In the last 48 hours quite a few things have happened where I am in Bangladesh. I relative of mine has been killed. He had nothing to do with supporting or not supporting the death sentence given at the War Crimes Tribunal. Just a lay person going about his day. At this stage it is not known whether the group of guys that attacked him were Shibir (Jamaat student wing), Chatra League (Awami League student wing) or Chatra Dal (BNP student wing). What I do know is that all three groups are beating each other up or any related to an opposition party.
A local restaurant has been ransacked after Chatra League goons demanded 400 portions of food for their party to celebrate the death sentence for Sayeedi which the restaurant refused.
A local motor showroom has been damaged causing lakhs (1 lakh = 100000) of damage in vehicles because the owner is known supporter of Jamaat.
A local chain of restaurants has been vandalized after refusing serve Chatra League goons who again demanded food for their party.
This is creating a lot of hatred and anger. This can only leader to major civil unrest and division. Chatra Dal and Shibir goons are looking for 'targets' to attack as revenge for Chatra League goons doings. Amar shunar bangla ... what a joke you are.
So it seems the current Awami League government is hellbent on bringing war criminals to justice by hook or crook. I personally am not too sure whether the whole of the Jamaat leadership consists of war criminals but what is apparent is that the trials are a farce - akin to a kangaroo court. This is a country where you can buy the High Court / Supreme court judges. This is a country where a war crimes tribunal judge is caught out having an online conversation about the trial he is presiding over. Who then subsequently resigns followed by another appointment and then a verdict: guilty and punishment is death. I believe war criminals from any war in the world should be sentenced to death. However if we are to take the scenario in Bangladesh it is hard to swallow the verdict as just. In December 2012 The Economist published a series of intercepted communications between the senior judge and an external adviser, suggesting close and prohibited collaboration between the judge, prosecutors, and the government The Geneva based International Commission of Jurists says the following:
"The ICJ says that the International Crimes Tribunal does not adhere to international standards of a fair trial and due process.
According to the ICJ, there are serious procedure flaws at all stages: pre-trial release has been routinely and arbitrarily denied; witnesses have been abducted and intimidated; there have been credible allegations of collusion between the Government, prosecutors and judges.
On 14 February 2013, a draft amendment was tabled in Parliament, retroactively changing the International Criminal (Tribunals) Act 1973 to enable prosecutors to appeal a life sentence and seek the death penalty."
With the above it is hard to justify the verdicts. Seeing the violence on the ground it appears to me it could cause a much more sinister civil unrest.
Why now?
My thinking on the current fast-track process is that AL are going to face an election next year. So by killing off the Jamaat leadership they will potentially kill BNP's main coalition partner.
Another angle is that it could also be a ploy to delay the election as they know the violence that will ensue the verdicts.
In my opinion it would have been better to put to the gallows Tareq and Koko Rahman (Kukur??) for the amount of crimes they committed by depriving the people of Bangladesh. At least there is national (again some suspect) evidence - but more importantly documented international evidence of their money laundering.
As a statesman/ woman - you have to ultimately see what such a tribunal will do - if it splits the people in two then is it worth pursuing in its current form? Sadly we don't have a stateswoman but a woman who thinks her father gave her the land and another woman who thinks her husband gave her the land. Both of which are thieving scums.
Military option
The last election brought about military intervention in the wise belief that the minus-2 solution would be taken on board by the people. The public were too shortsighted compared to the advance thinking the solution required. Ultimately they went back to calling the two respective women as their leaders by the two groups of people that divide Bangladesh. This time round there won't be such an intervention as AL (poss BNP involved??) have killed off at least 20% of the senior military leaders that Bangladesh has ever produced (it's first batch due to its infancy) in the Peelkhana (Pilkhana) massacre.
Reading this blog on the BBC made me feel very embarrassed. It was shameful already from the behaviour of the fans in Dhaka after Bangladesh's defeat to the West Indies team.
This blog highlights the gross incompetency of Bangladesh radio employees as they are late into their commentary box - in their own country. Presumably they hadn't finished their breakfast so they couldn't leave for the stadium.
