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Tuesday, October 26, 2010

[ALOCHONA] Turkey’s Doing It Without the Fez On



Turkey’s Doing It Without the Fez On

Turkey is at a crossroads: Its economy is booming, and the Turkish economic miracle is the direct result of the current government’s willingness to foster domestic entrepreneurship and do whatever is necessary to integrate the country into the twenty-first century’s global economy.

In addition, it is once again becoming one of the dominant powers in the Middle East as a result of its growing hard and soft power. Turkey’s hard power is a legacy of Turkey’s role as the Cold War anchor of NATO’s southern flank reinforced by its economic growth.

Turkey’s soft power, at least in the Middle East, is a function of the fact that it seems to be demonstrating that Islam and modernity—specifically, democracy and participation in the globalized economy—are in many ways compatible. If the Turks manage to pull this off, they will be poised to lead the Islamic world into the twenty-first century. But like any radical experiment, it is not clear that this one will succeed. Herein lies the peril and promise of contemporary Turkey for the United States.

Turkey has an Islamically-oriented government under Prime Minister RecepTayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP). The AKP’s 2003 victory (and unprecedented reelection in 2007) was the result of both the corruption and intellectual exhaustion of Turkey’s hitherto dominant political party, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s center-left Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the fact that the majority of Turkey’s voters have rejected the militant secularism that has characterized the Turkish Republic since 1923.

The peril is clear: The continuing growth of politicized Islam in Turkey, which, by the way, pre-dated the coming to power of the AKP, is polarizing Turkish society. Walking down the streets of Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city, you see the full range of Turkey’s political spectrum in the very different costumes and grooming of people on the street, with the devout women wearing head scarves and long dresses and coats, and the men sporting the telltale “Islamic” mustache (look at a picture of Erdoğan for an example) while the secularists dress as though they were living in Berlin or Paris, with blonde haired “white Turks” looking as though they came from even farther north in Europe.

The head scarf is the focal point of conflict in contemporary Turkey (reminiscent of Atatürk’s outlawing of the fez in 1925), with secularists designating it as the central front in the secular/Islamic culture war that rends Turkish society today. Some academic colleagues, part of Turkey’s secular elite, explained to me that as part of their responsibilities they were charged with “counseling” Islamic college students against wearing the head scarf, a principle they supported but a task they nonetheless regarded as embarrassing.

Since I was lecturing at a Turkish university, my “sample” of Turkish opinion was highly skewed toward secularists. That group, which makes up a significant fraction of the intellectual and political elite in Turkey, is deeply wary of the growing influence of Islam in Turkish politics. Former–Foreign Minister Emre Gonensay warned me that the Obama administration’s embrace of the Erdoğan regime, the culmination, in his view, of an American plot to convert Turkey into an Islamic Trojan horse, would backfire.

Overtly, secularists like Gonensay worry that Turkey will become like Iran. But I thought that I detected a more subtle fear: That the rise of the AKP demonstrates that the choice facing Turks is no longer between modernity and democracy and economic growth, on the one hand, and Islam and backwardness, on the other. In other words, developments in contemporary Turkey constitute a refutation of the core premise of the Atatürk Revolution that successful modernization could only come with secularization.

The international complications resulting from a more Islamically inclined Turkey are also becoming apparent. The AKP project of reconciling Islam and modernity is probably not helping Turkey’s admittedly slim chances of joining the European Union, given Europe’s militant secularism and growing Islamophobia.

Turkey’s diplomatic efforts to reach out to other regional powers, especially Iran and Syria, are also not playing well in the United States, where I think we mistake current–Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu’s “zero problems” diplomacy of engagement with those countries as appeasement , rather than as part of Turkey’s effort to lead the region through a combination of hard and soft power.

However, the most dramatic diplomatic shift has come in Turkey’s relations with Israel, in which incidents both trivial (as when Israel’s deputy foreign minister sought to humiliate Turkey’s ambassador by seating him in a low chair during a diplomatic démarche) and deadly (the nine deaths when the Israel Defense Forces seized the Turkish ship Mari Marmara on its way to run the Gaza blockade) have shaken the two countries’ previously cordial diplomatic relations and threaten their deep strategic cooperation. It was perhaps inevitable that as Turkey aspires to become a leading voice in the Islamic world, its relations with the Jewish state would cool, primarily over the issue of the unresolved Israel-Palestine conflict.

There is no doubt that the Turkey of today is not what it was even a few years ago, and this has caused domestic tensions and international complications. But we should not let these real costs obscure the potential benefits of the changes in Turkey for the region and ultimately the United States.

The AKP’s rise reflects in part the bankruptcy of the other political alternatives, including Kemalism itself. Nor does it appear to be necessarily incompatible with Turkey’s continued democratization. Indeed, one could argue that the Erdoğan government has deepened the process of democratization through much-needed judicial and constitutional reforms. The AKP has also taken much bolder steps toward resolving the Kurdish conflict than any previous government by making small but symbolic concessions to that restive minority group whose struggle for autonomy has cost nearly forty thousand lives over the past twenty-five years.

And instead of regarding Turkey’s overtures to Iran and Syria as indicative of its desire to join the “Axis of Evil,” we in the United States would do better to see it as part of an effort to neutralize Iranian influence in the region by presenting an alternative model to that of the Islamic Republic, one based on Islamic values but also committed to the principles of the modern world like democracy and free trade.

