Prof. Mahfuz Chowdhury

The fact has remained that Bangladesh failed to uphold true democratic values even after forty years of existence. Sadly, the democratic process was halted by the very leader who had led the country to independence. Soon after freedom, his unilateral decision to establish a personal army and impose a one-party autocratic rule created a great setback for Bangladesh democracy. His heavy handed rule eventually cost him his life, and also brought fifteen years of successive military reign.

The election of 1990 was supposed to have paved the way to a democratic process. Instead, it has given rise to a different kind of authoritarian rule by establishing a dual family dynastic reign. At the center of it all now sit two politically inept ladies, Sheikh Hasina Wajed and Begum Khaleda Zia, who have inherited the leadership of the two dominating political parties in the country. They show no respect for democratic process and tolerate no dissension within their party, and government when in power.

The option people get in the election that follows is to choose one or the other party, thereby putting one or the other lady in power. While in power, these ladies often treat the country as if it were their family property; they rule autocratically, tolerate corruption, ignore or even sanction human rights abuse, and most importantly, promote and implement their personal agendas with little regard to general welfare. The existing system is best described as democratic authoritarianism since regular election only leads to an autocratic rule.

The ladies have their own army of die-hard supporters. Most are core supporters, while others came from different political spectrum, left, right or center, driven by their personal ambition. At times there is a race to join the winning party even by those who claim to be the champion of democratic rights. Their apparent goal for joining is simply to gain personal benefits. Incredibly, the country’s ex-President also came to line up behind the leader who sacked him from the highest office.

In addition to the unscrupulous politicians, the so-called intellectuals of the country are lending support to the present autocratic system in Bangladesh. To be fair, the country’s intellectuals would fall into three categories – two of which are advantageously aligned with the two parties who support and defend their policies. Of the third group, most prefer to keep quiet for fear of imminent reprisals, while a few who remain vocal fail to make much difference.

If a country’s progress is somehow attributed to its intellectuals or political thinkers, the blame for any failure should be shared by them as well. The corrupt politicians are indeed responsible for the failure to establish a functioning democratic system in Bangladesh. Yet, the intellectuals couldn’t escape their responsibilities for failing to properly resist, educate or warn the people on the impact of autocratic family dynastic rule. Those who continue to believe that something good might come out of the present scandalous system are clearly being dishonest to them and the nation.

Under Bangladesh’s unitary system of government all important decisions are made at the center. It would be impracticable to run a country of 160 million people with such a centralized system. For the smooth functioning of government and the fostering of economic growth, power decentralization into several provinces is well overdue. But neither of the country’s governing ladies is willing to decentralize the country’s administration for fear of losing their absolute authority.

The world is currently on a change mode where the younger generation is taking charge and using the internet to their advantage. Whoever thought that an unemployed college student in Tunisia could ignite the “Arab Spring” by sacrificing his own life? Once powerful autocratic rulers in the Middle East have fallen like houses of cards; even developed countries are feeling the pinch from the “Occupy Wall Street” movement. Could Bangladesh be too far behind?

The people are the source of power, and given the opportunity Bangladeshi people seem quite ready to exercise their power. In a recently held municipal election, people have shown their disdain for the current system by electing a courageous lady as their mayor who didn’t get a party endorsement. But, to hide their infamy, both political parties rushed to quickly embrace the winner – immediately before or after the election.

For better or worse, change is bound to come to Bangladesh. The obvious question is – what kind of change will that be, or at what price?

The options for the country are quite clear – either democratize and decentralize, or plunge into anarchy. Time is running out. As reported by the country’s news media, the level of dangerous violence, mysterious killings, political assaults and slayings that the country is now experiencing point to already a serious lawlessness situation. The escalation of such violence both within and outside of each party is constantly being fueled and encouraged by hostile acts of both parties where democracy has no footing.

Bangladesh has a great potential to forge ahead economically with minimal foreign help only if it had a functioning democracy in place. The two feuding leadership families, which control the country’s politics and governance, are engaged in promoting their personal agendas with no regard to national interests. They lack the integrity and conviction to politically do the right thing, or right the wrong. The current system is fundamentally flawed and must therefore be changed for the good of the country.

