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A leading news agency in Bangladesh has catered a news item on Professor Anu Mahmud demanding release of detained garment workers leader Moshrefa Mishu. This is not only alarming but very much disturbing news indeed, as Mishu's name came as the top instigators behind series of anarchies at various ready made garment factories in Bangladesh.
According to the news, a so-called citizen's platform has called for removal of US ambassador to Bangladesh, James F Moriarty. It also urged the government to declare him 'unwanted'. The group claimed that the ambassador was a lobbyist of foreign companies eyeing the country's oil and gas sector.
The National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Mineral Resources, Power and Ports made the demand at a press conference in Dhaka.
The committee secretary Anu Mohammad said, as disclosed in WikiLeaks cables, the US ambassador was pressurising prime minister's energy advisor Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury to permit Asia Energy for open-pit coal mining in Phulbari.
The Phulbari open-pit excavation was halted following a violent protest in 2006 that killed three people.
The cables also revealed Moriarty held talks with Chowdhury in 2009 and urged him to approve British company Global Coal Management [GCM] to begin open-cast coal mining, the Guardian newspaper of UK reported based on WikiLeaks cables.
"He repeatedly put pressure on Bangladesh government to give the lease of the gas blocks to ConocoPhillips Company through export oriented agreement. He also put pressure to permit Chevron to buy old compressor machines and instruments in a high price. These US companies have been given advantages as per his directives.".
Anu Mohammad called those, who were involved in controversial oil-gas agreement, etc. as oil-gas-coal criminals. He suggested trying them as criminals.
Moshrefa Mishu, president of the Garments Sramik Oikya Forum [garment workers unity forum] is actively involved in series of notorious activities aimed at sabotaging country's textile and readymade garment sectors. It is important to mention here that, Bangladesh annually earns a few billion dollars of foreign exchange from the export of textile products. It is alleged that, Mishu is serving the purpose of vested interest groups with the aim of damaging Bangladesh's prospective export market thus creating opportunity for those competing nations in ultimately grabbing Bangladesh's stake in the international market. With such heinous agenda, Mishu has been actively involved in giving instigation as well as hiring hooligans in staging anarchism at various readymade garment factories with various lame excuses. Due such activities of Mishu, Bangladeshi textile and readymade garment exporters have lost at least a few hundred million dollars already due to rampage at various factories as well as delay and cancellation of export orders.
There is approximately 4,000 garment factories operating in Bangladesh. Factory owners mentioned in the media a number of times that in most cases, groups of outsiders [in the name of workers], vandalised the factories - sometimes in the presence of law enforcers. Due to such anarchism and vandalism, a large number of factories have even been forced to shut down due to huge financial losses.
Interestingly, following the arrest of Moshrefa Mishu, anarchism and vandalism in the textile and readymade garment sectors by unruly workers have totally stopped. This certainly proves that, Mishu was behind each of those notorious activities. It is quite interesting to see that Anu Mahmud has become very vocal in favor of this female hooligan.
On the other hand, Professor Mahmud has called for expulsion of the US ambassador in Bangladesh, James F Moriarty and demanded him to be declared Personna Non Grata [unwanted in his words]. He [Mahmud] sees US ambassador's efforts in favor of American companies as 'illegal'. Professor Anu Mahmud has shown the reason behind such demand stating the US ambassador is actively lobbying in favor of Asia Energy, a company already infamous in Bangladesh following the fatal shooting and murder of civilians at coal mining project at Phulbari area.
Asia Energy plc AIM: GCM is a new company, without any history of previous mining experience, quoted in the London Alternative Investment Market, set up to exploit open cast coal mining opportunities in the Phulbari region of Bangladesh. Asia Energy now trades under the name Global Coal Management. Asia Energy was incorporated in London in September 2003 and acquired 100% of Asia Energy Corporation Pty Ltd, which held the licenses to explore and mine the Phulbari Coal Project. Asia Energy Corporation Pty Ltd entered the coal mining scenario in 1998 by buying the mining contract originally awarded to international coal giant BHP on August 20, 1994. BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance [BMA] is Australia's largest coal producer and a leader in the international coal industry.
