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Friday, June 20, 2008

[mukto-mona] Media Release





Media release
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*****************************************
Sign the Petition : Release the Arrested University Teachers Immediately : An Appeal to the Caretaker Government of Bangladesh

http://www.mukto-mona.com/human_rights/university_teachers_arrest.htm

*****************************************
Daily Star publishes an interview with Mukto-Mona
http://www.mukto-mona.com/news/daily_star/daily_star_MM.pdf

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MM site is blocked in Islamic countries such as UAE. Members of those theocratic states, kindly use any proxy (such as http://proxy.org/) to access mukto-mona.

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Mukto-Mona Celebrates 5th Anniversary
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/5_yrs_anniv/index.htm

*****************************************
Mukto-Mona Celebrates Earth Day:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Earth_day2006/index.htm

*****************************************
Kansat Uprising : A Special Page from Mukto-Mona 
http://www.mukto-mona.com/human_rights/kansat2006/members/


*****************************************
MM Project : Grand assembly of local freedom fighters at Raumari
http://www.mukto-mona.com/project/Roumari/freedom_fighters_union300306.htm

*****************************************
German Bangla Radio Interviews Mukto-Mona Members:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Darwin_day/german_radio/


Mukto-Mona Celebrates Darwin Day:

http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Darwin_day/index.htm

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Some FAQ's about Mukto-Mona:

http://www.mukto-mona.com/new_site/mukto-mona/faq_mm.htm

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"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
               -Beatrice Hall [pseudonym: S.G. Tallentyre], 190




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[mukto-mona] Art. 7: Does Science make belief in Allah/God obsolete? No, but it should, says an Atheist......

 
Article 7 : Does science make belief in Allah/God obsolete?
 

 
No, but it should ; argues an atheist.
Until about 1832, when it first seems to have become established as a concept, the term « science » or "scientist" had no really independent meaning. "Science" meant "knowledge" in much the same way as "physic" meant medicine, and those who conducted experiments or organised field expeditions or managed laboratories were known as "natural philosophers." To these gentlemen the belief in a divine presence or inspiration was often assumed to be a part of the natural order, in rather the same way as it was assumed—or actually insisted upon—that a teacher at Cambridge University swear an oath to be an ordained Christian minister. For Sir Isaac Newton—an enthusiastic alchemist (an early form of the investigation of nature and an early philosophical and spiritual discipline, both combining elements of chemistry, metallurgy, physics, medicine, astrology, semiotics, mysticism, spiritualism, and art all as parts of one greater force), a despiser of the doctrine of the Trinity, and a fanatical anti-Papist, who believed that the main clues to the cosmos were to be found in the Bible. Joseph Priestley, discoverer of oxygen, was a devout Unitarian Christian as well as a believer in the phlogiston theory (1667:  an obsolete scientific theory that posited the existence of additional fire-like element called "phlogiston", in addition to the classical four elements of the Greeks: Earth, Water, Air and Fire.
Alfred Russel Wallace, to whom, along-with Darwin, we owe much of what we know about evolution and natural selection, delighted in nothing more than a session of the so-called spiritual communion with the departed. However, there were others like the rational and atheist John Stuart Mills who refused to study at Oxford University or Cambridge University, because he refused to take Anglican orders from the "white devil"; the deist and atheist David Hume (17111776)- the famous 18th-century Scottish philosopher, considered among the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment; Jean-Baptiste de Mirabaud (1743) (pseudonym du baron d'Olbach) the leader of French atheists and rationalists, who wrote the Bible of atheists-« The system of Nature », and many other less-sung heroes of atheism and rationalism.

And thus it could be argued that a commitment to science may or may not contradict a belief in the supernatural, particular in the pre-modern and pre-Enlightenment period. The best known statement of such ignorance in our own time comes from the late Stephen Jay Gould, who tactfully proposed that the worlds of science and religion commanded "non-overlapping magisteria." How true is this on a second look, or even on a first glance? Would we have adopted monotheism in the first place if we had known that:
*That our species is at most 200,000 years old.
*That the universe, as discovered by Edwin Hubble is expanding away from itself in a flash of red light.
*That these are very recent examples, post-Darwinian and post-Einsteinian, and they make pathetic nonsense of any idea that human presence on this planet, let alone in this one of billion galaxies of which our planet earth is a minutely small member, is part of a plan ! Which design, or designer? What plan, or planner determined that millions of humans would die without even a grave marker, for our first 200,000 years of struggling and desperate existence, and that there would only then be a "revelation" to save us humans, only about 3,000 years ago, disclosed only to few ignorant peasants in a remote, violent and illiterate area of the Middle East? Or to one of ignorant and illiterate Bedouins of the remote and thinly populated, socially and culturally backward desert of Arabia only 1500 years ago ? What nonsense ! What make-belief !

Such wild claims were, once, the prerogative of the Popes, Archbishops, Ayatullahs and the witch doctors, but now it's all but gone. This is as much as to say that reason and logic reject any Allah or God, which would be a fairly close approach to a historical and scientific claim that Ethics and Morality shudders at the very idea of an Allah or God !

Religion or Faith cannot rest itself on the argument that there might or might not be a prime mover. Religious faith must, of necessity, believe in answered prayers, divinely ordained morality, heavenly warrant for circumcision, stoning to death, cutting of hands and feet, Female Genital Mutilation and the occurrence of miracles etc. Physics and chemistry, biology and paleontology (
the study of prehistoric life forms on Earth through the examination of plant and animal fossils). and archaeology have, given us explanations for what used to be mysterious, and furnished us with hypotheses that are much better than, the ones offered by ignorant believers in inexplicable dimensions.

Does this mean that the inexplicable or superstitious has become "obsolete"? in a way and to some extent, yes, it has ; if only because we today believe that the human capacity for wonder neither will nor should be destroyed or superseded. But the original problem with religion is that it is our first, and our worst, attempt at explaining ourselves and our universe. It is how we came up with answers before we had any knowledge, any tools for investigation or analytic minds looking for evidence. It belongs to the terrified childhood of our species, before we knew about germs or could account for earthquakes. It belongs to our intellectual childhood, too, in the less charming sense of demanding a tyrannical authority: a protective Allah/God-parent who demands compulsory love even as he exacts a tithe of fear for his colossal destruction. This unalterable and eternal religious despot, Allah / God is the origin of totalitarianism, and represents the first cringing human attempt to refer all difficult questions to the smoking and forbidding religious altars. This of course is why one desires that science and humanism would make faith obsolete, even as one sadly realises that as long as we feel like insecure primates we shall remain very fearful of breaking the chain.

----------------------------------

In the greater interest of civilization, all articles in this series may be reproduced or published in any language.

Article 1: 
 Does science make belief in Allah/God obsolete ? Necessarily, it does - speaks a physicist
Articlw 2: Yes, of course  - speaks a psychologist
 <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/humanist_international/message/115>                                                                                                     Article 3 :  
Does science make belief in Allah/God obsolete ? No, and yes - speaks a Christian Priest… !<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/humanist_international/message/116>                                                         Article 4 :  Does science make belief in Allah/God obsolete ? Absolutely - says an eminent scientist <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/humanist_international/message/117>
Article 5 : Does science make belief in Allah/God obsolete? Of course –responds a philosopher <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/humanist_international/message/118>
Article 6 : Does science make belief in Allah/God obsolete ? Not Really - says a biologist http://groups.yahoo.com/group/humanist_international/message/120
 
 

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*****************************************
Sign the Petition : Release the Arrested University Teachers Immediately : An Appeal to the Caretaker Government of Bangladesh

http://www.mukto-mona.com/human_rights/university_teachers_arrest.htm

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Daily Star publishes an interview with Mukto-Mona
http://www.mukto-mona.com/news/daily_star/daily_star_MM.pdf

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MM site is blocked in Islamic countries such as UAE. Members of those theocratic states, kindly use any proxy (such as http://proxy.org/) to access mukto-mona.

