long-term dual-fuel power plants will not be driven by expensive diesel or furnace oil.
PDB statistics show that at present it cannot produce 600MW of electricity each day simply because of shortage of gas to the power plants.
Both Tamim and Ijaz Hossain, also a professor at BUET, said that they were concerned that there was only limited amount of gas exploration taking place.
The government has agreed a course of increasing electricity prices by 12 per cent in a series of six monthly rises up to 2014 to deal with the increased cost of electricity from the new power plants.
The Centre for Policy Dialogue has estimated that without making the increase, the government in the financial year 2011 alone will give an additional Tk 3800 crore subsidy to the Power Development Board.
Economist Anu Mohammad, however, told New Age that increasing the cost of electricity to consumers would have a downside.
‘Access to electricity of consumers in the limited income group will be squeezed and small and medium entrepreneurs will be adversely affected if the government increase electricity price at the declared rate,’ he said.
Mustafizur Rahman, executive director of the Centre for Policy Dialogue, however, told New Age that even though the price of electricity might increase, it is good for export-orientated industries that there is more power available even if it costs them more.
He proposed to keep the electricity price affordable to mitigate the bad impact on lower income groups and agriculture.
One step that the government has taken to try and speed up power generation is the enactment in September of the Speedy Supply of Power and Energy (Special Provision) Act 2010.
This, however, has become controversial as it gives immunity to those actors if it is found that there have been any irregularities in the projects.
Naming the law ‘indemnity corruption in power sector,’ former director general of the Power Cell BD Rahmatullah said that it would contribute more to increase in corruption than the acceleration of the speed of project implementation.
He said that the price at which the government has agreed to pay for the electricity from these companies was far too high.
The government has awarded companies a number of projects without floating any tender and more such projects are in the pipeline.
A particular concern that some have about the present government’s power generation policy is its increasing dependence on India.
In order to try to bring an immediate solution to the power crisis, the government agreed to import 500MW of power from India.
However, just to build the infrastructure for the project, the Bangladesh government will spend Tk 1400 crore and it is unlikely that the power will be come into the Bangladesh grid until 2012.
In addition, the price of the electricity will be decided by the Indian Central Electricity Regulatory Commission.
Rahmatullah told New Age that the power board could instead have decided to install a brand new power plant of 500MW capacity at a maximum cost of Tk 1,100 crore and the electricity it produced would have been cheaper.
In relation to the joint venture between India and Bangladesh that will bring 2600MW into the national grid, there is also concern that the management will be controlled by the Indian National Thermal Power Corporation and not Bangladesh authorities.
The Indian corporation has also been given the charge of the maintenance of all old power plants owned by the power board.
Rahmatullah told New Age that he had thought such decisions were the reflection of the government’s ‘subservient policy.’
The free compact fluorescent lamp distribution project has also failed to bring as much success as it was hoped.
A study conducted by the project officials found that free distribution of 1.05 crore lamps could save 53MW of electricity in the peak hour when it was expected to save 200MW.
Many consumers, moreover, say that the free CFLs did not work or stopped working only after a few weeks or did not produce sufficient light.
The three ambitious and expensive road shows in London, Singapore and New York do not appear as yet to have brought forward any new big investor in the country’s power sector.
According to the plan of the Power Division, the government will in five years set up power plants of capacity 10,673MW of which 6,738MW will come from the private sector, about 63 per cent of the total production.
Power expert Professor Shamsul Alam told New Age that the current government policies encouraging the privatisation of the power sector was contradictory to the constitutional commitment to alleviate poverty and ‘progressively to remove the disparity in the standards of living between the urban and rural areas.’

The New Age. (Bangladeshi newspaper) - Date: 03-01-11 - Sub: Energy issue

Are the Taliban and Al-Qaeda poles apart?

2010-08-23T01:39:00.000-07:00

Barrister Harun ur Rashid

THE most notorious Islamic militants are ordinarily grouped under two heads: Taliban and Al-Qaeda network. However, there is another group emerging - Salafism- that advocates restoring a Muslim empire across the Middle East and Spain. Salafis have sought inroads in Morocco, Algeria, Lebanon and Jordan.

Many people are confused about the objectives of Al-Qaeda and Taliban. Some think the objectives are similar and some believe they are not. Deeper analysis shows that Talibans in Afghanistan and Pakistan have different objectives than those of Al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda promotes holy war to translate its conservative religious ideologies globally; the objectives of Talibans are confined to changing the regimes in AfghanistanPakistan, and in that sense they are local.

Two embattled governments in Afghanistan and Pakistan confront the Talibans without success. The US came to Afghanistan in 2001 to remove the Taliban government which supported the Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden living in Afghanistan. The US fears that if Afghan Talibans regain control over Afghanistan, it may invite Al-Qaeda back in the country.

Understanding the differences between the two Talibans is also necessary. When Pakistan army launched an offensive against Talibans in Pakistan, many in the US administration thought incorrectly that the assault was against the Afghan Talibans, against whom the NATO forces, including the US military, are fighting.

Although both groups threaten American interests, the Afghan Taliban is the primary enemy of the US. On 25th December, the Taliban released a video showing an American soldier who was captured five months ago in Afghanistan. Private Bowe Bergdahl, an infantryman, was taken by the Taliban in Paktika Province on June 30th. The Taliban demands for a number of prisoners to be exchanged for Bergdahl.

The recent attacks of the Pakistani Talibans on military and police establishments have strained relations with Afghan Talibans because their hiding place in the Tribal areas in Pakistan is under attack from Pakistan army. They do not approve the way Pakistani Talibans are fighting with the Pakistan government and causing a lot of problems for Afghan Talibans.

The Afghan and Pakistani Talibans are present in the tribal areas on both sides of the Durand Line and the tribal areas have always been autonomous. Anxious to safeguard this autonomy, the tribes resist control by the central government.

The Afghan Taliban is by far the older of the two Talibans, led by Mullah Omar since it was formed in 1994 (believed to be formed under the guidance of Pakistan intelligence agency). It may be described as a genuine national movement incorporating not only a broad network of fighters but also a shadow government-in-waiting. It seeks to regain power it held over most of Afghanistan before being removed by the US invasion after 9/11.

The Pakistani Taliban is a looser coalition united mainly by enmity toward the government in Islamabad. It emerged formally in 2007 as a separate force led by Baitullah Mehsud under the name of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (Students' Movement of Pakistan). After the death of Baitullah Mehsud, Hakimullah Mehsud took over as head of Pakistani Taliban in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in Pakistan.

Another confusion that has arisen over the Afghan and Pakistan Talibans is that Afghan Talibans have been directing their forces from Pakistan and their leaders are believed to be residing in the border areas of Pakistan. Mollah Omar and his senior colleagues are understood to be in or around the city of Quetta in Baluchistan.

The US-backed Karzai government in Kabul has a tenuous hold on power. The insurgency has spread in many parts of the country, including Kabul itself. The military situation for the US and NATO is worse today than it has been in 2001. At the same time, neighbouring Pakistan has been destabilized. President Asif Ali Zardari, like his predecessor Pervez Musharraf, has to face a public which has become fervently anti-American. To the majority of people in Pakistan, India poses a threat greater than that of the Talibans. Furthermore, the fact that the US has so far failed to persuade India to restart talks with Pakistan and it has been doing little to curb what Pakistan perceives as the undue influence of India in Afghanistan has been unsettling for Pakistan.

Pakistan is expected to hang on to the “Kashmiri freedom fighters” that it has reportedly used as proxies in the Indian-administered Kashmir. Pakistan possesses 75 to 100 nuclear weapons. The deepest concern for the west is: what would happen with the nuclear weapons in the case of total regime collapse? Will they fall under the hand and control of the Talibans?

Lately Pakistan is fighting back the Talibans in South Waziristan. It is reported that the army has deployed some 28,000 troops to take on an estimated 10,000 militants including up to 1,500 foreign fighters.

As for Afghanistan, many observers suggest there is an urgent need to the establishment of a mechanism consisting of the six countries with contiguous borders with Afghanistan plus the US, Russia and Britain. Such a mechanism will facilitate precision targeting of terrorist groups and minimizing collateral damage. This has to be accompanied by a concerted effort to win hearts and minds through mega-doses of economic assistance.

