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Thursday, December 9, 2010

Re: [banglarnari] RE: [ALOCHONA] Court makes laws!!!,Killer become Justice !!!n Parliament act as?



THIS IS ANOTHER DIE HARD BALIST WHO KNOWS NOTHING AWAMI SLOGANS LIKE THE QUISLINGS G. HOS.BANGLADESH HAS SERIOUS PROBLEM HAVING HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF HORSES  LIKE WHICH IS DIFFICULT TO DRAG TO SENSES.

On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 5:14 AM, Farida Majid <farida_majid@hotmail.com> wrote:
 

             You should be sued for spreading slanderous rumor about an honorable man who has been proved innocent -- again and again -- in the justice system and outside it -- in the court of public opinion.
 
[I'll find out under which Act and section charges can be brought against your lot. For that though I will have to consult my dear friend Ruhul Quddus Babu, who, I hope, will have time nowadays to spare from his busy schedule].
 
            The Court has NOT made any law by declaring the Fifth Amendment ILLEGAL.  It only seems so to your ignorant and villainous eyes. 
             You must have been an accomplice in that illegal act!  Perhaps you will do us all a favor by educating yourself, Please read my article:

http://www.samakal.com.bd/details.php?news=23&view=archiev&y=2010&m=04&d=26&action=main&menu_type=&option=single&news_id=61535&pub_no=318&type=

 
                Farida Majid  


To: notun_bangladesh@yahoogroups.com; history_islam@yahoogroups.com; dahuk@yahoogroups.com; banglarnari@yahoogroups.com; khabor@yahoogroups.com; Bangladesh-Zindabad@yahoogroups.com; sonarbangladesh@yahoogroups.com; bangla-vision@yahoogroups.com; WideMinds@yahoogroups.com; vinnomot@yahoogroups.com; dhakamails@yahoogroups.com; alochona@yahoogroups.com; ayubi_s786@yahoo.com; faruquealamgir@gmail.com
From: aminul_islam_raj@yahoo.com
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2010 02:52:24 -0800
Subject: [ALOCHONA] Court makes laws!!!,Killer become Justice !!!n Parliament act as?

Dear All,
Do you know that there is a country where court can do and undo constitution of the country?And a killer (who was  found guilty  twice by police inquary and once by judiciary inquary commetee) takes oath as justice!!!)It is noted claim against him is 'he ensure death by KIRICH"
New  requisite qualification of Justice!!!!
What should be the act of perliament there?




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[ALOCHONA] Former European leaders call to confront Israel over settlement building



Former European leaders call to confront Israel over settlement building

26 former top EU officials, including ex EU chief Solana and former German President Richard von Weizsacker, urge world powers to sanction Jerusalem for its refusal to obey international law.

By Akiva Eldar
A group of 26 senior former European leaders who held power during the past decade are calling for strong measures against Israel in response to its settlement policy and refusal to abide by international law.
Settlements - AP - Sept 27, 2010 Palestinian man works at a construction site in a West Bank settlement on Monday, September 27, 2010.
Photo by: AP
In an unusual letter sent Thursday to the leadership of the European Union and the governments of the EU's 27 member states, the signatories, including former heads of state, ministers and heads of European organizations, criticize Israel's policies.
Among those signing the letter are the former European Union High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, Javier Solana, former German President Richard von Weizsacker, former Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzales, former president of the EU Commission and former Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, and former Irish President Mary Robinson.
The group drew up a series of recommendations to the current EU leadership during a meeting in London in mid-November.
The sharply worded document joins a decision by the governments of South American countries, including Brazil and Argentina, to recognize a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. In addition, the European Union Council has decided to support the Palestinian Authority's decision to establish an independent state and put an end to the occupation.
The letter's timing is also related to an announcement by the U.S. administration about the failure of the negotiations with Israel on extending the freeze on settlement construction. The former European leaders note that key American figures had suggested to them that the best way to help U.S. President Barack Obama in his efforts to promote peace was to make policy that contradicts U.S. positions come at a cost to Israel.
The European leaders are backing the Palestinians' efforts to rally international support for the recognition of an independent Palestinian state as an alternative to the negotiations that have reached an impasse. They note that the Palestinians cannot expect to be able to set up an independent state without international political and economic assistance.
As such, they are calling on the European Union to play a more effective and active role vis-a-vis the United States, Israel and others. They also want it made clear that a European Union decision to upgrade relations with Israel and other bilateral agreements will be frozen unless Israel freezes settlement activities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
They also propose that the EU announce that it will not accept any unilateral changes to the 1967 border that Israel carried out against international law, and that the Palestinian state would cover an area the same size as the area occupied in 1967. This would also include the establishment of a capital in East Jerusalem.
The leaders recommend that the EU support only minor land swaps on which the two sides agree.


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[ALOCHONA] The War Against Pakistan



The War Against Pakistan

By Fatima Bhutto

09 December, 2010
TomDispatch.com

What the Wikileaks revelations tell us about how Washington runs Pakistan

With governments like Pakistan's current regime, who needs the strong arm of the CIA? According to Bob Woodward's latest bestseller Obama's Wars, when Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari, an obsequiously dangerous man, was notified that the CIA would be launching missile strikes from drones over his country's sovereign territory, he replied, "Kill the seniors. Collateral damage worries you Americans. It doesn't worry me."

Why would he worry? When his wife Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan in 2007 to run for prime minister after years of self-imposed exile, she was already pledged to a campaign of pro-American engagement. She promised to hand over nuclear scientist and international bogeyman Dr. A.Q. Khan, the "father" of the Pakistani atomic bomb, to the International Atomic Energy Agency. She also made clear that, once back in power, she would allow the Americans to bomb Pakistan proper, so that George W. Bush's Global War on Terror might triumph. Of course, the Americans had been involved in covert strikes and other activities in Pakistan since at least 2001, but we didn't know that then.

This has been the promise that has kept Zardari, too, in power.

According to the recent cache of State Department cables released by Wikileaks, his position and those of his colleagues in government haven't wavered. In 2008, for example, Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani enthusiastically told American Ambassador Anne Paterson that he "didn't care" if drone strikes were launched against his country as long as the "right people" were targeted. (They weren't.) "We'll protest in the National Assembly," Gilani added cynically, "and then ignore it."

In fact, protests by the National Assembly have been few and far between and yet, by the end of November, Pakistani territory had been targeted by American unmanned Predator and Reaper missile strikes more than 100 times this year alone. CIA drone strikes have, in fact, been a feature of the American war in Pakistan since 2004. In 2008, after Barack Obama won the presidency in the U.S. and Zardari ascended to Pakistan's highest office, the strikes escalated and soon began occurring almost weekly, later nearly daily, and so became a permanent feature of life for those living in the tribal borderlands of northern Pakistan.

Barack Obama ordered his first drone strike against Pakistan just 72 hours after being sworn in as president. It seems a suitably macabre fact that, according to a U.N. report on "targeted killings" (that is, assassinations) published in 2010, George W. Bush employed drone strikes 45 times in his eight years as President. In Obama's first year in office, the drones were sent in 53 times. In the six years that drone strikes have been used in the fight against Pakistan, researchers at the New America Foundation estimate that between 1,283 and 1,971 people have been killed.

