Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia, like the vast majority of the people they claim to represent, need to go abroad for treatment.
They are like the millions of their compatriots who go to the US or UK every day for first-rate therapy.
Every year, hordes of slum-dwellers, farmers and factory workers go abroad for medical attention.
Our democratically elected leaders are just like them – ordinary citizens going abroad for treatment.
Tomorrow my wife and I will be taking the first flight out of Bangladesh to Singapore, Bangkok, Los Angeles, and sundry other places for our annual check-ups.
See you when we get back.
Adios!
Friday, January 11, 2008
More on Irene Z. Khan and Amnesty International in Bangladesh
Irene Z. Khan has described the interred Dhaka University teachers as “prisoners of conscience”. Conscience? They have no conscience.
Chief Justice (retired) Shahabuddin Ahmed, during his stint as president, said that students were getting guns instead of books. “He reiterated his stand against the ‘political use of students and urged the students to sever connections with the political parties’” (The Daily Star, July 11, 2000). Another ex-president, Badruddoza Chowdhury, has said: “Students are armed to punish the opposition and we strongly condemn such acts” (The Bangladesh Observer, March 30 2005). Did the teachers deplore the use of students in politics? Not at all. Where was conscience then?
Now, they are again using students for political purposes.
Irene Khan was conspicuous by her silence on the subject of students (of whom many are minors) being used in politics during our democratic nightmare. I once emailed AI to learn how they got their information regarding Bangladesh when they had no office here. Their local chapter had been shut down years ago because of internal shenanigans: I asked what these mysterious goings-on had been. I received no reply.
How, then, has she, in the space of a few days, summed up the political situation in Bangladesh, and given us a progress report?
She has insisted that AI always encourages the trial of war criminals. Fine. But right now, the two biggest war criminals are in the White House and the other was lately at Downing Street, as the Nobel laureate Harold Pinter observed. Has the AI called for them to hauled before the courts? Both are guilty of waging an illegal war that has claimed a million lives.
Unlike the conscientious Harold Pinter, the secretary general of AI, Irene Khan, knows what she must or must not do to safeguard her career.
Chief Justice (retired) Shahabuddin Ahmed, during his stint as president, said that students were getting guns instead of books. “He reiterated his stand against the ‘political use of students and urged the students to sever connections with the political parties’” (The Daily Star, July 11, 2000). Another ex-president, Badruddoza Chowdhury, has said: “Students are armed to punish the opposition and we strongly condemn such acts” (The Bangladesh Observer, March 30 2005). Did the teachers deplore the use of students in politics? Not at all. Where was conscience then?
Now, they are again using students for political purposes.
Irene Khan was conspicuous by her silence on the subject of students (of whom many are minors) being used in politics during our democratic nightmare. I once emailed AI to learn how they got their information regarding Bangladesh when they had no office here. Their local chapter had been shut down years ago because of internal shenanigans: I asked what these mysterious goings-on had been. I received no reply.
How, then, has she, in the space of a few days, summed up the political situation in Bangladesh, and given us a progress report?
She has insisted that AI always encourages the trial of war criminals. Fine. But right now, the two biggest war criminals are in the White House and the other was lately at Downing Street, as the Nobel laureate Harold Pinter observed. Has the AI called for them to hauled before the courts? Both are guilty of waging an illegal war that has claimed a million lives.
Unlike the conscientious Harold Pinter, the secretary general of AI, Irene Khan, knows what she must or must not do to safeguard her career.
Irene Z. Khan has described the interred Dhaka University teachers as “prisoners of conscience”. Conscience? They have no conscience.
Chief Justice (retired) Shahabuddin Ahmed, during his stint as president, said that students were getting guns instead of books. “He reiterated his stand against the ‘political use of students and urged the students to sever connections with the political parties’” (The Daily Star, July 11, 2000). Another ex-president, Badruddoza Chowdhury, has said: “Students are armed to punish the opposition and we strongly condemn such acts” (The Bangladesh Observer, March 30 2005). Did the teachers deplore the use of students in politics? Not at all. Where was conscience then?
Now, they are again using students for political purposes.
Irene Khan was conspicuous by her silence on the subject of students (of whom many are minors) being used in politics during our democratic nightmare. I once emailed AI to learn how they got their information regarding Bangladesh when they had no office here. Their local chapter had been shut down years ago because of internal shenanigans: I asked what these mysterious goings-on had been. I received no reply.
How, then, has she, in the space of a few days, summed up the political situation in Bangladesh, and given us a progress report?
She has insisted that AI always encourages the trial of war criminals. Fine. But right now, the two biggest war criminals are in the White House and the other was lately at Downing Street, as the Nobel laureate Harold Pinter observed. Has the AI called for them to hauled before the courts? Both are guilty of waging an illegal war that has claimed a million lives.
Unlike the conscientious Harold Pinter, the secretary general of AI, Irene Khan, knows what she must or must not do to safeguard her career.
Chief Justice (retired) Shahabuddin Ahmed, during his stint as president, said that students were getting guns instead of books. “He reiterated his stand against the ‘political use of students and urged the students to sever connections with the political parties’” (The Daily Star, July 11, 2000). Another ex-president, Badruddoza Chowdhury, has said: “Students are armed to punish the opposition and we strongly condemn such acts” (The Bangladesh Observer, March 30 2005). Did the teachers deplore the use of students in politics? Not at all. Where was conscience then?
Now, they are again using students for political purposes.
Irene Khan was conspicuous by her silence on the subject of students (of whom many are minors) being used in politics during our democratic nightmare. I once emailed AI to learn how they got their information regarding Bangladesh when they had no office here. Their local chapter had been shut down years ago because of internal shenanigans: I asked what these mysterious goings-on had been. I received no reply.
