Bangladesh is a growing force in cricket

“The age-group cricket is very competitive and at junior level they (Bangladesh) are very good.

They have a lot of good spin bowlers, they are a good fielding side as well as being very aggressive and they have also some impressive batters as well, so, all in all, they are a growing force.”

- England Under-19s coach Mick Newell on Bangladesh U-19 team.

Two good news unfurled today. Bangladesh Under-19 cricket team leads a 7 match series at 4-0 after a comprehensive win over the England Under-19 team.

Secondly Bangladesh beat Zimbabwe comprehensively to level the 5 match series at 1-1. Winning is not an upset anymore for Bangladesh cricket. Just look at the winning margins they are achieving. These show that they are a growing force in International cricket.

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I love Bangladeshis

This is an unusual but brilliant opinion from a Kuwaiti - Ali Ahmed Al-Baghli, the Former Minister of Oil, published in the Arab Times:

IT is wrong to dread the citizens of certain countries simply because some of their compatriots are involved in illegal and unethical activities. Inadequacies are not inherited, yet some people seem to enjoy discriminating others due to the misdeeds of their compatriots. Actually, the main problem is the improper enforcement of the law. Some groups, including the security authorities, consider certain nationalities like the Bangladeshis as outlaws!

Kuwaitis should not forget the fact that Bangladeshis clean your streets, collect your garbage, and serve you in public and private offices as they deliver documents, in addition to preparing tea and coffee for you. In other words, the Bangladeshis do the work of lazy citizens in government departments. Moreover, Kuwaitis should also realize that Bangladeshis are the watchmen in your houses and chalets. They also drive your children to school and your wives to cooperative societies. Everybody is aware of the vital services rendered by Bangladeshis, yet many have disregarded such great contributions due to nationality-based discrimination, which has negatively affected the lives of more than 100 million people with remarkable achievements that 300 million Arabs cannot accomplish.

Those who insult or discriminate against Bangladeshis, are they aware that a Bangladeshi discovered laser eye surgery? Do YouTube subscribers know that it is a Bangladeshi entity? Does the Kuwaiti military pilot know a Bangladeshi discovered the light aluminum in his aircraft? Do users of Bose speakers know that Mr Bose is a Bangladeshi?

Do you know the first man who built a skyscraper — Sears Tower in Chicago — was a Bangladeshi? Do women who got the so-called test tube babies know that one of the leading figures in this field is a Bangladeshi? Do you know that a Bangladeshi has invented a certain statistical equation? These are just few of the contributions of Bangladeshis to the world. What are the achievements of Kuwaitis or GCC citizens who have been abusing Bangladeshis?

Wow Mr. Al-Baghli, I am moved! And thank you from the bottom of my heart.

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2009 Global Hunger Index And Bangladesh

Global Hunger Index - BANGLADESH | RANK: 67, GHI: 24.70 (Alarming)

The Global Hunger Index (GHI) shows that worldwide progress in reducing hunger remains slow. According to the report, Bangladesh’s Global Hunger Index (GHI) score is 24.7, which gives it a rank of 67th out of 84 countries. The index ranks countries on a 100-point scale, with 0 being the best score (no hunger) and 100 being the worst.

This report compares the 2009 GHI with the 2008 Global Gender Gap Index, which is made up of four subindices: economic participation, educational attainment, political empowerment, and health and survival. The evidence shows that higher levels of hunger are associated with lower literacy rates and access to education for women. High rates of hunger are also linked to health and survival inequalities between men and women. Reducing gender disparities in key areas, particularly in education and health, is thus essential to reduce levels of hunger.

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The web Has Your Records

All netizens have a digital dossier. Your dossier is the accumulation of all the digital tracks you make when you use social media tools or browse online.

You may or may not be aware of the above fact but there are some alarming news like the CIA and the European Union are building a social networking surveillance system.

Tom Burghardt at Dissident Voice writes:

Researchers on both sides of the Atlantic are busy as proverbial bees building a “total information” surveillance system, one that will, so they hope, provide police and security agencies with what they euphemistically call “actionable intelligence.”

