25.4.07

Knotted thinking, emotionalism and observations

Here are a few examples of knotted thinking and emotionalism. They are pieces of mind killingly engineered common sense that I wish would be re examined. I present them as highly contratictory paragraphs. These mythologies, or incomplete and inconvenient half-thruths hold us back. Big Time.


JI are responsible and are the cause of all our social ills even though they can't vote themselves in alone. If the two main parties are out of the picture, great green serpent Islamists will jump up and bite us<>. My best strategy is to be trapped by my fear of the unknown and the prospect of actually doing some hard thinking and working and I should stick to the present 2 party system like a proper goat. The spirit of Liberation is enough for me Shoo go away caretaker government, grown ups playing.

People without food in their stomachs cannot be expected to be interested in 'high' talk. My party is a grass roots party, i speak for the hungry masses. They speak through me, even though i dont share their beliefs. Oh look at all these beautiful riots, what great lovely people power. Rural people are too backward, they should be turned into replicas of myslef then everything would be ok.

All who didnt follow Mujibs ideology and activities in the lead up to Bangladesh are collaborators, murders and rapists.

All who dont espose a secularism are communal.

In 9 months in 1971, loyalists and others mudered 3 000 000 people in Bangladesh.

India and the West are responsible for our vulnerability to environmental calamity. We are an independant country. We are free thinkers. Everyone is responsible for our problems apart from ourselves. Can i have some development dollars? What do you mean you are fed up? Ok, can i have some climate change bucks please?? Did i forget to tell you we are a sovereign nation? <>

Bangladesh is a vibrant liberal secular moderate freedom loving Muslim country with high levels of communal harmony. we have deep secular bangali traditions. There is no such thing as brahminical control theory and practice. Our history is fertilised in 1952, and is fully born in 1971. Nothing ever happened before.

Bangladesh is the most developed Least Developed Country.

The cricket team beats a few international sides in one day cricket. Whoopee we are not minnows. (waves finger wildly). Dr Yunus is a posterboy in the West. Whoopee what great empowerment! Goldman Sachs includes Bangladesh in its 'Next 11'. Whoopee All Hail their indepth contextual research (NOT).


And some comments on Pansiness
Last week there was a report of tens of little school girls in Barisal hospitalising themselves with grief at their teachers being transferred. Begum literally means Mother of Warriors. oh dear oh dear oh dear.

I wonder whether the genderising of the national symbol of 'mother land' in the case of Bangladesh encourages an effeminate sense of cultural and territorial identity. Passivity rather than interaction and initiative, of being subjugated rather than beings strong

The Bengali language tv channels in the UK must be making a killing during their nightly shows on BD politics. £1 a minute! thankyou media, you really bring out the worst in us AND you make moeny at the same time!

24.4.07

On being a Political Orphan.

This is about how I feel towards my ancestral lands, which for reasons and events outside my control has been truncated to and defined as a nation state bearing the title Bangladesh. I know who I am, what my forefathers strove towards, but for reasons outside my control their ambitions have been mutilated and distorted to create some mutilated poor man's third rate nationalism. In this country the biggest business is in making money out of other people's misfortune, either by 'developing them' or empowering them in sweatshops dedicated to inexpensive and crude clothes for AngloSaxonia. Sheesh.

There is a lesson here for the lazy. Do not assume that similar geographical origin has anything to do with defining 'Your People'.

You join the political orphanage when the society that you emanate from kills, then burys your past and pretends that it never existed. In its place it grafts a creakingly heavy narrative of emotional blackmail as your story of national liberation. It breeds replicas of itself, each generation engineered to bear its scars and mind blocks.

Sometimes people, when they have had enough, divorce their political parents, skip a generation of tutelage and nurture a new ambience, a new sound. I would recommend Bangladeshis do just that.

The Orphanage is not a virtual community based on the web, in case anybody was getting strange delusions of grandeur.