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Mukto-Mona Celebrates 5th Anniversary
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/5_yrs_anniv/index.htm

*****************************************
Mukto-Mona Celebrates Earth Day:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Earth_day2006/index.htm

*****************************************
Kansat Uprising : A Special Page from Mukto-Mona 
http://www.mukto-mona.com/human_rights/kansat2006/members/


*****************************************
MM Project : Grand assembly of local freedom fighters at Raumari
http://www.mukto-mona.com/project/Roumari/freedom_fighters_union300306.htm

*****************************************
German Bangla Radio Interviews Mukto-Mona Members:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Darwin_day/german_radio/


Mukto-Mona Celebrates Darwin Day:

http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Darwin_day/index.htm

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Some FAQ's about Mukto-Mona:

http://www.mukto-mona.com/new_site/mukto-mona/faq_mm.htm

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"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
               -Beatrice Hall [pseudonym: S.G. Tallentyre], 190




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[mukto-mona] Fw: Sharafat Hussain Babu (TMIC) with Congressman Mike Honda (D-CA) an d Joseph Crowley 9D-NY) at Washington / 06-17-08 Evening

Tarek Mukti International Comm. leader Sharafat Hossain Babu recently met with 2 congressmen to demand the unconditional release of Tarek Zia, his brother Koko and mother ex-Prime Minister recently in Washington,DC

Please note: forwarded message attached

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*****************************************
Sign the Petition : Release the Arrested University Teachers Immediately : An Appeal to the Caretaker Government of Bangladesh

http://www.mukto-mona.com/human_rights/university_teachers_arrest.htm

*****************************************
Daily Star publishes an interview with Mukto-Mona
http://www.mukto-mona.com/news/daily_star/daily_star_MM.pdf

*****************************************

MM site is blocked in Islamic countries such as UAE. Members of those theocratic states, kindly use any proxy (such as http://proxy.org/) to access mukto-mona.

*****************************************
Mukto-Mona Celebrates 5th Anniversary
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/5_yrs_anniv/index.htm

*****************************************
Mukto-Mona Celebrates Earth Day:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Earth_day2006/index.htm

*****************************************
Kansat Uprising : A Special Page from Mukto-Mona 
http://www.mukto-mona.com/human_rights/kansat2006/members/


*****************************************
MM Project : Grand assembly of local freedom fighters at Raumari
http://www.mukto-mona.com/project/Roumari/freedom_fighters_union300306.htm

*****************************************
German Bangla Radio Interviews Mukto-Mona Members:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Darwin_day/german_radio/


Mukto-Mona Celebrates Darwin Day:

http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Darwin_day/index.htm

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Some FAQ's about Mukto-Mona:

http://www.mukto-mona.com/new_site/mukto-mona/faq_mm.htm

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VISIT MUKTO-MONA WEB-SITE : http://www.mukto-mona.com/

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"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
               -Beatrice Hall [pseudonym: S.G. Tallentyre], 190




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[mukto-mona] Kolkata under eco-invasion

 
Wake up to global warming
Subrata Sinha 21 Jun 08 (http://thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=4&theme=&usrsess=1&id=209196)

Ever since man adopted the path of relentless exploitation of nature, disregarding the advice of sages and later day environmentalists, his very existence has been imperilled. Global warming is a manifestation of this suicidal path, created by human activities, escalated by noxious fumes from urban transportation and thermal power generation. The steeply-escalating oil price is its fallout; atmospheric pollution is now a global problem.
The former US vice-president, Al Gore, and the Inter-Governmental Panel for Climate Change shared the Nobel Prize for their efforts to highlight this grave issue. Significantly, they have pinpointed Gangetic West Bengal to be among areas to be hit first. For a state government that places environment-friendly hoardings all over the state, it would be interesting to examine the contradictions in its own stand vis-a-vis environment given that West Bengal is the ideal microcosm of the global scenario. None of political parties here bothers about events unlikely to happen within its lifespan. That amounts to a subhuman disregard even for future generations. The CPI(M), the dominant Left Front Government partner – as well as the Opposition parties – have protested against the fuel price rise imposed by the Centre. However, it is farcical that both these warring groups called separate bandhs on a Thursday and a Friday to the utter delight of urbanites for the bonus of a long weekend. Cocooned in their self-centred narcissism of relative affluence, they remain insulated from the plight of daily wage earners and the owners of small shops and minor trading establishments.
Amongst the most worrisome features defining today's society is the number of banks and other credit institutions in the sprint for disbursing loans. Some have roadside camps to lure loan customers; they compete to lower monthly payment and offer interest rates that allure people despite horrific stories of harassment of defaulters by hired goons. Like most urban areas, Kolkata, therefore, has seen a phenomenal increase in urban transportation, including high-power motorbikes, cars and SUVs. The state government has invited numerous automobile companies to set up units here. The point is that with narrow roads congested with sluggishly moving traffic, emissions levels escalate. The state has sponsored the Tata Nano at Singur, with unverified technological ability for emission control! Nevertheless, once it hits the road, the urban middle class, supported by easy loan facilities, will make a beeline for the fulfilment of a cherished dream. Yet the state government is critical of the Centre's petroleum policy – a small step in the right direction!
Most forward-looking cities in the world are switching over to trams and trolley cars, or diversifying their transport systems. Kolkata has the dubious distinction of easing out trams and covering their tracks for widening roads for the rapidly increasing, fume-spewing vehicles. Trams were cheap, convenient and environmentally non-hazardous. Certainly, the prolific expenditure on urban infrastructure, including numerous flyovers, could have been better utilised to renovate the tramways. That, alas, was not to be.
Private car owners (with Euro II standards) have to get their emission levels monitored regularly or face police wrath. Yet, most taxis, autos and buses are permitted to spew smoke and fumes. The latest move is to roll back a state government order for stricter emission standards for such vehicles before these are allowed fresh supplies of fuel. A fantastic act of commission and corruption. This city could even have learnt a lesson on emission control from New Delhi; that too is not to be. One wonders if the Capital Region was selected only to demonstrate to the world that India was doing its duty amid the global warming crisis by switching over to Compressed Natural Gas systems. Even Mumbai is now getting its old taxis similarly altered. Kolkata seems to be completely ignorant of its vulnerability to global warming.
(The author is a former dy director-general, Geological Survey of India.)

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Sign the Petition : Release the Arrested University Teachers Immediately : An Appeal to the Caretaker Government of Bangladesh

http://www.mukto-mona.com/human_rights/university_teachers_arrest.htm

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Daily Star publishes an interview with Mukto-Mona
http://www.mukto-mona.com/news/daily_star/daily_star_MM.pdf

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MM site is blocked in Islamic countries such as UAE. Members of those theocratic states, kindly use any proxy (such as http://proxy.org/) to access mukto-mona.

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Mukto-Mona Celebrates 5th Anniversary
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/5_yrs_anniv/index.htm

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Mukto-Mona Celebrates Earth Day:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Earth_day2006/index.htm

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Kansat Uprising : A Special Page from Mukto-Mona 
http://www.mukto-mona.com/human_rights/kansat2006/members/


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MM Project : Grand assembly of local freedom fighters at Raumari
http://www.mukto-mona.com/project/Roumari/freedom_fighters_union300306.htm

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German Bangla Radio Interviews Mukto-Mona Members:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Darwin_day/german_radio/


Mukto-Mona Celebrates Darwin Day:

http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Darwin_day/index.htm

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"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
               -Beatrice Hall [pseudonym: S.G. Tallentyre], 190




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[mukto-mona] Cambridge Divinity Scholar translates "Anandmath" into English

http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/news/dp/2008050602

News and Events
History-defining novel translated
7 May 2008

The novel that defined India's national song and inspired a whole
generation of freedom fighters over a century ago has been translated
by a Faculty of Divinity scholar.

Professor Julius Lipner's recent work is the only complete English
translation of `Anandamath, or the Sacred Brotherhood,' a novel
penned by author, poet and journalist Bankimcandra Chatterji in 1882.

For his work, Prof Lipner received the 2008 A.K. Ramanujan Book Prize
for Translation.

The prize is conferred for translations from a South Asian language,
and can be from work from any historical period. Previously
unpublished translations are more likely to receive the award.

Professor Lipner's version of `Anandamath' is the first translation
since the early 20th century and is the only one complete with
historical facts and an introduction which discusses the novel's
historical basis and the author's background.

The award was presented to Professor Lipner by the South Asia Council
which is part of the American Association for Asian Studies (AAS).
The AAS is a scholarly association open to all people interested in
Asia's history and culture.

Professor Lipner was born and brought up in India which he regularly
visits to conduct research. He has published extensively and has
lectured throughout the world. He teaches Hinduism and the
Comparative Study of Religion.

For more information about the Faculty of Divinity and the AAS please
access the links top right of this page.


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*****************************************
Sign the Petition : Release the Arrested University Teachers Immediately : An Appeal to the Caretaker Government of Bangladesh

http://www.mukto-mona.com/human_rights/university_teachers_arrest.htm

*****************************************
Daily Star publishes an interview with Mukto-Mona
http://www.mukto-mona.com/news/daily_star/daily_star_MM.pdf

*****************************************

MM site is blocked in Islamic countries such as UAE. Members of those theocratic states, kindly use any proxy (such as http://proxy.org/) to access mukto-mona.