The BBC team had to worry about more important things than breakfast. Theft, aggression, inappropriate behaviour towards women and then noise throughout the night. (Bengali's bark throughout the night - there's no sense of being quiet at least for the night in any place in BD)
The worst part is the behavior of the crowd towards the BBC team - especially towards the female members. Disgusting. Then again can we expect anything less from such race as ours? Oh I forgot we are a Muslim country so they guys must have been showing off their pious nature.
It seems that Starwood, the partner company running the Sheraton, is finally going to exit. There may be plenty of contractual issues around the renewing of the deal which I do not know. However one of the sticking points was the renovation of the hotel which BSL, the government owned shareholder, was against because the hotel is 'making a profit'. What nonsense and further proof fo BD governments lack of ability.
Even when this hurdle was overcome BSL wanted to be able to appoint the contractors for the works. Hahaha - 'our sonar people would like to tender and choose the contractors for the works so we can fiddle and get bribes and kickbacks'. I assume Starwood has enough experience of the neurotic corruption at every level in BD from the last 25 years experience in the country that they said - 'get lost'!
It's a shame really because the current psycho in charge of the country might make the future contract more 'managed by BSL' instead of the partner company.
I don't mind if BSL owned it 100% or was totally in charge of running it - if we knew for sure the BD guys would not be so politically chosen and in any case the certainty of absolute corruption from the gardener to the GM. Maybe in another 150 years (after a Tsunami has wiped away the population)?
I've been busy with a few things and havent been able to blog for a while. I've got plenty of things to blog about so hope to catch up with plenty of posts soon.
I read an article about the government planning to install speed monitoring devices to vehicles in Bangladesh. This is space age stuff for a bronze age country.
I can't simply understand the stupidity of this idea that they will monitor the speed of vehicles from a control center(s). LOL. Just imagine if these guys had some brain cells shared amongst them. They could have gone to Mars now. Screw NASA. These guy's are it! I mean really - is it really practical, feasible for a country like BD? In fact has such a thing been done anywhere in the world? I think not.
What is it trying to solve? The speeding problem and the killing of pedestrians. Right so fitting a remotely supervised monitor will solve this. Dream on. Instead of solving the utter lawlessness of the roads in Bangladesh again we are attacking the symptom instead of the cause. Bit like us fitting grills to all the windows in BD.
Another screwed up aspect is that the High Court ordered that the government have speed limiters fitted to all vehicles in the first place. Why have a parliament? Well I know the BD parliament is ineffective but seriously why don't we have judges just create laws in response lawsuits filed at the civil servants.
How stupid can it get? This is Bangladesh. It can only get worse.....
As you know by now the unfortunate incident of building blazes in Nimtoli, Dhaka.
We in Bangladesh are very lucky that such incidences are relatively rare considering the sheer unplanned nature of the whole country.
We have so many things going against us. 1. Road widths and the ever encroachment of the roads. The roads in Nimtoli, if you've ever been here, are in some parts so ridiculously narrow that rickshaws could have trouble. How are fire engines supposed to get to them?
2. Grills hinder any form of escape. In Bangladesh the fear of criminals makes all building owners turn their property into a modern prison with iron grills on all windows. This blocks any form of exit. Why do we need them above say 3 stories? Why do we need them at all? Instead of solving the crime problem we instead live with it and decide to solve the threat.
3. Overhead electricity. If as it is suggested that it was due to a transformer blowing up - then again there is no planning as to the location of theses transformers. Just place them on stilts - sometimes within arms reach of a building facade.
4. Zoning of commercial, industrial, residential properties. Apparently chemicals and other commerical substances in some buildings helped intensify the fire. This is my main bugbear. You can hear the media and the bangla masses blame the government - they should do something about the causes of fire. Well simple planning rules were demanded and enforced by civilized people of civilized nations over a century ago in other parts of the world. Here in BD we lay the blame solely on the government. Why don't the people demand proper zoning of buildings? and enforce them - themselves? Do they complain when someone rents the ground floor out as a shop? No - because they are doing the same. Bloody hypocrites.
We also had the building collapse the other day. The tilting buildings in Begunbari are now being demolished. Other's without approved plans will be demolished. What really will happen is that those unplanned building owners will now be spending five times as much in bribes to get their plans approved. Making those in the planning department even more fat and the whole story will be forgotten about.