The author is former Bangladesh Ambassador to the UN, Geneva. and

Source: Bangladesh newspaper - The Daily Star, 02 January 2010

Narrowing opportunities for higher education

2010-08-22T20:44:00.001-07:00

Abdul Hamid

Many factors are working as disincentives to higher education in Bangladesh. Opportunities here for higher education have progressively decreased over the years. Hundreds of aspirants vie for a single seat in any of the departments of the Dhaka University. The scene is more or less the same in all other public institutions of higher learning in the country.

Thus, many in the student population with potential for higher education are finding themselves excluded from the opportunity of such education mainly because the number of general public universities and specialised universities has not increased. Furthermore, the capacities in such institutions have not expanded to make it possible for them to admit more students. The private universities that have cropped up, normally charge high fees that cannot be afforded by many otherwise good students. Thus, the way to higher education is narrowing. Such education is also becoming like a commodity to be purchased by students of affluent parents.

Even in the limited number of public universities or specialised centres of higher education, courses get too frequently disrupted by aimless party politics. Frequent violent incidents linked to such politics contribute to undermine the academic atmosphere. The other fall-outs from campus violence -- session jams -- painfully lengthen the time that students have to spend for their graduate and post-graduate studies. The public universities are also found lacking in introducing or providing up-to-date courses and teaching aids. The teachers in them, as a consequences of their involvement in party politics and pulls outside for private teaching assignments, are seen spending less than the expected time to their main teaching posts.

Improving conditions of higher education will require adequate attention to both quantity and quality factors. It is very necessary to substantially increase government's investments in new general universities, specialised universities, engineering universities, science and technology universities, medical colleges, engineering colleges, agricultural colleges and universities, etc. Not only increasing their number, every effort must also be made to impart quality education in them. The resources of the publicly-run institutions of higher learning will need to be increased with greater allocations from the national budget for the purpose. The institutions themselves can reasonably increase tuition fees and other charges to meet increasing costs. Presently, tuition and other costs at public universities are nominal. Guardians will probably not find it hard to pay somewhat higher fees and other charges for the sound education of their young ones from such institutions.

Most private universities also need to progressively meet the criterion to be fully regarded as worthwhile centres of higher education. The deficiency of many of these institutions, in terms of not having their own campus, competent teaching staff and their own spacious premises to provide a healthful academic environment, excessive opportunities to study on a few subjects to the relative neglect of others, etc., do need to be addressed within a time-frame to ultimately overcome them. The operators of private universities do also need to take moves to set up campuses at sites away from Dhaka. Presently, 80 per cent of the existing private universities are located at or around the capital city, Dhaka. Private universities should be set up all over the country to create balanced opportunities for higher education.

Source: The Financial Express - Bangladesh newspaper – Date: 23-08-2010

Country's food security at risk

2010-08-22T20:43:00.000-07:00

Shamsul Huq Zahid

Signs are rather ominous on the horizon as far as global food prices are concerned. The food prices are still well below the unprecedented level reached in the year 2007-08, when higher prices led to severe food crisis in many countries across the globe. But, if not the rice, the current wheat price rise is being considered the fastest in 40 years.

The 2007-08 food crisis that had happened in almost three decades, pushed the prices of food prices to record highs and triggered food-riots in a number of countries.

Experts are of the opinion that the current wheat price rise could lead to hikes in the prices of other crops, including rice, despite the fact the global food reserves this time is much healthier than that of 2007-08. The ongoing global recession is also acting against any possible hike in food prices because of lower consumption.

But experts have expressed the fear that panic buying and export ban of food grains by major producers could fuel prices, trigger speculation and lead the world to a crisis witnessed during 2007-08.

One of the two factors has already come into play in the global food market. Russia has imposed ban on the sale of wheat as fires have been destroying its wheat crops on millions of hectares. The production in Canada

Bangladesh, which has been rated as one of the 'high' risk countries in the Food Security Risk Index 2010, released by risk analysis and rating firm Maplecroft, is a victim of the sudden Russian decision to stop wheat export.

The Maplecroft in collaboration with the World Food Programme (WFP) has developed 12 criteria to evaluate the risks to the supply of basic food staples for 163 countries. The criteria used to calculate the ranking of the countries include the nutritional and health status of populations, cereal production and imports, GDP per capita, natural disasters, conflict and effectiveness of the government.

Bangladesh's move, according to a recent report published in the Financial Express, to import at least, 25 per of its total wheat requirement this year has suffered setback because of the Russian ban. The private importers, reportedly opened letters of credit to import 0.6 million tonnes and the government 0.2 million tonnes of wheat from Russia. Now the import of the food grain from other sources would be costlier.

The East European wheat exporting countries have also hiked the price of the food grain following the Russian ban. Bangladesh cannot afford import of wheat from US, Canada and Australia because of higher prices. However, the quality of wheat grown in these countries is high.

The prices of wheat, for obvious reasons, have gone up in the domestic market. This development has also left an impact on the prices of rice, the main staple. The rice prices instead of going down have recorded rise even after a good boro rice harvest this year. At the retail level, the prices of coarse varieties of rice is above Tk 30 a kg, which is considered high.

Now where does Bangladesh stand in the Food Security Index? The Maplecroft has placed it at 23rd position (lower ranking denotes higher risk) in its Food Security Risk Index. Bangladesh, along with India and the Philippines, two rice exporting countries, has been put in the 'high' risk category.

A total of 10 countries, including the war-torn Afghanistan and nine African countries are in the category of 'extreme' risks. Finland (163) is the country considered least at risk, whilst the other Scandinavian countries - Sweden (162), Denmark (161) and Norway (160) - follow closely behind. Other low risk countries include Canada, (159), USA (158), Germany (156), UK (146) and France (142).

Despite a number of odds, including natural disasters and continuous shrinking of cultivable land, Bangladesh

But it faces problems when the prices of food grains go abnormally up in the international market. The country had a bitter experience in 2007-08 when food prices spiked and food grains became scarce in the international market. Neighbouruing India had promised to export 0.5 million tonnes of rice to Bangladesh at that time. But it had failed to honour its commitment.

The incumbent finance minister of India during a recent visit to Bangladesh has again promised to supply 0.4 million tonnes of rice to Bangladesh. Everybody would expect that India would keep its promise this time. The government, in the meanwhile, is trying to import food grains, including rice, from Myanmar and other sources and build up a healthy buffer stock to face any eventuality. The last boro harvest has been good but not a bumper one. The outlook of the Aman crop this year remains cloudy because of inadequate rain. The rainfall during the current monsoon has been nearly 40 per cent below the normal level.

So, this year's Aman production could prove very crucial as far as the country's short-term food security is concerned and the policymakers would have to chalk out plans to ensure the maximum output by ensuring all necessary inputs, including irrigation. has dropped by almost a quarter because of floods in June last. has achieved the near self-sufficiency in food production. But it has to import a substantial quantity of food grains every year to build up reserve stocks that help the authorities to keep the prices of rice within the reach of the common man.

Source: The Financial Express - Bangladesh newspaper – Date: 23-08-2010

Will the US soldiers be in Iraq beyond 2011?

2010-08-22T20:42:00.000-07:00

Md. Masum Billah

The last US combat brigade pulled out of Iraq on August 19, 2010 at dawn. It came ahead of the planned declaration of an end to US combat operations in Iraq by an August 31 deadline. It shows a key milestone in the withdrawal of American forces more than seven years after the US-led invasion virtually for a wrong decision of Bush administration. Under cover of darkness, the 4th Stryker Brigade , 2nd Infantry Division, crossed into neighboring Kuwait. . It took two days for 360 vehicles and 1200 soldiers to travel from Camp Liberty on Baghdad's outskirts and Camp Taji of the capital. The rest of the 4000 strong brigade left Iraq by air. About 56000 US soldiers remain in Iraq with that figure set to drop to 50000 by September 1, less than a third of the peak level during the surge of 2007.

The jubilant crowds shouted cheerfully. They gave farewell waving their hands. Ahmed Ibrahim 35 years old young man expressed his feeling in this way " No words can describe how I feel today. The occupation stayed in Iraq's hearts for seven years and this is a big occasion that deserves to be a permanent national day in future. The occupiers put me in Bucca prison in Iraq. But now I am free and so is Iraq." Another reveler said, " It has been a long time since the last big celebration. We have now got rid of the occupier and we will not see them again on Iraqi streets. Baghdad needs the peace of the past life back again. We want to regain what we had. But at the same time security forces now have extra duties and responsibilities. And I hope they can carry them out." US administration still raises the question of security of Iraq in absence of US forces. Actually, Iraqis seem to be prepared to tackle their own situation. No occupation can give any reasonable and permanent solution to insurgency. Ordinary people's expressions clandestinely say how far they love their motherland and how much pleased they are today.