*****************************************
Mukto-Mona Celebrates 5th Anniversary

http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/5_yrs_anniv/index.htm

*****************************************
Mukto-Mona Celebrates Earth Day:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Earth_day2006/index.htm

*****************************************
Kansat Uprising : A Special Page from Mukto-Mona

http://www.mukto-mona.com/human_rights/kansat2006/members/


*****************************************
MM Project : Grand assembly of local freedom fighters at Raumari

http://www.mukto-mona.com/project/Roumari/freedom_fighters_union300306.htm

*****************************************
German Bangla Radio Interviews Mukto-Mona Members:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Darwin_day/german_radio/


Mukto-Mona Celebrates Darwin Day:

http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Darwin_day/index.htm


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Some FAQ's about Mukto-Mona:

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Re: [ALOCHONA] Sheik Hasina is a perfect Leader!

Yes you right. Personall she is a great lady and good
house wife. But Politically she is a lier and
corrupted as well as Khaleda Zia or others
politicians. We need at least less lier and less
corrupted politicians. Please do not only support your
party or leaders, support our country too.

Thank you
Anwar
--- Nayan Khan <udarakash08@yahoo.com> wrote:

>
>
>
> The daughter of the father of our nation is a very
> kind hearted, lovely women, a real housewife like
> many of ours, after all, she has full of affections
> like our grandmas, forget about being a good wife!
> We hope she will stick with it forever by staying
> with her own family members overseas. Bangladeshi
> people once again got opportunity to compare both
> leaders. As a perfect daughter of a great leader who
> fought for freedom of a nation throughout his life,
> she like her dad doesn't want to remain herself in a
> small cottage, moreover, she carries freedom
> fighters or shahidi 'chetona', how dare she could
> stay in jail without ferrying this chetona days and
> nights long!
>  
> Almighty Lord shows His enormous mercy on her many
> times! This time again!
>  
> As per our honest, corrupt-free, 'satyabadi' lawyers
> along with her own Sheikh bhathija Barrister Taposh,
> she had completely lost her hearing, i.e. she was
> unable to hear anything during her last minute
> jail-life. But thanks God, right after released from
> the jail, after arrival in the USA, she started
> hearing everything, even BBC's journalist whispered
> question.  
>  
> Our future leader, Harvard graduate Joy Wajeed
> surely said a daughter of the father of a nation
> can't deal with any conspiracy. That's why she is
> very silent now, playing with her grand kids,
> showing her lovely 'momota' to them let alone poor
> peoples struggling to eat a piece of bread! Let it
> be done by 'sick lady' Khaleda Zia who doesn't want
> to leave her husband's country.
>  
> Prison can make a talkative person dumb.
> Psychologist may consider to prescribe this new
> great medicine for their next patients.  
>  
> We hope and pray for her rest in peace in her
> dreamland what she had proved many times during her
> regime-golden age in the era of 1996~2001. Even she
> transferred her prime ministrial office for a month
> long in USA. Let her be playing with our few future
> leaders continuously not playing 14 crore peoples'
> fate.   
>  
> We miss you, Netri. You are a perfect BALer leader! 
>
http://amadershomoy.com/online/news.php?id=23834&sys=1
>  
>  
>
>
>

------------------------------------

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[mukto-mona] `269,000 people died in Bangladesh Independence War` British Medical Journal

main table is here

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/bmj.a137v1/TBL2

main article published in british medical journal is here

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/bmj.a137

news in other media

http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/jun/20bangla.htm

http://www.jaijaidin.com/details.php?nid=76290

http://www.zeenews.com/articles.asp?aid=450003&sid=SAS

 

`269,000 people died in Bangladesh Independence War`
London, June 20: As many as 269,000 people died during the war leading to the liberation of Bangladesh in 1971, nearly five times more than the previously estimated figure, a new study says.

The study, titled `Fifty years of violent war deaths from Vietnam to Bosnia: Analysis of data from the world health survey programme`, published in the British medical journal said "war causes more deaths than previously estimated, and there is no evidence to support a recent decline in war deaths".


Earlier estimates of casualties during the Bangladesh war were in the region of 58,000, the study noted. The objective of the survey was to provide an accurate estimate of deaths in wars. The study analysed estimated deaths from war injuries in 13 countries over 50 years, including Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Between 1975 and 2002, the study says that the ongoing ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka between the government and Tamil Tigers accounted for the death of 215,000 people, while earlier estimates put the figure at around 61,000.

"Accurate estimates of war mortality are crucial for planning on several different levels. Political, military, and public health leaders must have credible information on the number of deaths to plan properly before, during, and after wars," said the study.

"The public must also be aware of the human cost of wars. Information on war deaths is useful in the investigation of the scope of war crimes, as in the Nuremburg trials after the second World War or the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia," the study urged.

 

 

 


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*****************************************
Sign the Petition : Release the Arrested University Teachers Immediately : An Appeal to the Caretaker Government of Bangladesh

http://www.mukto-mona.com/human_rights/university_teachers_arrest.htm

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Daily Star publishes an interview with Mukto-Mona
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[mukto-mona] Obama, Clinton to campaign together next week

Obama, Clinton to campaign together next week

Reuters

Fri Jun 20, 10:52 AM ET

 

Former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will join Barack Obama on the campaign trail next week for the first time since Obama emerged as the presumptive Democratic nominee on June 3.

Obama, an Illinois senator, has been intent on trying to unify the party ahead of the November election after a bitter, 16-month struggle between the candidates to become the Democratic standard-bearer.

Obama and Clinton will appear together on Friday, June 27, but the Obama campaign gave no details about the event.

Earlier this week, Obama included several high-profile supporters of Clinton, such as former secretary of state Madeleine Albright and retired Gen. Wesley Clark in meetings to advise him on national security.

Clinton, a New York senator and former first lady, saw her hopes of becoming the first woman president slip away after she entered the race last year with an aura of inevitability. Obama, who faces presumptive Republican nominee John McCain, would be the first black U.S. president.

Clinton did not concede defeat right away but in a speech to her supporters four days after Obama had racked up enough delegates to clinch the nomination, she gave Obama an emphatic endorsement.

(Reporting by Caren Bohan; Editing by Jackie Frank)


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[mukto-mona] The United Bengali republic

The following article is from Banglapedia.org.


United Bengal Movement a political proposal to solve the communal
question on the eve of the termination of British rule in India. In
April-May 1947 it became clear that the Partition of India was
ineviatable. huseyn shaheed suhrawardy, the Premier of the province
of Bengal, formally launched his idea of a sovereign state for
undivided Bengal. Almost simultaneously sarat chandra bose came
forward with his proposal for a Sovereign Socialist Republic of
Bengal. There had been differences of opinion between Suhrawardy and
Sarat Bose regarding the sovereign status of Bengal, but the primary
motive of both of them was to resist the partition of the province.
While the former wanted a completely independent state for united
Bengal outside the union of India, the latter visualised Bengal to be
a sovereign socialist republic within the Indian union.

Both, however, vehemently protested the move for the partition of
Bengal, initiated by most Congress and hindu mahasabha leaders of the
province. Some Hindu and Muslim leaders of Bengal supported
Suhrawardy and Sarat Bose in their move. Prominent among them were
Kiran Shankar Roy (Leader of the Congress Parliamentary Party in
Bengal Assembly), Satya Ranjan Bakshi (Sarat Bose's Secretary), abul
hashim (Secretary of the Bengal Provincial Muslim League), Fazlur
Rahman (Revenue Minister of the Province), mohammad ali chaudhury
(Finance Minister in Suhrawardy's cabinet) and others. For a while,
the proposal was discussed both at private and public bodies and
important negotiations took place among Bengal leaders.