In the United States, it is inevitable that Turkey’s image will be shaped in important ways by its relationship with Israel, the other major U.S. ally in the region. Once the darling of the pro-Israel lobby in Washington, which ran interference for it on sensitive issues like the Armenian genocide, Turkey is now being vilified by supporters of the Jewish state, largely because the shift in its regional diplomacy has led it to take a more assertively pro-Palestinian stance than it did in the past.

It would be a mistake, however, for us to judge Turkey by American standards of unquestioning support for the Jewish state, no matter what it does. First of all, it is that position, rather than evenhandedness, that is out of step with public opinion in Turkey and in the region (not to mention the rest of the world). It is also not clear that one-sided support of Israel by the United States has done much to advance the peace process, which is ultimately in the interest of Turkey, the rest of the region, the United States and Israel itself.

Indeed, if one believes as the Obama administration does, that the resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict is one of the most important steps for advancing American national interests in the region, Turkey’s more assertive stance on behalf of Palestinian self-determination probably does more to advance the two-state solution than does our own country’s default strategy of serving, in longtime U.S. government official Aaron David Miller’s apt phrase, as “Israel’s lawyer.”

It would be naive, of course, to deny that this new reality will not complicate things for Turkey both at home and abroad. But it would be a greater mistake for us to focus only on these complications and ignore America’s stake in the success of the Turkish experiment.

But the promise is real: If Turkey succeeds in combining Islam with political and economic modernity, and then helps the rest of the Islamic world achieve that synthesis, it could have the sort of regionally transformative effects that the Bush administration and its neoconservative allies’ sought, but failed, to bring about through their misguided war in Iraq. As President Obama put it last year, “given Turkey's history as a secular democratic state that respects the rule of law, but is also a majority Muslim nation, it plays a critical role I think in helping to shape mutual understanding and stability and peace not only in its neighborhood but around the world.”

The reality of modern Turkey is therefore as complex as the street tableaux I saw recently in Istanbul. It is both headscarves and miniskirts; it is simultaneously reaching out to Iran and Syria and moving closer to the European Union; and it is integrating into the modern global economy while at the same time reclaiming its Islamic heritage. A democratic, globalized and moderately Islamic Turkey contributes more to advancing U.S. interests in the Middle East than almost anything we could do directly. That’s our stake in Turkey’s experiment.

http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/without-fez-4299?page=show



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[ALOCHONA] Chatra League atrocities



Chatra League atrocities



http://www.prothom-alo.com/detail/date/2010-10-27/news/104571




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[ALOCHONA] Corruption on rise



Corruption on rise TIB ranks BD 12: Experts see making ACC toothless, withdrawal of many cases as reasons

Unstable governments, long-standing conflict between different quarters, continue to dominate the bottom rungs of the CPI, it is learnt.


http://www.prothom-alo.com/detail/date/2010-10-27/news/104548

Bangladesh has attained 12th position among the most corrupt countries across the globe scoring 2.4 in Transparency International (TI) index. In the previous year, country's ranking was 13th while position 139th among 180 countries, according to the watchdog's corruption-measuring barometer. This year, it has ranked Bangladesh 134th among 178 countries.

The score based on state of corruption was the same as last year for Bangladesh where it scored 2.4 in ratings in both the years.

The TI, a Berlin-based global anti-corruption watchdog released the 'Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI)-2010' report simultaneously all over the world on Tuesday.The TI index report of the Bangladesh chapter was released at a crowded press conference held at the National Press Club yesterday afternoon.

Executive Director of Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) Dr Iftekharuzzaman revealed the report at the press conference. TIB Trustee Board Chairman M. Hafizuddin Khan and member Prof Dr Muzaffer Ahmad were also present there.

The CPI rating of countries is done on a scale of 0-10, with zero indicating high levels of perceived corruption and ten indicating low levels of the moral vice in terms of perceived degree of prevalence of political and administrative corruption.

Meanwhile, the experts expressed their opinions over the TIB's report saying that from top to bottom corruption is a common scenario all over the country in the recent days.

Due to politicisation of the concerned sectors, the situation has aggravated. Besides, the Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) has become a 'toothless tiger'. The ACC's drive against corruption is also slow now.

Most of the cases earlier filed by the ACC under the caretaker government have been withdrawn. Even those earlier put behind the bar for corruption, have been set free. Not only that bribe, extortion, tender business and other corrupt practices involving the leaders and activists of the present Awami League government have accelerated further. Specially, political and bureaucratic corruption has now crossed limits, the observers said.

The CPI- 2010 is based on 13 independent surveys. However, all surveys are not included in all countries. The `Surveys Used` column indicates how many surveys were relied upon to determine the score for that country.

In 2008 the position of Bangladesh was 10th. It was placed earlier at the bottom of the list for five successive years from 2001 to 2005.

According to the CPI report, Pakistan records increasing corruption and its position worsened by two degrees from 13 to 11 while India stands at 21 against its ranking 23 in the last year.In the 2010 CPI, Denmark, New Zealand and Singapore tie in a trio for the first place with scores of 9.3 this year. Besides, Singapore Denmark and New Zealand having lowest levels of corruption around the world.On the other hand, Afghanistan and Myanmar have been sharing the second place with a score of 1.4, while Somalia stood last with a score of 1.1, the TI report added.