Under a security agreement signed between Iraq and US in January, which was enshrined in June milestone. The agreement says that US troops can no longer embark on operation on their own meaning their position has got weaker in Iraq. The Iraqi insurgents have become increasingly sophisticated at fighting US troops and more importantly very adept in concealment. Additionally, many have moved into key positions in the security, military and intelligent networks of the country effectively controlling parts of the mechanisms of control of the government. The US sacrificed ten thousands of soldiers in Vietnam. They could clearly understand that Iraq was going to be the second Vietnam for them. So, it was better to leave with the last respect.

On September 1, the US mission in Iraq will be re-christened ' Operation New Dawn' from ' Operation Iraqi Freedom' To fill the gap left by departing troops, the US State Department is to increase more than double the number of security contractors it employs in Iraq to around 7000.Jeffery takes up his post during political deadlock in Iraq, with no new government yet formed since election in March, and in the middle of the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, when insurgent attacks typically reached its peak. It is known to the world as the whole world witnessed that as a president candidate Barack Obama campaigned to end the seven-year old war responsibly and as president he has been explicit in his assurances to Americans that no troops will remain in Iraq from January 2012. While violence has dipped sharply since the height of sectarian warfare from 2006-2007 Iraq remains fragile and its leaders have not resolved a number of politically explosive issues that could easily trigger renewed fighting. Iraq's military chief, the former US general who oversaw the training of Iraq's security forces, says a US military presence will be needed beyond 2011. Obama's defense secretary Robert Gates says that they have left the door open to that possibility in comments last week while emphasizing that Iraq's new government still to be formed after an inconclusive election in March, would first have to ask if a new government is formed there and they want to talk about beyond 2011 'we are obliviously open to that discussion.' . His comments were likely not welcomed in the White House. In November tough congressional elections are going to be held. The president will show keeping his promise to withdraw all US troops by the end of 2011. There have been more than 4400 US military deaths in Iraq since the US- led invasion in 2003. Americans definitely don't want to loose any more soldiers.

The US -Iraq military pact that came into force in 2009 which provides the legal basis for American troops to be in Iraq. Under the agreement all US troops must be there by 2012. But US negotiator says that even as the pact was being negotiated, it was considered likely it would be quietly revised later to allow a longer -term although much smaller, force to remain. But the opinion polls shows that Americans are tired of nearly a decade of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, any decision to engage US military involvement in Iraq would enormously risky for Obama, who is up for reelection in 2012.

He would almost certainly face a backlash from fellow Democrats in Congress and from the left wing of his party, which is already disenchanted with him. Obama may be unwilling to alienate his party base as he heads into an election year, or he could decide it in his country's strategic interests to keep troops longer in Iraq again, only if a new Iraqi government asks.

The president has proven to be a very pragmatic leader. As conditions change, he has adapted his positions in Afghanistan and Iraq. So, I think he wants to hold his promise until Lieutenant General James Dubik, who oversaw the training of Iraq security forces from 2007 to 2008, says, "A discussion after 2011 is not just what does Iraq need, but what is in our strategic best interest."

Dubik continues, " Post 2011 Iraq would still need US and Western help in modernizing its forces and training them to use MI Abrams, tanks, F-16s and other sophisticated military hardware it is buying from the United States" P.J. Crowley, a spokesman of State Department said in msnbc TV interview," while departure is an historic moment, it is not the end of the U.S. Mission in Iraq. We are ending the war---but we are not ending our work in Iraq. We have a long term commitment to Iraq." The world wants to see that commitment must nod toward real peace and happiness, not to show any greed to grab Middle East liquid gold.

Source: The New Nation - Bangladesh newspaper – Date: 23-08-2010

Pakistan is in need of help, now

2010-08-22T20:40:00.001-07:00

Ban Ki-moon

Standing under leaden skies in Pakistan last Sunday, I saw a sea of suffering. Flood waters have washed away thousands of towns and villages. Roads, bridges and homes in every province of the country have been destroyed. From the sky, I saw thousands of acres of prime farmland - the bread and butter of the Pakistani economy - swallowed up by the rising tides.

On the ground, I met terrified people, living in daily fear that they could not feed their children or protect them from the next wave of crisis: the spread of diarrhea, hepatitis, malaria and, most deadly, cholera.

The sheer scale of the disaster almost defies comprehension. Around the country, an estimated 15 to 20 million people have been affected. That's more than the entire population hit by the Indian Ocean tsunami and Kashmir earthquake in 2005, the 2007 Cyclone Nargis and this year's earthquake in Haiti - combined. An area as big as Italy and larger than more than half the countries in the world - some 160,000 square kilometers, or 62,000 square miles - is under water.

Why has the world been slow to grasp the dimensions of this calamity? Perhaps because this is no made-for-TV disaster, with sudden impact and dramatic rescues. An earthquake may claim tens of thousands of lives in an instant; in a tsunami, whole cities and their populations vanish in a flash.

By contrast, this is a slow motion catastrophe - one that builds over time. And it is far from over.

The monsoon rains could continue for weeks. Even as waters recede from some areas, new floods are affecting others, particularly in the south. And, of course, we know this is happening in one of the most challenged regions of the world - a place where stability and prosperity is profoundly in the world's interest.

For all of these reasons, the floods of August are far more than a disaster for Pakistan alone. Indeed, they represent one of the greatest tests of global solidarity in our time.

That is why the United Nations has issued an emergency appeal for $460 million. That amounts to less than $1 a day per person to keep 6 million people alive for the next three months - including 3.5 million children. International aid commitments are growing by the day. Less than a week after the appeal was launched, we are halfway there. And yet, the scale of the response is insufficient for the scale of this disaster.

On Thursday, the United Nations General Assembly will meet to intensify our collective efforts. If we act now, a second wave of deaths caused by waterborne diseases can still be prevented. It is not easy to mount relief operations in such difficult and sometimes perilous places. But I have seen it happen around the world, from the most remote and dangerous parts of Africa to Haiti's shattered cities. And I saw it in Pakistan this week.

A host of UN agencies, international aid groups such as the Red Cross/Red Crescent and other nongovernmental organisations have been supporting the government of Pakistan's response to the emergency. Using trucks, helicopters and even mules to transport food around the country and reach those cut off from help, we have provided one-month food rations to nearly one million people.

Roughly that many now have emergency shelter, and more are receiving clean water every day. Cholera kits, anti-snake venom doses, surgical supply kits and oral dehydration salts are saving growing numbers of lives.

This is a start, but it needs a massive boost. Six million people are short ?of food; 14 million need emergency health care, with a special focus on ?children and pregnant women. And as the waters recede, we must move quickly to help people build back their country and pick up the pieces of their lives.

The World Bank has estimated crop damage to be at least $1 billion. Farmers will need seeds, fertilizers and tools to replant, lest next year's harvest be lost along with this one. Already, we are seeing price spikes for food in Pakistan's major cities. In the longer term, the huge damage to infrastructure must be repaired, from schools and hospitals to irrigation canals, communications and transport links. The United Nations will be part of all this, too.

In the media, we hear some talk of "fatigue" - suggestions that governments are reluctant to cope with yet another disaster, that they hesitate to contribute more to this part of the world. In fact, the evidence is otherwise. Donors are giving to Pakistan, ?and that is encouraging. If anyone should be fatigued, it is the ordinary people I met in Pakistan -women, ?children and small farmers, tired of troubles, conflict and economic hard times and who have now lost everything.

Yet instead of fatigue, I saw determination, resilience and hope - hope and the expectation that they are not alone in their darkest hour of need.

We simply cannot stand by and let this natural disaster turn into a man-made catastrophe. Let us stand with the people of Pakistan every step of the long and difficult road ahead.

(Ban Ki-moon is Secretary-General of the United Nations)

Source: The New Nation - Bangladesh newspaper – Date: 23-08-2010

Afghan imbroglio - will it ever end?

2010-08-22T20:39:00.001-07:00

Jonathan Power

Six years ago after we had talked about all manner of jihadists for an hour-jihadists in Kashmir attacking India, jihadists in Afghanistan attacking America, jihadists infiltrating India and jihadists in Pakistan attempting to kill President Pervez Musharraf-I asked the American ambassador in Islamabad, "don't you feel that you spend all your time just picking up the pieces for the wrongheaded policies when the West supported the jihadists as a tool against the Soviet presence in Afghanistan?" He sighed, nodded and replied, "That's right".