While the dead are regularly identified as "militants" or "suspected militants" in newspaper stories and on the TV news, they almost never have names, nor are their identities confirmed or faces shown. Their histories are always vague. The Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC) took a careful look at nine drone strikes from the last two years and concluded that they had resulted in the deaths of 30 civilians, including 14 women and children. (Perhaps, of course, superior American military intelligence classified them as "militants in training.") Based on this study, an average rate of error can be calculated: 3.33 civilians mistakenly killed in each drone attack. The dead, Pakistanis will assure you, are largely unnamed, faceless, unindicted, and un-convicted civilians.

Pakistanis are considered irrelevant, however, and collateral damage, as it turns out, doesn't seem to worry anyone in the governing elite.

Think of it this way: this summer, monsoon rains and floods submerged one-fifth of Pakistan, affecting 20 million people. It was the country's worst natural disaster in its history. Although the body count, under the circumstances, was considered comparatively low -- 2,000 killed -- the United Nations concluded that the destruction caused by the floods surpassed the devastating Asian tsunami of 2004, the Pakistan earthquake of 2005, and the recent earthquake in Haiti combined. Two million homes were destroyed and the crucial food belt in the key agricultural provinces of Punjab and Sindh was ravaged. Millions of children were left homeless or at risk of contracting cholera, dysentery, and other water-borne diseases. According to the World Heath Organization, 1.5 million potentially fatal cases of diarrhea and another two million cases of malaria are still expected.

During what U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon termed the worst disaster he'd ever seen, with the country desperate and prostrate, the CIA launched its most extensive drone campaign yet. Over the 30 days of September, as Islamabad rushed to assure Washington that it would not divert too many troops from the war effort to help with flood relief, 20-odd drone strikes were called in. They would produce the highest number of drone fatalities for a single month in the last six years.

In 2009, in one of the many State Department cables Wikileaks loosed on the world, U.S. Ambassador Anne Paterson confirmed that key player and Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Kayani directed his forces to aid those American drone strikes. Various U.S. operations in the country's northern and tribal regions were, the ambassador wrote, "almost certainly [conducted] with the personal consent of… General Kayani."

The Pakistani media has welcomed the release of the State Department documents because much that reporters and pundits have long claimed (and which Washington has long denied) has now been confirmed: that, for instance, the mercenary private contractor Blackwater (now known as Xe Services) has been operating in Pakistan at the behest of the Americans, that the country's military high command has given the green light for drone strikes on its own people, and that the infamously corrupt government of President Zardari has turned the country over to the Americans in exchange for money.

Pakistan already receives approximately two billion dollars in military aid a year, and that's just for the army. Under the Kerry Lugar Bill passed by the U.S. Congress, if Pakistan plays nice, opens up its nuclear secrets, and the Army's internal documentation on how it selects the Chief of Army staff and other matters, the country will get $7.5 billion dollars of "civilian aid" over five years -- and this is just the tip of the financial iceberg, which, of course, offers the present leadership the chance to extend their incompetent rule just a little longer.

One newspaper baron and government chamcha -- apple polisher in Urdu -- became the laughing stock of the country's new media when he went on television to suggest that revelations about how Pakistan's government had lied to its people, subverted its national sovereignty, and coordinated foreign attacks didn't faintly measure up to those about leaders in other countries. Look at Berlusconi!

The Pakistani political establishment has always believed that the West is best. It has, after all, been the ultimate source of their power and so, on December 3rd, Prime Minister Gilani called a meeting of the Joint Chiefs, the Defense Minister, and various cabinet ministers, including the Finance Minister, to discuss the Wikileaks scandal and strategies for dealing with any potential embarrassments in yet-to-be-released cables. (Lie, undoubtedly. It worked so well before.)

Tariq Ali, the Pakistani writer and historian, reacted to the Wikileaks revelations swiftly and with a frustration and anger felt by many Pakistanis. "The Wikileaks," he wrote, "confirm what we already know: Pakistan is a U.S. satrapy. Its military and political leaders constitute a venal elite happy to kill and maim its own people at the behest of a foreign power. The U.S. proconsul in Islamabad, Anne Patterson, emerges as a shrewd diplomat warning her country of the consequences if they carry on as before. Amusing, but hardly a surprise, is that Zardari reassures the U.S. that if he were assassinated, his sister would replace him and all would continue as before. Always nice to know that the country is regarded by its ruler as a personal fiefdom."

Still, that elite carries on with little sense of the grim absurdity of recent events. As the Wikileaks documents pour out, various members of parliament are queuing up to have their names put forward as possible replacements for the prime minister. Since the only person capable of replacing the president is his sister, there's no need for debate there.

Like many military chiefs in the past, General Kayani is putting forward his own set of favored names, overstepping the official limits of his office with impunity, while the unelected dark overlord of the government, Interior Minister Rehman Malik, has been offering himself for another unelected posting.

Malik came to public notoriety as Benazir Bhutto's security adviser -- until her assassination. The job of policing the nation was always a peculiar reward to offer a man who couldn't keep his one charge safe. Malik, for whom President Zardari issued a presidential pardon and who had all corruption charges against him dropped under the National Reconciliation Ordinance (an odious law pardoning 20 years worth of graft carried out by politicians, bankers and bureaucrats) was also given a senate seat by his friend the president.

Zardari, it is worth noting, did not stand for elections either, has no constituency, and was made president in the very same manner as Pakistan's previous ruler General Pervez Musharraf: he was selected by his own parliament.

What will Pakistan's elite learn from Wikileaks? Undoubtedly nothing. And if we're going by the White House's response so far, nor will Washington feel more constrained than it ever has when it comes to choosing its allies and running the South Asian arm of its informal global empire.

The Zardari government makes no secret of its gratitude for American support. They have, after all, watched as a foreign power bombs its land, illegally detains or renders its citizens, and turns a blind eye to Pakistan's flagrant censorship and abuse of human rights.

This obeisance to power is the key to Zardari's American engagement. And so it will remain. While we wait for Wikileaks to reveal the rest of the cables, which are unlikely to have any bearing on Washington's future dealings with the corrupt governments of Zardari in Pakistan or President Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan (or anywhere else for that matter), we watch as American officials argue for expanding their drone attacks southwards into the natural-gas-rich province of Balochistan. That it shares a border with Iran hardly seems a coincidence.

The Zardari regime's essential acquiescence has recently been acknowledged via a multi-year "no strings attached" offer of a military aid package by Washington. At the height of the devastation wreaked by the summer floods, the Health Secretary of Balochistan and the Deputy Chairman of the Pakistani Senate both alleged that aid could not be airlifted out of an air base in the city of Jacobabad on the border between Sindh and Balochistan, two flood ravaged provinces, because it was being used by the Americans for their drone strikes in Pakistan. The American embassy issued a swift and suitably hurt-sounding denial, but the damage was done -- and the message was clear: the war against Pakistan continues unabated, with its own government at the helm.

Fatima Bhutto, an Afghan-born Pakistani poet and writer, is most recently the author of Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter's Memoir (Nation Books, 2010). Her work has appeared in the New Statesman, the Daily Beast, and the Guardian, among other places. Her father, Murtaza Bhutto, son of Pakistan's former President and Prime Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and an elected member of parliament, was killed by the police in 1996 in Karachi during the premiership of his sister, Benazir Bhutto. Fatima lives and writes in Karachi, Pakistan. To listen to a Timothy MacBain TomCast audio interview in which Fatima Bhutto discusses the unequal U.S.-Pakistani relationship, click here or, to download it to your iPod, here.