In fact, the concept of a sovereign independent Bengal had its
origins in the past. The adoption of the lahore resolution in March
1940 was a significant step towards highlighting the demand for
separate homelands for the Muslims of the two Muslim majority zones
of India. But the Lahore Resolution remained undefined until April
1946. To the Bengal League leaders, the Pakistan scheme was mainly a
proposal for the establishment of two sovereign and independent
states in the two Muslim majority zones of India. The majority
opinion, represented by Suhrawardy and Abul Hashim, favoured some
kind of Greater Bengal consisting of the whole of Bengal and Assam
plus an adjacent part of the district of Purnea in Bihar which had a
Muslim majority.

khwaja nazimuddin (an influential member of the working committee of
Bengal as well as of All India muslim league) and Maulana mohammad
akram khan (President of Bengal Muslim League) were the exponents of
the minority opinion. They wanted a more homogeneous Pakistan
excluding the Hindu-majority Burdwan Division and including the rest
of Bengal, the whole of Assam, and some portion of the Purnea
District in Bihar.

mohammed ali jinnah came out officially with his views on the issue
in the Muslim Legislators' Convention at Delhi held on 7-9 April
1946. His definition of Pakistan led his followers in Bengal to
reconsider their earlier stand on Pakistan. They now began to support
Jinnah's stand for Akhand Pakistan comprising the whole of Bengal and
Assam in the North East and the Punjab, Sind, Baluchistan and the
North West Frontier Province in the North West of India. But it seems
probable that the Hashim-Suhrawardy group of the Bengal League
conceived the idea of East Pakistan in terms of an independent and
sovereign Greater Bengal since it was fully consistent with the
scheme of Pakistan as envisaged in the Lahore Resolution. Sometime
later both Suhrawardy and Hashim, being influenced by this ideal,
initiated the move for a united independent Bengal through
negotiations with provincial Congress leaders like Sarat Bose and
Kiran Shankar Roy. Indeed, Suhrawardy was imbued with such an idea
long before some Hindus organised a movement for partition and even
before the calcutta riot (1946).

After Attlee's February Declaration (1947) and the arguments advanced
by the indian national congress for the partition of the Punjab and
Bengal following the declaration, a few politicians of Bengal,
including Suhrawardy, thought of maintaining the integrity of the
province as a sovereign state. They felt the necessity of making
Bengal a self-sufficient state with its own constitution. The Premier
of Bengal emphasised the formation of a coalition ministry in the
province. He further emphasised that Bengal belonged to the Bengalis
and was indivisible. One portion of the province depended on the
other and all were entitled to participate in its administration. He
hoped that all sections of the people of the province would want to
live and work for making Bengal a glorious land. Suhrawardy
maintained that independence would usher in a new era of peace and
prosperity in Bengal. Hashim urged upon the Congress and the Muslim
leaders of Bengal to make joint efforts for the settlement of their
affairs peacefully and happily outside the aegis of the British
administration. Among the Congress leaders of the province, Sarat
Bose shared the Premier's view on an undivided Bengal.

During the days of April-May 1947, the Hindu press and politicians
began an intense movement for partitioning Bengal. The British
Declaration of February 1947 clearly foreshadowed the partition of
India. As it became clear to the Congress and Hindu Mahasabha leaders
that the partition of the country was inevitable, they insisted on
retaining the Hindu-majority areas of Bengal and Hindu & Sikh
majority areas of Punjab within the union of India. The Bengal
Provincial Congress Committee formally declared in favour of
partition of the province and the creation of a separate Hindu
majority province (West Bengal) which included Calcutta within the
union of India. Almost simultaneously, the Bengal Provincial Hindu
Mahasabha took a resolution proclaiming its firm resolve that the
Hindus of Bengal, at least the ones in Hindu majority areas, should
remain within the Union of India and should not be separated from the
rest of India. shyama prasad mukherjee was able to win the majority
of Bengal Congress and Bengal Hindu representatives in the Central
and Provincial Legislative Assemblies to his side. In a press
conference held in Delhi on 27 April 1947, Suhrawardy put forward his
plan for a united independent Bengal. Following him Abul Hashim
declared his views on the same issue through a statement issued in
Calcutta on 29 April 1947. A few days later, Sarat Bose put forward
his proposals for a Sovereign Socialist Republic of Bengal.

These schemes were launched in an atmosphere of mutual distrust
between the two major communities of India in general and Bengal in
particular. The Pakistan movement led by Jinnah had become popular
among the Muslims of Bengal in the post-Lahore Resolution days. The
Bengal Provincial Muslim League began to mobilise Muslim public
opinion in support of the demand for Pakistan. Congress and Hindu
Mahasabha leaders of the province were alarmed at the prospect of
the 'Pakistanisation' of the whole of Bengal. The inevitable increase
in communal tensions made it difficult for a Congress-League accord
in the province. The situation was aggravated by the All India Muslim
League's recourse to the strategy of 'Direct Action' to achieve
Pakistan. While direct action day was observed peacefully in other
provinces, it turned violent in Calcutta where the Government was
under the control of the Muslim League. It had a major impact on the
formation of Hindu public opinion in favour of the demand for the
partition of the province.

Ultimately, Bengal Provincial Hindu Mahasabha and the majority of the
Congress leaders of the province set aside the scheme of a sovereign
Bengal. They mobilised a large section of Bengali Hindus against
Suhrawardy's move. They were of the opinion that it was nothing but a
political strategy to establish Pakistan in the whole of Bengal. The
Hindu press did everything it could to convince Hindu opinion against
the united Bengal formula. The Hindu Mahasabha influenced Bengali
Congressmen to campaign against the move for an independent Bengal.

While the majority of the Bengal Congressmen were opposed to
Suhrawardy's scheme for an independent Bengal, the opinion in the
League circles also came in favour of the partion. The majority of
the Bengal Muslim Leaguers, led by Khwaja Nazimuddin and Maulana
Akram Khan, wanted Bengal to be an integral part of the single state
of Pakistan, and not an independent state. Nazimuddin, Akram Khan and
their followers were just as adamant as Jinnah about Pakistan. They
firmly believed in Jinnah's Two Nations Theory.

In spite of the opposition from most Congress and League leaders,
Suhrawardy and Hashim continued their efforts to reach an agreement
with Hindu leaders of the province on the basis of their schemes.
Suhrawardy met Frederick Burrows, Jinnah and Lord mountbatten, at
different times and had satisfactory talks with them. Sarat Bose
raised a voice of protest against the AICC's March resolution. Kiran
Shankar was convinced that if League leaders were prepared to come
forward with some offer to the Hindus, the province could still be
kept unified. From the beginning of May 1947, the Bengal
unificationists thus came closer to each other. They met Gandhi with
their proposals during the latter's visit to Calcutta and sought his
suggestions. They also tried to persuade the Congress and the League
High Commands to accept their views. Finally, a tentative agreement
was reached at a meeting, held on 20 May 1947, in Calcutta among
Bengali leaders who were favourable to the move for a united and
independent Bengal. The following were the terms of the agreement:

1. Bengal would be a Free State. The Free State of Bengal would
decide its relations with the rest of India.

2. The Constitution of the Free State of Bengal would provide for
election to the Bengal Legislature on the basis of a joint electorate
and adult franchise, with reservation of seats proportionate to the
population among Hindus and Muslims. The seats set aside for Hindus
and Scheduled Caste Hindus would be distributed amongst them in
proportion to their respective population, or in such manner as may
be agreed among them. The constituencies would be multiple
constituencies and the votes would be distributive and not
cumulative. A candidate who got the majority of the votes of his own
community cast during the elections and 25 percent of the votes of
the other communities so cast, would be declared elected. If no
candidate satisfied these conditions, that candidate who got the
largest number of votes of his own community would be elected.

3. On the announcement by His Majesty's Government that the proposal
of the Free State of Bengal had been accepted and that Bengal would
not be partitioned, the present Bengal Ministry would be dissolved. A
new interim Ministry would be brought into being, consisting of an
equal number of Muslims and Hindus (including Scheduled Caste Hindus)
but excluding the Chief Minister. In this Ministry, Chief Minister
would be a Muslim and the Home Minister a Hindu.

4. Pending the final emergence of a Legislature and a Ministry under
the new constitutions, Hindus (including Scheduled Caste Hindus) and
Muslims would have an equal share in the Services, including military
and police. The Services would be manned by Bengalis.

5. A Constituent Assembly composed of 30 persons, 16 Muslims and 14
non-Muslims, would be elected by Muslim and non-Muslim members of the
Legislature respectively, excluding Europeans.

After arriving at an agreement among themselves, Suhrawardy, Kiran
Shankar Roy and Sarat Chandra Bose tried to secure the approval of
the Congress and the League High Commands for the terms of the
tentative agreement. But the prevailing misunderstanding between the
Congress and the League leaders and the changing political situation
completely unnerved the authors of the agreement. The majority of the
Congress and League leaders of Bengal denounced the terms of the
agreement outright. Influential Hindu dailies of Calcutta and the
press belonging to the Khwaja group of the Bengal League started
campaigning against the terms of the agreement. While the Khwaja
group thought that the agreement would amount to a complete surrender
to the Hindus, Congress and Hindu Mahasabha leaders felt that it was
designed entirely to extend the frontiers of Pakistan. On 28 May
1947, the Working Committee of the Bengal Provincial Muslim League at
its meeting under the Presidentship of Akram Khan denounced the terms
of the tentative agreement and reiterated its adherence to the League
demand for Pakistan and expressed full confidence in the leadership
of Jinnah. The Bengal unity formula received a further setback when,
following the statement of the Congress Working Committee, Kalipada
Mukherjee, the General Secretary of the Bengal Congress discarded it
through a statement issued on 1 June 1947.