Driving away from that conversation I was convinced more than ever that the various terrorist movements unleashed in this corner of the world over the last 20 years have their origins in the policies of Jimmy Carter, that most pacific of all post war American presidents who, prodded by his National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, decided to undermine and repel the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on Christmas Day, 1979, by any means necessary, including the funding, training and arming of Islamic militants who burned with anti-communist zealotry much as they burn against the Western or Indian 'infidel' today.

Indeed, later evidence provided by Brzezinski seems to demonstrate that the US actually wanted the Soviet army to invade Afghanistan. "We did not push the Russians into invading", he is quoted as saying in an article in Lahore's Daily Times. "We knowingly increased the probability that they would". The secret operation was an excellent idea. The effect was to draw the Russians into the Afghan trap."

Once the Soviets were in Afghanistan the US then whipped up the West and the Islamic world into joint leadership of a UN majority that went into overdrive to diplomatically and militarily undermine the Soviet Union. Arming the jihads, among whom lurked Osama bin Laden, was one part of it, and many of the major Western powers and Saudi Arabia cooperated on this. Another was to strike fear in the Middle East by attempting to show that the Soviet army's real long-term ambition, if it could quell the Afghani resistance, was to reach a warm water port. The Soviet legions would move down through Iran to the Arabian Sea, and from there seize Iran's oil-laden ships, at that time backbone to the Western economies.

Needless to say, if the Soviets had nurtured that unlikely ambition the last thing they needed to do was to detour through the often impassable, mountainous terrain of Afghanistan.

If only the Soviets had been left alone to face what would have been a long war of attrition by local forces armed with their own more elementary weaponry, we would probably have never have seen the rise of Al Qaeda from its protected redoubt in Afghanistan. Nor would Pakistan's conflict with India over Kashmir have become so difficult to halt. Pakistan would not have been allowed to become a nuclear weapons' state. Nor would Pakistan be so often on the abyss of political disintegration, undermined by Islamic militancy within. Critics of Pakistan's present day embrace of militant Islam forget that it all began when the then president Ziaul Haq, facing domestic resistance from the secular parties to his alliance with the US, forged an alliance with Sunni extremist groups. This led to the steady Islamisation of many facets of Pakistani life, not least the distortion of Pakistan's legal system and provided militant clergy with unprecedented access to political power.

The worst mistake of all was Carter's policy somersault on Pakistan's development of nuclear weapons. In April 1979, the US administration convinced that Pakistan was secretly building bomb, suspended military aid. In December, after the Soviet invasion, it reversed its decision and persuaded Congress to authorise a large arms aid program. For the next decade Washington puts its telescope to its blind eye.

Not until 1990, the Cold War with the Soviet Union over, did President George Bush Sr. end the annual White House lie of giving assurances to Congress that all was well in Pakistan's nuclear laboratories.

Military sales were terminated. But by then Pakistan was only a turn of the screwdriver away from having its bomb and its chief nuclear weapons' scientist was already deep into secret deals selling his country's sophisticated knowledge and equipment to the likes of Libya, North Korea and Iran.

The West's obsessive anti-Soviet policies during the Cold War meant that the Afghanis, the Pakistanis, the Indians (and the Vietnamese, Cambodians, Angolans, Somalis and the Central Americans et al) paid a high price in war and carnage, whilst we in the West got on with our economic growth and social development.

But now the mistakes of the pro-jihadist, Cold War, warriors, "parents" of the Taleban with their subsequent rapid growth, have come to haunt us all. Are we any more ready than we were then to stop the myopic policies of today's decision-makers breaking the glass for the next generation to have to pick up?

Source: The New Nation - Bangladesh newspaper – Date: 23-08-2010

Time to terminate western civilization before it terminates us

2010-08-22T20:38:00.000-07:00

Unchecked, western civilisation drives us to one of two outcomes, and perhaps both: (1) Destruction of the living planet on which we depend for our survival, and/or (2) Runaway greenhouse and therefore the near-term extinction of our species. Why would we want to sustain such a system? It is immoral and omnicidal. The industrial economy enslaves us, drives us insane, and kills us in myriad ways. We need a living planet, writes Guy R McPherson

ACTUALLY, this review is too late for the many people who have already endured economic collapse. As any of those folks can tell the rest of us, we do not want to receive the lesson after the exam.
   I’ve written all this before, but I have not recently provided a concise summary. This essay provides a brief overview of the dire nature of our predicaments with respect to fossil fuels. The primary consequences of our fossil-fuel addiction stem from two primary phenomena: peak oil and global climate change. The former spells the end of western civilisation, which might come in time to prevent the extinction of our species at the hand of the latter.
   Global climate change threatens our species with extinction by mid-century if we do not terminate the industrial economy soon. Increasingly dire forecasts from extremely conservative sources keep stacking up. Governments refuse to act because they know growth of the industrial economy depends (almost solely) on consumption of fossil fuels. Global climate change and energy decline are similar in this respect: neither is characterised by a politically viable solution.
   There simply is no comprehensive substitute for crude oil. It is the overwhelming fuel of choice for transportation, and there is no way out of the crude trap at this late juncture in the industrial era. We passed the world oil peak in 2005, which led to near-collapse of the world’s industrial economy several times between September 2008 and May 2010. And we’re certainly not out of the economic woods yet.
   Crude oil is the master material on which all other depend. Without abundant supplies of inexpensive crude oil, we cannot produce uranium (which peaked in 1980), coal (which peaks within a decade or so), solar panels, wind turbines, wave power, ethanol, bio-diesel, or hydroelectric power. Without abundant supplies of inexpensive crude oil, we cannot maintain the electric grid. Without abundant supplies of inexpensive crude oil, we cannot maintain the industrial economy for an extended period of time. Simply put, abundance supplies of inexpensive crude oil is fundamental to growth of the industrial economy and therefore to western civilisation. Civilisations grow or die. Western civilisation is done growing.
   Not only is there no comprehensive substitute for crude oil, but partial substitutes simply do not scale. Solar panels on every roof? It’s too late for that. Electric cars in every garage? Its too late for that. We simply do not have the cheap energy requisite to propping up an empire in precipitous decline. Energy efficiency and conservation will not save us, either, as demonstrated by the updated version of Jevons’ paradox, the Khazzoom-Brookes postulate.
   Unchecked, western civilisation drives us to one of two outcomes, and perhaps both: (1) Destruction of the living planet on which we depend for our survival, and/or (2) Runaway greenhouse and therefore the near-term extinction of our species. Why would we want to sustain such a system? It is immoral and omnicidal. The industrial economy enslaves us, drives us insane, and kills us in myriad ways. We need a living planet. Everything else is less important than the living planet on which we depend for our very lives. We act as if non-industrial cultures do not matter. We act as if non-human species do not matter. But they do matter, on many levels, including the level of human survival on Earth. And, of course, there’s the matter of ecological overshoot, which is where we’re spending all our time since at least 1980. Every day in overshoot brings us 205,000 people to deal with later. In this case, ‘deal with’ means murder.
   Shall we reduce Earth to a lifeless pile of rubble within a generation? Or shall we heat the planet beyond human habitability within two generations? Or shall we keep procreating as if there are no consequences for an already crowded planet? Pick your poison, but recognise it’s poison. We’re dead either way.
   Don’t slit those wrists just yet. This essay bears good news.
   Western civilisation has been in decline at least since 1979, when world per-capita oil supply peaked coincident with the Carter Doctrine regarding oil in the Middle East. In my mind, and perhaps only there, these two events marked the apex of American Empire, which began about the time Thomas Jefferson — arguably the most enlightened of the Founding Fathers — said, with respect to Native Americans: ‘In war, they will kill some of us; we shall destroy all of them.’ It wasn’t long after 1979 that the US manufacturing base was shipped overseas and we began serious engagement with Wall Street-based casino culture as the basis for our industrial economy. By most economic measure, we’ve experienced a lost decade, so it’s too late for a fast crash of the industrial economy. We’re in the midst of the same slow train wreck we’ve been experiencing for more than a decade, but the train is teetering on the edge of a cliff. Meanwhile, all we want to discuss, at every level in this country, is the quality of service in the dining car.
   When the price of crude oil exhibits a price spike, an economic recession soon follows. Every recession since 1972 has been preceded by a spike in the price of oil, and direr spikes translate to deeper recessions. Economic dominoes began to fall at a rapid and accelerating rate when the price of crude spiked to $147.27/bbl in July 2008. They haven’t stopped falling, notwithstanding economic cheerleaders from government and corporations (as if the two are different at this point in American fascism). The reliance of our economy on derivatives trading cannot last much longer, considering the value of the derivatives — like the US debt — greatly exceeds the value of all the currency in the world combined with all the gold mined in the history of the world.
   Although it’s all coming down, as it has been for quite a while, it’s relatively clear imperial decline is accelerating. We’re obviously headed for full-scale collapse of the industrial economy, as indicated by these 40 statistics. Even Fortune and CNN agree economic collapse will be complete soon, though they don’t express any understanding of how we arrived at this point or the hopelessness of extracting ourselves from the morass.
   We know what economic collapse looks like, because we’re in the midst of it. What does completion of the collapse look like? I strongly suspect the economic endgame is capitulation of the stock markets. Shortly after we hit Dow 4,000, within a few days or maybe a couple weeks, the industrial economy seizes up as the lubricant is overcome with sand in the crankcase. Why would anybody work when the company for which they work is, literally, worthless? Even if they show up for a few days to punch the time-clock, the bank will not issue a check, and the banks won’t be open to cash it. It won’t be long before publicly traded utility companies don’t have enough employees to keep the lights on. It won’t be long before gas (nee service) stations shutter the doors. It won’t be long before the grocery stores are empty. It won’t be long before the water stops flowing through the municipal taps.
   There are those who question my credibility, particularly when I make predictions. We’re in the midst of a war to save our humanity and the living planet, and some readers are worried about my credibility, as determined by the power of the mainstream. My responses are twofold: (1) I’m hardly sticking my neck out, unlike when I made my ‘new Dark Age’ prediction in 2007 (at which point the price of oil had yet to exceed $80/bbl, the industrial economy appeared headed for perennial nirvana, and everybody who read or heard me thought I was insane); of the fifty or so energy-literate scholars I read, about half indicate the new Dark Age starts within a year, and a large majority of the other half give us less than two years; (2) Get over it. This war has two sides, finally. This revolution needs to be powerful and fun, and we cannot afford to lose. We cannot even afford to worry about seeking credibility from those who would have us and are having us murder every remaining aspect of the living planet on which we depend for our survival.
   Credibility? Respectability? It’s time to stop playing by the rules of the destroyers. We need witnesses and warriors, and we need them now. It’s time to terminate western civilisation before it terminates us.
   Lesson over. The exam comes within a couple years. And pop quizzes come up every day in this unfair system.
   Countercurrents, August 18. Guy R McPherson is Professor Emeritus at the University of Arizona. He now lives in an off-grid, straw-bale house where he puts into practice his lifelong interest in sustainable living via organic gardening, raising small animals for eggs and milk, and working with members of his rural community.