 

 




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[ALOCHONA] Low and disorder !



Low and disorder !
 
 



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[ALOCHONA] Cops top corrupt



Finds TIB in its maiden public opinion polls; Bangladeshis keep faith most in govt for fight against graft
 
 
The police are the most corrupt institution followed by the civil service, political party and the judiciary in Bangladesh, shows the first public opinion survey of Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB).

Global Corruption Barometer 2010, the biggest worldwide survey on people's perception and experience about corruption, said most Bangladeshi respondents favour the government over other organisations to fight corruption.

The corruption watchdog released the survey at a press conference at the Brac Centre Inn yesterday. It is the first time Bangladesh has been included in the yearly survey initiated in 2003 covering 44 countries.

Of the 86 countries surveyed, Bangladesh has the highest number of citizens to prefer the government to fight corruption with 60 percent of them opting for it against a global percentage of 22, says the survey of 1,049 Bangladeshis in 64 districts between June 9 and 10 this year.

The media is the second choice of Bangladeshi respondents for fighting corruption with 16 percent of them giving opinion in its favour. However, the highest number of respondents (25 percent) worldwide picked the media as the most trusted institution to fight corruption.

The survey also came up with an interesting finding that 90 percent of Bangladeshi respondents want to be involved in fighting corruption while 95 percent of them are eager to help their colleagues or friends in the same cause. Ninety-three percent of them believe ordinary people can make a difference in combating corruption.

According to the survey, nongovernmental organisations in Bangladesh are more corrupt than the media and the military. Sixteen percent of the respondents chose it followed by the media (14 percent) and military (nine percent).

Seventy-nine percent of Bangladeshis, surveyed in the report, believe the police are the most corrupt public service institution followed by the public service (68 percent), political party (58 percent), the judiciary (43 percent) and parliament (32 percent).

Bangladesh also tops the list with regard to victims of petty corruption in key public service sectors, says the survey report published worldwide yesterday.

The survey took into account people's opinions on corruption and their experience about it.

Ten Sub-Saharan African countries are doing better than Bangladesh in combating petty corruption, shows the survey with opinions of more than 91,500 people across the globe.

According to the findings, bribe has plagued key public service institutions in Bangladesh with 76 percent of the respondents labelling police as the key bribe collector. Sixty-four percent of them awarded the judiciary the second position followed by the land service (48 percent), registry and permit service (47 percent), utilities (34 percent), educational system (28 percent) and medical service (18 percent).

Petty bribery in public service institutions is higher in Bangladesh than other South Asian Countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, shows the survey.

The reasons people give bribes include receiving the service they are entitled to, speeding things up and avoiding trouble with the authorities.

"The people of Bangladesh have more faith in the government than any other institution to fight corruption. The government must ensure transparency in its basic democratic institutions and strengthen them to resist corruption," said TIB Executive Director Dr Iftekharuzzaman.

He also stressed the need for making effective the Anti-Corruption Commission and the judiciary to curb corruption.

According to the survey, 66 percent respondents believe corruption has increased globally over the past three years.

Eighty percent of the respondents worldwide labelled political party as the most corrupt institution followed by parliament (61 percent), police (59 percent) and religious bodies (53 percent).

TIB Trustee Prof Muzaffer Ahmad and TIB president M Hafizuddin Khan were present at the press conference.

Global Corruption Barometer is one of the four tools the institution uses to measure corruption worldwide. The others are Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), Global Corruption Report and Bribe Payers Index.

According to the CPI published on October 26, Bangladesh remains static in terms of curbing corruption.
  http://www.thedailystar.net/story.php?nid=165491
 



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[ALOCHONA] Khaleda should disclose sources of income: PM



Khaleda should disclose
sources of income: PM

 

The prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, on Thursday told parliament that the BNP chairperson, Khaleda Zia, should let the people know about her sources of income with which she had bought the 'costly' household articles that were found at the Mainul Road house.
  

 Hasina also instructed the finance minister to check Khaleda's tax file, submitted to the interim government, to verify whether the latter had evaded tax.
   'The BNP chief has to disclose her sources of income by which she bought the furniture and other costly goods,' said the leader of the house in her concluding speech at the brief seventh session of the ninth parliament. 'I want to know it,' the prime minister said.
   Hasina said that the opposition leader had lived in the cantonment house which had 45 rooms, 12 bathrooms and four kitchens with 64 air coolers.
   'A total of 29 vehicles, including 14 covered vans and two large trucks were used to take her household articles and she submitted another long list of the goods. If the BNP chief had bought the articles with her own money, from where she got the money,' asked the prime minister, adding that the people knew that Ziaur Rahman did not leave
   anything in the house.
   'Poor people's money was looted to build up such huge wealth. She should give the account of her sources of income to the people,' said Hasina.
   Hasina said that after plundering public wealth, they [BNP] had enforced hartal for a house although she [Khaleda] was given another house.
   The prime minister also criticised the Jatiya Party chairman, Hossain Mohammad Ershad, for giving the cantonment house to Khaleda.
   'He [Ershad] should also explain why he had given the house to his "bhabijan" (sister-in-law),' Hasina quipped.
   

Rejecting Ershad's proposal to create seven provinces to ease pressure on Dhaka city, Hasina said, 'I think creation of provinces would not resolve the problems.'

 

'Bangladesh is a small country. Creating provinces would result in top heavy administration. More people would be appointed, more buildings would be built at the state level and public spending would increase,' said the prime minister.
   'It would be more effective if we make the district councils stronger by decentralising administration,' she said.

 

http://www.newagebd.com/2010/dec/10/front.html




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[ALOCHONA] Indian BSF routinely kills on border -



Indian BSF routinely kills on border -
 
US-based rights body spurs Dhaka to protect its nationals

Indian border security force (BSF) routinely gun down civilians crossing the border with Bangladesh despite negligible evidence of any crime, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report released yesterday.(The Daily Star )

Over 900 Bangladeshi nationals have been killed by the BSF over the last decade, many of them when they crossed into Indian territory for cattle rustling or other smuggling activities.

However, in several cases "we also found that Bangladeshi nationals were injured or killed due to indiscriminate firing from across the border", the report said.

HRW found no evidence in any death it documented that the person was engaged in any activity that would justify such an extreme response.

The rights body said the Bangladesh government should vigorously protect the right to life of its citizens, even those who may be involved in illegal trade, and should call upon the Indian government to exercise restraint.

The Indian government should prosecute BSF soldiers responsible for serious human rights abuses, the rights group said.

The 81-page report, "Trigger Happy: Excessive Use of Force by Indian Troops at the Bangladesh Border," documents the situation on the border region, where both Bangladesh and India have deployed border guards to prevent infiltration, trafficking, and smuggling.

It said the BSF--responsible for guarding against extremists, drug and weapons smugglers and human traffickers--is instead using its muscle to detain, torture and kill with impunity, according to HRW, the New York-based rights group.