This post is not to make light of those who's father is no longer with them. Just in case anybody was being literalist.

22.4.07

Hasina went to the Airport


Things are a little dynamic in Bangladesh at the moment.

No silly im not talking about the onset of the monsoon or the Turkish washing up powder pictured on the left. It's the *other* type of weather im talking about.

The interim government of Bangladesh is trying to put a stop to the two recent dynasties, the Ahlal Mujib and the Ahlal Zia bringing more ruin upon the people of Bangladesh who keep voting for them. I don't have full information but this seems like a good move. I consider myself politically orphaned when it comes to Bangladesh, the people need better thinking and leadership. We need for new actors to be nurtured, stabilised and ride out with confidence.

We need to understand who we are and what we are doing with ourselves. A collective cosmological and trouble shooting exercise

Forever appealling to the 'Spirit of Liberation' is getting nowhere, and the two trees in the political field, the Ahlal Mujib and the Ahlal Zia were hogging all the sunlight and sucking out all the water. Now they might be over with 'TIMBAAAAAAAAR'.

Amusingly, the queen of Ahlal Mujib is in London at the moment trying to get to Bangladesh. The only problem for her is that the government is not going to let her in as she is a threat to the peace, even though she has murder charges to answer to. She could be seen as a preacher of hate in her home country, where she regularly led her followers to bring the country's economic and transport to a stand still and disrupted Parliamentary proceedings, boycotted them and spread Talibanisation theories about Bangladesh. It would be wise for observers not to forget the events of October 28th 2006 either, when she ordered her fedayeen onto the streets with sticks and oars. Several people were killed. I received eyewitness accounts of them beating 'enemies' to death in gangs then jumping over their bodies. There is some revolting footage here. Secular, moderate, non communal and democratic enough for western utility? Of Course!!!

The Ahlal Mujib were overjoyed to see the 1st Caretaker Government destroyed and the elections delayed. they and the press that shared their agenda, the Daily Star et al helped to create these unprecedented and 'legally creative' conditions. Now they are not so steady. Again and again they get themselves and the rest of us into trouble with their drunken fancies and actions.

The Ahlal Mujib will be supported by their freinds in the UK, the US and of course in India. Lord Avebury is a notorious Awami League mouth piece, human rightist and righteously indignant in a predictable white aristo sort of fashion. I'm suprised that Jeremy Corbyn MP (Labour Anti-War) is taking a shine to her cause. It is an open secret in Bangladesh that there are tens of thousands of of its citizens on the payrolls of unfreindly agencies of a next door neighbour. Its one of those sad facts of life.

I hear that yesterday Hasina told a big meeting of her fans in London that she was going to Heathrow airport today to try to board a BA flight to Dhaka, even though the Bangladesh Government has instructed BA and the Brit security agencies not to let her on the plane. Air India is always an option for her, i hear its cheaper.

I hope that Hasina's presence in the UK doesn't mess up things in the UK and in Bangladesh. There are some people quite high up in Labour and other parties with an axe to grind.

The thing i feel with the younger generation is that a more advanced engagement with the Ahlal Mujib can happen in the UK, and the deshis here are (a) a lot less brainwashed with *Bangladesh Atudies*, (b) don't really care about gettign promoted in the Bangladeshi business or government, (c) have food in their bellies, (d) care about their religious idenity beyond ritual and personal morality and (e) have the space and the literacy.

Someone should go over to her sister Rehana's house and do a citizen's arrest. Only problem being they would probably get lynched. I'd wish Shk Hasina Wajed a pleasant retirement but i don't think we have heard the last from her.

5.4.07

Newish Muslim Posture - DeobandoMutazili

As in (a) know your material and your history (Deoband) and (b) Give your brain a go (Mutazili).

Usually both of these terms are thought of as pejoratives but i think its quite a cool hybridised stance to have, especially if you are into history and education like Fazlur Rahman was.

Of course in defining these terms only the better qualities of mentioned movements are invoked.