Prime Minister (PM) Sheikh Hasina yesterday said her government is going to introduce general rationing system so that all sections of people can cope with the prices of essentials like rice, pulses, oils and baby foods.
She disclosed the plan while addressing the members of Bangladesh Ansar and the Village Defence Party (VDP) at the Ansar-VDP Academy in Shafipur.
The prime minister also announced a package programme enhancing allowance for the Ansar members and assigning them to new roles in rural development and peacekeeping.
Announcing a number of facilities and benefits for the country’s 4.9 million Ansar and VDP members, the prime minister said daily allowance of the attached Ansar members will be fixed at minimum Tk 180.
The prime minister also directed the authorities concerned to take steps to implement this decision “immediately”.
Elaborating the new universal rationing system, she said, “We are considering providing ration for all. Whatever the wage of a person, he will be entitled to purchase rice, pulses, oils and baby milk under the general rationing system.”
She said all beneficiaries will have to follow a ‘limit’ in getting the services under the government rationing system.
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By Henry Gee & Rory Howlett
The articles in this Insight testify to the success of Charles Darwin’s theory of descent with modification by means of natural selection, carefully detailed in his book On the Origin of Species almost 150 years ago. The most striking aspect of the theory is its simplicity. Given heritable variation, a superabundance of offspring, and environmental change, natural selection must happen, and evolution will follow. The natural world can be explained without invoking pre-existing germs, essential life forces, the great chain of being, Ptolemaic epicycles or a prime mover.
This simplicity has meant that the theory has always accommodated new discoveries — the general theme of this Insight. In Darwin’s day, nothing was known about genetics or the mathematical basis of natural selection. But such discoveries have only made the theory stronger.
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By Sarah Cheema

From Head to toe so filled with fancies, my friend
I am heart-broken and quite forlorn, my friend
For a fleeting glimpse of a flower in bloom
I have walked many miles over thorns, my friend.
(Bayaz-e-Sadequaini)

An obituary published in the DAWN on February 12, 1987 aptly titled ‘Death of a Master’ described in one word what Pakistan’s greatest painters meant to the nation -The Grand Master – who during over 3 decades of his active, or rather furious involvement changed the course of art in Pakistan.
February 10th 2009, marked the 21st death anniversary of Syed Sadequain Ahmed Naqvi – the ‘Fakir’ who would be king. In his short life of 57 years, Sadequain distinguished himself as an artist with boundless energy, a zest for work and a courage to speak up for the deprived.

Born in Amroha, U.P India on June 25, 1930-this brilliantly self taught painter migrated to Pakistan in 1948 and started working for the Radio Pakistan in Karachi before finally deciding to become a full-time painter.
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HMS Vanguard is now back at its home base at Faslane on the Clyde
A Royal Navy nuclear submarine was involved in a collision with a French nuclear sub in the middle of the Atlantic, the MoD has confirmed.
HMS Vanguard and Le Triomphant were badly damaged in the crash in heavy seas earlier this month.
First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Jonathon Band said the submarines came into contact at low speed and no injuries were reported.
Both the UK and France insisted nuclear security had not been compromised.
Factfile: HMS Vanguard and Le Triomphant
BBC defence correspondent Caroline Wyatt said the incident was “incredibly embarrassing” for the Ministry of Defence (MoD).
She said HMS Vanguard, with “very visible dents and scrapes”, was towed back to its home base at Faslane on the Firth of Clyde.
First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Jonathon Band confirms the collision took place
The submarines are equipped with sonar to detect other vessels nearby but our correspondent said it be might the case that the anti-sonar devices, meant to hide the submarines from enemies, were “too effective”.
“This is clearly a one-in-a-million chance when you think about how big the Atlantic is,” she said.
The two submarines are key parts of each nation’s nuclear deterrent, and would have been carrying missiles, though both the UK and France have insisted there was no danger of a nuclear incident.
They were carrying around 240 sailors between them. A French naval spokesman said the collision did not result in any injuries to the crew.
Le Triomphant is based at L’Ile Longue near Brest, north-west France. HMS Vanguard arrived back in Faslane on Saturday.
On 6 February, France’s defence ministry had said that Le Triomphant “collided with an immersed object (probably a container)” when coming back from patrolling, and that the vessel’s sonar dome was damaged.
But in a subsequent statement, it admitted that the collision between the two submarines took place.
“They briefly came into contact at a very low speed while submerged,” the statement added.
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By P. SAINATH

The number of farmers who have committed suicide in India between 1997 and 2007 now stands at a staggering 182,936. Close to two-thirds of these suicides have occurred in five states (India has 28 states and seven union territories). The Big 5 – Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh– account for just about a third of the country’s population but two-thirds of farmers’ suicides. The rate at which farmers are killing themselves in these states is far higher than suicide rates among non-farmers. Farm suicides have also been rising in some other states of the country.