Unstable governments, long-standing conflict between different quarters, continue to dominate the bottom rungs of the CPI, it is learnt.

If the sources those surveys for individual countries remain same, and if there is corroboration by more than half of those sources, real changes in perceptions can be ascertained.Using the above criteria, it became possible to establish an improvement in scores from 2009 to 2010 for Bhutan, Chile, Ecuador, FYR Macedonia, Gambia, Haiti, Jamaica, Kuwait, and Qatar.Similarly, a decline in scores from 2009 to 2010 can be identified for the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Madagascar, Niger and the United States, the report says.

http://newsfrombangladesh.net/view.php?hidRecord=339391

http://www.jugantor.info/enews/issue/2010/10/27/news0135.php


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RE: [ALOCHONA] The European Muslims.



who will take bush, john howard, blair to International forums...to explain the dimension of their crimes in Iraq?


KH







To: alochona@yahoogroups.com
From: qrahman@netscape.net
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2010 04:54:08 -0400
Subject: Fwd: [ALOCHONA] The European Muslims.








They blame why Bush invaded Iraq or Afghanistan. I ask who allowed Bush to invade Iraq. The most corrupted Saudi Royal House, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait and many other Muslim nations are to be held responsible for this Iraqi catastrophe. Muslims should fight and dislodge these moribund regimes that licked Bushes boots to protect their corrupted regimes. Why blame the west when cancer is within the Muslim nations.

:-)

I am sure one of them "Liberal" nations will award the author for "Creative/imaginary" thoughts. This author found a way to blame Iraqis and Muslims for the situation in Iraq!!

Even George Bush could not come up with such Bold face "bull crap". Congratulations!!

No one since Hitler could blame the Jews and attacked the Jews [ For everything that was wrong] at the same time. Now we have our own ...........hoopti duoooooooo

The west is in trouble. They cannot complete with China, Brazil and other upcoming nations. When things are bad, they blame someone other than themselves. Cowards of all ages and all countries ( Yes some of them were Muslims!) have done it. We are watching history repeating itself.

Shalom





-----Original Message-----
From: Akbar Hussain <akbar_50@hotmail.com>
To: alochona group <alochona@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thu, Oct 21, 2010 6:04 am
Subject: [ALOCHONA] The European Muslims.

 
After the Second World War the European nations had time to count their dead. The numbers were so staggering that a sense of abhorrence engulfed their psyche which led to a total distaste for war. During the cold war period Europe basically remained an unwilling partner of the US Soviet rhetoric of war and conflict. The breakup of the Soviet Union and their eagerness to prop up the new Russian Federation by helping them by all means was a strong signal that the West European nations wanted to abolish the specter of war once for all. Things were going pretty well but the events following 9/11 forced Europe to sit and think again. This enemy was not any nation but a faith well known for peace and tranquility. This faith is Islam. Islam did not threaten them from out side, the danger propped up from their within. Many years before millions of Muslims who came to Europe for happiness and prosperity suddenly started behaving as enemies. Children born to their adopted countries, speak their own languages, educated and adopted their way of life discovered that their roots are not there. They started to gather hatred for their own countries and adopted hatred as their way of life and have become mortal enemies.
 
Europe became nervous and in utter bewilderment tried to secure their nations by many unusual ways which were hitherto unknown to themselves. The liberal European mentality turned to one of suspicion and fear. Muslims who lived in Europe turned against their own and gradually alienated them from the mainstream society. The Age of Enlightenment which gave Europe its unique sense of humanism, toleration and an urge to adopt multi cultural society has came to an end. The rightist forces which were on the fringe of the society started gathering power and a cultural clash ensued.
 
The Muslims who lived in the west for generations started to show an ugly side of their mind which they started claiming as directed by their faith. The host liberal nations struggled to define their own ways of action and in this confusion the extremist forces coerced the public opinion to believe that they are in danger of loosing their own societies. The present statistics shows that more than 50pc of the people in those countries are showing signs of intolerance and even want that the Muslims live their countries.
 
This is a dangerous trend which is definitely leading to a broader conflict. The Muslims are not showing any pragmatic attitude to come to terms with these dire consequences which in the final analysis will only harm them. They are claiming that by the sheer birth rate they will turn these nations as Islamic nations. The dangers of Muslim extremism are not understood or recognized by the vast majority of the Muslims. The stern measures gradually taken by the European nations against the Islamic faith are not taken seriously by the Muslims. The moves are on to prohibit hijab, niqab, constructions of mosques and minarets are a few measures which shows how much hatred and disliking are gradually taking place among the once most liberal societies in Europe.
 
