The opposition wants the government to produce Ilyas Ali, who must be
dead and, hopefully, buried by now. We, the people, suffer. How can the
government resuscitate a corpse? The only recourse I know of is to
enlist the help of 'Herbert West, Reanimator'. As the title implies, he
could bring the dead back alive. But the last I heard of him was that he
was being pursued by some vengeful zombies he had 'resuscitated'. Will
the opposition settle for a zombie? As far as we are concerned, the
entire political class can be dead and buried, with no hope of
reanimation.
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Friday, April 13, 2012
Vercingetorix And Doofus Dignity (essay)
Vercingetorix And Doofus Dignity
(click above for essay)
(click above for essay)
Vercingetorix was the leader of the Gauls who dared to rebel against the mighty Roman Republic. Irrational? Sure, but also dignified. The pursuit of dignity often entails the irrational. But we in Bangladesh are no "doofuses" like the great Vercingetorix – we are rational, and without an atom of self-respect or dignity.
Excerpt:
"Take my compatriots. Ever since Mir Zafar betrayed the last Nawab of Bengal, Siraj ud-Dawlah, we have been a rational people. At the Battle of Plassey, the former sold his honour, his country and his ruler to the British. A force of 3,000 went on to defeat a force of 50,000, and the Nawab was ferreted out and executed. Now, there's a real doofus for you. If he had supinely allowed the British to go on building their fort in Calcutta, turning a blind eye to the obvious, and selling his loyalty after an agreed-upon interval, well, he would never have found a place in the hearts of the common people, as he has with the superb popular play enacted in the countryside, but he would have died in a silken bed. After all, you can't eat glory and heroism. Posthumous applause is posthumous. "
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Arabs and the Freedom Industry
Now we come to North Africa, or the Arab Spring. Here we will pause to note what T.E.Lawrence had to say in his Seven Pillars of Wisdom about the Arab: "Arabs could be swung on an idea as on a cord; for the unpledged allegiance of their minds made them obedient servants. None of them would escape the bond till success had come, and with it responsibility and duty and engagements. Then the idea was gone and the work ended--in ruins. Without a creed they could be taken to the four corners of the world (but not to heaven) by being shown the riches of earth and the pleasures of it; but if on the road, led in this fashion, they met the prophet of an idea, who had nowhere to lay his head and who depended for his food on charity or birds, then they would all leave their wealth for his inspiration. They were incorrigibly children of the idea, feckless and colour-blind, to whom body and spirit were for ever and inevitably opposed." The idea – or wave, as Lawrence called it – was nationalism, a revolt against the Ottomans, and it was backed up heavily by British cash. "One such wave (and not the least) I raised and rolled before the breath of an idea, till it reached its crest, and toppled over and fell at Damascus. The wash of that wave, thrown back by the resistance of vested things, will provide the matter of the following wave, when in fullness of time the sea shall be raised once more."
And the sea has been raised once more – this time again with western cash and training. According to the Washington Post:" It's estimated more than 10,000 Egyptians since 2005 have participated in USAID-financed democracy and governance programs, carried out by NDI, IRI and 28 other international and Egyptian organizations - not only political training, but also projects to prepare judges, build PTA-style school associations and otherwise deepen civic involvement." Again, the Washington Post says: "…the State Department’s Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) has funneled up to $6 million to Syrian opposition groups such as Barada TV since 2006. MEPI is supervised by Tamara Wittes, a longtime pro-Israel advocate of democratic reform in the Middle East….:"
Friday, April 6, 2012
Ideas And The Arabs
"Arabs could be swung on an idea as on a cord; for the unpledged allegiance of their minds made them obedient servants. None of them would escape the bond till success had come, and with it responsibility and duty and engagements. Then the idea was gone and the work ended--in ruins. Without a creed they could be taken to the four corners of the world (but not to heaven) by being shown the riches of earth and the pleasures of it; but if on the road, led in this fashion, they met the prophet of an idea, who had nowhere to lay his head and who depended for his food on charity or birds, then they would all leave their wealth for his inspiration. They were incorrigibly children of the idea...."
Thus T.E.Lawrence in his Seven Pillars of Wisdom. And the idea he used to get the Arabs to revolt against the Turks was nationalism - which indeed lay in ruins.
Today the same Arab has risen in revolt, mouth hooked on another western idea - democracy. The result will be what Lawrence had foretold - ruin.
Thus T.E.Lawrence in his Seven Pillars of Wisdom. And the idea he used to get the Arabs to revolt against the Turks was nationalism - which indeed lay in ruins.
Today the same Arab has risen in revolt, mouth hooked on another western idea - democracy. The result will be what Lawrence had foretold - ruin.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
The Hounds of Hell
It is with a heavy heart that I will be leaving my home of eight years tomorrow. It is with a heavy heart because I'm being hounded out of my residence.
The hounds are the local committe, who suddenly objected to my teaching students English on the premises. That I have been doing the same for eight years was an argument that had no importance to them.
And when, after the first illegal interview (illegal because it is not the committee that can speak to me; they must speak only to my landlord, as my lawyer later informed me), I filed a general diary, fearing violence.
When they found out that I had filed a GD, they were furious: how dare I excercise my rights as a citizen? In this building, only the committee had rights, and I was a mere individual.