So now there is a drive to make sure unsafe buildings are safe. The very concept of a building in Bangladesh is unsafe - it's clad in metal bars on all sides with a dodgy road that fire engines cannot get to. Together with a shop or some kind of commercial outfit usually on the ground floor. Not to forget the eyesore of a transformer on stilts outside the building - that's probably had a truck reverse into it so its leaning to the side a bit.
Of course they should do something about it. They being the government. Nothing for us, the public, to do is there?!
So not content with closing Channel 1 they have now gone after Amar Desh. Whatever the problems with the editor and acting editor may have been it does not justify closing down of a newspaper.
One can only conclude that it is because it is a BNP leaning paper the reason it was shut down. Couple of things to note tho.
1. Why is the law so stupid that it warrants the closure of a newspaper? What about the job, the economics, the freedom of speech. (I know, I know - Bangladeshi bureaucrats don't give a toss about that!! - I'm just baffled it's - 2010)
2. What have the other media outlets done - both AL & BNP leaning media outlets? They could have all gone on strikes or some kind of movement. How about a standard banner on front page criticising the government of ALL papers published in Bangladesh until they re-instate Amar Desh? What the AL leaning papers don't realise is that if the law and the lawmakers are not resolved over this then it will be their turn next time BNP are in power.
I'll finish with two sentences: Amar Desh - history. Amar Sonar Bangla - the future! LOL!
So the authorities decided to ban Facebook citing indecent images. If they were concerned with the images of of the Prophet then they would have banned access to the whole Internet a while ago as they are all over the place - if one wants to see them.
The Western media seem to be reporting that the ban was due to religious reasons viz Pakistan. If only they came and found out and not Parrot AP's misleading press release.
The real reason is the caricatures of Mz Hasina & Khaleda. If you get hold of those images then I suggest they be pasted on all free sites. They do not have the capability to ban these sites - not even Facebook using proxies and vpn's. They tried to use DPI (deep packet inspection) and failed too. Even Cisco didn't give the BD authorities time of day to reply for such a silly request.
I just hope that Mahbub Rodin isn't being tortured to death - Everyone remember that!
After nearly three the years the country's courts have managed to put Sheikh Hasina cousin Sheikh Helaluddin and his wife Rupa Chowdhury for corruption. Read the article here.
How they amassed such wealth is anybodies guess. However my question is now that the ACC is being re-politicised for the benefit of Hasina apu's shontan's what are the chances the case will be dropped?
Bangladeshis have successfully managed exported their third rate electoral malpractice to the UK.
Vote fraud is now rampant in BangaliPara area of east London. It is embarrassing to see such disgusting behaviour of Bangladeshi diaspora. A council candidate even resorted to violence with his home grown 'cadres' (haha really does my head in that word!!) by beating up a journalist.
Some of the candidates were even born there! So what does this show? It doesn't matter where you are born, whether it's a 3rd world country like Bangladesh or a 1st world country like the UK. What matters is who you are - a Bangladeshi by blood. The cancerous "durniti" gene lives on regardless of its environment in Bengalis.
Yesterday I cam across a blog comment that echoed my sentiments. I thought of this from day one but haven't had time to air my views. It seems a certain Amjad Ali from London said it exactly as I want to (see comment 20).
For the readers benefit here is a copy of his comment:
"I travel to Bangladesh regularly and I have had no problem with the Immigration authority. People travelling from UK to Bangladesh think that they can break the law once they arrive at Dhaka airport. We wouldn’t dare to enter a restricted area at LHR, so why do people enter a restricted are in Dhaka airport?? Once people are confronted by the immigration officer for these uncivilized behaviour, then they start saying I am a community leader, Doctor, barrister, lawyer from UK. What gives them the right to break laws just because they are from UK??"
Have a read of Rezwan's statement. He states that he "purchased a ticket for 500 taka". WTF?! You cannot go inside the terminal building as it's restricted area. Yes you can bribe and go inside - but bribing isn't a legal ticket. And he claims to be a barrister?!!
Can you imagine the verbal exchange when he was caught? I think words along the lines of "do you know who I am?! I am a second rate barrister from London ... where I deal with all the illegal Sylhetis!, How dare you question my illegal entry?!".
Don't get me wrong - I don't condone the behaviour of the air force personnel that beat him up. But if I had a dodgy barrister giving me a mouthful ...