The entire responsibility for this mess goes to the Muslims. By their most ungrateful behavior which is clearly hypocrisy and also tantamount to treason, they are bringing peril to themselves. It's disgusting to note that how a faith can be used to destroy its own followers. By adopting mediaeval and uncivilized methods to prop up a religious fury Muslims have lost all credibility as a community to stand along with other nations. They are nowhere closer to understand what really ails them. If heaven had any power to make them happy and prosperous in their own lands they would not have flock at the doors of the European nations braving all the perceivable perils. The reality is that a frustrated people can't negotiate, they can only capitulate. They blame why Bush invaded Iraq or Afghanistan. I ask who allowed Bush to invade Iraq. The most corrupted Saudi Royal House, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait and many other Muslim nations are to be held responsible for this Iraqi catastrophe. Muslims should fight and dislodge these moribund regimes that licked Bushes boots to protect their corrupted regimes. Why blame the west when cancer is within the Muslim nations.
 
Akbar Hussain
     
  
 




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RE: [ALOCHONA] Transit, transshipment fees



If you explore the past of some of Hasina's advisors + ministers, you will discover amazing facts.

Find out more about dr. moshiur rahman.
why he was caught in Bdesh-Indian border, but allowed to stay in India.
Well-traied by RAW, before taking up the wonderful position with AL.
So, won't he suck the toes of his master now???
KH







To: alochona@yahoogroups.com
From: qrahman@netscape.net
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 2010 13:47:38 -0400
Subject: Re: [ALOCHONA] Transit, transshipment fees



But economic adviser to the Prime Minister Dr Mashiur Rahman favours the withdrawal of fees and wrote a letter to the shipping minister to stop collecting the fees until "further decision."

>>>>>>>> 
If we give this facility to our big neighbor India, fee should be a big motivator for Bangladesh. Without fee [ And assurance about our security concerns] why should Bangladesh allow India a "Transit"? Right now our roads are congested and can hardly handle our own cargoes. These roads and bridges needs to be "Upgraded" and India have to pay for these improvements.

Remember China does not use our bridges but recently gave us a very generous GRANT [ Never have to repay them] for our Padma bridge mega project. All of us know we badly need to upgrade our infrastructure immediately and India can help. It will be a truly win win proposition.



-----Original Message-----
From: Isha Khan <bdmailer@gmail.com>
Sent: Wed, Oct 13, 2010 7:59 am
Subject: [ALOCHONA] Transit, transshipment fees

 
Transit, transshipment fees -Foreign Office rejects India's waiver push
But economic adviser to the Prime Minister Dr Mashiur Rahman favours the withdrawal of fees and wrote a letter to the shipping minister to stop collecting the fees until "further decision."


The Foreign Ministry continues to oppose India's insistence on waiver of transit and transshipment fees, saying Indian private sector already receives massive subsidies for transporting goods to the northeastern hinterlands.The ministry Monday drove home its message to the Indian High Commission officials and advised India's diplomats to lobby Bangladesh's National Board of Revenue (NBR) instead to seek the waiver.

The NBR has imposed transit and transshipment fee of Tk 10,000 per container and Tk 1,000 per tonne for bulk cargo.
"India should be prepared to pay a certain amount for using Bangladesh's land as corridor," a foreign ministry official said.

"The Indian central government subsidises its private sector for transporting goods to the northeastern part through the 'chicken neck' corridor," the official said, adding New Delhi can channel a part of that amount to ship goods through Bangladesh.

Bangladesh can earn an estimated Tk 1.0 to Tk 2.0 billion as transshipment fees and it is insignificant for Indians if they consider the broader economic benefits, he explained.Foreign minister Dr Dipu Moni and finance minister AMA Muhith supported the fees and both had earlier ruled out the waiver of transshipment fees, insisting those will be the country's income.

But economic adviser to the Prime Minister Dr Mashiur Rahman favours the withdrawal of fees and wrote a letter to the shipping minister to stop collecting the fees until "further decision."

Adding to the standoff, the customs authority has blocked the entry of two Indian ships carrying fly ash at the Bangladeshi border at Shekbaria as they didn't pay the transshipment fee. The ships destined for Assam were still not allowed to enter the Bangladesh territory.

Referring to the Protocol of Inland Water Trade and Transit (IWTT), the Foreign Ministry official defended the action, saying domestic laws will be applicable as cargoes entered the Bangladesh territory."In the agreement, it is not mentioned anywhere that transshipment and transit fees cannot be imposed," the official said.

The government signed the transshipment agreement in May to allow Indian goods to transship to Tripura through Ashuganj.According to the agreement, Ashuganj will be the second transshipment point and fifth port of call in Bangladesh, while India has declared Shilghat to be the port of call on the Indian side.

Sherpur in Sylhet was the first transshipment point under the 1972 protocol, but India never used the facility.Tripura border is only 49 kilometres from Ashuganj and the river port is navigable throughout the year.

The Indian authorities since '80s have demanded that Ashuganj become the second point and Bangladesh has agreed to the demand during the visit of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to India in January.The IWTT agreement stipulates that Narayanganj, Mongla, Khulna and Sirajganj are the port of calls in Bangladesh and Kolkata, Haldia, Pandu and Karimganj in India.
 
 




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RE: [ALOCHONA] FW: Indonesian Vice President urges Muslims to stand up against Islamic Radicals



Can we seriously fund a scholarship, to evaluate, who lie more and who ...jamaat or AL,  has done more damage to Bangladesh.

Think about it.
AL, well-trained  by RAW, has succesfullly created smoke-screen to hide their corruption, inefficiency and violence for many years.