Source: The New Age - Bangladesh newspaper – Date: 23-08-2010

A possible Taliban interlocutor

2010-08-22T20:36:00.001-07:00

by Saeed Naqvi

THE unspeakable tragedy of the floods in Pakistan, on a scale unknown to man, has dwarfed much else in the region: 100 shot dead in three days of political, ethnic and sectarian violence in Karachi, the cloudburst in Leh, the Koochi (Pushotoon shepherds) and Hazara clashes, ironically, in Kabul’s Darul Aman or haven of peace.

Before I meander, let me focus on just one image, here in Kabul, which may provide a clue (among other such clues) to the Afghan jigsaw.

Through a maze of contacts, I am invited to meet Mullah Abdus Salaam Zaeef who, at 42, is a veteran of dramatic experiences of a variety that makes fiction riveting. An orphan, he joined the ranks of the Mujahideen fighting the Soviets. He was then 15, fresh from a madrassah in Pakistan where his relatives had fled to escape the ‘Soviets’.

Mullah Omar, whom he even today refers to as Amirul Mu’mineen, or the chief of the faithful, became his mentor and friend. Obviously, he left such an impression on Mullah Omar and others in the al-Qaeda-Taliban leadership that when the Taliban came to power in Kabul in 1996, Mullah Abdus Salaam Zaeef was posted as the Taliban ambassador to Islamabad. There were similar Taliban representations in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, but not Washington, leaving the US with suitable deniability of any affiliations with the ‘fundamentalists’. It is another matter that ‘fundamentalist’ delegations made routine beelines to George Bush and his affiliates in Texas. UNICOL, I think, was not quite dead at that stage.

Fast forward to 9/11 and pictures of Donald Rumsfeld at Tora Bora Mountains pointing at the caves, flames leaping out: ‘Do you think they are cooking cookies in there?’ He meant Osama bin Laden was hatching plots in those caves. He probably was.

Zaeef dutifully addressed press conferences outside his embassy in Islamabad. Then, in December, the then Pakistan president, Pervez Musharraf made a U-turn, joined the war on terror and remained George W Bush’s ‘most trusted ally’ to the very end.

As a prelude to the Bush-Musharraf romance, the ISI promptly handed Mullah Zaeef to the US forces who ferried him to Guantanamo Bay. His four-year stint at this facility is now a book — in Guantanamo. He then wrote another book on his years with Taliban.

So, here I am at his two-storey house protected by armed guards in an officially provided cabin outside the door.

I am escorted to the terrace, lined with flower pots, a green synthetic carpet spread wall to wall.

Mullah Zaeef is a tall, burly man with a thick, bushy beard, blending with his black turban. There are no chairs. Taliban austerity, I suppose. We recline against colourful, rectangular cushions, bloated with extra stuffing of cotton.

As an opening gambit, I settle for the topic most current: negotiations with the Taliban.

Who will you negotiate with? I ask.

‘When NATO generals and ambassadors ask me that question I say: “Americans should negotiate with the people they are fighting – Taliban.”’

What about President Hamid Karzai? I continue.

‘He is only an instrument of the Americans.’

But General David Petraeus, the US force commander, Pakistan’s General Ashfaq Kayani and President Karzai have been meeting to work out the modalities of negotiations.

‘Negotiations are possible but only with the Americans,’ he persists.

Surely, General Kayani and the ISI will insist on a role. After all, the ISI has invested so much in Afghanistan over the past 30 years.

‘The CIA has invested; the ISI has spent a fraction of that investment,’ he does not even pause to think.

Are you saying that Pakistan has no role in negotiating peace in Afghanistan?

‘None whatsoever,’ he continues. ‘Afghan Taliban are fighting the Americans; Pakistan Taliban are fighting the Pakistan government.

‘Pakistan Taliban or Afghan Taliban have no quarrel with the Pakistan nation, the people. The fight is with their intelligence agency, with their government.’

I come to the point directly. The Pakistan army has been talking to the Haqqani group which is extending its influence in Afghanistan.

‘There are no talks with Haqqani.’ Who knows, General Petraeus may be right that there is no monolithic Taliban group, just a syndicate of groups. For Mullah Zaeef, the ultimate Taliban leader is Mullah Omar. Can I meet Mullah Omar? I ask him.

‘Extremely dangerous these days,’ he says.

Throughout the 90-minute conversation, what comes across is his total distrust of Pakistan. If you wish to see this cool man lose his composure, draw him out on Pakistan’s control on Taliban in Afghanistan.

‘They cannot be trusted. It was from their air bases, that the Americans first struck Afghanistan. They facilitated the US troop movements. And do you think they will let the US leave? Do you know that Balochistan is

the critical supply route for US Afghan operations? Will Pakistan ever give up this source of income and, above all, control on the Americans.’

By now he is virtually frothing in the mouth.

‘Even Israelis are not as harsh with their prisoners as the Pakistanis are. The torture our people have suffered….’ Remarkably, he said all this on TV.

‘First they entertained me as ambassador, then handed me over to the Americans like an ordinary criminal. Why?’ he explodes. The next government in Afghanistan will be neutral between India and Pakista.

For perspective, let me explain where Mullah Zaeef stands in the Taliban hierarchy.

Quite as important as Mullah Zaeef were Taliban foreign minister and representative to the UN Wakil Ahmad Mutawakkil and Abdel Hakim Mujahid respectively.

After the September elections, we may hear these names as possible interlocutors, if there are to be negotiations, that is.