It is significant that the count of farmers taking their lives is rising even as the numbers of farmers diminishes, that is, on a shrinking farmer base. As many as 8 million people quit farming between the two censuses of 1991 and 2001. The rate of people leaving farming has only risen since then, but we’ll only have the updated figure of farmers in the census of 2011.

These suicide data are official and tend to be huge underestimates, but they’re bad enough. Suicide data in India are collated by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), a wing of the Ministry of Home Affairs, government of India. The NCRB itself seems to do little harm to the data. But the states where these are gathered leave out thousands from the definition of “farmer” and, thus, massage the numbers downward. For instance, women farmers are not normally accepted as farmers (by custom, land is almost never in their names). They do the bulk of work in agriculture – but are just “farmers’ wives.” This classification enables governments to exclude countless women farmer suicides. They will be recorded as suicide deaths – but not as “farmers’ suicides.” Likewise, many other groups, too, have been excluded from that list.

The spate of farm suicides – the largest sustained wave of such deaths recorded in history – accompanies India’s embrace of the brave new world of neoliberalism. Many reports on that process and how it has affected agriculture have been featured right here, on the Counterpunch site. The rate of farmers’ suicides has worsened particularly after 2001, by which time India was well down the WTO garden path in agriculture. The number of farmers’ suicides in the five years – 1997-2001 – was 78,737 (or 15,747 a year on average). The same figure for the five years 2002-06 was 87,567 (or 17,513 a year on average). That is, in the next five years after 2001, one farmer took his or her life every 30 minutes on average. The 2007 figures (detailed below) place that year, too, in the higher trend.

What do the farm suicides have in common? Those who have taken their lives were deep in debt – peasant households in debt doubled in the first decade of the neoliberal “economic reforms,” from 26 per cent of farm households to 48.6 per cent. We know that from National Sample Survey data. But in the worst states, the percentage of such households is far higher. For instance, 82 per cent of all farm households in Andhra Pradesh were in debt by 2001-02. Those who killed themselves were overwhelmingly cash crop farmers – growers of cotton, coffee, sugarcane, groundnut, pepper, vanilla. (Suicides are fewer among food crop farmers – that is, growers of rice, wheat, maize, pulses.) The brave new world philosophy mandated countless millions of Third World farmers forced to move from food crop cultivation to cash crop (the mantra of “export-led growth”). For millions of subsistence farmers in India, this meant much higher cultivation costs, far greater loans, much higher debt, and being locked into the volatility of global commodity prices. That’s a sector dominated by a handful of multinational corporations. The extent to which the switch to cash crops impacts on the farmer can be seen in this: it used to cost Rs.8,000 ?($165 today) roughly to grow an acre of paddy in Kerala. When many switched to vanilla, the cost per acre was (in 2003-04) almost Rs.150,000 ($3,000) an acre. (The dollar equals about 50 rupees.)

With giant seed companies displacing cheap hybrids and far cheaper and hardier traditional varieties with their own products, a cotton farmer in Monsanto’s net would be paying far more for seed than he or she ever dreamed they would. Local varieties and hybrids were squeezed out with enthusiastic state support. In 1991, you could buy a kilogram of local seed for as little as Rs.7 or Rs.9 in today’s worst affected region of Vidarbha. By 2003, you would pay Rs.350 — ($7) — for a bag with 450 grams of hybrid seed. By 2004, Monsanto’s partners in India were marketing a bag of 450 grams of Bt cotton seed for between Rs.1,650 and Rs.1,800 ($33 to $36). This price was brought down dramatically overnight due to strong governmental intervention in Andhra Pradesh, where the government changed after the 2004 elections. The price fell to around Rs.900 ($18) – still many times higher than 1991 or even 2003.
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By Praful Bidwai

The dominant culture of our corporate nabobs has contempt for democracy and regards profiteering as its right – to be respected by the state.

THEY were supposed to be the brightest and the best – products of the finest that India has to show by way of technical prowess, and shining examples of what industry, perseverance and innovation can achieve in a globally important sunrise industry. Our information technology professionals put India into the cutting-edge sector of the world economy; they even helped make the earth flat, in the super-adulatory but illusory description of the Roaring Nineties.

IT rookies were considered “rainmakers”, who would produce miracles through unstoppable 20 to 30 per cent growth year after year. Why, some business analysts even thought computer software would become a new paradigm, where “development” could be achieved while bypassing the traditional route of industrialisation and broad-based services.