Bangladesh would plunge into an anarchical state like Afghanistan, Pakistan or Somalia unless the destructive policies of the two dominant parties are effectively reversed and true democratic reforms are put into place. It’s imperative that the key supporters of the present autocratic system realize this ominous fact and take appropriate action to save the country from the imminent gloom. Otherwise, the consequence would be dreadful from which no one in the country would escape unharmed. As the seventh largest country in population, the world order would also be enormously affected by such an outcome.

The video, which was posted on YouTube and other websites, shows four men in camouflage Marine combat uniforms urinating on three corpses. One of them jokes: “Have a nice day, buddy.” Another makes a lewd joke.

At the Pentagon, Captain John Kirby said the defense department was “deeply troubled” by the video.

“Whoever it is, and whatever the circumstances – which we know is under investigation – it is egregious behavior and unacceptable for a member of the military,” said Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman.

US Troops Defile Dead Afghans on Camera

Videos Shows U.S. Marines Urinating On Dead Taliban Fighters

   A still image taken January 11, 2012 from an undated YouTube video shows what is believed to be US
   Marines urinating on the bodies of dead Taliban soldiers in Afghanistan.

The US military has been prosecuting soldiers from the Army’s 5th Stryker Brigade on charges of murdering unarmed Afghan civilians while deployed in Kandahar province in 2010.

On January 15th, 2010, U.S. soldiers in Bravo Company stationed near Kandahar executed an unarmed Afghan boy named Gul Mudin in the village of La Mohammad Kalay. Reports by soldiers at the scene indicate that Mudin was about 15 years old. According to sworn statements, two soldiers – Cpl. Jeremy Morlock and Pfc. Andrew Holmes ? staged the killing to make it look like they had been under attack. Ordering the boy to stand still, they crouched behind a mud wall, tossed a grenade at him and opened fire from close range.

These soldiers routinely collected errant weapons and planted them on the bodies of unarmed civilians they killed, in order to frame their victim as enemy combatants. The presence of a “drop weapon” virtually guaranteed that a shooting would be considered a legitimate kill.

Photographs published in March by two magazines – Der Spiegel and Rolling Stone – showed soldiers posing with the bloodied corpse of the Afghan boy they had just killed. The images can be seen below:

Following the routine Army procedure required after every battlefield death, the soldiers cut off the dead boy’s clothes and stripped him naked to check for identifying tattoos. Here they are shown scanning his iris and fingerprints, using a portable biometric scanner.

The soldiers also took photographs of themselves celebrating their kill. In the photos, Morlock grins and gives a thumbs-up sign as he poses with Mudin’s body. Note that the boy’s right pinky finger appears to have been severed. Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs reportedly used a pair of razor-sharp medic’s shears to cut off the finger, which he presented to Holmes as a trophy for killing his first Afghan.

Holmes poses with Mudin’s body. According to a fellow soldier, Holmes took to carrying Mudin’s severed finger with him in a zip-lock bag. “He wanted to keep the finger forever and wanted to dry it out,” one of his friends would later report. “He was proud of his finger.”

Before the military found itself short of troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, Capt. Jeremy Morlock was the kind of bad-news kid who the Army might have passed on. He grew up not far from Sarah Palin in Wasilla, Alaska; his sister hung out with Bristol, and Morlock played hockey against Track. Back in those days, it seemed like he was constantly in trouble: getting drunk and into fights, driving without a license, leaving the scene of a serious car accident.

Even after he joined the Army, Morlock continued to get into trouble. In 2009, a month before he deployed to Afghanistan, he was charged with disorderly conduct after burning his wife with a cigarette. After he arrived in Afghanistan, he did any drug he could get his hands on: opium, hash, Ambien, amitriptyline, flexeril, phenergan, codeine, trazodone.

The photos collected by soldiers included many shots of local children, often filed alongside images of bloody casualties. At one point, soldiers in 3rd Platoon talked about throwing candy out of a Stryker vehicle as they drove through a village and shooting the children who came running to pick up the sweets.

According to one soldier, members of 3rd Platoon also talked about a scenario in which they “would throw candy out in front and in the rear of the Stryker; the Stryker would then run the children over.”

Gibbs allegedly used a pair of medic’s shears to cut off the finger of at least two Afghan civilians murdered by members of his platoon.