Saeed Naqvi is a distinguished fellow, Observer Research Foundation and senior journalist.

Source: The New Age - Bangladesh newspaper – Date : 23-08-2010

Action, reaction and proliferation: War crimes trial

2010-08-22T20:35:00.000-07:00

Manirul Islam

Finally, war crime trial has started - a high risk must-finish project for the government. The hi-tech operation theatre after couple of commissioning glitch has optimistically started treating the cancer cells virulently entrenched in the bloodstream of the nation. Public minds are slowly emerging out of an epoch of disbelief and steadily crystallizing solid around the issue. The issue was doused in the bloodbath of 1975. Soon the alleged war criminals reincarnated in our national politics and walked over the 72 Constitution to the apex of power - un-repented and unforgiving. Even the history of treachery shies away to accept the tragic fact when a group of duplicitous freedom fighters in the Bangladesh Army under the leadership of the decorated liberation war sector commander General Zia toppled all legal and moral barriers and embraced these alleged assassins of 1971 as comrades in arms to impose an about turn in the course of our nation - a total revision of politics, history and even the identity of the nation. Pakistani model of politics based on fundamentalism and military rule was installed. But the curtain of that episode of treachery and tragedy has dropped - if not finally, at least for now. After crossing the perilous hurdles like BDR tragedy and the Hill Tract carnage, we the public could come out of the qualm to believe that the trial of the assassins of 1971 is a reality today.
The messianic leader of the 1971 Gulam Azam is still breathing in fresh air - to everyone's awe. If Jamaat leaders are indicted for war crime, Jamaat needs to be obliterated too from our political landscape for the same crime it has been nurturing and protecting under its wing till today. Individual, business and international intake channels of enormous wealth and logistics of Jamaat must be throttled now. Supreme court's recent landmark verdict of annulment of 5th amendment of the Constitution is a significant excipient to outlaw political manipulation of faith, but the challenge of driving it to reality is the work of the parliament.
The action plan is enormously daunting when the domestic enemy of this plan is a legion of extreme right faith merchants, ready-to-explode cosmic warriors and neo-nationalists. The enemy formation has been mostly same as that of Pakistan era political landscape, only security risk has multiplied exponentially due to the strategic connection of the local jihadi groups with global terrorist network.
In international arena, a seismic change has almost vaporized the camp of allies of our liberation war. Soviet Union, the great superpower and the great ally of freedom struggle of every nation on earth has had a meteoric crash and broke into insignificant fragments, their ideology is now fossil beyond redemption and national liberation struggles are now redefined as insurgency in the vocabulary of the new world order. India, then the torch bearer of global democracy, secularism, social equity and freedom has abandoned that path, welcomed rising Hindu fundamentalism, embraced market economy and since has been serenading and flirting with world's worst dictators and military statesmen for mere business interest. This compromise on founding principle of India apparently worked as collateral for her supersonic transformation into economic power house. To India, Bangladesh is now just another bazaar.
USA, the chief commander of anti-liberation war coalition has not made any significant departure from its pre-cold-war policy on Muslim-intensive countries like Bangladesh. Being constantly haunted by communist phobia, they still depend on lethal arsenals of the Islamic politics to rid the Muslim countries of spores of atheist ideology. Recent prospect of rekindling the spirit of 1971 has refreshed US nightmare of possible reincarnation of some sort of socialism in Bangladesh. As such romance between USA and Jamaat Bangladesh is blossoming again in new colour. Jamaat has been certified by the US Ambassador as a democratic political force in Bangladesh. Recently, when the trial of the perpetrators of alleged war crimes started, the US Embassy and the UK High Commission have demanded in unison totally sanitized handling of this trial and treatments of the war criminals; it must be thoroughly visible, must follow applicable international penal codes, must be partisan politics--proof, must refer to human rights manual A to Z in treating the war criminals. The cruel paradox in US policy is that the perpetrators of war and anti-human crimes always receive highest humanitarian and judicial protection, whereas, victims are treated as the collaterals of war. The encyclopaedia of US wars and expeditions from Vietnam to Afghanistan are the testament of worst form of war crimes and savagery committed, defended and covered up. Saudi Arabia, the most trusted supporter of US policy in the Muslim world, is against a secular Bangladesh. As the employer of the largest Bangalee expatriate community it is holding the golden key to sabotage this trial of their trusted cohorts.
Bangladesh Army, born in the field of 1971 war, by 1973 became overwhelmingly populated by the Bangalee soldiers repatriated from Pakistan, mostly without change of loyalty and by August 1975 it pathogenically transformed into a clone of Pakistan Army; same ideology, same ambition and same command control. In the early morning of August 15, 1975 our army could overrun, without any internal or external resistance, all the outposts of our nascent, famished democracy. The ornate architecture of our political history, with the triumphant facade of liberation war, was brutally raged to the ground amid epic tragedy. Now when this democratic and pro-liberation war government has undertaken the momentous task of house cleaning, success remains conditioned to the basic fact that how effectively our army has been hermetically isolated from the external influence or from their demonic love for power and opulence. Furthermore, how visible the government action will be in doling justice to the diabolic Generals who, in the past, spearheaded direct or indirect martial law using illegitimate and immoral policy; nocturnal lovers, poets and wealth scavengers turn perfect political exorcist in the day light.
By and large Bangalee intellectuals have been the lighthouse in our long political journey in the stormy ocean. It is hard to believe though, at the climax of the war they preferred to stay back totally defenceless and marooned in their own houses in the university campuses, as if they were on a suicidal fantasy. Some of our new generation intellectuals and talk show celebs have been rehearsing and honing their alarmist jargons to match their usual skepticism in measuring the social and political fallout of the war crime trial. This initiative of confusion has percolated the latest hype among handful blog-centric human rights utopians and dotcom Jamaati intellectuals based in the western capitals who often raise tempest in the tea cup in support of this celestial philosophy.
In political front, club of left aristocrats and hermits like CPB, BSD and other bonsai parties who were die-hard crusaders against war criminals now prefer abstinence from actively supporting any action plan of this bourgeois government on this issue. Their intellectual wing, green warriors for the protection of ecology and national natural wealth, has gone further organizing aggressive street protests and an abortive Hartal against this government's so-called sale-out plan of the country and her wealth. In reality they performed fore-work to create inertia for the anti-government movement of BNP led coalition, evidently the main opposition of war crime trial.
We have united, struggled, shredded barricades, shed blood, sacrificed kith and kin and walked the most arduous uphill route to the spectacular summit of victory - 1971. Then we callously failed to retain the gains and soon had the downhill plunge into abyss, fragmented and discordant. Now, we are united and again have started walking to reconnect ourselves with our history, our genesis. The trial of war criminals is the basic imperative to level the ground for the reconstruction of a strong cohesive and monolithic nation. Let us all remain steadfast and rally around the spirit of 1971 to make it a success.

(The writer is based in Toronto, Canada)

Source: Sunday, 22 August 2010 – The Daily Independent – Bangladesh

The future of Internet search

2010-08-22T20:34:00.000-07:00

Esther Dyson

Imagine that Googling an address gave you a list of the closest buildings, ranked by distance. Not exactly what you were looking for, most likely. But that is pretty close to what we still accept for most Internet searches. You don't get what you actually want to finish your task; you get a list of pages that might lead you to it.

That is beginning to change. Even as the online world has turned its attention from searching to social networking, search is getting interesting again. Consider the development of online search in the broadest terms. First came Yahoo!, with its carefully cultivated (by human editors) catalogue of interesting web pages. Then along came Google, with co-founder Larry Page's innovative ranking of Web pages not just by their content, but also by the quantity and quality of other pages that link to them.

Social networking brings a new insight. People are likely to buy what their friends recommend, which is why marketers should spend time on social networks and join the conversation, rather than interrupt it with traditional advertising.

But what happens when, influenced by their friends, people actually go to buy something or take some action? That long list of blue links to pages that may or may not contain what they want looks pretty old.

Now, however, something is happening to fix this, and it's not just a prettier background. It's structure - the same sort of context the old Yahoo! catalogue supplied, but this time automatically generated and deeper - and across more than just a few categories such as sports and travel.

For example, what people want (and are now getting) in product search is not a list of pages, but a set of products displayed in some meaningful fashion. They want a map of the product space, not a list. The challenge of course, is that each kind of product has a different structure and a different set of attributes.

