The 3rd world view

December 17, 2008

Everything’s amazing but nobody’s happy

Wednesday, December 17, 2008 Technology, Video No comments

Why you are unable to call home to Bangladesh

Wednesday, December 17, 2008 Bangladesh, Telecom No comments

In recent times people from all over the world are having tough time to call to Bangladesh using calling cards or other means using VOIP technology.

This article answers why. Some snippets:

"VOIP or Voice Over IP is a technology that enables telephone companies to transmit high numbers of phone calls all over the world very cheaply. [..] Creative entrepreneurs have popped up everywhere setting up VOIP internet exchanges throughout Bangladesh that carry a huge volume of international phone calls into Bangladesh using the Internet. These exchanges usually consist of computer servers, gateways, and modems.

These VOIP exchanges carried as much 80% of the total international telephone traffic but were highly illegal. [..]

The new military backed administration has been on a very big anti-corruption campaign against the graft and illegality of the past that Bangladeshi’s have put up with for far too long. Hundreds of illegal businesses, shops and slums have been bulldozed and destroyed. The same has happened to the VOIP internet exchanges that have been making a great living from their illegal internet telephone services.

They have been selling international telephone call capacity to foreign phone card companies who have also benefited greatly by their very low rates and margins.

Closing down these internet exchanges has sent the telephone network and capacity in to complete turmoil in Bangladesh. You now have millions of callers trying to make the same volume of calls on 20% of the capacity that existed previously – there is less and less capacity available all the time."

Victory Day

Tuesday, December 16, 2008 Bangladesh, genocide, Liberation war 1 comment

Greetings to everyone on the 37th anniversary of the Victory day in Bangladesh.

It is a day when Bangladesh came into being. 'Victory against what?' one may ask. It was a victory against the farcical two nation theory, The colonialism of West Pakistan and their oppression against their East Pakistani brothers in economic, administrative and cultural sectors, victory against one of the worst genocides in the history of the world, victory against the rape of thousands of women by the Pakistani soldiers and the nine month long liberation war.

The history of the Bangladesh liberation war is an epic itself, the journey from east Pakistan to Bangladesh was long and full of struggles.

In my last years post on the victory day I had promised that supported by E-Bangladesh I will build an online archive of all the available information, evidence, eye witness portraying the true story of the genocide committed by the Pakistanis in 1971. Here is it "1971 Bangladesh Genocide Archive".

This site is essential because:

Now there is a renewed call for trial of the war criminals who are trying to rewrite history.

The general Pakistanis were provided with the wrong version of the truth all the time. From a Pakistani newspaper:
Only foreign media aired the news of the Fall of Dhaka on December 16, 1971. Radio Pakistan kept airing usual transmission and giving a picture of “all is well”.
Even the reports the Pakistani people get display a fragment of the truth.

We dedicate this site to the hundreds and thousands of people who have died in the war and those brave souls who has fought for the country with firearms, support and stood in solidarity with the Bangladeshis.

Bloggers unearth the fake Taj Mahal scam in Bangladesh

Monday, December 15, 2008 Bangladesh No comments

Global Voices has the full details:

Bibortonbadi, another blogger who visited the site was also very upset at falling prey to yellow journalism; he wrote in his blog [bn]:

There's nothing worth seeing. The so-called replica of the brilliant Taj has been made with colored tiles. I had read so many things in the newspapers - 400crores of Taka, valuable marble and tiles from Italy, 172 diamonds from Belgium, 160kgs of bronze on the dome…where is all of that? Is 400crores Taka such a little thing? Local tiles on a plain and simple brick structure…even the tiling work is that of an amateur…the structure is still incomplete. Even if after all this they want to put Italian marble where will they put it? All the visitors were upset and were feeling cheated. …After 10minutes we realised that there was nothing to see inside. We left. On the way back we spoke to other visitors and there was only one word going around — "what a scam!"

Blogger Raihan called up the newsdesk of a leading Bangla daily Prothom Alo , who had also published the "Taj" article complete with details of lavishness, and questioned them whether their reporter had physically visited the site before publishing the article and if not, how they could publish an article without first verifying the facts themselves. He says that in response the newsdesk informed him that they had merely reported the AFP article. After he alerted the person on the line about the facts, he was told that they would surely send a reporter to visit the site and write another article on the same.

With Bangladeshi bloggers uploading their first-hand experience of visiting the site through posts, pictures and videos, it is only now we are getting the real picture of the "fake Taj" story.