Modern times : Smokey scenes in Bangladesh 2

Are we actually going to have any elections on 18th december? This question mark is my personal and also many others reaction after the final decision by the Government today. After the end of B.N.P.'s 48 hours ultimatum the Government failed to bring two major alliances in any agreement. Although some other parties inside B.N.P. led four party alliance like Jamayat-e-Islami wanted the elections on 18th december till last week, B.N.P. has taken hard line about the schedule. There was an offer from the Government to B.N.P. to switch the election date to 28 december, which had been also opposed. On the other hand Awami League led 14 Party alliance and also the socalled greater alliance which was formed at the end of december 2006, wants the elections to be held on the fixed date at any cost.

One would find these news on newspapers, radio and tv channels. But what actually or wheather there are something else behind the cartain brings the anxiety to the people. If Emergency is withdrown before the last date of nomination paper submissions, those who have been punished by the law would be unable to join the election. If after the submission then the well known criminal faces will return, in fact many of them are already there and waiting for others to come out of jail soon. The present Government had taken hard lines against corruptions and terrorism at the very beginging. Then in last two years one can see a regular decrease in their degree of interests to do something in deed. There were big chaos before they came on 11/01/07. There was also an election shedule and the alliances were fighting almost everyday on the street. At that time B.N.P. led alliance wanted the election badly, with their manipulated voterlist, which could have been emended before the end of their time in Government till 28 October 2006. We have seen plenty of discussions between these two parties only any sort of initiatives were absent. It seemed to a silent observer like me that the socalled indirect military takeover on 11th of january 2007 had been planed by both of the parties during those lengthy and meaningless discussions. There are some similarities in the present situation. The parliament elections had to be held two years before. If we do not have any elections in december then comes the question that I asked at the begining of this post.

Like Rezwan Islam I am also worried.

A brief Histroy of Bangla Blogging...At the very begining (2)

From the very begining there were several attempts from the fundamentalists to take control over the front page, interpreting history of Bangladesh with their unhistoric approaches which were naturally full of lies, to construct a different image for the ongrowing IT generation and for the Bangla blogsphere about the liberation war of Bangladesh'1971 and religious fundamentalism as well. There were also some people, claiming themselves as real free thinkers, who refuse to call anyone or simply use the word Rajakar, for the sake of their postmodern view. As reactions came very strong protests from Bangladeshi bloggers with pro-liberation and anti-fundamentalist view. At that time there were hard debates on political and cultural histry, religion, philosophy and above all freedom of speech. Among these themes, pro & contra-liberation servived as the key divider of the polaraization. However, after first two months the first ever Bangla Blog community had been parted into two major groups. The conflict was often hard enough to make bloggers thinking about alternative internet platforms. Naturally the pro-liberation group was stronger and within the end of March 2006 they managed to create an atmosphere for creative and informative writings.

I consider, as an active observer of the history, April and May 2006 was the golden hours of Bangla Blogging.

(to be continued)

AqimudDeen or AqimutTakht?

Lots of funny thing are happening in Bangladeshi politics. The funniest one, from my point of view, making big slogans for the holy reform which ends with unfinished registration of the political parties and return of the previous leadership and every evil things related. The seccond joke is the registration-affair of Jamayat-e-Islami. They have renamed their party bringing Bangladesh at the begining, which is clever, but leaving Aqimuddeen form their logo is one of the biggest jokes of the century. They would have treat it as a mutual with the reality. Then one can ask, what reality can be there which is more important than establishing Deen on earth for a muslim (according to their conception of religion)? They have removed Aqimuddeen from their logo because they want to continue their corporate part in the horribly corrupt power structure of Bangladesh.

Jamayat-e-Islami should have put Aqimuttakht on the logo to make their stand clear.

The Spectre still hunting?

Newly-elected next president of USA Barak Obama has been several times convicted as a socialist or having socialist tendency. It is obvious that he is not. But for his opponents anything with the smell of protectionism appears as socialist monster. This reminds me what Engels said 113 years back:

A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.
Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?
Two things result from this fact:
I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be itself a power.
II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with a manifesto of the party itself.

For the recent context one may replace monopoly for europe.

Modern times : Smoky scenes in Bangladesh 1

There had been a lot of chaos in Bangladesh as well as in the world market in last couple of weeks. As the mob concentration goes for crisis like sculpture removal from airport road and continuous threats from the religious fundamentalists which can even cause nationwide such unrest so that there will be no elections possible on 18th of December, the world economic depression goes downwards. It is quite easy to mark correlations between the chaos caused by the fundamentalists and the uncertainty of having at last an elected parliament. But to relate it with the world crisis is not that easy. It is more empirical comment than a significant hypothesis. Being an observer of the politics since late 80's, one may go for deductions like, behind every religious fundamentalist uprising there were instabilities in world market as the key factor or almost every big crisis in the world market caused provoked religious fundamentalist chaos in Bangladesh and some other countries with similar economic and political orientations.

The chaos occurred by madrassa students was surely negligible for the government if they wanted to. But they reacted as if there was a severe fundamentalist uprising on the sculpture issue. Now almost every protest against fundamentalism is suppressed by the government. These occurrences show that the government themselves want to prolong such chaos in order to, either strengthen the fundamentalist fascism as reserve forces to be used as trained killers in "right times" or to develop some unrest to postponed parliament elections and go for a long term military regime.