How, then, has she, in the space of a few days, summed up the political situation in Bangladesh, and given us a progress report?
She has insisted that AI always encourages the trial of war criminals. Fine. But right now, the two biggest war criminals are in the White House and the other was lately at Downing Street, as the Nobel laureate Harold Pinter observed. Has the AI called for them to hauled before the courts? Both are guilty of waging an illegal war that has claimed a million lives.
Unlike the conscientious Harold Pinter, the secretary general of AI, Irene Khan, knows what she must or must not do to safeguard her career.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Amnesty International in Bangladesh
Irene Z. Khan, secretary general of Amnesty International, has been here lecturing the caretaker government on human rights.
Over the last sixteen years, when student politicians were dying at the rate of 50 per month and these boys were raping and killing with abandon, where was – the hopelessly misnamed – Irene?
Between 1985 and 2000, 15 student politicians were murdered on the campus of Tejgaon Polytechnic College. These boys were minors.
In 1989, world leaders decided that children needed a special convention just for them because people under 18 years old often need special care and protection that adults do not. The leaders also wanted to make sure that the world recognized that children have human rights too.
The Convention sets out these rights in 54 articles and two Optional Protocols. It spells out the basic human rights that children everywhere have: the right to survival; to develop to the fullest; to protection from harmful influences, abuse and exploitation; and to participate fully in family, cultural and social life .
The reader will notice that all the highlighted rights have been violated in the case of the student politicians of Bangladesh. For student activists begin their violent careers well before they are eighteen.
To read an interview of a student politician, visit http://ritro.com/sections/worldaffairs/story.bv?storyid=3664
Irene Khan is Bangladeshi, and she knows very well what democracy has meant for high school students – she comes to Bangladesh regularly to visit her mother. Yet she has never raised the point with the previous, democratically elected leaders of Bangladesh. Instead, she is pushing for the restoration of democracy here.
See the article: http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_23393.shtml
Over the last sixteen years, when student politicians were dying at the rate of 50 per month and these boys were raping and killing with abandon, where was – the hopelessly misnamed – Irene?
Between 1985 and 2000, 15 student politicians were murdered on the campus of Tejgaon Polytechnic College. These boys were minors.
In 1989, world leaders decided that children needed a special convention just for them because people under 18 years old often need special care and protection that adults do not. The leaders also wanted to make sure that the world recognized that children have human rights too.
The Convention sets out these rights in 54 articles and two Optional Protocols. It spells out the basic human rights that children everywhere have: the right to survival; to develop to the fullest; to protection from harmful influences, abuse and exploitation; and to participate fully in family, cultural and social life .
The reader will notice that all the highlighted rights have been violated in the case of the student politicians of Bangladesh. For student activists begin their violent careers well before they are eighteen.
To read an interview of a student politician, visit http://ritro.com/sections/worldaffairs/story.bv?storyid=3664
Irene Khan is Bangladeshi, and she knows very well what democracy has meant for high school students – she comes to Bangladesh regularly to visit her mother. Yet she has never raised the point with the previous, democratically elected leaders of Bangladesh. Instead, she is pushing for the restoration of democracy here.
See the article: http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_23393.shtml
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Mars
I was going by rickshaw the other night, when I looked up and saw – The Red Planet! To the east, it shone like a red star, but it wasn't Antares.
This is a great opportunity to see the Red Planet in its glory: it is almost as bright as Jupiter.
Of course, it isn't as bright as it was in 2003, when it seemed to be overhead, but I have never seen it this bright since or before then.
Watch out for Mars tonight!
This is a great opportunity to see the Red Planet in its glory: it is almost as bright as Jupiter.
Of course, it isn't as bright as it was in 2003, when it seemed to be overhead, but I have never seen it this bright since or before then.
Watch out for Mars tonight!
effect of education on character
According to Bertrand Russell, the effect of Aristotle's teaching on Alexander was nil. We can generalise this to affirm that the effect of education on character is zero – or even negative.
In light of the recent events in Bangladesh involving the academic community, it can be safely inferred that with education comes a progressive deterioration in character. What would have appeared culpable to any illiterate peasant appeared not only innocent, but even laudable, to our teachers and students. Tolstoy was right to elevate the unlettered farmer above the educated intellectual.
After all, it took a massive amount of education to turn French peasants into murderers.
In light of the recent events in Bangladesh involving the academic community, it can be safely inferred that with education comes a progressive deterioration in character. What would have appeared culpable to any illiterate peasant appeared not only innocent, but even laudable, to our teachers and students. Tolstoy was right to elevate the unlettered farmer above the educated intellectual.
After all, it took a massive amount of education to turn French peasants into murderers.
"no" to subsidised campus politics
Since our recalcitrant teachers cannot be disciplined by the law (for it seems that they are above the law), and that they cannot discipline themselves, the only recourse for the people of Bangladesh is to impose upon them the discipline of the market.
The public universities should be privatised: once private, they will charge market rates, and teachers won't be able to moonlight as politicians and shut down the institutions.
They will have to compete for market share: in short, they will have to start earning their living, like the rest of us, instead of being subsidised by the rest of us.
We, the people, refuse to subsidise campus politics.
The public universities should be privatised: once private, they will charge market rates, and teachers won't be able to moonlight as politicians and shut down the institutions.
They will have to compete for market share: in short, they will have to start earning their living, like the rest of us, instead of being subsidised by the rest of us.
We, the people, refuse to subsidise campus politics.
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