Bundles of global contradictions

For which sector Bangladesh should welcome Foreign Direct Investment? What are the priority sectors for investment? It is a million dollar question when the FDI flow is on the wane. It is really difficult for a regime, suffering from the scarcity of foreign investment, to say no to FDI in less priority sectors. For their image repairing and also fattening the pockets of the ruling quarters it was necessary. What hell our civil engineers and architects and also REHAB doing? Aren’t BUET, KUET, RUET, DUET, CHUET and other 54 private universities producing who can build home on free land?

Currency Debate: Metal or Paper or Internet?

Every country even the 194th nation, carved out of Sudan, has its own currencies no matter all of them are beautiful or not. Bangladesh has altogether nine banknotes and seven coins. Bangladesh Bank (BB) has the sole authority to issue banknotes. Central banks the world over change the design of banknotes from time to time. The BB has so far issued notes in the denominations Taka 1000.00, 500.00, 100.00, 50.00, 20.00, 10.00, 5.00, 2.00, 1.00 and coins of Taka 5.00,2.00 1.00, 0.50, 0.25, 0.10, 0.05, 0.01 totalling Taka 1696.91 only. All of them are not beautiful. All of them are not good-looking but the two taka note is the best among the local notes.

Palestine Statehood: Cause of Humanity

Who hasn’t heard of cerebral celebrity Noam Chomsky, orientalist Edward Said or Arabic pop singer Latifa Bint Alayah Al Arfaoui and Tony Bla

Arabic pop singer Latifa Bint Alayah Al Arfaoui

ir’s sister in law Lauren Booth? They are none but a handful few who were deprived of the Western privileges they could have enjoyed. It happened not because all of them were Muslims but because they voiced concern on the oppression of the Palestinians. Noam Chomsky, an American activist writer and an icon for the journalists, is a Jew by religion, Edward Said a Palestinian-American Christian, Lauren Booth, a British Christian turned Muslim and Latifa is a Tunisian-Egyptian singer Muslim.

Balkan war criminal’s arrest and aftermath

July 13, 1995. Bosnians both Muslims as well as Croats rushed to places of their choice for safety. Croats, who had relatives in the mainland of Croatia, sought refuge there and who hadn’t faced Serbian savagery. But a good number of Muslims who had nowhere to go, headed towards Srebrenica to avoid persecution, rape, torture, extermination and killing. Muslim Bosnia and Herzegovina, surrounded by non-Muslim Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro, is a country with no friendly country borders as is the case with predominantly Muslim Bangladesh which has no border with any Muslim country. Fear-stricken faces were only looking for the secured places they can take shelter. Unarmed civilians started fleeing. They ran to and fro in face of Serb oppression and persecution. No destination.

Nobler than Nobel

Thanks to big-budget research firms and the laboratories lavishly spending for the research works for which the humanity is getting ‘happy’. More and more inventions are surprising the people of the planet and certainly benefits are being pocketed by scientists overtly. They are getting prestigious awards even the Nobel Prize. But covertly the patrons are being the real beneficiary. Most of the research works, though not all, are designed to serve the funder’s purpose. And that is logical that money will attain the goal of the money holder. Rice is more necessary than research works designed to make rich people’s life more easy and comfortable. Certainly there is competition to claim credit by different super powers in the funding the research works or laboratories.

Patchy Politics of Pranab and the Hoipolloi Hilarious at Hillary Clinton

Indian finance minister Pranab Mukharjee came to Bangladesh coinciding with that of the visit of US secretary of state Hillary Clinton in Dhaka, creating a new crescent –Dhaka-Delhi-District of Colombia. For long 64 years the US had been a trusted and strategic friend for successive Pakistani regimes, albeit not of Pak people. Now Washington DC terms the Islamic republic as a ‘failed state’. Over these years Pakistani regimes in utter disregard to its people’s opinion went on being sychophant and continued to get the facilities of the US capitalism which supported and subsidised the successive spineless govts and particularly the Pakistani army. The Pakistani armed forces received around 2000 billion dollar from the US which engaged it in ‘war on terror’, causing the former to lose 35000 Pakistani lives. All were aimed at Russia which invaded Afghanistan in 1980s. Finally it became a failed state being a friend and follower of the industrialized North. Now the US, which didn’t support our War of Independence in 1971