The New Nation - Internet Edition

UNRESTRICTED use of faulty gas cylinders in CNG-run vehicles poses serious threats to those who use them. In 2007, there was more than one cylinder explosion per month leaving at least one person dead in each. In an incident in Narsingdi, three persons died on the spot. According to media reports, 18 incidents of CNG cylinder explosions were recorded in 2007 and at least 17 people lost their lives.

A number of causes lead to cylinder explosions, say concerned people. Use of faulty and sub-standard cylinders is the main cause. In violation of instructions from the competent authority, many vehicles are fitted with low quality cylinders. Instead of cylinders specially made for compressed natural gas, oxygen cylinders or those meant for some other uses are used and those do not have minimum quality and cannot take CNG pressure. All the cylinders that so far exploded were found to be not of required specification. According to the Society for Urban Environmental Protection (SUEP) 87 percent of the cylinders that exploded were either of low quality or had faulty design or were fitted improperly. About half of the conversion workshops are reportedly unauthorised. not having the requisite expertise and experience in the field.

Cylinders, irrespective of kind and quality, need to be checked before use in CNG-run automobiles. Those should be checked at least once every five years for the sake of safety. But there is no arrangement for monitoring their uses. Rupantorito Prakritik Gas Company Ltd (RPGCL) is designated to verify genuineness of the cylinders, submit report and give new dates for checkups. But atomobile owners are rarely found to get their cylinders checked voluntarily. RPGCL does not have the authority to compel people for the same. Even the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA), which is supposed to check fitness of vehicles, does not ask for checking the CNG cylinders. About one lakh CNG-fuelled vehicles now ply in Bangladesh. Those are not regularly checked. Doubts are there whether the 10,000 three-wheelers imported in 2001 had the right kind of cylinders. RPGCL is authorised to issue licences and supervise the conversion works of other workshops. But allegations are there that it does not do the same. So, those workshops are free to convert vehicles with low quality cylinders and other materials at will. Many automobile owners are also unaware of the need for quality check of cylinders that they use.

Each cylinder blast reportedly has the power of a 500-pound bomb. Such an explosion may cause loss of life and serious damage to property. Many blasts of cylinders occurred during refueling of gas. Explosions in filling stations may lead to much more disastrous incidents. To avert such eventualities, the authorities must ensure regular monitoring of all cylinders. They must see whether the conversion workshops are of requisite standards. Unauthorised conversion of vehicles must not be allowed. Use of low quality cylinders must be made punishable. People must also be made aware of the causes leading to CNG cylinder-blasts.

A NEWSPAPER report published recently has been startling and should cause indignation among all to be concerned about it. It stated that police had seized huge quantities of date-barred insecticides with the owner of the company distributing the stuff admitting during police interrogation that he has been selling the date-expired products among the farmers for a long time. Insecticides are generally disapproved in many countries considering their health hazarding properties. The same are still sold in Bangladesh but reservations exist about their application and lately the official policy seems to be in favour of naturally protective ways of farming without insecticides. In this situation, if insecticides long past the safety period of their use, are extensively used, then one shudders to think of the human health risks from crops grown with such insecticides and also the toxicity to be caused to soil where the same are applied.

Not only insecticides, the country appears to have also become a carefree ground for marketing spurious and sub-standard fertilisers. Some months ago a big consignment of such fertilisers of Chinese origin were seized by the law enforcers. In that case also, confession came from the owners of the seized fertilisers that they have been indulging in such trading for a long time. Frequently, one comes across news of the farmers getting duped and buying sub-standard fertilisers which can have degrading effects on the soil. The sale activities of pesticides are also shot through with similar offences. Farmers in Bangladesh have been the targets of such abuses and dangerous practices for a long time. They are forced to buy poor quality, soil degrading and environmentally risky products at high prices. Not only targeted productivity can be a casualty of applying such sub-standard inputs, these inputs are also gradually causing otherwise fertile lands to lose their fertility while dangerous toxins are entering the human bodies due to consumption of crops produced with such dangerous agro-inputs.

Farming is still the mainstay of sorts for the national economy notwithstanding its diversification. Productivity going down in the farming sector and losing one of its traditionally valued biggest assets --the fertility of its cultivable lands-- must be regarded as a very great loss that calls for taking of immediate countrywide preventive steps against such risks through very stern law enforcement measures. For achieving the well-being of the greatest number of people in the country, policies must be framed and plans effectively implemented for the farmers to get the agro-inputs they need in adequate quantities at affordable prices. No less important would be making available such inputs which can be accepted without question as being not only of good quality but also of having no adverse environmental effects.