This magic wand would allow India to raise standards of living across the board without addressing the people’s elementary needs, including health care, education and nutrition, leave alone redistribution of assets. This might be the Great Shortcut our rulers have always craved.

Going by the mystique around them, our IT professionals personified the virtues of honesty, commitment, self-confidence, an adventurous spirit and loyalty to their companies, clients and shareholders. They could do no wrong. They were the best grooms on the marriage market. They were everybody’s favourites. They deserved all the pampering the industry got – tax exemptions, land at concessional rates, and low-cost connectivity.

The Satyam scandal has shattered the dream. We have a scam, where the amount stolen – going by promoter-chairman B. Ramalinga Raju – is two and a half times higher in absolute terms than that was lost in the Enron scandal. Involved here is every trick in the scamster’s book: forging bank certificates, inflating expenses, spiriting away assets, and browbeating senior executives.

It defies credulity to believe that over seven years Ramalinga Raju did not take large sums out of Satyam to buy real estate and other assets, influence business contracts, and bribe politicians and bureaucrats in return for favours. According to officials in the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, his family floated more than 100 companies, 23 of them branded with the “Maytas” name alone.

Underlying the Satyam swindle is the failure of all supervisory bodies, including PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC), the statutory auditor, independent directors, and Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). Irregularities were reported in PwC’s handling of Satyam accounts in 2001, but there was no investigation. Similarly, complaints filed with SEBI were not pursued. PwC, which has audited Satyam’s accounts since 1991, should have faced punitive action from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI). The ICAI’s disciplinary council met, but failed to act.

Satyam’s independent directors acted largely as rubberstamps. When the board met in mid-December to approve the scandalous proposal to invest $1.6 billion in Maytas, it ignored the elephant in the living room: the conflict of interest in buying a company floated by the promoters’ family in an unrelated business.

Even worse was SEBI’s approval for Satyam’s foul transactions, including the Maytas deal. Other authorities also ignored complaints about illegal land allocations to Satyam group companies in different cities, in violation of their master plans.

A major reason for these gross failures of supervision and regulation is the naive belief that in order to create a favourable investment climate, state agencies must sincerely trust entrepreneurs, and it must be generally assumed that corporations tell the truth – unless proved otherwise. This makes nonsense of all considerations of prudence and precaution, including rigorous verification of accounts and tough investigation into grey areas. It also ignores the specific context in which the IT industry has recently evolved. This is marked by fierce competition in the low-value-added, largely repetitive software development business. Not every IT company is an Infosys, which reportedly looks for challenging assignments in high-end businesses. Although it was the IT industry’s Number Four, Satyam had 690 clients, most of them small. The average firm is smaller and faces bigger challenges.

Under tight conditions, there is an increased temptation to look for shortcuts such as artificially boosting company ratings by employing more people than necessary, paying bribes to win contracts, and moneymaking through funds diversion and speculative investments.
What is true of Satyam may be true of many other IT companies. The World Bank has blacklisted two well-known firms, besides Satyam, for making “improper payments” (read, open bribes or favours like stock options). This, plausibly, could be the tip of the iceberg. Official agencies have failed to discover irregularities or subject IT corporate activities to scrutiny on the assumption that they are, must be, all in order; it would be counterproductive to rock the boat. This has promoted lack of accountability and impunity, and encouraged IT entrepreneurs to assume that they are immune from critical scrutiny. Coupled with the celebration of the Greed Creed in our media and social discourse, and the neoliberal doctrine that there must be no limits on incomes, profits and wealth, this culture of impunity makes for a deadly cocktail.

Following the older Friedman (Milton), many of our businessmen have convinced themselves that their only corporate social responsibility is to make profits. And following the younger or lesser Friedman (Thomas), they tell themselves that the world is flat: it is only natural that their consumption should match that of the elites in the industrial North. So they must make money by any means.

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from Hari Sharma

Dear friends and members of SANSAD:

We draw your attention to the Public Events on Thursday, February 19. These are being organized by a newly formed South Asian Ad Hoc Committee for Action Against Aggression.

Please join us at the Pickets and also at the Candlelight vigil.

And if you belong to a community-based organization, kindly consider giving this event your organizational endorsement.

Thank you

hari sharma
for SANSAD

On President Obama’s visit to Canada
PROTEST U.S. BOMBINGS OF PAKISTAN
AND THE OCCUPATION OF AFGHANISTAN

Thursday February 19, 2009

Drop In Picket
12pm – 5pm,
US Consulate, 1076 W. Pender St.