HRW found numerous cases of indiscriminate use of force, arbitrary detention, torture, and killings by the security force, without adequate investigation or punishment.

The report is based on over 100 interviews with victims, witnesses, human rights defenders, journalists, law-enforcement officials, and BSF and Bangladesh Rifles' (BDR) members, said a press release of the HRW.

The report said border officials are required to exercise restraint and "act in proportion to the seriousness of the offence." It suggested India and Bangladesh should take immediate steps to end the killing of hundreds of their citizens at the West Bengal-Bangladesh border by BSF.

"The border force seems to be out of control, with orders to shoot any suspect," said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia Director at HRW. "The border operations ignore the most basic rule of law, the presumption of innocence."

HRW said since both Indians and Bangladeshis have fallen prey to this excessive use of force, both governments need to open a joint independent investigation to turn the situation around.

"Human Rights Watch has repeatedly called upon the Indian government to prosecute those responsible for human rights violations instead of letting its security forces get away with murder," Ganguly said. "The BSF insists that there are internal investigations, but why then is it so unwilling to reveal whether anyone has been punished for these killings."




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[ALOCHONA] Eviction of Khaleda Zia: Latest in Hasina’s Zia Phobia!



Eviction of Khaleda Zia: Latest in Hasina's Zia Phobia!

Friday November 26 2010 20:54:31 PM BDT

By Obaid Chowdhury, USA

Begum Khaleda Zia, Chairperson of the BNP and Leader of the Opposition in the Parliament was evicted from her cantonment residence on November 13, 2010. From the television footage, her ouster did not seem a peaceful one, nor was it a voluntary action as claimed by the Inter Service Public Relations (ISPR).

The ISPR press release on the issue had much to be desired and left many questions unanswered. Incidentally, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed is the Defense Minister under whom the ISPR falls. No wonder she was seen enjoying the Nero's grin when her 'arch enemy' was being publicly humiliated. The way the judiciary, administration and Awami cadres took up the issue, it appeared that it was a crisis matter of the highest order and must be resolved immediately if the nation were to survive! Some top Ministers and Awami stalwarts shrugged at the final episode to indicate that it was a judicial matter and the government had nothing to do in its process. One can FOOL one person all time, some persons sometime, but NOT ALL PERSONS ALL TIMES. Members of public know on whose direction those steps were taken; they understand the credentials of the learned judges who gave the verdict on the issue; they are clear about the loyalty of the Law Minister and the Attorney General, as well as the enthusiasm of the Home Minister.

Then Brigadier Ziaur Rahman was allocated House No. 6 on Shaheed Moinul Road in the Dhaka Cantonment after he took over as the Deputy Chief of Army Staff in June 1972. He continued to stay in the same house when he became the army chief in 1975 and retired as a Lieutenant General to become the President in 1977. Ziaur Rahman was killed in 1981 and his bereaved family was allowed to stay in the house under a government order. Later, President H M Ershad granted the ownership of the house to Begum Khaleda Zia as a token of the nation's respect and gratitude to the assassinated president. Begum Zia and her family had been living in the house for nearly 4 decades and nobody raised any question about its legality. However, things changed since Sheikh Hasina Wazed started her second inning in the helm of Bangladeshi affaires in January 2009. It looks like her singular mission this time is to destroy Zia's image and Zia's family.

(Please see an earlier article "Hasina's Zia Phobia", copy appended below for ready reference)

Mystery still shrouds the assassination of President Ziaur Rahman on May 31, 1981. Zia was leading Bangladesh to a self-assertive road, much to the discomfort of India, which invested so heavily for its creation before, during and after 1971. India always desired Bangladesh to be integrated with its northeastern region for political, economic and strategic advantages. Zia posed a big challenge in that design. Most analysts, therefore, believed that the RAW (Research and Analysis Wing---the CIA of India) had a hand in Zia's killing. They also suspected the connivance of India-trained then army Chief Lieutenant General H M Ershad; Major General M A Manzur, then Chittagong Area Commander, was just a scapegoat in the killing. Zia allowed Sheikh Hasina to return from her self-exile in India only a few weeks earlier; and intriguingly, Hasina was caught trying to flee to Agartala in India following Zia's assassination! "Amar Phasi Chai" of Motiur Rahman Rentu—one-time close aide of Sheikh Hasina---gives some insight to the conspiracy theory in Zia-killing.

Awami League and its sponsors tried to eliminate Ziaur Rahman; but look, over two million people gathered at his funeral, an unprecedented event in Bangladesh! That spoke of the love and respects Zia the man commanded over the people of Bangladesh.

Circumstances forced Begum Khaleda Zia to join politics and carry her late husband's mission forward. Ershad and Hasina joined hands in the late 1980s to thwart that. (See "Democracy and the Challenge of Development" by Maudud Ahmad and the 'box of crores' from Ershad to Hasina in Sheikh Selim's Statement). The result was Khaleda came out as the 'Uncompromising Leader' in the face of all odds, repeated humiliations and harassments. During the elections in 1991, following the ouster of Ershad, Zia the leader, along with Khaleda Zia, became the issue. "Zia Tumi Acho Mishe, Shara Banglar Dhaner Shishe" created magic in peoples' mind and they voted BNP overwhelmingly. Hasina's anti-Zia slogans and activities boomeranged.

In 1996, Sheikh Hasina managed to win majority and form the government, thanks to helping hands from the Election Commission under Abu Hena (a die-hard Awami supporter), sections of bureaucracy and media, of course, not discounting an ever active RAW behind them all. Sheikh Hasina spent much of her energy during her first administration in her two oft-quoted promises: rehabilitating the image of her father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and hanging his killers. She largely succeeded in her dual missions. At the same time, she tried to demean, defame and obliterate everything Zia, Begum Zia or BNP did. The public response was shown in rejecting her in the next election in 2001.

In the elections to be held in January 2007, Sheikh Hasina perceived that BNP-led alliance was heading for another victory, so she started all out disturbance activities---at huge loss to men and materials--- to foil the election on various pretexts. At that point, our great 'patriot' and self-promoted General Moeen U Ahmad came forward to salvage the situation by declaring 'Emergency' and running a martial law-type administration for the next two years. He did not make any secret of his love for Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his Awami League while detest for the BNP which installed him as army chief in the first place, superseding a few seniors on the recommendation of his old pal Major Syeed Eskandar, brother of Khaleda Zia. Royal-style treatment and a cavalry gift to Moeen in India point to an underhand horse-trade. It was widely believed that the Moeen backed Caretaker administration worked to see Hasina's Awami League win the election they masterminded on December 29, 2008, a fact later publicly admitted by Hasina's newfound 'brother' and Jote partner Ershad.

Saddled in power and backed by her sponsors, Hasina started a crusade to demolish Zia, his family and the BNP that is in opposition now. While she nullified nearly 7000 cases, ranging from corruption to murder, against her and her party members, she not only strengthened those against the opposition leaders but also continued to institute, almost on a daily basis, new cases against them, particularly Khaleda and her two sons Tarek Zia and Afrafat Zia. Tarek and Arafat are currently recuperating in London and Singapore from the severe physical and mental damages they suffered due to inhuman torture inflicted on them by Moeen's goons. The administration of Hasina is issuing daily warnings to the effect that these two Zia-sons would be sent to the torture cell again if they dared to return home, surely serving another punishing dose to their mother Khaleda too.