KH







To: alochona@yahoogroups.com
From: mramjan@hotmail.com
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 2010 08:25:02 -0400
Subject: RE: [ALOCHONA] FW: Indonesian Vice President urges Muslims to stand up against Islamic Radicals



Can you tell point by point what lies jamat made ? I can tell you 100's of lies made by anti jamathis in Bangladesh. Your supporting groups telling lies from morning to evening. They woke up with lies, they sleep with lies, they dream lies, they live on lies, they die on lies, they will raise again with lies with Feraun and Namrud.
 

From: farida_majid@hotmail.com
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 18:33:14 -0400
Subject: [ALOCHONA] FW: Indonesian Vice President urges Muslims to stand up against Islamic Radicals

 
                 Why can't Bangladeshi politicos have the heart to call upon people to resist lies and
falsehoods spread by Jamaat and its cronies in the name of Islam?
 
                  How can we have the Constitution reprinted to reflect the cancellation of the notorious
5th Amendment  and still allow "religion based political parties"?  Can God belong to one political party
and not belong to another party?  What kind of 'shereki' is this cheating game?
 
                   I urge everyone to do something -- raise awareness and warn the politicians you may
know and stop the nonsene.  We have sacrificed enough and had been patient for far too long!
 
                   Farida Majid
 

Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 09:56:24 -0400
Subject: Indonesian Vice President urges Muslims to stand up against Islamic Radicals

 
 October 18, 2010

Indonesian Vice President urges Muslims 
to stand up against Islamic Radicals

Ulma Haryanto & Anita Rachman
The Jakarta Globe

JAKARTA - 
Vice President Boediono has received cautious praise after calling on the "silent majority" to take a stand against a growing radicalism that he describes as threatening to take the country down a path of destruction. "Once we allow radicalism to take over our way of thinking, it will lead us toward destruction," the vice president said in a speech on Saturday at the opening of the Global Peace Leadership Conference, organized by Nahdlatul Ulama.  

"Freedom of expression has been used by certain groups to spread hatred," he added.

Though racism and interreligious conflict are fundamental issues that exist in most societies, Boediono said, Indonesians should protect the foundation upon which the country was built — the principle of unity in diversity. "Although Islam is the religion of the majority of people, Indonesia is not an Islamic state," he said. Boediono said the country must not abandon the basic principle that guarantees religious freedom for all.

To do this, he called on the silent majority to take a stand. "Radicals are usually vocal, though they are few in number. They drown out the silent majority," he said. "But there are times when the silent majority must dare to speak out. We must loudly reject radicalism and return to the original agreement of the founding fathers of the nation."

Pluralism advocates applauded him for speaking out strongly on a threat they have long warned of but that officials have paid little attention to. Week after week, stories of discrimination against minority religious groups fill news pages, and several surveys have pointed to a worrying increase in intolerance among Indonesians. 

Dhyah Madya Ruth, chairwoman of Lazuardi Birru, a group that aims to educate young people about the dangers of extremism, said it was important that the government made a clear stand. 

"We have to create a synergy between the government, the people and civil society organizations in solving this problem," she said. "Most important in this is not just the silent majority, but the silent government has to make a firm stand." Burhanuddin Muhtadi, an analyst from the Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI), said that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono had never strongly addressed radicalism. 

In August Yudhoyono decried "groups that threatened the nation," but his vague message could not be grasped by the public, Muhtadi said. "He is too focused on his own image. He doesn't want to be considered antagonistic toward Islamic hard-liners." Another important government figure who needs to stand up against those who promote hatred is the religious affairs minister, said Ulil Abshar Abdalla, the founder of the Liberal Islam Network and a Democratic Party politician.

"For example, in several Islamic gatherings people openly call for the banishment of [minority Islamic sect] Ahmadiyah. That should not be allowed," he said, adding that he regretted that Religious Affairs Minister Suryadharma Ali had adopted a conservative approach that fostered radicalism. Suryadharma has openly advocated banning the Ahmadiyah sect.








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[ALOCHONA] FW: MUST READ: The dangers of Grameenism & microcredit



             As you read this imp. article on Grameenism keep in mind the The [George] Soros Syndrome.
 
 From "The Soros Syndrome" by Alexander Cockburn:
 
In other words, foundations, nonprofits, NGOs—call them what you will—can on occasion perform nobly, but overall their increasing power moves in step with the temper of our times: privatization of political action, directly overseen and manipulated by the rich and their executives. The tradition of voluntarism is extinguished by the professional, very well-paid do-good bureaucracy.
 
I'm still not sure why Ralph Nader, in his vast 2008 novel Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us, embraced the proposition embodied in the title (unless the whole exercise was an extended foray into irony). As an international class, the superrich are emphatically not interested in saving us, beyond advocating reforms required to stave off serious social unrest.
 
For many decades the superrich in this country  thought that the major threat to social stability lay in overpopulation and the unhealthy gene pool of the poor. Their endowments and NGOs addressed themselves diligently to these questions, by means of enforced sterilization, exclusion of Slavs and Jews from America's shores and other expedients, advanced by the leading liberals of the day.
 
More recently, "globalization" and "sustainability" have become necessary mantras, and foolish is the grant applicant who does not flourish both words. NGOs endowed by the rich are instinctively hostile to radical social change, at least in any terms that a left-winger of the 1950s or '60s would understand. The US environmental movement is now strategically supervised  and thus neutered as a radical force by the Pew Charitable Trusts, the lead dispenser of patronage and money. 