Candelight Vigil
5:30 pm – 7pm
Vancouver Art Gallery, Robson Sq.

On Thursday, February 19, to mark the first official visit of U.S. president Barack Hussein Obama to Canada concerned members of the South Asian community and their supporters from throughout the Lower Mainland plan to publicly express their protest against the continuing drone attacks on the sovereign territory of Pakistan and the continued occupation of Afghanistan.

Whatever “change” and “hope” Barack Obama promised to bring to the people of the USA and of the world, when it comes to Afghanistan and Pakistan, it is only a continuation of the drastic and irresponsible policies followed by George Bush. During the last six months of his presidency, the Bush administration extended the occupation of Afghanistan by carrying out 30 air strikes on Pakistani soil, killing 220 people. And within days of assuming his presidency, on January 23, Barack Obama ordered another air strike on Pakistan. As a result, two separate Pakistani villages were attacked by drones, killing 22 people, most of them women and children.

Clearly this is an undeclared war against a sovereign country. The drone attacks have continued despite publicly expressed denunciations of this violation of sovereignty by the Government of Pakistan, as well as by a vast majority of Pakistani people.

Many innocent people have been killed and maimed, mirroring the fate of Afghan civilians across the border. U.S drone attacks have devastated tribal areas such as Bajaur on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan, further impacting families already separated by the Durand line.

The drone attacks by the U.S. have contributed to increasing the instability and tensions within communities in that region with the bombing of mosques and schools, and the indiscriminant killings of scores of civilians.

The U.S led war on terror has also resulted in the disappearances and detentions of thousands of civilians in Pakistan. The cases of these disappeared people have still not been brought to trial despite years of work by their families and human rights activists.

This expansion of the American war into Pakistan will only destabilize the entire South Asian region, with serious consequences for the whole world.

Bombs do not bring peace

As the Canadian Peace Alliance has recently stated: “Mr Obama was elected because of a desire for peace and change. The people of Canada and, indeed, the people of the world, urge him to remember that and to cancel plans to expand the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

We, the people of South Asian origin demand peaceful negotiations if there are conflicts to be resolved. And we say NO to the imperialist interventions and occupations: in Pakistan and the whole South Asian region, in Afghanistan, in Iran, and everywhere else. Terrorism cannot be eradicated by bombs and occupations but only by addressing the structural inequalities and conditions of oppression that are faced by the majority of people in Pakistan and Afghanistan and by respecting the needs of the people and their desire for independence and sovereignty.

We also understand that our struggle cannot be waged in isolation and that we must also speak out against the injustices faced by other communities.

We stand in solidarity with our Indigenous sisters and brothers fighting for justice both here and around the world.

We also express our solidarity with all the other peoples of the world fighting for liberation and justice from Sri Lanka to Iran to Gaza to the Philippines and beyond.

We ask all peace and freedom loving people to join us and stand in solidarity with the Pakistani and Afghan people to collectively send a message of “hope” and “change” to Ottawa during Obama’s visit on February 19th:

Obama, can you stop the bombing of Pakistan?
Obama, Harper, can you end the occupation of Afghanistan?

YES, YOU CAN! YES, YOU CAN!

Organized by:
South Asian Ad-hoc Committee for
Action Against Aggression

Endorsing Organizations:
Fraser Valley Peace Council, South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy (SANSAD), Siraat Collective, Pakistan Action Network (PAN), Canadian Muslim Union, StopWar.Ca, No One Is Illegal (Vancouver), Colour Connected Against Racism (UBC)

For further information, contact:
Amal Rana, 604-764-6257
Hari Sharma, 604-420-2972
Shahzad Nazir Khan, 604-613-0735
email: stopthebombings@gmail.com
on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=53834426221

BERLIN (Reuters)

Life hangs in the balance in a new film about an Iraqi girl whose father betroths her to a local sheikh, leaving her with a very adult choice: submit and forget dreams of education or risk death in the name of honor.

In “Niloofar,” the determined 13-year-old is caught in a trap where opportunism and tradition push families to propagate customs that lead to their own regret—unless individuals step up to tempt fate.
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UPDATE: The rumor that George Clooney is dating the 26-year-old niece of assassinated Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto is false, according to the actor’s publicist Stan Rosenfield.

Some What ifs?
Would George Clooney have converted to Islam?
Would he have campaigned for her in the next elections!

The parties in Larkana would be awesome. Feudals and Hollywood set co-mingling in the Sindh Desert.

As a Muslim, Clooney could film his next movie in Mecca proper… and not even have to give up his Starbucks or Burger King.

(Reader’s views on a news item)