Zia's name has been removed from the Dhaka International Airport---after 30 years---, his murals had been destroyed wherever they existed, nameplates bearing his name were taken off from every public place; even there was a muted conspiracy to dismantle his Mazaar near the Sangsad Bhaban. Zia's presidency---which stood as a stark contrast to her father's disastrously repressive period from 1972 to 1975---has been wiped off the history of Bangladesh by re-writing the constitution and eliminating his period of administration, thanks to a compliant judiciary. That is not all; Awami leaders 'discovered' Zia to be an agent of Pakistan during our liberation war in 1971!

(Please read another article "Ziaur Rahman: A Pakisatni Spy!" below)

Evicting Khaleda Zia from her residence after 4 decades is the latest example of Hasina's Zia phobia. We read in Science, 'every action has an equal and opposite reaction'; the theory has been found working in politics too. In case of Zia---to defame or demonize him---, it had always been an overwhelming opposite reaction. Madam Prime Minister, you cannot FOOL the public forever. They made a mistake---rightly or wrongly---on December 29, 2008; they are now waiting for the next chance to correct that mistake, as well as revive Zia with rejuvenated honor and respect he deserves.

Obaid Chowdhury
New York, USA
-------------------------
Hasina's Zia Phobia

In a cabinet meeting on February 15, 2010, the 'mohajote' government led by Awami League decided that anything bearing the name of the late president Ziaur Rahman would be eliminated, be that Zia International Airport or the name Ziaur Rahman in school textbooks. The decision was said to be in compliance with the Supreme Court verdict to void the 5th amendment of the constitution. It was not understood, however, what Fifth Amendment has to do with removing Zia's name from Dhaka International Airport. Earlier, Zia's announcement of independence in March 1971 was nullified by another court order. Yet earlier, Zia's murals and pictures had been destroyed or erased from public places. The people in general did not seem to approve these vindictive partisan behaviors. It was a manifestation of immaturity and politics of hatred and vengeance, they commented. One may not be surprised if the Zia Mazaar is destroyed, renamed or even reassigned to someone else too!

There is an old saying that British Parliament can do anything except making a man a woman and vice versa. Looks like the current Mohajote parliament can do anything; ram rolling its decisions irrespective of logic, relevance or public acceptance. If it says Zia did not exist, so be it. If there was no Zia, there should be no Zia Mazaar either. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had already made insinuating remarks to the effect that Zia Mazaar was a fake one; it did not contain Zia's body. Obviously she has been saying all these on the strength of her almost 90% ownership of the parliament and on the notion of 'I am the law'! However, 70 million voters---majority (52%) of whom did not vote for Awami League in the last elections--will keep counting for their time to come again, nonetheless.

The Zia phobia in Sheikh Hasina and her cohorts can perhaps be explained by a few factors, within and outside.

Zia outdid Sheikh Mujibur Rahman by declaring the independence of Bangladesh on March 27, 1971. Mujib himself never disputed that historic reality, although his grudge against Zia was displayed by appointing Zia's junior K M Safiullah as the army chief. Mujib followers, however, could never digest the fact that an unknown 'Major Zia' stole the show by making that announcement which according to them ought to have come from their supreme leader. Let us revisit our recent past history to put the matter in correct perspective.

Nobody denies Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's contribution to the independence of Bangladesh. He ascended the position of an undisputed leader in East Pakistan in the late 1960s, mainly through his 6-Point program that was primarily crafted for full autonomy for East Pakistan. Interestingly, a few names came up for authorship of the 6 Points---it included a few former Bengali civil servants and Altaf Gauhar, the powerful Information Secretary during President Ayub's time. However, 6 Points were neither original nor innovative. Demands for the autonomy or independence had its roots in the original Lahore Resolution of 1940, which mentioned 'independent Muslim homelands', as well as during the decade-old constitutional crisis of Pakistan from 1947 to 1956 (Please see "The Separation of East Pakistan" by Hasan Zaheer). Sheikh Mujib's struggle had been for the autonomy of East Pakistan. Never did he say a word about an independent East Pakistan or Bangladesh. Even his famous March 7, 1971 speech fell short of the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI). That the March 7 speech could not be considered an UDI was borne by the fact that Sheikh Mujib went on to negotiate with the Pakistani military junta from March 15 to 24, 1971 in Dhaka favoring a unified Pakistan. In fact, Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhasani first hinted of an independent East Pakistan as early as in 1957 and spoke it with finality in December 1970.

On March 1, 1971, President Yahya Khan postponed the inaugural session of the new parliament, to be held in Dhaka in two days. The student leaders and a section of Awami League had since been pressurizing Mujib to make the UDI. Mujib refused to do any such thing, not even on March 7, despite generation of much public hype on that day. He finished his 17- minute speech with Joy Bangla and Joy Pakistan, because he still believed in a united Pakistan and wanted to form the next government in Islamabad.

It was, however, strange that being a seasoned politician, Mujib failed to visualize the game plan of the junta that was amassing military power in East Pakistan, ostensibly in preparation for a showdown. A representative from Lt Col M R Chowdhury, Major Ziaur Rahman and others in Chittagong conveyed to him on March 17 about the ominous military built up there and sought immediate advice, further hinting that Bengali elements were ready to strike before they were attacked. As always, Mujib never took military seriously and reportedly balked at the representative not to take any preemptive action at a time when he was engaged in 'fruitful' talks with the West Pakistani leaders. A visionary, strategic and timely direction at that crucial time could have saved lives of hundreds of thousand innocent Bengalis.

On March 25, President Yahya quietly left Dhaka, leaving instructions to 'butcher' Lt General Tikka Khan to start Operation Searchlight the same night aimed at 'teaching the Bengalis a lesson' or in other words, annihilating them. Yet on the same day, Mujib retorted at the inquisitive journalists that he was making progress in 'talks' and he had a meeting scheduled with Yahya soon (Please see Ittefaq, Observer, Dawn and many other newspapers of March 26, 27, 1971). Meanwhile, the rumor of Operation Searchlight spread outside the Dhaka cantonment and people started fleeing the city or preparing for resistance. Top political and student leaders were on the run knowing that they would be the immediate targets of the military. Many of them requested Sheikh Mujib to move to a safe location but Mujib did not care, perhaps he had his own plans. According to a source, a few student leaders led by A S M Abdur Rob went to Mujib that night with a written declaration of independence. Sheikh Mujib was coerced to sign it. Rob can explain if it was a fact and what happened to that declaration, if any.

There were reports that Mujib talked with the US ambassador Joseph Farland in Islamabad that night. Shortly after midnight on March 25, Sheikh Mujib was taken into custody from his residence and flown to West Pakistan. His family was allowed to stay at his residence under Pakistan military protection and with a fat allowance. Young Sheikh Hasina seemed to have been enjoying the life pretty well then; she conceived Joy during that period.

It is thus not clear when and how did Sheikh Mujibur Rahman make the declaration of independence, other than what we heard of the Rob-version.