              Refect upon "patroange" and its desirability when you stave off attempts to make any structural change to the govt.
 
                      Farida

 


Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2010 02:08:08 -0700
Subject: MUST READ: The dangers of Grameenism & microcredit

 



The danger of Grameenism  

October 2010

By: Patrick Bond
HIMAL MAGAZINE

Far from being a panacea for fighting rural poverty, microcredit can impose additional burdens on the rural poor, without markedly improving their socio-economic condition. (Also belowKhorshed Alam on why microcredit initiatives inspired by Mohammad Yunus's vision and implemented by Grameen Bank and other NGOs have not gone nearly as well in Bangladesh as has been publicised worldwide.) 


For years, the example of microcredit in Bangladesh has been touted as a model of how the rural poor can lift themselves out of poverty. This widely held perception was boosted in 2006, when Mohammad Yunus and Grameen Bank, the microfinance institution he set up, jointly received the Nobel Peace Prize. In Southasia in particular, and the world in general, microcredit has become a gospel of sorts, with Yunus as its prophet. 

Consider this outlandish claim, made by Yunus as he got started in the late 1970s: 'Poverty will be eradicated in a generation. Our children will have to go to a 'poverty museum' to see what all the fuss was about.' According to Milford Bateman, a senior research fellow at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) in London who is one of the world's experts on Grameen and microcredit, the reason this rhetoric resonated with international donors during the era of neoliberal globalisation, was that 'they love the non-state, self-help, fiscally-responsible and individual entrepreneurship angles.' 

Grameen's origins are sourced to a discussion Yunus had with Sufiya Begum, a young mother who, he recalled, 'was making a stool made of bamboo. She gets five taka from a business person to buy the bamboo and sells to him for five and a half taka, earning half a taka as her income for the day. She will never own five taka herself and her life will always be steeped into poverty. How about giving her a credit for five taka that she uses to buy the bamboo, sell her product in free market, earn a better profit and slowly pay back the loan?' Describing Begum and the first 42 borrowers in Jobra village in Bangladesh, Yunus waxed eloquent: 'Even those who seemingly have no conceptual thought, no ability to think of yesterday or tomorrow, are in fact quite intelligent and expert at the art of survival. Credit is the key that unlocks their humanity.' 


But what is the current situation in Jobra? Says Bateman, 'It's still trapped in deep poverty, and now debt. And what is the response from Grameen Bank? All research in the village is now banned!' As for Begum, says Bateman, 'she actually died in abject poverty in 1998 after all her many tiny income-generating projects came to nothing.' The reason, Bateman argues, is simple: 'It turns out that as more and more 'poverty-push' micro-enterprises were crowded into the same local economic space, the returns on each micro-enterprise began to fall dramatically. Starting a new trading business or a basket-making operation or driving a rickshaw required few skills and only a tiny amount of capital, but such a project generated very little income indeed because everyone else was pretty much already doing exactly the same things in order to survive.'

Contrary to the carefully cultivated media image, Yunus is not contributing to peace or social justice. In fact, he is an extreme neoliberal ideologue. To quote his philosophy, as expressed in his 1998 autobiography, Banker to the Poor

I believe that 'government', as we know it today, should pull out of most things except for law enforcement and justice, national defense and foreign policy, and let the private sector, a 'Grameenized private sector', a social-consciousness-driven private sector, take over their other functions.
At the time as he wrote those words, governments across the world, especially in the United States, were pulling back from regulating financial markets. In 1999, for example, Larry Summers (then US Treasury secretary and now President Barack Obama's overall economics tsar) set the stage for the crash of financial-market instruments known as derivatives, by refusing to regulate them as he had been advised. 

The resulting financial crisis, peaking in 2008, should have changed Yunus's tune. After all, the catalysing event in 2007 was the rising default rate on a rash of 'subprime mortgage' loans given to low-income US borrowers. These are the equivalent of Grameen's loans to very poor Bangladeshis, except that Yunus did not go so far as the US lenders in allowing them to be securitised with overvalued real estate. 

Yunus has long argued that 'credit is a fundamental human right', not just a privilege for those with access to bank accounts and formal employment. But reflect on this matter and you quickly realise how inappropriate it is to compare bank debt – a liability that can be crushing to so many who do not survive the rigours of neoliberal markets - with crucial political and civil liberties, health care, water, nutrition, education, environment, housing and the other rights guaranteed in the constitutions of countries around the world. 

Microcredit mantras
By early 2009, as the financial crisis tightened its grip on the world, Yunus had apparently backed away from his long-held posture. At that time, he told India's MicroFinance Focus magazine the very opposite of what he had been saying: 'If somebody wants to do microcredit – fine. I wouldn't say this is something everybody should have' (emphasis added). Indeed, the predatory way that credit was introduced to vulnerable US communities in recent years means that Yunus must now distinguish his Grameen Bank's strategy of 'real' microcredit from microcredit 'which has a different motivation'. As Yunus told MicroFinance Focus, 'Whenever something gets popular, there are people who take advantage of that and misuse it.'