In all-India politics, the main opposition to the proposal for a
sovereign independent Bengal came from the Indian National Congress.
The Congress High Command was frightened of the possibility of
permanent domination of Hindus by Muslims in a united Bengal. Both
Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel were totally opposed to
the concept of a sovereign Bengal. Nehru thought that through this
scheme the Muslim League in Bengal would force practically the whole
of Bengal to join Pakistan. He further held the view that if Bengal
were to remain united it should continue to be a part of the Union of
India. He made it clear that Congress would regard a separate state
of Bengal as an extension of Pakistan. Sardar Patel too offered
determined resistance to the move for Bengal unity. His
correspondence with influential Hindu leaders of Bengal during April-
June 1947 indicates his role in directing Hindus to the partition of
the province as well as his fanatical opposition to the idea of a
sovereign Bengal. He condemned those Hindu leaders of Bengal who had
got themselves involved in negotiations with the Muslim League
leaders of the province.

The approach of the Muslim League High Command to the terms of the
tentative agreements was also not favourable. True, Jinnah, was not
totally opposed to the proposition. It is evident that he had once
offered some encouragement to the scheme. Considering the arguments
of Mountbatten that in case of a division of India there should be a
partition of the Punjab and Bengal, Jinnah initially was ready to
agree to the proposal of a united independent Bengal. His primary
consideration was to avert the partition of Bengal; the possibility
of a potential alliance between an independent Bengal and Pakistan in
the future was of secondary importance to him. But he could not
finally settle his mind in favour of the issue. Although apparently
he had given his blessings to the move, several factors seemed to
have been responsible for making Jinnah reconsider his stand. He
rejected the idea in the end, perhaps he felt that it was after all a
deviation from the creed of Pakistan. He was not interested in
offering any concessions such as joint electorate etc, as
incorporated within the terms of the tentative agreement.

The Premier of Bengal had sincerely felt that the formation of a
coalition Ministry in the province would be an important step towards
bringing the Hindus and Muslims of Bengal closer together as well as
preventing the province from being partitioned. But Jinnah never
considered these issues to be matters of great urgency. His veto to a
coalition cabinet in Bengal proved to be fatal to the Suhrawardy-Bose
Formula.

The British were never totally allergic to the idea of a sovereign
independent Bengal. Burrows, the Governor of the province, was not at
all in favour of the partition of the province. In fact, he was
inclined to the Suhrawardy- Bose Formula and had tried his best for
its implementation to the last. The Viceroy was also not unwilling to
offer united Bengal the status of a Dominion along with India and
Pakistan. He had assured Suhrawardy that the British would accept any
settlement about Bengal approved by the League and the Congress High
Commands. But the British had to look at the question from an all
India point of view. They were not eager to compromise the safety of
the whole of India for the interest of one province. Hence in the
long run the failure of the scheme was inevitable.The final blow to
the concept was given when the Congress and the League High Commands
accepted Mountbatten Plan (the 3rd June Plan of 1947) for partition
of India and for transfer of power to the two Dominions of India and
Pakistan. [Chitta Ranjan Misra]

------------------------------------

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[mukto-mona] A tiger come across the river and killed 3 peoples in Munshigonj.

Dear All,

A tiger is come across the river and killed 3 peoples at Kadamtala in Munshigonj union of Satkhira. Peoples are thundered and shouting to give away the tiger from village.

 

The tiger come across the Malanch river aroud 7.30pm in the dark. First it killed a man in the road. When people shouted, then the tiger went in a house. In the house there was two peoples. The tiger killed two peoples. Peoples tried to keep the tiger in the houses, could not. Now (11.55 pm) the tiger is staying in the locality. Peoples are moving from their area for safety.

 

Recently a number of tiger killed the forest resource collector.

 

Mohon
 

Mohon Kumar Mondal
Executive Director
LEDARS (Previously GUS)
Head Office
Village: Munshigonj, Post Office: Kadamtala
Upazila-Shyamnagar, District- Satkhira. P.C- 9455
Bangladesh
Phone: +88 017 1346 2821, +88 019 1354 4402

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[mukto-mona] Johan Hari Reports Bangladesh set to disappear under the waves by the end of the century

 

Bangladesh is set to disappear under the waves by the end of the century

A special report by Johann Hari

The Daily Independent

Friday, 20 June 2008

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/bangladesh-is-set-to-disappear-under-the-waves-by-the-end-of-the-century--a-special-report-by-johann-hari-850938.html

 

Bangladesh, the most crowded nation on earth, is set to disappear under the waves by the end of this century – and we will be to blame. Johann Hari took a journey to see for himself how western profligacy and indifference have sealed the fate of 150 million peoplewent to see for himself the spreading misery and destruction as the ocean reclaims the land on which so many millions depend

 

This spring, I took a month-long road trip across a country that we – you, me and everyone we know – are killing. One day, not long into my journey, I travelled over tiny ridges and groaning bridges on the back of a motorbike to reach the remote village of Munshigonj. The surviving villagers – gaunt, creased people – were sitting by a stagnant pond. They told me, slowly, what we have done to them.

 

Ten years ago, the village began to die. First, many of the trees turned a strange brownish-yellow colour and rotted. Then the rice paddies stopped growing and festered in the water. Then the fish floated to the surface of the rivers, gasping. Then many of the animals began to die. Then many of the children began to die.

 

The waters flowing through Munshigonj – which had once been sweet and clear and teeming with life – had turned salty and dead.

 

Arita Rani, a 25-year-old, sat looking at the salt water, swaddled in a blue sari and her grief. "We couldn't drink the water from the river, because it was suddenly full of salt and made us sick," she said. "So I had to give my children water from this pond. I knew it was a bad idea. People wash in this pond. It's dirty. So we all got dysentery." She keeps staring at its surface. "I have had it for 10 years now. You feel weak all the time, and you have terrible stomach pains. You need to run to the toilet 10 times a day. My boy Shupria was seven and he had this for his whole life. He was so weak, and kept getting coughs and fevers. And then one morning..."

 

Her mother interrupted the trailing silence. "He died," she said. Now Arita's surviving three-year-old, Ashik, is sick, too. He is sprawled on his back on the floor. He keeps collapsing; his eyes are watery and distant. His distended stomach feels like a balloon pumped full of water. "Why did this happen?" Arita asked.

 

It is happening because of us. Every flight, every hamburger, every coal power plant, ends here, with this. Bangladesh is a flat, low-lying land made of silt, squeezed in between the melting mountains of the Himalayas and the rising seas of the Bay of Bengal. As the world warms, the sea is swelling – and wiping Bangladesh off the map.

 

Deep below the ground of Munshigonj and thousands of villages like it, salt water is swelling up. It is this process – called "saline inundation" – that killed their trees and their fields and contaminated their drinking water. Some farmers have shifted from growing rice to farming shrimp – but that employs less than a quarter of the people, and it makes them dependent on a fickle export market. The scientific evidence shows that unless we change now, this salt water will keep rising and rising, until everything here is ocean.

 

I decided to embark on this trip when, sitting in my air-conditioned flat in London, I noticed a strange and seemingly impossible detail in a scientific report. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – whose predictions have consistently turned out to be underestimates – said that Bangladesh is on course to lose 17 per cent of its land and 30 per cent of its food production by 2050. For America, this would be equivalent to California and New York State drowning, and the entire mid-West turning salty and barren.

 

Surely this couldn't be right? How could more than 20 million Bangladeshis be turned into refugees so suddenly and so silently? I dug deeper, hoping it would be disproved – and found that many climatologists think the IPCC is way too optimistic about Bangladesh. I turned to Professor James Hansen, the director of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, whose climate calculations have proved to be more accurate than anybody else's. He believes the melting of the Greenland ice cap being picked up by his satellites today, now, suggests we are facing a 25-metre rise in sea levels this century – which would drown Bangladesh entirely. When I heard this, I knew I had to go, and see.

 

1. The edge of a cliff

The first thing that happens when you arrive in Dhaka is that you stop. And wait. And wait. And all you see around you are cars, and all you hear is screaming. Bangladesh's capital is in permanent shrieking gridlock, with miles of rickshaws and mobile heaps of rust. The traffic advances by inches and by howling. Each driver screams himself hoarse announc-ing – that was my lane! Stay there! Stop moving! Go back! Go forward! It is a good-natured shrieking: everybody knows that this is what you do in Dhaka. If you are lucky, you enter a slipstream of traffic that moves for a minute – until the jams back up and the screaming begins once more.