Regulatory authorities are used to enforce rules. If companies don't adhere to them then enforcement authorities try and bring them in line with fines and other court orders.
Every government in the world always talks about creating jobs. Even more so in Bangladesh. So instead of punishing the company for non-performance (if that is true) the Bengali authorities go and close it down. All those jobs down the drain (Although the concept of a drain in Bangladesh is basically the footpath!!!!).
It's not just Chanel 1 employees affected. The supporting industries such as marketing, graphics, sound, studios will also be hard done by what to me seems like a political move.
Why do I think that? Well the owners are Giasuddin Mamun & Tareq Rahman (sorry I will wash out my mouth for mentioning such corrupt words after this blog).
The move hasn't affected the corrupt owners as much as they are rich enough from their theft from the BD public. Besides Ms Zia's son is still trying to fix his spine in a private hospital in London from the beating uncle Moin and uncle Bari gave him for being a naughty boy (a child without a father can become very troublesome).
My main concerns are firstly economic and secondly freedom of speech. We have just lost another media outlet.
Hope everyone likes the new name for Dhaka airport! Hazrat Shahjalal is associated with Sylhet so if Sylhet airport was renamed to that then it would make sense. Why you would want to is another question!
At least it wasn't renamed to BongoBhondu airport - probably because the BongoBhondu sign writers have got an order book to last the next decade taking into account the number of things that have been renamed.
Clearly this is another step to modernising the country as the impoverished country really needed a name change to help its 180 million people!!!
WTF don't we just rename the country as BongoBhonduDesh?!
Good job the IATA (DAC) and ICAO (VGZR) codes were fixed and don't have any influence by our ruling elite (haha elite?! really?)!
More proof that Hasina and her henchmen are in it for themselves. Looks like the Anti-Corruption Commission [ACC] will be politicised again.
Thanks to General Moin Uddin and his military regime the ACC was strengthened. It now is apparent that they are undoing all the good things that came from the military rule.
They are basically making sure that all the corrupt deals they do in the next few years will go unaccounted. You can be sure that if the BNP come to power again they will not revert this stupid law by a stupid woman and her unpatriotic criminals.
It seems AL are not aware of the gas shortage in the country. Even though the gas network does not have 100% coverage. It's also one of the often stated reason why gas based power plants are not able to work at capacity. Yet it seems we can sell the gas instead of buying it for national use. I'm talking about the deal for Cairn to sell gas externally.. When will they learn? Will we ever get a patriot running the country instead of a zealot?
The Caretaker Government wanted to rid education of student politics during its 2 year reign. Unfortunately the do-gooders, the corrupt, the advocates of student goonda's and 'cadres' didn't want the ban. They were in the majority.
Even everyday people who to all extents were simple civilized soles that I spoke to were against the ban. Why I asked? Well they keep harping on about the independence struggle. Yes students back then played a pivotal role. However, we are now in a completely different scenario and situation. Back then every one had a common goal. Now there's two goals. Get into power and get into power. The Jubo League(chadabaji wing of Awami League) and Jubo Dal (chadabaji wing of BNP) have have hijacked the agenda. These are not patriotic citizens. These will never fight in an independence fight again - not that we need one. Instead in a war situation these parasitic beings will loot and flee the country using the nearest possible exit.
Since AL came to power virtually all educational establishments have been inflicted with these parasitic attacks by Jubo League. One has to understand that the local MP, Mayor, MP, commissioner (councilor) also shelter them. As AL did genuinely overwhelmingly win the election it is no surprise that they feel even more hard in beating up and robbing innocents, tender manipulation and extortion.
I was disgusted reading todays paper with the end less list of Jubo League thuggery. Due to which I've decided to compile a list of the mother-chuds activities.
I'm catching up with my queue of posts ...... It seems that Bangladesh is now gonna join the Western world in the fanciful game of turning the clocks back and forth using the term Daylight Savings Time (DST). Read the BDNews press release here. Perhaps one the ruling party henchmen heard the term while visiting their foreign slush fund in a western country. If only they knew the science and history behind it.
I think it's also a buzzword that will work with the public as they will think it's cool thing to do - after all most of the Western world does it. The AL morons are using it as an excuse for energy savings. If only they used some real, scientific data to substantiate their claims and reasons.
