LIFE'S TRIVIA

I have been pretty busy lately and did not find time to write about myself. Me & S. are waiting for our first baby, which is due end of this month. This is a whole new experience for us as a new phase of our lives is beckoning. She has been troubled with this pregnancy right from the start. She had to be on bed rest for more than a month in her first trimester. She had to deal with the troubles in going to work during hartal and the discomforts she faces in workplace (like lack of restroom etc.). But each day has been filled with new experiences for her. Every single ache, every feeling of movement of the baby is new to her and we had to deal with the pains and joys of the events. Each visit to doctor (weekly in the last phase), each scan, each test corresponds much worry and relief. This has changed our lives and will continue to do so. I am giving her all the time beyond my work hours to be with her, to give her comfort, to keep her from worries. Our families are also pretty excited about the whole affair. They are always keen about her comforts, her taste change, food habit and the concerns for nutrition.

We are reading numerous magazines, books, articles about pregnancy and babies. We love to watch programs like "The amazing baby videos". The past couple of months we were busy with buying all sorts of little things needed to greet the baby (like nappies, dresses, pillows etc.). She has even prepared a bag full of necessary things, which she will require at the hospital. I am arranging money for the hospital fees. I am praying to God that he would present a healthy, sound baby to us and without much trouble of the mother. And I need your prayers too for the child and the mother.

Some recommended books during pregnancy:

* To Have To Hold: A parent's Guide to Child Birth and Early Parenting
- by Joyce L. Kieffer, Training Resource Corporation, Harrisburg, PennSylvania
* Is There A Baby in your Future?: A calendar for before, during and after your pregnancy
- by Best Start Health Coalition in Peel, Canada
* Sananda -Annapurna: Special pregnancy edition

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VIOLENCE, TERROR, OPPORTUNISTS AND WAYOUT

Bangladesh is caught in a vicious web of bloody violence caused by grenade and bomb explosions, numerous bomb threats and the inability of the security forces to stop these. All they could do is to kill some criminals in mysterious "encounters" brewing more doubts about their intentions and capabilities. We will do injustice just to blame them only, because they cannot act freely; as it is said that there are always instructions for them from the higher level of the government about whom to arrest and whom to leave alone and whom to kill in "encounter" so that they do not expose the powers behind them. The latest bomb threats include the prime minister & son, Dhaka University, a renowned school, and the World Bank chief in Bangladesh creating a panic. There are Interpol and other international security agencies investigating the 21/8 bombing incidents and they have made some progresses. But it is also said that some of their local partners are trying to influence the investigation in a view to distract from what really happened.

However the government is busy in blaming the main opposition and vice versa being responsible for the deteriorating law and order situation. See how silly the politicians are. In the midst of this crisis situation, making malice remarks to each other and only thinking about being into power. Actually mediocrity knows no level above its own. All we have some mediocre politicians and no great leader. Some forces are even generating some theories to indict India that they are behind in creating this anarchy in the country. I hope the politicians should stop beating around the bushes and not make the situation worse. We want the truth.

The present government is trying to suppress the agitations, rallies and harassing, intimidating the opposition activists forcefully and in a brutal way. Its not only a matter of trying to stem the tide of revolution and the question of whether the opposition is always just in their causes, but it is in a way hampering the basic human rights of the people, the right to protest and the right to express their ideas. The ruling parties forget that they are creating a legacy of oppression and autocracy. The oppositions are not addressing the crisis issues of the country, rather saying that if they are put back into the power they will change the situation. But will they be able to keep themselves away from the culture of intimidating and harassing their oppositions?

As I wrote in a previous post, we are being held by some opportunist robbers of the country, who have taken shelters under the mail political parties, because they need protection from justice. One party had ruled for five years (and robbers under their shelter robbed the country) and then another party had ruled for five years (ditto). This cycle may repeat also. We will always be left in the hand of non-thinkers and opportunists. But where are the common people's interests? You have to belong to a party, take a shelter. Otherwise you won't be heard. You won't get your rights. It is our interest or their interest. There is no common interest. There are no ethics, morality, virtue or more of these nice words. Those who still hang on to those morality or ethics are the loneliest persons in this society.

But I still believe in common people's power. I believe in our people of the village, who may seem to you as uneducated and impoverished. But those are the people who played a big role in our liberation war and we drove away the killers of Pakistan and liberated ourselves in 1971. When the people will rise, there will be no place of the opportunist robbers or terrors in our country. I am waiting for that moment again.

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QUOTES OF THE DAY

* The terrible thing about terrorism is that ultimately it destroys those who practice it. Slowly but surely, as they try to extinguish life in others, the light within them dies.

- Terry Waite 1939-, Consultant and Former Hostage, Born in Bollington, Cheshire

* Fighting terrorism is like being a goalkeeper. You can make a hundred brilliant saves but the only shot that people remember is the one that gets past you.