Even in the absence of any political direction, the patriotic Bengali elements of the army, Bangladesh Rifles, Police and Ansars gave gallant fights against the Pakistani murderers. Students, teachers, bureaucrats and others also organized their own fights. In such a chaotic situation and disjointed activities of resistance to the Pak army's wholesale genocide, came an announcement from Chittagong Radio Station on March 27, 1971 declaring Bangladesh an independent country and asking the people to fight the occupation forces. It was Major Ziaur Rahman of 8 East Bengal Regiment. The first announcement was made in his own name; later it was changed in the name of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. That was the first such announcement people heard and the message spread from mouth to mouth like wild fire, locally and internationally. Even if there was a declaration from Sheikh Mujib, nobody knew of it. Was it an offence on the part of Zia to make that announcement at that critical juncture to give a direction to the people, and more particularly to the fighting forces of Bangladesh? Perhaps, it was 'an unpardonable offence' in the eyes of the Awami League and its sycophants and so Zia should be punished for his 'audacity'. Ironically, the Supreme Court had to come to the rescue of the Awami League on this controversial issue!

It was President Ziaur Rahman who allowed Sheikh Hasina to return to Bangladesh in early 1981 from her self-exile. Well tutored by her mentors during asylum in India, the first thing she worked on was to get rid of Zia, because Zia reminded of her father's failures and Zia was too assertive to the liking of India (Please see "Amar Phansi Chai" by Matiur Rahman Rentu, onetime Hasina aide). Indeed the fall of Zia came soon; he was killed on May 31, 1981. According to reports, Hasina was caught near Kasba while trying to flee to India at that time. In death, Zia became much larger than life; people understood what the man he was and what a leader Bangladesh lost!

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was the most loved person in Bangladesh on January 10, 1972 when he came to independent Bangladesh after release from Pakistani custody. By the time he died on August 15, 1975, few shed tears, no Innalillah heard. To contrast, hardly anybody knew Major Ziaur Rahman before March 27, 1971, but some 2 million people gathered at his Janaza in 1981 in Dhaka.

Zia was no angel, he might have flaws and perhaps made mistakes, but his mistakes of 6 years, if any, fade before the blunders Mujib committed in 3 and half years' from 1972 to 1975.

Thus, Zia-fear in the Awami circle is understandable. However, can it erase Zia from the history? In addition, what pains me to note in my limited legal comprehension that the citadel of our judiciary seems to have become part of this partisan political game.

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

Ziaur Rahman: A Pakistani Spy?

In a recent press briefing, State Law Minister Qamrul Islam said that former president Ziaur Rahman was a Pakistani intelligence agent during the liberation war in 1971. He threw a challenge saying he had evidences to prove his point. What a great revelation after nearly 40 years! He also mentioned that Ziaur Rahman was an intelligence officer in Pakistan army and that he rehabilitated the Razakars and war criminals of 1971. If those were the evidences the state minister possessed to prove his point, one would seriously worry about the intellectual content of such a personality who had been entrusted with the responsibility of adjudicating the law and order of the country.

Some Awami League stalwarts had earlier said in the parliament and outside that Ziaur Rahman did not fight in the war of liberation and as such, he was not a freedom fighter. One would definitely feel pity for these people, for their knowledge of our liberation war and their mental make-up. It may not be too illogical to suggest that these people need to get their brain checked.

Former minister General Shawkat Ali, former minister Col Oli Ahmed, former ambassador Brigadier Chowdhury Khaliquzzaman, former foreign secretary and ambassador Major Shamsher Mobin Chowdhury and many others were present when 8 East Bengal Regiment revolted in Chittagong on the night of March 25, 1971 under the leadership of then Major Ziaur Rahman. If Zia was a Pakistani agent:

• Why would he revolt against the Pakistani occupation army at that critical juncture of our history?

• Why would he personally go and round up all Pakistani officers of the unit, including its Commanding Officer Lt Col Rashid Janjua (These officers were later killed by an angry youngster on his own)?

• Why would he make the historic, though risky, declaration of independence of Bangladesh from Chittagong Kalurghat Betar on March 27, 1971?

• Why would the provisional government of Bangladesh under Tajuddin Ahmed make him a Sector Commander and later "Z" Force Commander during the war?

• Was there any evidence in his conduct of the war that Ziaur Rahman betrayed the Mukti Bahini or tried to protect the interest of Pakistan? (This writer was a small-time member of the Z force and was closely associated with Ziaur Rahman's war activities.)

• Why would the Pakistan military in Bangladesh hunt for his family, after Ziaur Rahman's revolt and declaration of independence? (On a tip, Begum Zia with her two infant sons were later arrested by the military and kept in confinement until the end of the war. To contrast, Sheikh Mujib's family was allowed to stay at his Dhanmandi residence under military protection and with a fat allowance. Sheikh Hasina was so happy during those days that she decided to conceive Joy.)

• Why would the government of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman reward Ziaur Rahman with the gallantry of Bir Uttam?

• Why would Ziaur Rahman be promoted from Major to Major General by Bangladesh government and make him the deputy chief of army staff?

• Why would the people accept Ziaur Rahman and later vote him to be the president of Bangladesh? (By any standard, he was the most successful president of the country so far.)

• Why would the people not accept his assassination on May 31, 1981? (To the contrary, people gave an instant approval to the August 15, 1975 coup in which Sheikh Mujibur Rahman died.)

•Why would over 2 million people gather at the funeral of Ziaur Rahman? (It was an unprecedented display of remorse and respect to the assassinated president and can compared to the love people showed to Sheikh Mujibur Rahman on January 10, 1972 upon his return to independent Bangladesh.)

As such, those people who claim Ziaur Rahman to be a Pakistani agent in 1971 or a non-freedom fighter are seriously in need of visiting psychiatrists.

Obaid Chowdhury
New York, USA
E Mail : alaldulal@aol.com


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RE: [ALOCHONA] Re: The Yunus Saga



          My oh my! What a gaseous outburst! Ejazur, your brain at the knees is far more developed than mine.  I am a Neandarthal when it comes to knee-jerk reaction to perfectly well-written articles I posted that were packed with relevant facts and informed opinions from reliable authorities. {I think one article was originally posted by bd_mailer].

        I wanted people to take a closer look at the Grameenism syndrome and the 'hoopla' about microcredit. We need to seriously check the myth of "poverty-reduction" claims made by Younus.  The articles provided enough facts and pertinent information, but you chose to stick to the myth.

        Of course I want change in the Structure of the Govt.  --that is where the machinery of the endemic corruption is operative.  My campaign for democratic local governance remains uncompromising no matter which Party is in the Administration.  Even in the early days of Grameen when I admired the idea, I wrote in an article (1993), "A bank, no matter how innovative. is not a substitute for good governance."

         But I do resent you attacking me by quoting a fragment of my sentence. My whole sentence read:

Why is suddenly all this venom against PM Hasina for accusing Grameen for being a cruel and unforgiving moneylender, something that is the buzz in all corners of the world?

          You took this disngenuous path to convey the idea that unless one follows the Alochona practice of condemning Hasina and BAAAAAAAAAAAL on every post one deserves condemnation.  You really think Hasina or any other Prime Minister should not show any concern whether Younus evaded payng tax to the Bangladesh Govt.  Why should a statement from Norad reflect what tax he paid or did not pay to the Bangladesh Govt.?