On the 29th August 2006 six protesters had been shot dead at Phulbari area, by paramilitary forces, when a crowd of 30,000 people stormed the local offices of Asia Energy. On the 30st August 2006 further unrest the day after the shootings when widespread half day strikes were organized. The Bangladesh government imposed a ban on further protests at the mine site. Gary Lye, chief executive of Asia Energy Corporation [Bangladesh] Pty Ltd, was quoted as saying "It is up to the authorities to determine exactly what happened, but it would appear that the unforgivable events and the needless loss of life and suffering that took place yesterday in Phulbari are entirely the fault of the organizers [of the protest]. Asia Energy has since had its right to mine in Bangladesh withdrawn.
On news of the withdrawal of mining rights, shares in Asia Energy PLC crashed, falling from 284p to 117.5p in a single day. The company requested trading be suspended, on 31 August 2006, saying "Asia Energy PLC became aware this morning of press reports quoting a junior minister in Bangladesh stating that the Bangladesh Government is canceling all existing agreements with Asia Energy. The Company had not received any communication from the Government to this effect. In view of this the shares of Asia Energy were suspended from trading on the AIM Market at 08:40 hrs [BST] this morning."
After the fatal shootings, on 11 January 2007 Asia Energy changed its name to Global Coal Management PLC at the same time as maintaining that it was 'fully committed to the Phulbari Coal Project in Bangladesh'.
I personally do not see any crime in Moriarty's efforts in favor of Asia Energy, because, in today's world, diplomacy is more related to economic issues. James F Moriarty is also trying his best in upholding the interests of American companies. It is also important to note that the ambassador is not lobbying in favor of Asia Energy without any signal from administration in Washington under the leadership of President Barack Hussain Obama. Here the ambassador has not personal interest. What he is doing is definitively aimed at protecting the interest of US companies.
If Bangladeshi government will pay any heed to what Professor Anu Mahmud demanded, it will certainly put Dhaka-Washington relations into the worst ever crisis. And of course, in that case, the worst sufferers will be textile and readymade garments exporters of Bangladesh, who earns billions by exporting products to US market. Do we see any similarity between Mishu and Professor Mahmud's agenda?
December 29, 2010
New Look for Mecca: Gargantuan and Gaudy
By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/30/arts/design/30mecca.html?pagewanted=print
JIDDA, Saudi Arabia — It is an architectural absurdity. Just south of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, the Muslim world's holiest site, a kitsch rendition of London's Big Ben is nearing completion. Called the Royal Mecca Clock Tower, it will be one of the tallest buildings in the world, the centerpiece of a complex that is housing a gargantuan shopping mall, an 800-room hotel and a prayer hall for several thousand people. Its muscular form, an unabashed knockoff of the original, blown up to a grotesque scale, will be decorated with Arabic inscriptions and topped by a crescent-shape spire in what feels like a cynical nod to Islam's architectural past. To make room for it, the Saudi government bulldozed an 18th-century Ottoman fortress and the hill it stood on.
The tower is just one of many construction projects in the very center of Mecca, from train lines to numerous luxury high-rises and hotels and a huge expansion of the Grand Mosque. The historic core of Mecca is being reshaped in ways that many here find appalling, sparking unusually heated criticism of the authoritarian Saudi government.
"It is the commercialization of the house of God," said Sami Angawi, a Saudi architect who founded a research center that studies urban planning issues surrounding the hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, and has been one of the development's most vocal critics. "The closer to the mosque, the more expensive the apartments. In the most expensive towers, you can pay millions" for a 25-year leasing agreement, he said. "If you can see the mosque, you pay triple."
Saudi officials say that the construction boom — and the demolition that comes with it — is necessary to accommodate the ever-growing numbers of people who make the pilgrimage to Mecca, a figure that has risen to almost three million this past year. As a non-Muslim, I was not permitted to visit the city, but many Muslims I spoke to who know it well — including architects, preservationists and even some government officials — believe the real motive behind these plans is money: the desire to profit from some of the most valuable real estate in the world. And, they add, it has been facilitated by Saudi Arabia's especially strict interpretation of Islam, which regards much history after the age of Muhammad, and the artifacts it produced, as corrupt, meaning that centuries-old buildings can be destroyed with impunity.