Then, after browbeating my landlord, they came en masse into my apartment where only my wife and I reside. There they used minatory langauge and said that if I did not stop all activity in one week, they would bar the gates. This was illegal: they had no right to talk to me, for I had leased the house from my landlord, not from them. They could complain to my landlord: in fact, we had already decided to leave the flat rather than live with such hoodlums. But they paid no attention to what I had to say. This is the behaviour of moneyd 'gentlemen' in Bangladesh.
Through brute force and intimidation, they forced a law-abiding, harmless individual and his wife to leave. After all, there's a limit to the harassment and intimidation that a gentleman can endure.
And to think that they achieved all this, not through a court order, but by sheer bullying and coercion.
I hope the Supreme Court will take these matters under cognisance, and uphold the rights of tenants against a tyrannical majority.
The hounds are the local committe, who suddenly objected to my teaching students English on the premises. That I have been doing the same for eight years was an argument that had no importance to them.
And when, after the first illegal interview (illegal because it is not the committee that can speak to me; they must speak only to my landlord, as my lawyer later informed me), I filed a general diary, fearing violence.
When they found out that I had filed a GD, they were furious: how dare I excercise my rights as a citizen? In this building, only the committee had rights, and I was a mere individual.
Then, after browbeating my landlord, they came en masse into my apartment where only my wife and I reside. There they used minatory langauge and said that if I did not stop all activity in one week, they would bar the gates. This was illegal: they had no right to talk to me, for I had leased the house from my landlord, not from them. They could complain to my landlord: in fact, we had already decided to leave the flat rather than live with such hoodlums. But they paid no attention to what I had to say. This is the behaviour of moneyd 'gentlemen' in Bangladesh.
Through brute force and intimidation, they forced a law-abiding, harmless individual and his wife to leave. After all, there's a limit to the harassment and intimidation that a gentleman can endure.
And to think that they achieved all this, not through a court order, but by sheer bullying and coercion.
I hope the Supreme Court will take these matters under cognisance, and uphold the rights of tenants against a tyrannical majority.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
3,000 nations
There are around three thousand languages in the world, so there should be three thousand nations.
Some may be quite small - the size of a park, say. Some may be just a bedsit, with the residents offering visas at the door to curious tourists. There would be recordings of the language inside and a few trinkets. When the inmates die, the bedsit will become a museum. Or the heirs may wish to inherit it if it pays well. Otherwise patriotism might be squeezed out of such a small accomodation. The children may decide to emigrate en masse. That is, the nation might move out.
As for the parks, they may offer green credentials, a bit of boating and picknicking....Indeed, it is hard to see how these nations can make money. They'll have to be subsidised, of course. This is not as outlandish as it seems: take Bangladesh. It is a highly subsidised nation. Indeed, even today many nations do not earn their keep. Since they don't have the pennies, they don't have the pride, just a lot of hot air.
So I personally see no objections to a UN of 3,000 members. It's perfectly feasible. In fact, it's already happening.
Some may be quite small - the size of a park, say. Some may be just a bedsit, with the residents offering visas at the door to curious tourists. There would be recordings of the language inside and a few trinkets. When the inmates die, the bedsit will become a museum. Or the heirs may wish to inherit it if it pays well. Otherwise patriotism might be squeezed out of such a small accomodation. The children may decide to emigrate en masse. That is, the nation might move out.
As for the parks, they may offer green credentials, a bit of boating and picknicking....Indeed, it is hard to see how these nations can make money. They'll have to be subsidised, of course. This is not as outlandish as it seems: take Bangladesh. It is a highly subsidised nation. Indeed, even today many nations do not earn their keep. Since they don't have the pennies, they don't have the pride, just a lot of hot air.
So I personally see no objections to a UN of 3,000 members. It's perfectly feasible. In fact, it's already happening.
Law and Morality
In Bangladesh, thanks to the donors, we are focussing exclusively on legal measures to improve our society. This is disastrous.
What happens to morality? A society that attempts to rely exclusively on law is already moribund. Law without morality means a dead end. The NGOs have focussed attention on a 'rights-based' society. There's a reason for that. They have a parallel agenda of secularism, and the promotion of 'univeral [western] values'. And this precludes the morality that we have learned from religion. A hatred of religion is prevalent among the intellectuals - instead they import werstern ideas that have no resonance here.
Values such as compassion, empathy, altruism, commiseration are dead or dying. Without these values no society can function as a group of human beings, but as a bunch of animals - for even animals have their natural laws. When Nelson Mandela was faced with the task of nation-building, he went beyond rights and appealed to the Christian value of turning the other cheek. Unfortunately, he also imported secular western values which have devastated his society.
What happens to morality? A society that attempts to rely exclusively on law is already moribund. Law without morality means a dead end. The NGOs have focussed attention on a 'rights-based' society. There's a reason for that. They have a parallel agenda of secularism, and the promotion of 'univeral [western] values'. And this precludes the morality that we have learned from religion. A hatred of religion is prevalent among the intellectuals - instead they import werstern ideas that have no resonance here.
Values such as compassion, empathy, altruism, commiseration are dead or dying. Without these values no society can function as a group of human beings, but as a bunch of animals - for even animals have their natural laws. When Nelson Mandela was faced with the task of nation-building, he went beyond rights and appealed to the Christian value of turning the other cheek. Unfortunately, he also imported secular western values which have devastated his society.
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