Md. Monirul Islam

History is written by the victors" this jargon's common use has taken its place in the history and generally, it is not an intentional approach but is intensified for a while as an intentional object in the course of time based on its vicissitudes. Human civilisation, according to Marxian interpretation, is divided into five phases: primitive communism, slavery, feudalism, socialism and capitalism.

In primordial age, there was no sort of intentional approach; they (inhabitants) hunted animals and subsisted on fragmented areas of that particular age. And there was no discrimination mainly in terms of seeking interests because sense of realisation didn't rise among the people of this age. Firstly, mere sense but not sense of realisation grew in the age of slavery which ultimately transformed into today's capitalism and capitalism's giant hegemon fully has been outburst through the process of globalization in this supranational age.

From slavery to capitalism, class conflicts or struggles are evident if we look on this carefully. In slavery, masters oppressed slaves and it symbolises the big cruelty because there was no human right of slaves of that particular age. Feudal lords also behaved with the serfs as located by the masters to their slaves in slavery. How much the approach of upper classes was intentional? Was it intentional or natural is the question? These two ages (slavery and feudalism) could be the rudimentary phase of class consciousness but not the absolute phase of it.

In fact, intentionalism or class consciousness, from overall view points, vehemently grew with the emergence of socialism and capitalism based on broader prospect or long term purpose. But in slavery and feudalism, several actors but not all among upper classes realized their approach which was intentional. Rest of them mere acted with their associates' intention.

So, we may demarcate shortly that intentional approach were under process in slavery and feudalism and it has been intensified or taken its absolute shape in socialism and capitalism. Present world's ideological bondage is mainly being forged by its actors based on socialism and capitalism although socialism collapsed; its actors are dominant all over the world. And that's why the unipolar character of U.S now is in great difficulties with the dominance of that socialist actors like Vladimir Putin in Russia, Fidel Castro in Cuba, Hugo Shavez in Vaneguala etc.

Bangladesh's present scenario is now in dilemma for its incumbency's some important decisions on various crucial fields. This interim government came to power to accomplish their specific goals to avert country from traditional malpractices done by its bigwigs i.e. former leaders. Actually, Government's main purpose is to reform the state-ingredients which were often used as the weapon of generating difficulties meaning the misfortune of the country.

The voyage of this government attempts to extend their hand in it but failed to achieve their prescribed goal; rather make hazards in these crucial and sensitive fields. For instance, in the text book of class IX and X, some controversies have been located which highly connects with our nationality, image and it also went against public's emotion.

More than half of people in our country espouse Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) for the charismatic leadership of President Ziaur Rahman, the founder father of BNP. Some misnomers on Ziaur Rahman have been included in the changing version of our text book of class nine and ten of 2008 in our country. It shocks people tremendously.

The birth of South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) was fully initiated with the attempt of General Ershad, which is true. But at first, the dream of framing SAARC and some initiatives of it were taken by President Ziaur Rahman. This truth has been fully ignored by the National Curriculum and Text Book Board (NCTB) in their changing version of the book of class IX and X.

This type of historical misinterpretation will highly stroke the heart of innocent readers and they will be grown pertaining the vague elucidation of history. Probably, one day reality would be focused in its arena in the course of time. Now those who are writing these with misappropriation, they would not be pardoned by our upcoming generation. Then, defaulters would be thrown in the garbage of history.

As we all know that despotism is often denounced by some enthusiastic endeavors and their (autocrats) history is avowed with hatred in any society. Hitler was one of the tyrants in the history of the world and he is always remembered odiously not only by Garman people but all corners' people of the world also. For his misdeeds, Garman government, few days ago, postponed Hitler's citizenship from the country.

In Iran, Reza Shah Pehlabi, the autocratic ruler was ousted through a mass revolution in 1979. Zulfikkar Ali Bhutto was another autocratic ruler of Pakistan who was sentenced to death for his misdeeds. But an exceptional case is located in Bangladesh that our autocrat ruler is now in happiest mood instead of ousting from Bangladesh.

Autocrat's access in history in an enthusiastic manner, of course, is nothing but betray with the Bangladeshi Nation. Two men in our history are specially kept in mind, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and President Ziaur Rahaman for their contribution in the war of liberation in 1971. But one of them, Ziaur Rahman is going to be faded out standing with that of autocracy.