 

Around you, this megalopolis of 20 million people seems to be screaming itself conscious. People burn rubbish by the roadside, or loll in the rivers. Children with skin deformities that look like infected burns try to thrust maps or sweets into your hand. Rickshaw drivers with thighs of steel pedal furious-ly as whole families cling on and offer their own high-volume traffic commentary to the groaning driver, and the groaning city.

 

I wanted to wade through all this chaos to find Bangladesh's climate scientists, who are toiling in the crannies of the city to figure out what – if anything – can be saved.

 

Dr Atiq Rahman's office in downtown Dhaka is a nest of scientific reports and books that, at every question, he dives into to reel off figures. He is a tidy, grey-moustached man who speaks English very fast, as if he is running out of time.

 

"It is clear from all the data we are gathering here in Bangladesh that the IPCC predictions were much too conservative," he said. He should know: he is one of the IPCC's leading members, and the UN has given him an award for his unusually prescient predictions. His work is used as one of the standard textbooks across the world, including at Oxford and Harvard. "We are facing a catastrophe in this country. We are talking about an absolutely massive displacement of human beings."

 

He handed me shafts of scientific studies as he explained: "This is the ground zero of global warming." He listed the effects. The seas are rising, so land is being claimed from the outside. (The largest island in the country, Bhola, has lost half its land in the past decade.) The rivers are super-charged, becoming wider and wider, so land is being claimed from within. (Erosion is up by 40 per cent). Cyclones are becoming more intense and more violent (2007 was the worst year on record for intense hurricanes here). And salt water is rendering the land barren. (The rate of saline inundation has trebled in the past 20 years.) "There is no question," Dr Rahman said, "that this is being caused primarily by human action. This is way outside natural variation. If you really want people in the West to understand the effect they are having here, it's simple. From now on, we need to have a system where for every 10,000 tons of carbon you emit, you have to take a Bangladeshi family to live with you. It is your responsibility." In the past, he has called it "climatic genocide".

 

The worst-case scenario, Dr Rahman said, is if one of the world's land-based ice-sheets breaks up. "Then we lose 70 to 80 per cent of our land, including Dhaka. It's a different world, and we're not on it. The evidence from Jim Hansen shows this is becoming more likely – and it can happen quickly and irreversibly. My best understanding of the evidence is that this will probably happen towards the end of the lifetime of babies born today."

 

I walked out in the ceaseless churning noise of Dhaka. Everywhere I looked, people were building and making and living: my eyes skimmed up higher and higher and find more and more activity. A team of workers were building a house; behind and above them, children were sewing mattresses on a roof; behind and above them, more men were building taller buildings. This is the most cramped country on earth: 150 million people living in an area the size of Iowa. Could all this life really be continuing on the crumbling edge of a cliff?

 

2. 'It is like the Bay is angry'

I was hurtling through the darkness at 120mph with my new driver, Shambrat. He was red-eyed from chewing pan, a leaf-stimulant that makes you buzz, and I could see nothing except the tiny pools of light cast by the car. They showed we were on narrow roads, darting between rice paddies and emptied shack-towns, in the midnight silence. I kept trying to put on my seatbelt, but every time Shambrat would cry, "You no need seatbelt! I good driver!" and burst into hysterical giggles.

 

To see if the seas were really rising, I had circled a random low-lying island on the map called Moheshkhali and asked Shambrat to get me there. It turned out the only route was to go to Coxs Bazar – Bangladesh's Blackpool – and then take a small wooden rowing boat that has a huge chugging engine attached to the front. I clambered in alongside three old men, a small herd of goats, and some chickens. The boat was operated by a 10-year-old child, whose job is to point the boat in the right direction, start the engine, and then begin using a small jug to frantically scoop out the water that starts to leak in. After an hour of the deafening ack-ack of the engine, we arrived at the muddy coast of Moheshkhali.

 

There was a makeshift wooden pier, where men were waiting with large sacks of salt. As we climbed up on to the fragile boards, people helped the old men lift up the animals. There were men mooching around the pier, waiting for a delivery. They looked bemused by my arrival. I asked them if the sea levels were rising here. Rezaul Karim Chowdry, a 34-year-old who looked like he is in his fifties, said plainly: "Of course. In the past 30 years, two-thirds of this island has gone under the water. I had to abandon my house. The land has gone into the sea." Immediately all the other men start to recount their stories. They have lost their houses, their land, and family members to the advance.

 

They agreed to show me their vanishing island. We clambered into a tuc-tuc – a motorbike with a carriage on the back – and set off across the island, riding along narrow ridges between cordoned-off areas of sand and salt. The men explained that this is salt-farming: the salt left behind by the tide is gathered and sold. "It is one of the last forms of farming that we can still do here," Rezaul said. As we passed through the forest, he told me to be careful: "Since we started to lose all our land, gangs are fighting for the territory that is left. They are very violent. A woman was shot in the crossfire yesterday. They will not like an outsider appearing from nowhere."

 

We pulled up outside a vast concrete structure on stilts. This, the men explained, is the cyclone shelter built by the Japanese years ago. We climbed to the top, and looked out towards the ocean. "Do you see the top of a tree, sticking out there?" Rezaul said, pointing into the far distance. I couldn't see anything, but then, eventually, I spotted a tiny jutting brown-green tip. "That is where my house was." When did you leave it? "In 2002. The ocean is coming very fast now. We think all this" – he waved his hand back over the island – "will be gone in 15 years."

 

Outside the rusty house next door, an ancient-looking man with a long grey beard was sitting cross-legged. I approached him, and he rose slowly. His name was Abdul Zabar; he didn't know his age, but guessed he is 80. "I was born here," he said. "There" – and he points out to the sea. "The island began to be swallowed in the 1960s, and it started going really quickly in 1991. I have lost my land, so I can't grow anything... I only live because one of my sons got a job in Saudi Arabia and sends money back to us. I am very frightened, but what can I do? I can only trust in God." The sea stops just in front of his home. What will you do, I asked, if it comes closer? "We will have nowhere to go to."

 

I was taken to the island's dam. It is a long stretch of hardened clay and concrete and mud. "This used to be enough," a man called Abul Kashin said, "but then the sea got so high that it came over the dam." They have tried to pile lumps of concrete on top, but they are simply washed away. "My family have left the island," he continued, "They were so sad to go. This is my homeland. If we had to leave here to go to some other place, it would be the worst day of my life."

 

Twenty years ago, there were 30,000 people on this island. There are 18,000 now – and most think they will be the last inhabitants.

 

On the beach, there were large wooden fishing boats lying unused. Abu Bashir, a lined, thin 28-year-old, pointed to his boat and said, "Fishing is almost impossible now. The waves are much bigger than they used to be. It used to be fine to go out in a normal [hand-rowed] boat. That is how my father and my grandfather and my ancestors lived.

 

"Now that is impossible. You need a [motor-driven] boat, and even that is thrown about by the waves so much. It's like the bay is angry."

 

The other fishermen burst in. "When there is a cyclone warning, we cannot go out fishing for 10 days. That is a lot of business lost. There used to be two or three warnings a year. Last year, there were 12. The sea is so violent. We are going hungry."

 

Yet the islanders insisted on offering me a feast of rice and fish and eggs. I was ushered into the council leader's house – a rusty shack near the sea – and the men sat around, urging me to tell the world what is happening. "If people know what is happening to us, they will help," they said. The women remained in the back room; when I glimpsed them and tried to thank them for the food, they giggled and vanished. I asked if the men had heard of global warming, and they looked puzzled. "No," they said. We stared out at the ocean and ate, as the sun slowly set on the island.

 

3. No hiding place

Through the morning mist, I peered out of the car window at the cratered landscape. Trees jutted out at surreal angles from the ground. One lay upside down with its roots sticking upwards towards the sky, looking like a sketch for a Dali painting. Shambrat had spat out his pan and was driving slowly now. "There are holes in the ground," he said, squinting with concentration. "From the cyclone. You fall in..." He made a splattering sound.

 

It was here, in the south of Bangladesh, that on 15 November last year, Cyclone Sidr arrived. It formed in the warmed Bay of Bengal and ripped across the land, taking more than 3,000 people with it. Like Americans talking about 9/11, everybody in Bangladesh knows where they were when Sidr struck. For miles, the upturned and smashed-out houses are intermixed with tents made from blue plastic sheeting. These stretches of plastic were handed out by the charities in the weeks after Sidr, and many families are still living in them now.