Bangladesh is a tropical country. It's daylight hours do not fluctuate as much as the Western countries located in the Northern hemisphere.
Let me show you some real info using a tool provided by ptaff.
The above graph shows that BD has a fluctuation of 3 hours in the number of daylight hours. Sunrise and sunset also fluctuate a maximum of 2 hours. These fluctuations are quite steady compared to the UK.
The UK, for example, has a difference of 8 hours in daylight times. Moreover, sunrise fluctuates from 4am to 8am - a difference of 4 hours. Sunset fluctuates from 4pm to 10pm - a difference of 6 hours. These conditions can benefit from DST. Nonetheless there are various movements wanting to abolish DST in the UK as the benefits have been questioned by some groups.
If you really want to save energy in BD then you really need to carry out 2 tasks:
1. Close shops and malls by 8pm. Rest of the world manages to carry out its shopping by 6/7pm when all the shops shut. The Caretaker government brought in a good rule - but the the corrupt whining public & business 'samities' kept moaning about this. Without any reason of course.
2. Design buildings to take into account of natural sunlight. Not building piss-poor, ugly, 'towers' (basically what one would call a high rise in any other part of the world) back to back. Even a semi concrete bungalow in the middle of nowhere has rooms without direct sunlight coming in! To fix this we would of course need decent planning laws and enforcement of them .. fat chance...
I strongly oppose DST in Bangladesh because it's going to bring about undue costs to the nation for no benefit at all. These ruling party moronic idiots have not got anything better to do .... We don't need Daylight Savings Time - instead we need Saving from the moronic ill-educated, ill motivated scum of politicians that fester in Bangladesh time and time again.
It seems like we are back to the pre- 1/11 days where the battling Begums are more interested in tit-for tat politics - (Maybe it's because they both had a common lover over which they fell out??).
I think we have more important issues in the country than to cancel the lease of Pinky's (Khaleda's) house on Shaheed Mainul Road in Dhaka Cantonment by Perky (Hasina).
One way to look at it is that what goes around comes around - after-all Pinky did cancel the allocation of Hasina and her sister's plots. The difference is that Pinky didn't allocate the property to herself unlike Perky.
If Pinky did violate the rules of the lease then she deserves it. Nonetheless is it really the most important thing that needs doing at the moment?
Out of all the land in the country Hasina makes a point that it needs to recover it to give houses to the relatives of the Pilkhana massacre. Hmmm... me thinks that she's trying to suck up to them. I hope they can see through her - mixing dirty politics with a heinous national crime.
On the other hand as the Daily Star reports it could be also due to the military's unhappiness of Pinky's comments following the Pilkhana massacre. In which she could have negotiated to delay the task for the sake of national unity.
Finally could it be a diversionary tactic by Hasina from the Pilkhana massacre inquiry? Surely something like this will get 50% of the population up in arms as their mother is about to lose a house (like she really needs it after conning the public out of billions of Taka's). This will then divert the public and media attention to Pinky. From what I hear - politicians of all sides seem to have had a hand in the BDR massacre (more on that later). Hasina really needs another front to open...
According to the Oxford dictionary: Walkout - a sudden angry departure, especially as a protest or strike.
Come to Bangladesh, a nation who fought hard for it's independence and for its language. It is the land where the roots of International Mother Language Day come from. Yet ask any layman and they wont know that it's an English noun that they have adopted. In fact they think its a Bengali word. Why is it so common and why does everyone know it? Thats because the dear leader of the opposition and mother to 50 % of Bangladeshi's exercises a walkout nearly every other day from parliament.
If it wasn't for the detriment of the country it would be laughable. In the west where physical punishment isn't allowed in schools some unruly children exercise a 'walkout' to the teachers dismay. It's usually funny to all the other kids. They think the child who just walked out is immature and can't hack it. That's the bit that makes me laugh. The ill-educated and unruly, spoilt, madam Khaleda Zia.
Going back to the OED description of the word - there is a difference to the Bengali version - in that it isn't sudden - it's predictive.
As I write Begum Zia and her cronies have just exercised another walkout on the last day of the current session in parliament. I suppose none of them will need to have gym membership as the walkouts will keep them quite fit...