The question is, can Bangladesh be treated as a country with such geopolitical importance where at the moment an independent civil government might be unpleasant for Uncle Sam & co. From my point of view yes. Bangladesh is in, at the moment, geopolitically one of the most important areas. Rise of India and China and perhaps the newly elected Maoist government in Nepal, may increase the geopolitical importance to have a strong control over Bangladesh due to the hegemonic crisis in global governance. A series of forced privatization, without creating any least alternatives, had been occurred in last 7-8 years. Selling off the natural resources began actually in marshal law regime under general Ershad, but has accelerated itself in last 11-12 years. Under democratically elected governments it is almost impossible to stop or to control criticism against this type of selling off. So, from the history, it won’t be that insignificant to see such correlations.

What is to be done? To elect one of those two corrupt parties may look meaningless and also I think which is not untrue, but having another long term military fascism would be the worst choice for Bangladesh. On the other hand if BNP/AL comes into power with the orientation they presently have, there will be definitely further massacres due to religious fundamentalism which could build stronger ground for upcoming military ruling.

There must be some way out. What we need is an elected government without having sympathy for the actual sources and beneficiaries of religious fundamentalism and communalism. Stopping these two forces will remove or at least weaken the barriers of development and stronger democracy.

A brief Histroy of Bangla Blogging...At the very begining (1)

Where and how do I begin? Although the titel itself claims to be something accademic, I'm follwing only my personal observations and experiences, being one of the oldest bloggers of the Bangla Blogsphere. Before the opportunity of writing Bangla in unicode fonts came, there was actually no chance to develop a blog in Bangla. As far as I know unicode Bangla first appeared in 2004. At that time couple of bloggers with high motivation and enthusiasm began to maintain their Bangla Blog in Blogspot or Wordpress with the help of Unicode Bangla. The first ever Bangla Blogging platform http://somewhereinblog.net came in december 2005. For the first time in history they made the glorious opportunity to write Bangla either with Bijoy or Phonetic or with the help of virtual keyboard directly. Birth of http://somewhereinblog.net was somewhat a revolution for using Bangla in the virtual world. From december 2005 to June 2007 (approximately) they had almost the absolute monoply in Bangla Blogsphere. This platform developed the first blogging community in Bangla, who can be considered as the poineers of Bangla Blogging.

I personaly stuck into it on the third day of january 2006. I enrolled myself on 31 January 2006. At that time there were hardly 40 or 50 bloggers active. Some of them used to engage themselves fully with literaure and the rest were interested in current politics and polemics. Although I was in the first group, the clashes representing the historical and contemporary politics, culture and society forced me to got engaged with. The blog-conflicts of january-february and march 2006, made the first polarization in blog community.

(to be continued ;) )

Could any hell be more horrible than now and real?

How do I supposed to react getting another reference of the underhand understanding between military regime and religious fundamentalism? The present "military-backed civil government" kept their heads down in front of so called fundamentalist protests last week.

From the histroy of South Asia, we know that the term communalism with the mask of religious fundamentalism strengtht themselves under the financing of British Empire since British colonial period. With the partition of British India with respect to the religious-group majority, left Royal Empire the upgrowing seeds of communalism in the mask of religious fundamentalism behind. Panjab and Bengal had been parted into east and west with respect to the hindu and muslim majority. As the world politics had been determind by cold war at that time and also the anti-thesis of Bengal division grew rapidly in the eastern part of former Bengal presideny, which resulted in today's Bangladesh. But as the control of the political hegemony remaind under the benificiaries of the Bengal division, the seeds of religious fundamentalism which was left behind by the british rulling class, dared to activate themselves.

So, from the very begining there had been an obvious relationship between religous fundamentalism and imperialism. We also know from the history the relationship between military regimse and imperialism, which kept continiously promoting religious groups to organize themselves safely.

The incidents last week, shows that the so called military backed civil government has no difference with the previous pure military regimes of 1975-1990. And the so called democratic forces who are preparing themselves for the upcomming parliament elections are infact got very tiny difference with the uniformed forces.

The furstration continues. I would be the happiest one to be an optimist.


news kinks:
http://www.thedailystar.net/story.php?nid=58970

Hessens upcomming Government and my predictions

Feeling a bit gloomy. A new Governtment is about to be formed in Hessen. For the first time in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany, the leftists are going to be a part of the provincial Government of Hessen, which is one of the most decisive provinces in the Post-war era of German politics. The provincial parliament elections has been held on 27 January this Year. The present CDU Government of Hessen under Chief Minister Roland Koch could only be removed if there is a coalition between SPD, The Greens and The Left Allaience. On this puzzle, wheather the Lefts are to be taken as a coalition partner of the provincial government,delayed the formation of the government in total 9 odd monthes till last week. Now after lots of pendamoniums SPD has decided itself to make a coalition with the Left allaience. On the other hand CDU and FDP leadres keep continously accusing Andrea Yipsilanti (Chief of the SPD in Hessen) for promoting a left uprising in Hessen, which can, as the CDU Chief Minister Roland Koch mentioned, influence terrorism among the children and above all in the whole socity and the whole country.

Things are nothing unexpected, atleast for those who know the political history of the federal republic of germany. But I smell something else with the statements of Roland Koch. From the history of Germany, we know, what Hitler did in 1936 at the Parliament house in Berlin. I wasn't feeling good,like most other foreigners, under the CDU Government. But now, I dont know why I feel like, what is also influenced by the present economic depression of the world economy, something worst is going to happen here.

I will be the happiest man on earth if my predictions go wrong.

Good Day!