In this context, the whistleblowing web site Wikileaks published a remarkable document October 4 by the INDECT Consortium, the Intelligence Information System Supporting Observation, Searching and Detection for Security of Citizens in Urban Environment.

Hardly a catchy acronym, but simply put INDECT is working to put a human face on the billions of emails, text messages, tweets and blog posts that transit cyberspace every day; perhaps your face.

According to Wikileaks, INDECT’s “Work package 4″ is designed “to comb web blogs, chat sites, news reports, and social-networking sites in order to build up automatic dossiers on individuals, organizations and their relationships.” Ponder that phrase again: “automatic dossiers.”

New Scientist reported back in 2006 that the National Security Agency “is funding research into the mass harvesting of the information that people post about themselves on social networks.”

The above is information scary but you can confuse the data miners if not avert them if you put your real life information in your social networking activities at minimum. And if you are a blogger writing on sensitive issues, you might want to do it anonymously.

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Pesta Blogger 2009

Last Saturday (October 24, 2009) I attended the Pestablogger 2009 conference held in the SMESCO building in Jakarta. Around 1200 bloggers from all across Indonesia participated in this third annual Indonesian bloggers gathering.

(SMESCO building at Jalan Gatot Soebroto)

This year's theme was "One Spirit One Nation", which reflects the nation's unity and diversity. Iman Brotoseno, the chairman of the event tells:

"Blog and other social media are able to break through physical, religious and cultural boundaries to keep us united as one nation with one spirit."

(Click here to read the rest of this entry)

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The Hawa Bhaban Conspiracy

Who was behind the August 21, 2004 murder plot against Sheikh Hasina left unanswered for years. But now shocking details are emerging.

Last year we learned that the former BNP lawmaker and deputy minister Abdus Salam Pintu Pintu was detained and charges were made against him and 22 persons including top Harkat-ul-Jihad (Huji) leader Mufti Abdul Hannan for the sensational August 21 grenade attack against Hasina. He confessed of his involvement in the assassination attempt during interrogation.

Now a Daily Star investigation reveals some characters behind the chilling conspiracy to kill Hasina. We hear that former home minister Babar 'supplied' grenades and the militant organization HUJI was used as mercenary group:

(Image courtesy The Daily Star)    (Click here to read the rest of this entry)

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Hizbut Tahrir Banned In Bangladesh

In 2007 I wrote why Hizbut Tahrir is the next threat for Bangladesh. They had been recruiting talented youths from Bangladeshi education institutions and brain washing them for their quest to establish Khilafat. Rawi commented in my above post:

I happened to closely follow the alarming emergence of HT in Bangladesh over the last 5 years -- alarming because they openly reject democracy as "un-Islamic", unlike the other Islamist parties that at least accept the democratic system as a pragmatic norm and act within it. Ironically, when they first started their activities at universities in Dhaka in the name of "intellectual debate", I heard some of these British-accented returned-to-Bangladesh leaders claiming that HT is a "non-violent, non-political" movement (exact words). Imagine my reaction when, less than 2 years later, I come across explicitly political leaflets being distributed outside mosques in Dhanmondi.

It's not entirely true that HT is "totally peaceful". Rather, they have taken on different colors in different countries. In places in Central Asia, HT-inspired movements have been known to engage in openly militant activities. Also important to note, though HT is currently based in the UK, they were originally founded in Palestine over 50 years ago by a cleric named Nabhani. A professor I knew at college, who once personally interviewed the late founder of Hamas, said he happened to meet an HT man in Palestine whose views were the most "extremist" he had ever seen -- even more extreme than Hamas!

Finally the Bangladesh government made the right decision in banning Hizbut Tahrir in Bangladesh.

"The organisation's activities have been banned from today [Thursday] as its activities go against public security."

Hizbut-Tahrir (the Party of Liberation) has already been banned in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Pakistan, Tunisia, Libya, Turkey, and in the former Soviet states in Central Asia.

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