To be sure, Yunus also unveiled a more radical edge in that interview, interpreting the crisis in the following terms. 'The root causes are the wrong structure, the capitalism structure that we have,' he said. 'We have to redesign the structure we are operating in. Wrong, unsustainable lifestyle.' Fair enough. But in the next breath, Yunus was back to neoliberalism, arguing that state microfinance regulation 'should be promotional, a cheerleader.'

For Yunus, regulators are apparently anathema, especially if they clamp down on what are, quite frankly, high-risk banking practices, such as hiding bad debts. As the Wall Street Journal conceded in late 2001, a fifth of the Grameen Bank's loans were more than a year past their due date: 'Grameen would be showing steep losses if the bank followed the accounting practices recommended by institutions that help finance microlenders through low-interest loans and private investments.' A typical financial sleight-of-hand resorted to by Grameen is to reschedule short-term loans that are unpaid after as long as two years; thus, instead of writing them off, it lets borrowers accumulate interest through new loans simply to keep alive the fiction of repayments on the old loans. Not even extreme pressure techniques – such as removing tin roofs from delinquent women's houses, according to the Journal report – improved repayment rates in the most crucial areas, where Grameen had earlier won its global reputation among neoliberals who consider credit and entrepreneurship as central prerequisites for development. 

By the early 2000s, even the huckster-rich microfinance industry had felt betrayed by Yunus' tricks. 'Grameen Bank had been at best lax, and more likely at worst, deceptive in reporting its financial performance,' wrote leading microfinance promoter J D Von Pischke of the World Bank in reaction to the Journal's revelations. 'Most of us in the trade probably had long suspected that something was fishy.' Agreed Ross Croulet of the African Development Bank, 'I myself have been suspicious for a long time about the true situation of Grameen so often disguised by Dr Yunus's global stellar status.' 
Several years earlier, Yunus was weaned off the bulk of his international donor support, reportedly USD 5 million a year, which until then had reduced the interest rate he needed to charge borrowers and still make a profit. Grameen had allegedly become 'sustainable' and self-financing, with costs to be fully borne by borrowers. 

To his credit, Yunus had also battled backward patriarchal and religious attitudes in Bangladesh, and his hard work extended credit to millions of people. Today there are around 20,000 Grameen staffers servicing 6.6 million borrowers in 45,000 Bangladeshi villages, lending an average of USD 160 per borrower (about USD 100 million/month in new credits), without collateral, an impressive accomplishment by any standards. The secret to such high turnover was that poor women were typically arranged in groups of five: two got the first tranche of credit, leaving the other three as 'chasers' to pressure repayment, so that they could in turn get the next loans. 

At a time of new competitors, adverse weather conditions (especially the 1998 floods) and a backlash by borrowers who used the collective power of non-payment, Grameen imposed dramatic increases in the price of repaying loans. That Grameen was gaining leverage over women – instead of giving them economic liberation – is a familiar accusation. In 1995, New Internationalist magazine probed Yunus about the 16 'resolutions' he required his borrowers to accept, including 'smaller families'. When New Internationalist suggested this 'smacked of population control', Yunus replied, 'No, it is very easy to convince people to have fewer children. Now that the women are earners, having more children means losing money.' The long history of forced sterilisation in the Third World is often justified in such narrow economic terms.

In the same spirit of commodifying everything, Yunus set up a relationship with the biotechnology giant Monsanto to promote biotech and agrochemical products in 1998, which, New Internationalist reported, 'was cancelled due to public pressure.' As Sarah Blackstock reported in the same magazine the following year: 'Away from their homes, husbands and the NGOs that disburse credit to them, the women feel safe to say the unmentionable in Bangladesh – microcredit isn't all it's cracked up to be … What has really sold microcredit is Yunus's seductive oratorical skill.' But that skill, Blackstock explains, allows Yunus and leading imitators 

to ascribe poverty to a lack of inspiration and depoliticise it by refusing to look at its causes. Microcredit propagators are always the first to advocate that poor people need to be able to help themselves. The kind of microcredit they promote isn't really about gaining control, but ensuring the key beneficiaries of global capitalism aren't forced to take any responsibility for poverty.
 

The big lie

Microfinance gimmickry has done huge damage in countries across the globe. In South Africa in 1998, for instance, when the emerging-markets crisis raised interest rates across the developing world, an increase of seven percent, imposed over two weeks as the local currency crashed, drove many South African borrowers and their microlenders into bankruptcy. Ugandan political economist Dani Nabudere has also rebutted 'the argument which holds that the rural poor need credit which will enable them to improve their productivity and modernise production.' For Nabudere, this 'has to be repudiated for what it is – a big lie.' 

Inside even the most neoliberal financing agency (and Grameen sponsor), the World Bank, these lessons were by obvious by the early 1990s. Sababathy Thillairajah, an economist, had reviewed the Bank's African peasant credit programmes in 1993, and advised colleagues: 'Leave the people alone. When someone comes and asks you for money, the best favour you can give them is to say 'no'… We are all learning at the Bank. Earlier we thought that by bringing in money, financial infrastructure and institutions would be built up – which did not occur quickly.' 