In the process of suppressing the photographs, the Army may also have been trying to keep secret evidence that the killings of civilians went beyond a few men in 3rd Platoon. In this image, the bodies of two Afghan men have been tied together, their hands bound, and placed alongside a road.

MORE WAR CRIMES COMMITTED BY U.S. SOLDIERS

1. Pictures & Videos: ‘Death Zone’ — How U.S. soldiers turned a night-time airstrike into a chilling ‘music video’
2. The Haditha Killings — U.S. Marines committed WAR CRIMES of unfathomable proportions!
3. American soldiers torturing (Lynching) Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison
4. Mr. President Bush — ‘You are a War Criminal who belongs in Guantanamo Prison’

5. War Crimes Committed by the United States in Iraq and Mechanisms for Accountability

   Columnist – John Sammon
Never once in my journalistic career have I ever attacked the work of another political columnist. Until now.

On Veterans Day my local newspaper ran a lone editorial on its editorial page written by David O’Brien, a professor of faith and culture at the University of Dayton. The editorial extolled the sacrifices made by our troops. There are reasons I must respond.

The editorial contains falsehoods, exaggerations and half-truths. Secondly, it’s the only opinion given, with no rebuttal. Thirdly, if we are unwilling to learn from past mistakes, or say we never make them, we will repeat them.

O’Brien starts out saying we gather on Veterans Day with heavy hearts mourning our fallen troops and I whole-heartedly agree. No argument there. But then he says, “We put aside our complaints about “Bush’s War” or “Obama’s War” and acknowledge our shared responsibilities.”

We put aside our complaints?

Who are we?

I never put aside my complaints. I opposed the war in Iraq from day one. I’m sure there are others, so it isn’t a case of “we.”

To get Americans to support war in Iraq, Bush lied that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction as he put it “such as the world had never seen,” and maintained that an attack on America using such weapons was imminent. That means like next week. So it was “Bush’s war.” Obama inherited it.

“Shared responsibilities?”

We failed in our shared responsibilities, especially the media, to ask tough questions of the president requiring him to make a truthful case, and instead were swept along on a drumbeat of pro-war fervor in the wake of 9-11 fuelled by deceptions.

O’Brien continues, “After 9-11, we launched our war on Afghanistan, then after extended debate, we invaded Iraq.”

Extended debate?

What is your perception of the word “extended?” I would describe it instead more as a “rubber stamp” fed by falsehoods and distortions, with anyone questioning it labeled a traitor. The Founding Fathers expected presidents to ask Congress for a Declaration of War to maintain some control over the Oval Office, a requirement presidents for the past 60 years have chosen to ignore as they continually extend their power.

O’Brien says, “Later, a majority of us decided that preemptive war in Iraq was the right choice.”

He neglects to also mention that today a sizeable portion of the population don’t consider the war in Iraq worth the cost.

He then says, “We accepted a surge of troops in Iraq and welcomed subsequent news of progress.” As Ronald Reagan would have once said, “there you go again” David, with the “we” statement. I was skeptical of the benefits of the “surge,” flooding parts of a country with troops when you’re dealing with a highly mobile insurgency. Its results can be debated, but there were critics in the military who labeled it “The Pillsbury Doughboy.” You push them out of an area, and like pushing the Doughboy in the stomach, they bulge out the back, simply moving and setting up shop somewhere else.

A surge is like a tide that comes in and out. Assuming it was successful, will it be so permanently?

O’Brien then says, “Those of us who opposed these wars (he finally acknowledges me) blamed presidents and politicians.”

Who else you gonna blame? Lindsay Lohan? I didn’t have a vote on whether to go to war.

“Occasionally we demanded withdrawal, but we proposed no persuasive alternative strategies,” O’Brien continues.

Was Cindy Sheehan’s opposition, the mom who opposed the war after her son was killed, “occasional?”

There you go again with the “we” David. If I had proposed an alternate strategy, would the Joint Chiefs of Staff listen? When you say “we,” we who? There is no alternate strategy to a wrong war, other than not fighting it. Just before the war in Iraq was launched, United Nations Weapons Inspectors were in the country looking for and not finding the alleged weapons of mass destruction. Bush and company basically told the UN “you’re too late, there are weapons, get out of the way.”