 

There have always been cyclones in Bangladesh, and there always will be – but global warming is making them much more violent. Back in Dhaka, the climatologist Ahsan Uddin Ahmed explained that cyclones use heat as a fuel: "The sea surface temperatures in the Bay of Bengal have been rising steadily for the past 40 years – and so, exactly as you would expect, the intensity of cyclones has risen too. They're up by 39 per cent on average." Again I circled a cyclone-struck island at random and headed for the dot.

 

The hour-long journey on a wooden rowing boat from the mainland to Charkashem Island passed in a dense mist that made it feel like crossing the River Styx. The spectral outline of other boats could sometimes be glimpsed, before they disappeared suddenly. One moment an old woman and a goat appeared and stared at me, then they were gone.

 

The island was a tiny dot of mud and lush, upturned greenery. It had no pier, so when the rowing boat bumped up against the sand I had to wade through the water.

 

I looked out over the silent island, and saw some familiar blue sheeting in the distance. As I trudged towards it, I saw some gaunt teenagers half-heartedly kicking a deflated football. From the sheeting, a man and woman stared, astonished.

 

"I was in my fields over there," Hanif Mridha said. "I saw the wind start, it was about eight at night, and I saw everything being blown around. I went and hid under an iron sheet, but that was blown away by the wind. The water came swelling up all of a sudden and was crashing all around me. I grabbed one of my children and ran to the forest" – he pointed to the cluster of trees at the heart of the island – "and climbed the tallest one I could reach. I went as high as I could but still the water kept rising and I thought – this is it, I'm going to drown. I'm dying, my children are dying, my wife is dying. I could see everything was under water and people were screaming everywhere. I held there for four hours with my son."

 

When the water washed away and he came down, everything was gone: his house, his crops, his animals, his possessions. A few days later, an aid agency arrived with some rice and some plastic sheeting to sleep under. Nobody has come since.

 

His wife, Begum Mridha, took over the story. Their children are terrified of the sea now, and have nightmares every night. They eat once a day, if they're lucky. "We are so hungry," she said. The new home they have built is made from twigs and the plastic sheet. Underneath it, they sleep with their eight children and Begum Mridha's mother. The children lay lethargically there, staring blankly into space over their distended bellies.

 

Begum Mridha cooks on a lantern. They eat once a day – if that. "It's so cold at night we can't sleep," she said. "The children all have diarrhoea and they are losing weight. It will take us more than two years to save up and get back what we had."

 

If cyclones hit this area more often, what would happen to you? Hanif looked down. He opened his mouth, but no words came.

 

4. Bangladesh's Noah

In the middle of Bangladesh, in the middle of my road trip, I tracked down Abul Hasanat Mohammed Rezwan. He was sitting under a parasol by the banks of a river, scribbling frenetically into his notebook.

 

"The catastrophe in Bangladesh has begun," he said. "The warnings [by the IPCC] are unfolding much faster than anyone anticipated." Until a few years ago, Rezwan was an architect, designing buildings for rich people – "but I thought, is this what I want to do while my country drowns? Create buildings that will be under water soon anyway?"

 

He considered dedicating his life to building schools and hospitals, "but then I realised they would be under water soon as well. I was hopeless. But then I thought of boats!"

 

He has turned himself into Bangladesh's Noah, urging his people to move on to boats as the Great Flood comes. Rezwan built a charity – Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha, which means self-reliance – that is building the only schools and hospitals and homes that can last now: ones that float.

 

We clambered on to his first school-boat, which is moored in Singra. In this area there is no electricity, no sewage system, and no state. The residents live the short lives of pre-modern people. But now, suddenly, they have a fleet of these boats, stocked with medicines and lined with books on everything from Shakespeare to accountancy to climatology. Nestling between them, there are six internet terminals with broadband access.

 

The boat began to float down the Curnai River, gathering scores of beaming kids as it went. Fatima Jahan, an unveiled 18-year-old girl dressed in bright red, arrived to go online. She was desperate to know the cricket scores. At every muddy village-stop, the boat inhaled more children, and I talked to the mothers who were beating their washing dry by the river. "I never went to school, and I never saw a doctor in my life. Now my children can do both!" a thin woman with a shimmering heart-shaped nose stud called Nurjahan Rupbhan told me. But when I asked about the changes in the climate, her forehead crumpled into long frown-lines.

 

I thought back to what the scientists told me in Dhaka. Bangladesh is a country with 230 rivers running through it like veins. They irrigate the land and give it its incredible fertility – but now the rivers are becoming supercharged. More water is coming down from the melting Himalayan glaciers, and more salt water is pushing up from the rising oceans. These two forces meet here in the heart of Bangladesh and make the rivers churn up – eroding the river banks with amazing speed. The water is getting wider, leaving the people to survive on ever-more narrow strips of land.

 

Nurjahan took me up to a crumbling river edge, where tree roots jutted out naked. "My house was here," she said. "It fell into the water. So now my house is here –" she motioned to a small clay hut behind us – "but now we realise this is going to fall in too. The river gets wider day by day."

 

But even this, Nurjahan said, is not the worst problem. The annual floods have become far more extreme, too. "Until about 10 years ago, the floods came every year and the water would stay for 15 days, and it helped to wet the land. Now the water stays for four months. Four months! It is too long. That doesn't wet the fields, it destroys them. We cannot plan for anything."

 

When the floods came last year, Nurjahan had no choice but to stay here. She lived with her children waist-deep in the cold brown water – for four months. "It was really hard to cook, or go to the toilet. We all got dysentery. It was miserable." Then she seemed to chastise herself. "But we survived! We are tough, don't you think?"

 

We sat by the river-bank, our feet dangling down towards the river. I asked if she agrees with Rezwan that her only option soon will be to move on to a boat. He is launching the first models this summer: floating homes with trays of earth where families can grow food. "Yes," she said, "We will be boat-people."

 

I clambered back on to one of the 42 school-boats in this area. Young children were in the front chanting the alphabet, and teenagers at the back were browsing through the books. I asked a 16-year-old boy called Mohammed Palosh Ali what he was reading about, and he said, "Global warming." I felt a small jolt. He was the first person to spontaneously raise global warming with me. Can you tell me what that is? "The climate is being changed by carbon dioxide," he said. "This is a gas that traps heat. So if there is more of it, then the ice in the north of the world melts and our seas rise here."

 

I asked if he had seen this warming in his own life. "Of course! The floods in 1998 and 2002 were worse than anything in my grandfather's life. We couldn't get any drinking water, so the dirty water I drank made me very sick. The shit from the toilet pits had risen up and was floating in the water, but we still had to drink it. We put tablets in it but it was still disgusting. What else could we do?"

 

Mohammed, do you know who is responsible for this global warming? He shakes his head. That answer lies a few pages further into the book. Soon he, and everybody else on this boat, will know it is me – and you.

 

5. The warming jihad

What happens to a country's mind as it drowns? Professor Philip Jenkins of Pennsylvania State University believes he can glimpse the answer: "The connection between climate change and religious violence is not tenuous," he says. "In fact, there's a historical indicator of how it could unfold: the Little Ice Age."

 

Between the ninth and 13th centuries, the northern hemisphere went through a natural phase of global warming. The harvests lasted longer – so there were more crops, and more leisure. Universities and the arts began to flower. But then in the late 13th century, the Little Ice Age struck. Crop production fell, and pack ice formed in the oceans, wrecking trade routes. People began to starve.

 

"In this climate of death and horror, people cast about for scapegoats, even before the Black Death struck," he says. Tolerance withered with the climate shocks: the Church declared witchcraft a heresy; the Jews began to be expelled from Britain. There was, he says, "a very close correlation between the cooling and a region-wide heightening of violent intolerance."

 

This time, there will be no need for imaginary scapegoats. The people responsible are on every TV screen, revving up their engines. Will jihadism swell with the rising seas? Bangladesh's religion seems to be low-key and local. In the countryside, Muslims – who make up 95 per cent of the nation – still worship Hindu saints and mix in a few Buddhist ideas, too. In the Arab world, people bring up God in almost every sentence. In Bangladesh, nobody does.

 

But then, as we returned to Dhaka, I was having a casual conversation with Shambrat. He had been driving all night – at his insistence – and by this point he was wired after chewing fistfuls of pan, and singing along at the top of his voice to the Eighties power ballads. I mentioned Osama bin Laden in passing, and he said, "Bin Laden – great man! He fight for Islam!" Then, without looking at me, he went back to singing: "It must have been love, but it's over now...."