           Please read Jaffor's piece posted on News From Bangladesh:

         

The predicament of Grameen Bank does not bode well for Dr. Yunus

Wednesday December 08 2010 21:02:30 PM BDT

By A.H. Jaffor Ullah, USA


I first met Dr. Muhammad Yunus in April 1971 in Dayton, Ohio when he was a struggling pedagogue in a small college in eastern Indiana and I was a lowly graduate student in Cincinnati, Ohio. The military crackdown of Yahya regime on the wee hours of March 26, 1971 had greatly disturbed a few of us in America; therefore, a hastily arranged meeting was called by Prof. Aminul Islam of Wright State University in Dayton. There were only 6-7 participants in that meeting and Dr. Yunus was one of them. My take on Dr. Yunus was that he was very over ambitious. He told us that he would like to be the ambassador of Bangladesh in Sweden when Pakistanis will be booted out by our freedom fighters. Hearing this quip I laughed because Dr. Yunus was hardly in his early thirties at the time. They don't appoint a young man as an ambassador lest the position loses its gravitas.

Dr. Yunus returned to Bangladesh in the seventies to take up an academic position in Chittagong and there he started his great experiment with micro credit and what a remarkable journey he charted for himself and for Bangladesh.

In the early1980s CBS 60 Minutes – a news magazine – did a segment on Dr. Yunus and the newly founded Grameen Bank, which catapulted him to western world in a big way. He gave a glowing report on the success of his bank to change the lives of many women in Chittagong, a port town in southeastern Bangladesh. There was no independent audit or verification to the Bank's financial statement or Dr. Yunus's exaggerated claim that micro-lending could be a panacea for hapless women in rural areas of Bangladesh.

Dr. Yunus is always very crafty with his words when he talks about the success of his micro-lending practice in rural Bangladesh. He tied the operation of Grameen Bank with poverty alleviation especially for womenfolk. This was the selling point. The gullible western press fell for the bait and they glorified both Dr. Yunus and Grameen Bank while giving glowing encomiums to his brainchild – the bank for the poor. Nowhere was mentioned the exorbitant finance charge that pale the interest rate levied by Kabuliwalas (the Kabuli men from Afghanistan were roving moneylenders of Bengal during British Raj) or the Mahajons (traditional Hindu moneylender).

By 1990s Dr. Yunus had morphed into a towering figure allover the world. When he talked everyone listened. The western press had various monikers for him. They lovingly called him "the banker for poor folks." While the adulation and encomiums poured in, many economists in Bangladesh were puzzled about Grameen Bank. Is it a commercial financial institution? You bet. But many people erroneously thought it was an NGO solely devoted to poverty alleviation and in particular for womenfolk. I never thought Dr. Yunus clarified this issue for once and all. This dual identity of Grameen Bank had served Dr. Yunus rather well. For, he never allowed any outside auditors to examine the Bank's book. Why so? Because Grameen Bank was not exactly a commercial bank. That is the impression one gets when Dr. Yunus glowingly talked about the noble goals of the bank for poor. Also, he helped created Grameen Foundation allover the globe. The foundation did the fund raising in the West but we never fully understood whether Grameen Bank had benefited from the donations collected by the foundation.

Lately, I have learned that Grameen Bank and its employees had never paid a dime to Bangladesh treasury as income tax. Dr. Yunus became a smart businessman while trying to be a social engineer as he always maintained that he started Grameen Bank to uplift the financial lot of indigent womenfolk in Bangladesh. He used this mantra over and over again to Grameen Bank become the nation's number one cellphone company. Bangladesh's Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, has quipped in December 2010 that while she was the PM during 1996 through 2001 Dr. Yunus convinced her that his company should get the license to operate a mobile phone business because this would empower womenfolk of Bangladesh. A very convincing argument one might say. Dr. Yunus precisely knew that he could sell almost anything to the nation (read government) provided he invokes the mantra of poverty alleviation. Who could in the right frame of mind argue with Dr. Yunus about his various enterprises that were involved in uplifting the lot of indigent womenfolk?

During 1996 the world experienced a severe downturn in global economy that affected the Asian countries too alongside with the western nation. The Grameen Bank was in liquidity crisis then. Luckily, help was underway from Scandinavian nations. About 100 million dollar grant was given to Grameen Bank – a very successful commercial bank as touted by Dr. Yunus throughout 1990s. This did not chime in with what Dr. Yunus had always said about the success of Grameen Bank. Now bizarre revelation had filled the media. This is true that when the grant money was given to Grameen Bank (read Dr. Yunus) by the donor nation, the money did not go to Grameen Bank but it was deposited to another entity by the name Grameen Kalyan created single-handedly by Dr. Yunus. This is a serious breach of terms and conditions imposed by Swedish authorities who made the grant. Dr. Yunus may say that all the grant money was deposited to Grameen Kalyan and this may be true but this is a fact that the contract was breached. How come an erudite economist did not see it? Dr. Yunus's detractors have said this was done to avoid taxes due to Bangladesh Treasury.

The Bangladesh Bank is now actively examining all the documents pertaining to this grant given by Swedish authorities in 1996. Dr. Yunus thinks no irregularity will be unearthed and that will vindicate his name. There is an intense media interest in this developing story and trust me there will be fallout from this investigation which is being done by Bangladesh Bank.

I read in the media that when Swedish authority found it out about the irregularity done by Grameen Bank right after the grant money was handed out to Dr. Yunus, they questioned Dr. Yunus. In return Dr. Yunus wrote a letter to Norwegian authorities begging them not to disclose the irregularity to anyone in Bangladesh. The inquiry was hushed up. However, in this day of WikiLeaks the news of Dr. Yunus's crafty move resurfaced again. Had this story surfaced in 1996, this would have squished any hope for getting the Noble Peace Prize in October 2006.

Dr. Yunus and his Bank are under microscope now and this does not bode well for him and Grameen Bank. The news of tyranny done by Grameen Bank's agent allover Bangladesh to the Bank's clients who could not come up with interest payment is everywhere in the Internet and print media. The fact that Grameen Bank could not even make a dent in poverty alleviation will be established for once and all. Someone had euphemistically said that Grameen Bank is a "Death Trap" for indigents who borrowed some paltry sum from them.

The axiom that says you cannot fool all the people all the time will be established again now that a full-scale probing is underway by Bangladesh Bank.

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

Dr. A.H. Jaffor Ullah, a researcher and columnist, writes from New Orleans, USA
E Mail : jhankar@bellsouth.net
 


To: alochona@yahoogroups.com
From: Ezajur@yahoo.com
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2010 10:16:41 +0000
Subject: [ALOCHONA] Re: The Yunus Saga

 

Farida

 

I don't think any such discussion has arrived at any definitive conclusion. Grameen has distributed more than 6 billion dollars to over 6 million borrowers. Are you saying that no less than 6 million people have been driven further into poverty because of Grameen Bank? Are you standing with Hashishana and saying that there is not one example of success amongst these millions of borrowers?

 

Look. Some borrowers are indeed driven to destitution and some commit suicide. Investigations are needed in these cases. And suicides should be draw the continuous attention of every agency in the land. But of course this is Bangladesh – what's another suicide? It is not as if would ever take the AL to account for the persecution of a young girl by any of its cadres.