But not long afterwards, Yunus stepped in to help the World Bank with ideological support. When I met Yunus in Johannesburg, not long before South Africa's April 1994 liberation, he vowed he wouldn't take Bank funds. Yet in August 1995, Yunus endorsed the Bank's USD 200 million global line of credit aimed at microfinance for poor women. However, according to ODI's Bateman, the World Bank 'insisted on a few changes: the mantra of 'full cost recovery', the hard-line belief that the poor must pay the full costs of any program ostensibly designed to help them, and the key methodology is to impose high interest rates and to reward employees as Wall Street-style motivation.' 

Bateman also remarks on the damage caused to Bangladesh itself by subscribing to the microcredit gospel: 'Bangladesh was left behind by neighbouring Asian countries, who all choose to deploy a radically different 'development-driven' local financial model: Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand, China, Vietnam.' And the countries that were more reliant on neoliberal microfinance soon hit, Bateman insists, 'saturation, with the result of over-indebtedness, 'microcredit bubbles', and small business collapse.' Just as dangerous, Yunus's model actually 'destroys social capital and solidarity,' says Bateman. It is used up 'when repayment is prioritised over development. No technical support is provided, threats are used, assets are seized. And governments use microfinance to cut public spending on the poor and women, who are left to access expensive services from the private sector.' The Yunus phenomenon is, in short, a more pernicious contribution to capitalism than ordinary loan-sharking, because it has been bestowed with such legitimacy. 

Bateman records extremely high microfinance interest rates 'everywhere'. In Bangladesh, for instance, these are around 30 to 40 percent; in Mexico, they go up as high as 80 percent. No wonder that in the most recent formal academic review of microfinance, by economist Dean Karlan of Yale University, 'There might be little pockets here and there of people who are made better off, but the average effect is weak, if not nonexistent.'

As the Wall Street Journal put it in 2001, 'To many, Grameen proves that capitalism can work for the poor as well as the rich.' And yet the record should prove otherwise, just as the subprime financial meltdown has shown the mirage of finance during periods of capitalist crisis.


The latest figures suggest that nearly 70 million people (out of 150 million total) in Bangladesh are still living below the poverty line; of those, about 30 million are considered to live in chronic poverty. Grameen Bank now has around seven million borrowers in Bangladesh, 97 percent of whom are women. Yet after decades of poverty-alleviation programmes what effect has Grameen had in its home country? The microcredit initiatives inspired by Mohammad Yunus's vision and implemented by Grameen Bank and other NGOs have not gone nearly as well in Bangladesh as has been publicised worldwide. 

To start with, the terms of microcredit in Bangladesh are inflexible and generally far too restrictive – by way of weekly repayment and savings commitments – to allow the borrowers to utilise the newfound credit freely. After all, with a first repayment scheduled for a week after the credit is given, what are the options but petty trading? The effective interest rate stands at 30 to 40 percent, while some suggest it goes upwards of 60 percent in certain situations. Defaulters, therefore, are on the rise, with many being compelled to take out new loans from other sources at even higher interest rates.

Worryingly, in the families of some 82 percent of female borrowers, exchange of dowry has increased since their enrolment with Grameen Bank – it seems that micro-borrowing is seen as enabling the families to pay more dowry than otherwise.

Only five to 10 percent of Grameen borrowers have showed improvement of their quality of life with the help of microcredit, and those who have done will tend to have other sources of income as well. Fully half of the borrowers who could not improve were able to retain their positions by taking out loans from multiple sources; about 45 percent could not do so at all, and their position deteriorated. Many are thus forced to flee the village and try to find work in an urban area or abroad. It has now become clear that most Grameen borrowers spend their newfound credit for their daily livelihood expenditure, rather than on income-generating initiatives.

The main difference between microcredit lenders and feudal moneylenders was that the latter needed collateral. It is true that microcredit has created money flows in rural areas, but also that it created a process through which small-scale landowners can quickly become landless – if one cannot pay back the money at high interest rates, many are forced to sell their land. In cases of failure of timely repayment, instances of seizure by Grameen of tin roofs, pots and pans, and other household goods do take place – amounting to implicit collateral. 

This does not mean that credit is not useful to the poor and powerless. The problem lies in the approach taken. Poverty is conceptualised extremely narrowly, only in terms of cash income; when in fact it has to do with all aspects of life, involving both basic material needs such as food, clothing and housing; and basic human needs such as human dignity and rights, education, health and equity. It is true that the rural economy today has received some momentum from microcredit. But the questions remain: Why has this link failed to make any significant impact on poverty? Why, despite the purported 'success' of microcredit, do people in distress keep migrating to urban centres? Why does a famine-like situation persists in large parts of Bangladesh, particularly in the north? Moreover, why does the number of people under the poverty line keep rising – alongside the rising microcredit?

In fact, poverty has its roots and causes, and expanding the credit net without addressing these will never improve any poverty situation. Experience shows that if countries such as Bangladesh rely heavily on microcredit for alleviating poverty, poverty will remain – to keep the microcredit venture alive. Grameen Bank's 'wonderful story' of prosperity, solidarity and empowerment has only one problem: it never happened. 

~ Khorshed Alam

Patrick Bond is a senior professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal School of Development Studies Centre for Civil Society in Durban, South Africa. Khorshed Alam is executive director of the Alternative Movement for Resources and Freedom Society, based in Dhaka.



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