Consider wines: you can sort them by price, year, or region of origin, by red, white, or rosé, or by sparkling or still. For clothes, you want sizes and colors - and perhaps some filters depending on your personal characteristics - and of course a "buy now" button.

Some areas, such as travel, are even more complex. To "map" travel properly, the software needs to understand such things as time zones, flight duration, layovers, and the like, along with concepts such as coach or first class, deluxe and standard rooms, double vs. single, and so on. That is why there is a whole separate vertical market for travel, but one that first Bing, and now Google (with the acquisition of ITA Software), may be claiming.

For a long time Google didn't need to do much to remain the leader in Internet search, focusing primarily on the "access" part of its self-proclaimed mission "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." But runner-up Microsoft went out and bought Medstory in 2007 and then Powerset in 2008. (I was an investor in both of them, so I have been watching these developments with interest, but I have no inside information on either company since the acquisitions.)

Medstory has a deep understanding of health care, including the relationships between diseases and treatments, drugs and symptoms, and side effects. Powerset, a tool for creating and defining such relationships in any sphere of interest, is broader but less deep.

This all happened a couple of years ago - just before Yahoo! gave up on search entirely and handed that part of its business over to Microsoft. Also around that time, Bill Gates uttered one of the smartest things he has ever said: "The future of search is verbs." But he said it at a private dinner and it never spread.

To me, the meaning was clear: when people search, they aren't just looking for nouns or information; they are looking for action. They want to book a flight, reserve a table, buy a product, cure a hangover, take a class, fix a leak, resolve an argument, or occasionally find a person, for which Facebook is very handy. They mostly want to find something in order to do something.

As a result, Bing launched a few forays into vertical integration. And in the last few months Google has begun to react. First, it bought ITA Software, which provides the underlying data to several travel-booking sites (Hotwire and Orbitz) and to Kayak, as well as to Bing. Most resellers, a little nervous about Bing's tool that sends users to book directly with airlines and hotels, are even more concerned about what Google might be up to.

Then, last month, Google acquired Metaweb and its user-generated database Freebase. While Powerset was a tool for understanding natural language and for structuring it "under the covers" (where programmers could see it), Metaweb lets partners and end-users create data structures or add information to structures created by others. For example, Metaweb/Freebase has an extensive structured database of movies, actors who appear in them, and their directors. You can ask (and get the answer) to "movies directed by Roman Polanski" and get only those movies - not those in which he only appeared. Try doing that with Google. You soon will be able to.

Other categories include business (with entities such as employers, industries, and employees), biology, space flight, and many more, and include representations - such as graphs, timelines, and tables - of how they are connected.

Most things don't exist in isolation. They have complex relationships to other things, and by representing that information using verbs - for example, "the company that Google acquired" vs. "the company that Google competes with" - we can represent the world more accurately. And that means better, more meaningful responses when we search.

Source: Sunday, 22 August 2010 – The Daily Independent – Bangladesh

Iran begins fueling first N-reactor

2010-08-22T02:06:00.000-07:00

AP, Bushehr

Iranian and Russian engineers began loading fuel into

Iran

's first nuclear power plant on Saturday, a major milestone as Tehran forges ahead with its atomic program despite U.N. sanctions.

The weeklong operation to load uranium fuel into the reactor at the Bushehr power plant in southern

Iran

is the first step in starting up a facility the

U.S.

once hoped to prevent because of fears over Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

Iran

's nuclear chief celebrated the plant as "a symbol of Iranian resistance and patience" and said it demonstrated the country's nuclear aims are entirely peaceful - an assertion that many governments around the world seriously question.

"Despite all pressure, sanctions and hardships imposed by Western nations, we are now witnessing the startup of the largest symbol of

Iran

's peaceful nuclear activities," Ali Akbar Salehi told reporters inside the plant.

Russia

, which helped finish building the plant, has pledged to safeguard the site and prevent spent nuclear fuel from being shifted to a possible weapons program. After years of delaying its completion, Moscow says it believes the Bushehr project is essential for persuading

Iran

to cooperate with international efforts to ensure

Iran

does not develop the bomb.

The

United States

, while no longer formally objecting to the plant, disagrees and says

Iran

should not be rewarded while it continues to defy U.N. demands to halt enrichment of uranium, a process used to produce fuel for power plants but which can also be used in weapons production.

On Saturday, a first truckload of fuel was taken from a storage site to a fuel "pool" inside the reactor building under the watch of monitors from the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency. Over the next two weeks, 163 fuel assemblies - equal to 80 tons of uranium fuel - will be moved inside the building and then into the reactor core.

Workers in white lab coats and helmets led reporters on a tour of the cavernous facility.

It will be another two months before the 1,000-megawatt light-water reactor is pumping electricity to Iranian cities.

Iran

denies an intention to develop nuclear weapons, saying it only wants to generate power with a network of nuclear plants it plans to build.

The Bushehr plant is not considered a proliferation risk because the terms of the deal commit the Iranians to allowing the Russians to retrieve all used reactor fuel for reprocessing. Spent fuel contains plutonium, which can be used to make atomic weapons. Additionally,

Iran

has said that IAEA experts will be able to verify that none of the fresh fuel or waste is diverted.

Of greater concern to the West, however, are

Iran

's stated plans to build 10 new uranium enrichment sites inside protected mountain strongholds.

Iran

said recently it will begin construction on the first one in March in defiance of the U.N. sanctions.

Nationwide celebrations were planned for Saturday's fuel loading at Bushehr.

"I thank the Russian government and nation, which cooperated with the great Iranian nation and registered their name in Islamic Iran's golden history," Salehi said. "

Today is a historic day and will be remembered in history."

He spoke at a news conference inside the plant with the head of

Russia

's state-run nuclear corporation, Sergei Kiriyenko, who said

Russia

was always committed to the project.

"The countdown to the Bushehr nuclear power plant has started," Kiriyenko said. "Congratulations."

Iran

's hard-liners consider the completion of the plant to be a show of defiance against U.N. Security Council sanctions that seek to slow

Iran

's nuclear advances.