I should say at this point I did not oppose the strike on Afghanistan because that country harbored the culprits from 9-11. I opposed Iraq because it was wrong and would weaken our efforts in Afghanistan, which it did.

O’Brien then says, “ending American wars is never easy (I agree),” and he lists past wars, but then adds “our shameful withdrawal from Vietnam.”

President Dwight D. Eisenhower considered an open-ended land war in Asia unwinnable and apparently O’Brien has never heard of the deceptions revealed in the Pentagon Papers in which the government was lying to its own people. This is all documented.

Do I also need to remind readers that the “shameful withdrawal” was carried out under the conservative Republican Administration of Gerald Ford, who had inherited it from the disgraced Richard Nixon, who had earlier pledged to get us out? Perhaps the best way to answer “shameful withdrawal” is to quote anti-war activist and folk singer Pete Seeger, who was labeled a communist because of his views.

“Was Abraham Lincoln a traitor because he opposed the Mexican War?” Seeger asked. “Was Mark Twain a traitor because he opposed the Spanish American War?”

An anonymous soldier writes on Tumblr: “Burned the whole lot of them on my Commander’s orders.”

U.S. forces stationed in a remote area of Afghanistan recently received about 20 copies of Bill O’Reilly’s book “Pinheads and Patriots: Where You Stand in the Age of Obama.”

Their orders upon receiving the books: Burn them, according to a tumblr account maintained anonymously by a soldier.

Some jerk sent us two boxes of this awful book (SPOILER ALERT: George Washington ? Patriot; George Soros ? Pinhead) instead of anything soldiers at a remote outpost in Afghanistan might need, like, say, food or soap. Just burned the whole lot of them on my Commander’s orders.

[ READ MORE ] [ HOLLYWOOD REPORTER ]

The video below, first uncovered by Gawker, shows copies of Pinheads and Patriots being included in Operation Shoebox packages.

——————————————————-

The All-Spin Zone: O’Reilly Makes A Hash Of Obama’s Economic Record — In a single segment of his show, Bill O’Reilly made a series of false or misleading claims about President Obama’s economic record, arguing that Obama’s embrace of spending greatly expanded the deficit, that the stimulus was “didn’t work very well,” that increasing taxes on the rich won’t “put a dent” in federal debt, and that the United States is on a path to Greek-style economic disaster. None of these claims stand up to scrutiny. [ READ MORE ]

O’Reilly Smears Occupy Wall Street Protesters As “Loons,” “Anarchists,” “The Fringe“

——————————————————
In Other Right-Wing ‘Hate’ News…..
——————————————————

1. Officer Faces Civil Rights Charges in Stop-and-Frisk Arrest — Allegations of racism in NYPD’s stop-and-frisk program are nothing new — 93 out of every 100 residents were stopped by police in one community.

How Does It Feel to be Stopped and Frisked?

2. White Supremacist Pat Buchanan: Blacks Have Lost The American Identity They Had During Segregation

3. Amnesia? Fox News Invents More Media Bias, Ignores Own History Of “Nazi” Name-Calling

“Taliban gunmen armed with suicide bombs and heavy weaponry Tuesday launched coordinated attacks in Kabul, targeting NATO’s headquarters, the US embassy and the Afghan intelligence agency.” — AFP, Afghanistan

There were no casualties among US personnel at the American embassy.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton waxed indignant saying: American will not be cowed and will continue to work in Afghanistan.

Clinton dismissed the Taliban as “cowards,” but they demonstrated exemplary courage attacking an outpost of the most powerful nation on Earth.

The NATO headquarters, the US embassy and the Afghan intelligence agency are legitimate military targets, and any impartial observer would have to sympathize with the Taliban.

The Taliban is a Neanderthal organization, but we are clearly in the wrong trying to impose our will on a nation that doesn’t have a history or desire for democracy.

Hillary says that we will continue to “work” in Afghanistan, we’ve done enough “work” (killing of civilians) in that godforsaken part of the world. It’s time to do the right thing, and pull our troops out of Afghanistan.

By Robert Paul Reyes

Follow Robert Paul Reyes on Twitter: http://twitter.com/robertpaulreyes