 

I say neo this and geo that is a crock of hoopla. The fact is NGOs and microcredit have flourished in Bangladesh like nowhere else and this is because of the failure of every government since our birth to radically, and properly, tackle the needs of huge sections of our people. It is the failure of our governments that has turned our nation into the destination of choice for any NGO. We are NGO dependent not because of some international conspiracy but because of our own historically and culturally embedded penchant for stupidity.

 

Why all this sudden venom against Hasina over this issue?

 

Good grief! Of all the issues in all the land, over which to show your hand, you choose this episode?! It drives me nuts why people aren't open about which party they support. Obviously it's to avoid awkward questions. But then, when they do voice their support their logic is so

poor, so compromised, so self serving that its just as well they talk about everything except their own party and their own nethri.

 

Let us be clear. There is nothing sudden about this venom against Hasina. It was there from the beginning, it is always palpable and it is grounded in logic, good taste and the trauma that comes from knowing that our nation deserves far better.

 

Hasina is a bitter, jealous and petty old bat. The values which you hold dearest are sound and I dare not challenge them blindly. But these same values are embodied in the personages of the Finance Minister and the Education Minister and their like. Your values are ill served by the personages of the Home Minister, the Foreign Minister and the Prime Minister. For that matter even the Agriculture Minister. When you get the courage to confess publicly to this you will finally serve both the nation and the Awami League to the best of your abilities and render the opposition meaningless. .

 

You don't mind Hasina slapping down her Foreign Minister in public for suggesting that maybe nothing illegal was done. You don't mind Hasina smirking, goading and insulting Dr Yunus on the national stage. You don't mind her tone, choice of words, manner and attitude, though she has

offended many people, including many of your own friends who support AL. You don't mind that she displays jealousy and pettiness towards Dr Yunus. You don't mind that Hasina doesn't require an investigation into the tax affairs of any of her supporters. You don't mind that she said on the national stage that Dr Yunus is just another example of a Bangladeshi trickster. You don't mind that Grameen has flourished under each of her governments. You don't mind that she speaks about millions of suffering borrowers but has done bugger all about it in each of her two terms. You don't mind that Hasina has done more than anyone to ensure this regrettable incident reaches the international stage even before a single minute of investigation has commenced. You don't mind that Hasina demonstrated visible pleasure and vindictiveness at Dr Yunus' embarassment. You don't mind that Hasina was outraged that Dr Yunus, as is his right, dared to enter politics.

 

Have you noticed the lack of commentary and observation, across all sectors, which praises the leadership and personality of Hasina? The eunuchs who grovellingly sprinkle 'Manonio Prodahan Monthri' on their drivel don't count.

 

In fact you don't mind anything as long as your own pet concerns are served. Now that the Norwegians have themselves, within days of the story breaking, put this matter to rest, you won't flinch an inch. Bongobondhu's daughter was of course right and you will go onto maintain radio silence on her follies and the crimes of her minions. Oh yeah! And it won't even cross your mind to criticise her for not taking any action over Grameen over the next 3 years.

 

Your claim that the world is abuzz with concerns about the veracity of Dr Yunus and microcredit is easily matched with the claim that the world is abuzz with new accolades for Dr Yunus, new adventures in microcredit abroad and new efforts to improve the effectiveness of microcredit.

 

Many are the learned, articulate and well fashioned Bangladeshis who engage the complex issues of this wide world, with great minds and great people, espousing the loftiest ideals and the deepest logic. But when it comes to the land they love best, when it comes to the people they love best, they deposit all their intelligence at the border, and descend into babbling hypocrites. It is often not ill intentioned. It's something to do with a complex weave of helplessness and hopelessness.

 

Let's hear it again. I have all the time in the world to try and hold your newly exposed fair hand. Let's hear it - 'The Transaction'. Say it again 'The Transaction'. Oooh! Sounds like a Tom Cruise thriller. Oooh! We're so scared of this big bad transaction! Any other transactions you might have concerns about during the term of this government. No? Oh you are so sweet.

 

I'm a clown, I'm an idiot, I'm illiterate, I'm a pink bottomed monkey.

 

But baby, even then, I'm far, far, far superior to the Prime Minister of your choice.

 

Ezajur Rahman

 

Kuwait

 
 
 

--- In alochona@yahoogroups.com, Farida Majid <farida_majid@...> wrote:
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> Not too long ago we had a discussion on microcredit and how it is really an extension of neoliberal capitalism in the guise of NGO that does more harm to the poor by sucking their money and globalising it.
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> Why is suddenly all this venom against PM Hasina for accusing Grameen for being a cruel and unforgiving moneylender, something that is the buzz in all corners of the world? Any sitting Govt. should express concern over tax evasion when such a large sum is transfered from a Bank and into a Trust/Kalyan in a questionable transaction.
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> Please have another look at the article from Himal Magazine as you sing the praise of "Noble" Younus:
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> As you read this imp. article on Grameenism keep in mind the The [George] Soros Syndrome.
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> Excerpt from "The Soros Syndrome" by Alexander Cockburn:
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> 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.
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> 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.
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> 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.
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> 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.
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> Refect upon "patroange" and its desirability when you stave off attempts to make any structural change to the govt.
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> Farida
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> Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2010 02:08:08 -0700
> Subject: MUST READ: The dangers of Grameenism & microcredit
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> http://www.himalmag.com/The-danger-of-Grameenism_nw4752.html
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> The danger of Grameenism
> October 2010By: Patrick Bond
> HIMAL MAGAZINE
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> 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 below, Khorshed 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.)
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> 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.
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> 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.'
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> 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.'
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> 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.'
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> 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,
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> 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.
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> 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.
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> 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.
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> 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.'
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> 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.'
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> 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.
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> 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.
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> 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.
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> 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.
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> 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
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> 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.
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> The big lie
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> 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.'
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> 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.'
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> 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.'
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> 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.
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> 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.'
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> 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.
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> Reputation and reality
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> 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.
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> 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.
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> 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.
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> 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.
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> 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.
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> 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?
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> 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.
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> ~ Khorshed Alam
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> ~ 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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> To: alochona@yahoogroups.com
> From: Ezajur@...
> Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2010 05:16:54 +0000
> Subject: [ALOCHONA] The Yunus Saga
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> `The Yunus saga'
> Courtesy New Age 8/12/10
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> I AGREE with everything Md Mujibul Alam Khan has to say on the `Yunus saga' published in New Age on Monday. However, the Norwegians made it clear that they were not alleging corruption against Yunus. Corruption is alleged against him only by Sheikh Hasina and the Awami League. As it seems, Sheikh Hasina and her leaders can barely contain their glee at this setback for Yunus.
> Both of Hasina's governments should be held accountable for the errors made by the Grameen Bank. Although the prime minister accuses the Grameen Bank and Yunus of being cruel and fraudulent moneylenders who are responsible for ruining many people's lives, she hasn't done anything about it all these years.
> Hasina's concern for the image of Bangladesh abroad is laughable, seeing she did as much to hurt it as anyone else over the years. She never initiated an investigation into the corruption and incompetence within her own party and her government.
> Yunus would bring more honour, good sense and vision to the office than either Sheikh Hasina or Khaleda Zia if he entered politics.
> Ezajur Rahman
> Kuwait
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