of genocidaires and democracts

Rober Mugabe goes to Europe, and Angela Merkel lectures him - and Gordon Brown refuses to attend because he's there.

Yet both Merkel and Brown fell over themselves to meet the mass murderer George Bush. And Brown was perfectly happy to work alongside Tony Blair, genocidaire extraordinaire.

A strange world, indeed.

Yunus doth protest too much

"I am shocked – shocked! – to learn there is gambling going one here."

Devotees of the film Casablanca will recall these lines by the Chief of Police, a constant gambler at the club.

Mohammed Yunus's protestations of ignorance at the jiggery-pokery at Grameen Telecoms sound the same. Frankly, there's no cause for anyone to be shocked – or surprised. These things are par for the course.

To quote a pithier saying: "He doth protest too much".

Six Poems

Sayeed.pdf (application/pdf Object)





VOICES my schizoid uncle hears voices – god or demon – and so do we – voices from the west

hartal not all words can be translated, and this is one of them

arafat day we don't recall the passing away of yasser arafat, but recall the death of noor hossain, because western donors would disapprove of the former and approve of the latter

compassion sometimes, kindness is cruel

little by little we are the little people, but the little can go a long way...


fiat justitia in his essay "You and the Atomic Bomb", Orwell was terrified of the prospect of the atomic bomb, not killing humanity, but empowering big states against small ones...he need not have despaired

"We know people want martial law, but we can't print that!"

I remember, back in the late '90s, I submitted an article to the Daily Star, the last line of which Mahfuz Anam refused to publish – and I refused to alter. His sub-editor, Modon Shahu, called me once day and urged me to change the line.

He chuckled and said: "We know people want martial law, but we can't print that!"

Pause and ponder the implications of the sub-editor's statement.

The battle-cry of The Daily Star is "Committed to the People's Right to Know"; also, "Journalism Without Fear or Favour". Add "Not" before the first, and change "Without" to "With" in the second shibboleth, and you have an accurate idea of the newspaper's ethos.

When a newspaper knows what people want, and what they are saying, it is its duty to report that. Instead, we have a so-called newspaper in cahoots with western donors and NGOs, trying to force-feed democracy down our collective throat.

Well, we finally regurgitated on January 11, 2007 – the day democracy ended: the conclusion of a sixteen-year-old nightmare.

Two-hundred-fifty years of mental subordination

Decline in religious belief ("desacralization") is associated with "progress" (that is, Europe) by our intellectuals.

Since the British ruled us for 200 years, it is still with Britain (and Europe, by extension) that our intellectuals identify. They are caught in a time-warp, as if last year was 1947.

Since our intellectuals don't have a single original idea, (rendered incapable of thought by the Pax Britannia), they growl like dogs at a stranger at the slightest hint of religion.

But not all religions.

Since the intelligentsia are incapable of thought, they are thoroughly incoherent: their hatred is directed, not at all religions, but at Islam, and their love towards Hinduism (and by extension all things Indian).

According to Ian Stephens, this was the attitude of the British (and the Europeans) towards Islam and Hinduism – loathing for the former, and admiration for the latter. As editor of the prestigious Statesman (which first blew the whistle on the famine of '43), he was in a position to know and articulate what his fellow Britons thought and felt on the subject: "But the attitude towards Islam of westerners, American and European – a less obvious but interesting matter – needs some discussing here and now. Their lack of interest in a country so exceptional as Pakistan, so populous, so strategically important, a country, moreover, which has allied itself with them militarily; their frequent symptoms of a vague emotional repugnance; their inclination to turn elsewhere, towards other less significant parts of the map, combine, on reflection, into something strange, which asks for inquiry. (Emphasis added)." After considering practical matters of administration and empire, Stephens turns to religious history: "It is the rough military fact of seizure of European soil by, for him [the Occidental], an alien, infidel regime, that grips his thoughts....Or, delving deeper into European group-memory, where the hurt of it still festers a little, he may think of the high hopes, the chivalry, the faith and then the disillusioned, ignominious end of the Crusades."
"It can scarcely be questioned that, though detailed attempts to analyse them would be absurd, thoughts like these do distort the westerner's attitude towards Islam, and therefore towards the interesting country dealt with in this book." (Ian Stephens, Pakistan, Old Country, New Nation, Penguin: Harmondsworth, 1964, pp 15-16, 19)"

Despite sixty years of "independence", we still think the way our former masters wanted us to think.