 

I wondered how many Bangladeshis felt this way. The Chandni Chowk Bazaar – one of the city's main markets – was overcast the afternoon I decided to canvass opinions on Bin Laden. I approached a 24-year-old flower-seller called Mohammed Ashid, and as I inhaled the rich sweet scent of roses, he said: "I like him because he is a Muslim and I am a Muslim." Would you like Bin Laden to be in charge of Bangladesh? "Yes, of course," he said. And what would President Bin Laden do? "I have no idea," he shrugged. What would you want him to do? He furrowed his brow. "If Osama came to power he would make women cover up. Women are too free here." But what if women don't want to cover up? "They are Muslims. It's not up to them."

 

A very smartly dressed man called Shadul Ahmed was strolling down the street to his office, where he is in charge of advertising. "I like him," he said. "Bin Laden works for the Muslims." He conceded 9/11 "was bad because many innocents died," but added: "Osama didn't do it. The Americans did it. They are guilty."

 

As dozens of people paused from their shopping to talk, a pattern emerged: the men tend to like him, and the women don't. "I hate Bin Laden," one smartly dressed woman said, declining to give her name. "He is a fanatic. Bangladeshis do not like this." As the praise for Bin Laden was offered, I saw a boy go past on a rickshaw, stroking a girl's uncovered hair gently, sensuously. This is not the Arab world.

 

The only unpleasant moment came when I approached three women selling cigarettes by the side of the road. They were in their early thirties, wearing white hijabs and puffing away. Akli Mouna said, "I like him. He is a faithful Muslim." She said "it would be very nice" if he was president of Bangladesh. Really? Would you be happy if you were forced to wear a burqa, and only rarely allowed out of your house? She jabbed a finger at my chest. "Yes! It would be fine if Osama was president and told us to wear the burqa." But Akli – you aren't wearing a burqa now. "It's good to wear the burqa!" she yelled. Her teeth, I saw, were brown and rotting. "We are only here because we are poor! We should be kept in the house!"

 

I wanted to track down some Bangladeshi jihadis for myself, so I called the journalist Abu Sufian. He is a news reporter for BanglaVision, one of the main news channels, who made his name penetrating the thickets of the Islamist underground. He told me to meet him at the top of the BanglaVision skyscraper. As the city shrieked below us, he explained: "In the late 1980s, a group of mujahideen [holy warriors] who had been fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan came back to launch an Islamic revolution here in Bangladesh. They tried to mount an armed revolt in the north and kill the former Prime Minister. But it didn't come to much."

 

Islamic fundamentalism is hobbled in Bangladesh, because it is still associated for most people with Paki-stan – the country Bangladesh fought a bloody war of independence to escape from.

 

But Sufian says a new generation of Islamists is emerging with no memory of that war. "For example, I met a 21-year-old who had fought in Kashmir, whose father was a rickshaw driver. He said it was his holy duty to establish an Islamic state here through violence. Most were teenagers. All the jihadis I met hated democracy. They said it was the rule of man. According to them, only the rule of God is acceptable."

 

He said it would be almost impossible to track them down – they are in prison or hiding – but my best bet was to head for the Al-Amin Jami mosque in the north-west of Dhaka. "They are fundamentalist Wahhabis, and very dangerous," he said. Yet when I arrived, just before 6pm prayers, it was a bright building in one of the nicer parts of town. Men in white caps and white robes were streaming in. An ice-cream stall sat outside. I approached a fiftysomething man in flowing robes and designer shoes. He glared at me. I explained I was a journalist, and ask if it would it be possible to look inside the mosque? "No. Under no circumstances. At all."

 

OK. I asked a few polite questions about Islam, and then asked what he thought of Osama bin Laden. "Osama bin Laden?" he said. Yes. He scowled. "I have never heard of him." Never? "Never." I turned to the man standing, expectantly, next to him. "He has not heard of Osama bin Laden, either," he said. What about September 11 – you know, when the towers in New York fell? "I have never heard of this event, either." Some teenage boys were about to go in, so I approached them. Behind my back, I can sense the Gucci-man making gestures. "Uh... sorry... I don't think anything about Bin Laden," one of them said, awkwardly.

 

I lingered as prayers took place inside, until a flow of men poured out so thick and fast that they couldn't be instructed not to speak. "Yes, we would like Osama to run Bangladesh, he is a good man," the first person told me. There were nods. "He fights for Islam!" shouted another.

 

The crowd says this mosque – like most fundamentalist mosques on earth – is funded by Saudi Arabia, with the money you and I pay at the petrol pump. As I looked up at its green minaret jutting into the sky, it occurs to me that our oil purchases are simultaneously drowning Bangladesh, and paying for the victims to be fundamentalised.

 

After half-an-hour of watching this conversation and fuming, the initially recalcitrant man strode forward. "Why do you want to know about Bin Laden? We are Muslims. You are Christian. We all believe in the same God!" he announced.

 

Actually, I said, I am not a Christian. There was a hushed pause. "You are... a Jew?" he said. The crowd looked horrified; but then the man forced a rictus smile and announced: "We all believe in one God! We are all children of Abraham! We are cousins!" No, I said. I am an atheist. Everyone looked genuinely puzzled; they do not have a bromide for this occasion. "Well... then..." he paused, scrambling for a statement... "You must convert to Islam! Read the Koran! It is beautiful!" Ah – so can I come into the mosque after all? "No. Never."

 

6. The obituarist?

In a small café in Dhaka, a cool breeze was blowing in through the window along with the endless traffic-screams. The 32-year-old novelist Tahmima Anam was inhaling the aroma of coffee and close to despair.

 

She made her name by writing a tender novel – A Golden Age – about the birth of her country, Bangladesh. When the British finally withdrew from this subcontinent in 1948, the land they left behind was partitioned. Two chunks were carved out of India and declared to be a Muslim republic – East Pakistan and West Pakistan. But apart from their religion, they had very little in common. The gentle people of East Pakistan chafed under the dictatorial fundamentalism imposed from distant Islamabad. When they were ordered to start speaking Urdu, it was enough. Her novel tells how in 1971, they decided to declare independence and become Bangladesh. The Pakistanis fought back with staggering violence, but in the end Bangladesh was freed.

 

Now Anam is realising that unless we change, fast, this fight will have been for the freedom of a drowning land – and her next novel may have to be its obituary.

 

Anam came to Bangladesh late. Her Dhaka-born parents travelled the world, so she grew up in a slew of international schools, but she always dreamed of coming home. Her passion for this land, this place, this delta, aches through her work. About one of her characters, she wrote: "He had a love for all things Bengali: the swimming mud of the delta; the translucent, bony river fish; the shocking green palette of the paddy and the open, aching blue of the sky over flat land."

 

"You can see what has started to happen," she says. The vision of the country drowning is becoming more real every day. Where could all these 150 million people go? India is already building a border fence to keep them out; I can't imagine the country's other neighbour – Burma – will offer much refuge. "We are the first to be affected, not the last," Anam says. "Everyone should take a good look at Bangladesh. This story will become your story. We are your future."

 

It is, she says, our responsibility to stop this slow-mo drowning – and there is still time to save most of the country. "What could any Bangladeshi government do? We have virtually no carbon emissions to cut." They currently stand at 0.3 per cent of the world's – less than the island of Manhattan. "It's up to you."

 

Anam is defiantly optimistic that this change can happen if enough of us work for it – but, like every scientist I spoke to, she knows that dealing with it simply by adaptation by Bangladeshis is impossible. The country has a military-approved dictatorship incapable of taking long-term decisions, and Dutch-style dams won't work anyway. "Any large-scale construction is very hard in this country, because it's all made of shifting silt. There's nothing to build on."

 

So if we carry on as we are, Bangladesh will enter its endgame. "All the people who strain at this country's seams will drown with it," Anam says, "or be blown away to distant shores – casualties and refugees by the millions." The headstone would read, Bangladesh, 1971-2071: born in blood, died in water.

 

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Kansat Uprising : A Special Page from Mukto-Mona 
http://www.mukto-mona.com/human_rights/kansat2006/members/


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MM Project : Grand assembly of local freedom fighters at Raumari
http://www.mukto-mona.com/project/Roumari/freedom_fighters_union300306.htm

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German Bangla Radio Interviews Mukto-Mona Members:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Darwin_day/german_radio/


Mukto-Mona Celebrates Darwin Day:

http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Darwin_day/index.htm

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Some FAQ's about Mukto-Mona:

http://www.mukto-mona.com/new_site/mukto-mona/faq_mm.htm

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VISIT MUKTO-MONA WEB-SITE : http://www.mukto-mona.com/

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"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
               -Beatrice Hall [pseudonym: S.G. Tallentyre], 190




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