Hard-line leader Hamid Reza Taraqi said the launch will boost

Iran

's international standing and "will show the failure of all sanctions" against

Iran

The US and/in Bangladesh

2010-08-22T02:01:00.000-07:00

Melissa Hussain

WHAT does the reproduction of capitalism in peripheral economic formations have to do with the US? Of course, as I have pointed out, the US has been present in Bangladesh since—and even before—its birth as a nation-state. To speak of the US is to speak of the US government as well as the current phase of imperialism—US imperialism. This imperialism, as I suggested, is both economic and cultural, and its economic operations cannot be dissociated from the operations of the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO, and even from so-called ‘donor’ agencies and NGOs invading and intervening in peripheral economies under capitalism. My earlier account of the World Bank did not directly mention the role of the US there, but I should point out here that the World Bank in Bangladesh, from time to time, has sought assistance and suggestions from the US while the US also gave suggestions to the World Bank since the days of the so-called ‘green revolution’ in Bangladesh (the then East Pakistan) in the 1960s, an initiative which actually began with both support and suggestions from the US.
Here I will dwell on other aspects of US imperialism, while keeping the connections between US imperialism and international financial institutions in sight. Let me then begin by historicising the nature of US imperialism in Bangladesh. When India was partitioned by the British in 1947, the region known as East Bengal became East Pakistan. Resistances to rule by Pakistan and to US imperialism grew in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), particularly headed by the East Pakistan Communist Party. In the 1960s, as Badruddin Umar relates in volume two of his The Emergence of Bangladesh: Rise of Bengali Nationalism, 1958-1971:
At this [1968] Congress [of the East Pakistan Communist Party] a programme of the East Pakistan Communist Party was adopted. It was prepared on the basis of the documents adopted in the conference of eighty-one parties in Moscow in 1960. The principal strategic objective of the programme was to end the exploitation by the US imperialists and the exploitation and rule of monopoly capitalists, to complete the anti-imperialist, anti-feudal and anti-capitalist national democratic revolution and to advance along the path of non-capitalist development with a view to attaining the socialist stage. (131)
The East Pakistan Communist Party aimed for a broad-based alliance of ‘workers, peasants, middle-class intellectuals and a section of the national bourgeoisie’ (131) in order to oppose—as Umar puts it—‘US imperialism, the big bourgeoisie, feudal landowners, and the central government which represented their interests’ (131). The objective of this alliance was, then, to establish an independent, socialist nation-state.
From the very beginning, Washington was unambiguous in its support of Pakistan and opposition to the movement for independence in East Pakistan. The US government simply did nothing to intervene, then, while hundreds of thousands—and some say millions—of Bengalis were brutally killed by the Pakistani army in Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence. Rather, the US remained solidly on the side of Pakistan. In a phone conversation with secretary of state Henry Kissinger on March 29, 1971, President Nixon had this to say of Bangladesh: ‘The real question is whether anybody can run the god-damn place’ (US Dept of State, South Asia Crisis 36). And in another phone conversation with Kissinger the next day, President Nixon said, ‘The main thing to do is to keep cool and not do anything’ (US Dept of State, South Asia Crisis 37). It was around this time that Kissinger famously characterised Bangladesh as ‘an international basket case’ (Hitchens 50). While these statements were made in casual conversations, they are indicative of the Nixon administration’s position vis-à-vis Bangladesh. It should be emphasised here that when the Bengali freedom-fighters were sacrificing their lives to achieve a new nation-state and were indeed in the midst of their liberation war, the US government did not merely diplomatically oppose the liberation movement, but even militarily opposed it by sending its seventh fleet to the Bay of Bengal in support of Pakistan as a direct threat to Bangladeshi freedom-fighters.
Despite the pronounced and increasing US imperial opposition to the national liberation movement of Bangladesh, the country finally achieved its independence in 1971 in exchange for millions of lives and a war-devastated land. Indeed, the land was not only devastated and the economy completely ruined, but a widespread famine also broke out soon after independence in 1974. That famine killed 27,000 people according to official estimates, although the toll was probably closer to 100,000, as Rehman Sobhan relates in The Crisis of External Dependence: The Political Economy of Foreign Aid to Bangladesh (44). While Sobhan argues that the politics of external dependence on aid was to blame for the famine, he also points to the fact that the US government made the decision to withhold food shipments to Bangladesh in 1974, in order to register its disapproval of Bangladesh’s trade ties to socialist countries, particularly Cuba. And in her essay ‘Food Politics’—which appeared in Foreign Affairs in 1976—Emma Rothschild even argues that the US government played a decisive role in the widespread extent of the famine by withholding desperately-needed food aid at that critical point. The New Delhi-based food and trade policy analyst Devinda Sharma has more recently documented this history thus:
At the height of the 1974 famine in the newly born Bangladesh, the US had withheld 2.2 million tonnes of food aid to ‘ensure that it abandoned plans to try Pakistani war criminals’. And a year later, when Bangladesh was faced with severe monsoons and imminent floods, the then US Ambassador to Bangladesh made it abundantly clear that the US probably could not commit food aid because of Bangladesh’s policy of exporting jute to Cuba. And by the time Bangladesh succumbed to the American pressure, and stopped jute exports to Cuba, the food aid in transit was ‘too late for famine victims’. (‘Famine as Commerce’ par. 14)
The fallout of the restricted flow of aid meant that Bangladesh turned to the World Bank in desperation, and made the pact to trade in its original ideals of socialism and nationalism that had been established in the constitution for economic liberalisation and the development of the private sector. In other words, it is because of the pressures of US imperialism and the World Bank—and also in the interest of the national ruling classes—that the ideals of socialism in particular, the ideals that at least partly informed the liberation war of Bangladesh, were all abandoned.
The initial nationalisation efforts were abandoned as well in the direction of de-nationalisation, rather privatisation. Since the time of Ziaur Rahman (from the mid-1970s onwards), the privatisation efforts gathered momentum and kept progressively increasing through each successive government. Indeed, as Naila Kabeer points out in ‘The Quest for National Identity: Women, Islam and the State of Bangladesh’, ‘The rapid de-nationalisation of the economy under Zia created a newly rich class of entrepreneurs and traders whose interests were tied to those of the government in power and who became its allies’ (42). Indeed, the de-nationalisation of the economy under Zia involved a number of elements. For one, there was a massive increase in foreign aid. Because Bangladesh dropped its declaration of socialism and of secularism, it garnered more donors from the West (for the move away from socialism) and from the Persian Gulf (for the religious posture). Secondly, international agencies—which were already present in Bangladesh since the early seventies—began to play a larger role in state governance, while the role of the state became rather marginal.
In fact, the role of the state—although marginal—is nevertheless not inconsequential in the sense that it has remained willingly subservient to the dictates of US imperialism and the World Bank and other financial institutions, and even NGOs. As far as the bourgeois government is concerned, it has always been an ardent ally of the US. As Azfar Hussain maintains emphatically in his Bengali essay ‘Markin Shamrajjer Shamprotik Bakyaron [The Contemporary Grammar of US Imperialism]’,
Not a single bourgeois administration of Bangladesh since 1971 has been able to say no to the pressures, dictates, suggestions, and recommendations of the US, while in many instances each administration has even welcomed the interventions of the US and the World Bank and other financial institutions, linked as they are, from time to time. For instance, even the so-called founding father of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, despite his initial socialist postures and pronouncements, became increasingly pro-American, while Ziaur Rahman was an open boot-licker of the US administration. The two major bourgeois parties in Bangladesh that have alternately run the country since 1971 have been equally pro-US imperialist and thus themselves have threatened the sovereignty and security of the country itself. But who are anti-imperialists in Bangladesh? The answer is simple: the people—the toiling masses whose so-called cheap labour is routinely exploited by multinational corporations or US imperialist capitalism. (36)
Indeed, the US has either refused to provide aid to Bangladesh in critical times, or it has stepped in to provide ‘aid’ with strings attached, aid that set Bangladesh up for exploitation, an imperialist relationship with unequal power-relations and production-relations. Consider these observations, for instance, from Badruddin Umar in his relatively recent foreword to Mahfuz Chowdhury’s book, Economic Exploitation of Bangladesh. Umar maintains that the United States is
the most important factor in this process [of exploiting the people in Bangladesh] as an imperialist country which in pursuit of its ‘new world order’ and ‘open market policy’ is pressurizing the Bangladeshi ruling classes and their governments to systematically dismantle and destroy industries, to throw millions of workers out of employment and push the country’s economy towards rapid ruination. (‘Foreword’ xv)
Umar has been writing—and organising—in resistance to US imperialism in Bangladesh for almost forty years now, and his basic critique of US imperialism has been consistent. In 1972, for instance, just after the formation of Bangladesh, Umar made the following observations in Politics and Society in Bangladesh, in the chapter unambiguously titled ‘The Ascendancy of US Imperialism in Bangladesh’:
No sensible man [sic] in this country can any longer deny the fact that within seven months of the overthrow of Pakistan, Bangladesh has fallen under the grip of world imperialism, particularly its leader, the United States of America. But uninformed persons, men used to stupid political rigmarole, anti-social elements and lackeys of the ruling classes still continue to believe and propagate that it is not so. They also charge and openly make accusations against all sections of political opposition by saying that they are trying to frustrate all anti-imperialist, particularly anti-US, policies of the government of Bangladesh. These latter groups of men still continue their talk about anti-imperialism, socialism, etc. and without the slightest scruple of conscience proceed to build ‘socialism’ with money and commodities supplied by the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, etc and their patron and principal, the government of the United States. (60)
Umar makes an explicit connection between the World Bank, the IMF, and US imperialism, a point that I have already dwelt on. But Umar is also talking about the functioning of hegemony here: the ruling class in Bangladesh talks of socialism, while reproducing capitalism. Also, a number of left intellectual-activists from Bangladesh—such as Serajul Islam Choudhury, Anu Muhammad, and Nurul Kabir—have all variously examined and interrogated the history of the changing but continuous relationship between US imperialism and the national ruling classes in Bangladesh.
US imperialism in Bangladesh also has to do with how US multinational corporations keep exploiting the domestic markets, the labour markets, and natural resources in Bangladesh. My purpose here is not to provide an exhaustive account of the involvement of US multinational corporations in Bangladesh, but to point out certain trends. A number of US-based multinational corporations have invested in Bangladesh, such as Chevron and the former Unocal Corporation (which merged with Chevron in 2005) which invested in the natural gas sector, a number of US-based clothing industries, with Wal-Mart being the giant among them, which have invested in the Export Processing Zones. Since 1971, the role of US multinational corporations has increasingly gathered momentum, targeting the country’s ‘cheap’ labour—in other words, the labour of women and even children—as well as the country’s natural resources, particularly oil and gas reserves.

The New Age. Date: 22.08.10