That mentality is dividing the holy city of Mecca — and the pilgrimage experience — along highly visible class lines, with the rich sealed inside exclusive air-conditioned high-rises encircling the Grand Mosque and the poor pushed increasingly to the periphery.
There was a time when the Saudi government's architecture and urban planning efforts, especially around Mecca, did not seem so callous. In the 1970s, as the government was taking control of Aramco, the American conglomerate that managed the country's oil fields, skyrocketing oil prices unleashed a wave of national modernization programs, including a large-scale effort to accommodate those performing the hajj.
The projects involved some of the world's great architectural talents, many of whom were encouraged to experiment with a freedom they were not finding in the West, where postwar faith in Modernism was largely exhausted. The best of their works — modern yet sensitive to local environment and traditions — challenge the popular assumption that Modernist architecture, as practiced in the developing world, was nothing more than a crude expression of the West's quest for cultural dominance.
These include the German architect Frei Otto's remarkable tent cities from the late 1970s, made up of collapsible lightweight structures inspired by the traditions of nomadic Bedouin tribes and intended to accommodate hajj pilgrims without damaging the delicate ecology of the hills that surround the old city.
Fifty miles to the west, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill's Hajj terminal at King Abdul Aziz International Airport is a similar expression of a form of modernity that can be sensitive to local traditions and environmental conditions without reverting to kitsch. A grid of more than 200 tentlike canopies supported on a system of steel cables and columns, it is divided into small open-air villages, where travelers can rest and pray in the shade before continuing their journey.
The current plans, by contrast, can read like historical parody. Along with the giant Big Ben, there are many other overscale developments — including a proposal for the planned expansion of the Grand Mosque that dwarfs the original complex — in various mock-Islamic styles.
But the Vegas-like aura of these projects can deflect attention from the real crime: the way the developments are deforming what by all accounts was a fairly diverse and unstratified city. The Mecca Clock Tower will be surrounded by a half-dozen luxury high-rises, each designed in a similar Westminster-meets-Wall Street style and sitting on a mall that is meant to evoke traditional souks. Built at various heights at the edge of the Grand Mosque's courtyard, and fronted by big arched portes-cocheres, they form a postmodern pastiche that means to evoke the differences of a real city but will do little to mask the project's mind-numbing homogeneity.
Like the luxury boxes that encircle most sports stadiums, the apartments will allow the wealthy to peer directly down at the main event from the comfort of their suites without having to mix with the ordinary rabble below.
At the same time, the scale of development has pushed middle-class and poor residents further and further from the city center. "I don't know where they go," Mr. Angawi said. "To the outskirts of Mecca, or they come to Jidda. Mecca is being cleansed of Meccans."
The changes are likely to have as much of an effect on the spiritual character of the Grand Mosque as on Mecca's urban fabric. Many people told me that the intensity of the experience of standing in the mosque's courtyard has a lot to do with its relationship to the surrounding mountains. Most of these represent sacred sites in their own right and their looming presence imbues the space with a powerful sense of intimacy.
But that experience, too, is certain to be lessened with the addition of each new tower, which blots out another part of the view. Not that there will be much to look at: many hillsides will soon be marred by new rail lines, roads and tunnels, while others are being carved up to make room for still more towers.
"The irony is that developers argue that the more towers you build the more views you have," said Faisal al-Mubarak, an urban planner who works at the ministry of tourism and antiquities. "But only rich people go inside these towers. They have the views."
The issue is not just run-of-the-mill class conflict. The city's makeover also reflects a split between those who champion turbocharged capitalism and those who think it should stop at the gates of Mecca, which they see as the embodiment of an Islamic ideal of egalitarianism.
"We don't want to bring New York to Mecca," Mr. Angawi said. "The hajj was always supposed to be a time when everyone is the same. There are no classes, no nationalities. It is the one place where we find balance. You are supposed to leave worldly things behind you."
The government, however, seems unmoved by such sentiments. When I mentioned Mr. Angawi's observations at the end of a long conversation with Prince Sultan, the minister of tourism and antiquities, he simply frowned.
"When I am in Mecca and go around the kaaba, I don't look up."