- Paul Wilkinson

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* CINEMA GOERS HAVE NO RIGHT TO LIVE IN THE SOCIETY
* PEOPLE OF BANGLADESH NOT COMMUNAL
* GRENADE ATTACK WAS AN ANTI-ISLAM PLOT
* THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD RESIGN IMMEDIATELY

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WORLD BANKS' LEGAL IMMUNITY

The global movement against the World Bank is aimed at making the institution accountable to people as well as to their clients, the government that are recipients of their aid. But the present coalition government of Bangladesh has been surprisingly helping them doing the opposite. Farhad Mazhar writes in The New Age:

On 4 July this year, the cabinet decided that the sovereignty of the World Bank is over and above the sovereignty, constitution and the legal regime and procedures of Bangladesh. The four-party alliance government has decided to offer this precious gift to the World Bank: legal immunity, but only Allah knows in return for what.

Providing legal immunity implies that no aggrieved person or party, including the government itself, can take the institution to court, even in cases of explicit evidence of responsibility for corruption, destruction of national resources, environment and ecology and consequently the livelihood of people.

The World Bank impeded a legal process (one suit against them by one of its ex emplyees) of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh by claiming it enjoys legal immunity.

The World Bank and IMF policies have been breeding poverty and widening the gap between rich and poor and similarly causing a polarization among nations, which has in turn bred terrorism, violence and war. They are aware of these misdeeds and instead of having a positive reform they are trying to hide their wrongdoings in that immunity.

Our political oppositions are surprisingly silence about this issue because they are more concentrated on clinching back their power rather than doing good to the society. Mazhar concludes:

While as a citizen we must condemn the role of our own government, we should not fail to see how the World Bank has systematically demolished the capacity of a country to develop a strong and independent judiciary by manipulating our judiciary and the executive organs of the state.

Rightfully so and I echo with this editorial in the Daily Star:

Less foreign aid/loan and more foreign investment is the direction in which the country should be moving.

Related article:
WB immunity will infringe on sovereignty

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VICTIMS OF ASSYMETRICAL WARFARE



I was shocked watching the pictures of the gruesome bloodbath in Beslan in the media. Its true that many of us have been accustomed, even inured with the news of the murder of innocent lives by the terrorists, whether it is in Dhaka or in Jerusalem. But this was beyond any imagination. Young kids traumatized by masked killers wearing bomb-belts, forced to drink their own urine, when they were kept hostage for over 3 days without any food or a single drop of water. A mother was forced take the toughest decision of her life, when she was asked to chose one of her children for a hostage release. None of the children, parents and teachers killed and wounded in Beslan deserved this barbarism. None of us deserve to watch and live with it. Does anybody have answers to the hostage families grieves?

But what can we do about this depraved military tactic - "taking hostage of innocents" - soft target as they say. The terrorists find it easy to impose terror on soft targets in a desperate situation, when they cannot penetrate the strong defense of law and order/occupied forces. If the hostage-takers in Beslan knew they were likely to die, they also knew they would die with the world's attention upon them. Had they died in a regular firefight with Russian forces, we would neither have known nor cared. But whatever the reason is killing innocents is morally wrong and we need to find out the root cause of the Russian soldiers becoming terrorists. An Article in the Guardian says:

Since plunging recklessly back into Chechnya in 1994, Putin, his predecessor Boris Yeltsin, and the once proud Red Army have caused such untold misery, such rank injustice, such fury and despair that, like the Americans in Iraq, they created a breeding ground and magnet for the religious extremists they struggle to extirpate. In effect, it was Russian generals and their turncoat allies who internationalized a war that should never have begun and which could have been peaceably resolved long ago. For this foolishness, Russia's conscript soldiers still pay a terrible price.

It has been reported that out of 27 terrorists, 10 were Arabs. How do the Arab fit here? Have they become mercenaries? Or is it that they are spreading the anarchy, the notion of jihad everywhere in the world? How to deal with these fucked up minds?

In asymmetrical warfare everyone is involved and anyone is a potential victim. To fight asymmetrical war with tanks makes as much sense as trying to shoot mosquitoes with a machine gun. The result is counter-productive.

So we should be tactical about using force against these demons. The media can play a role here, showing the nature of atrocities to the world to make these terrorists understand that this is wrong. It would lessen the number of sympathizers of these terrorists. And I plea to all the terrorists:

* leave the women and children away from your warfare*

Related posts:
*Carnage in Beslan
* The path to school number one
* Russian bear ready to glass the mideast?

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PHOTOBLOG -VISUAL THOUGHTS

A photoblog is a type of weblog that is regularly updated with photos. Some photoblogs focus only on photography, while others have photos in addition to other content. All photoblogs, however, consider photos to be an important part of their chronological blogging structure. (for more faqs)

I have been quite impressed browsing some photologs. There is another world of blogs where much is told via photos shot by amateurs and professionals.

Some notable Bangladeshi girl photoblogs:

* Nazzina
* Rings
* Nazma

Go click on their name to have a look. Don't forget to browse through all their pages of wonderfully told delights. I promise you won't be bored.

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