Who the victors are daring to misinterpret the history of Bangladesh? Are they saluting the former identity of autocrat? Or are they forcing to add misnomer in Bangladeshi history? If this appreciation of taking autocrat's place in history in positive fashion is continued, future survival of Bangladesh would be under threat with the further configuration of autocracy.

I assume that it is not those ages i.e. slavery, feudalism where sense of realization was not acute. For this, suppressed classes were not able to make protest against exploiters. But it is the age of globalization generated with that of socialism and capitalism from where sense of realisation was shaped in its absolute manner. So, it is the outcome of historical vicissitude and if any intentional approach is come on track, interpretation of this approach (intentionalism) would be possible because of having the experiences of previous ages.

The realisation of intentionalism is more acute than that of previous phase. For instance, in international arena, the intentional approach of U.S is now apparent to everybody and that's why, they are not in convenient position; but their intention is to sustain their domain of unipolarism.

"History is written by the victors"- if this jargon is right, then my question is who are the victors in Bangladeshi epoch? NCTB's personnel, Of course, are not the victors of Bangladesh. We are all victors who love and believe the sovereignty of Bangladesh and who liberated the country either with their deeds or lives. So, history of Bangladesh would be written by the victors about the victors who are actual victors. If this bona fide approach might be written as history in history, we would be the history of the history.

Matein Khalid

IT WAS just another car bomb in Baabda, a Christian suburb of Beirut where the Presidential palace stands, vacant since Emile Lahoud finally ended his term of office. But the bomb claimed a special victim. Francois Al Hajj was no ordinary Lebanese army general.

A Maronite officer who had led his troops in the bloody siege against the terrorists at the Palestinian Nahral Bared refugee camp, General Hajj was also close to Hezbollah and the Aounist Maronites, who supported his bid to succeed Michael Suleiman as army commander if General Suleiman became the next President of the Republic. This was the nineth political assassination since the murder of Rafik Hariri on 14th February 2005 as his motorcade passed the beachfront corniche hotels of Ein Mreisseh.

The German philosopher Hannah Arendt spoke of the "banality of evil" when she witnessed Adolf Eichmann on trial for his role as the apparatchik of Hitler's Final Solution. It is a symbol of Lebanon's pathological politics that the murders of Prime Ministers, journalists, editors, parliamentarians, warlords seem so routine, so inevitable. I feel as if a malign, evil invisible monster straight out of Dali and Goya's surreal nightmares has taken over this beautiful, haunted land I have loved as my own ever since I was a teenager, where I learnt the grisly ballet of life and death as a neophyte journalist, the betrayal and sorrow implicit in the game of nations.

General Hajj, of course, had no shortage of enemies, who ranged from Al Qaeda terrorists to the Intelligence agencies of half a dozen regional states and pro-Syrian Palestinian militias. Yet it is significant that the leaders of the March 14 movement, anti-Syrian politicians like Druze leader Walid Jumblatt or Cabinet Minister Marwan Hamadeh did not immediately blame Damascus for the latest killing, though George Bush once again implied that Syrian "interference" was behind the 25 tons of TNT in a parked car that doomed General Hajj in yet another political assassination carried out with professional precision.

Are Jumblatt and Hamadeh silent because they seek to do a deal with the Baathist regime in Damascus or because they know that General Hajj was targeted because his troops killed 250 terrorists of the Fateh Islam gang during the siege of the camp? After all, the militants of Nahr El Bared included Palestinians, Syrians, Saudis, Yemenis, Iraqis, Chechens, Egyptians, Maghrebis. Does Al Qaeda intend to transform northern Lebanon into another Afghanistan?

My numerous Lebanese friends from Beit Mary to Edgeware Road to the DIFC Gate are certain that the latest car bomb was a political message, a manifestation of what an ex- Phalanist gunman turned merchant banker friend I have known since we were Choeifat schoolboys calls le puissance occult, the sinister men of twilight who write the fate of Lebanon. Was General Hajj was killed because the Americans snubbed Syria at Annapolis, because Siniora refused to give Hezbollah a veto power over UNIFEL's mandate in South Lebanon, because the US and the France sought to investigate the murder of Rafiq Hariri, because the Israelis will not vacate the Golan Heights?. But who knows? Who really knows?

Lebanon will forever be haunted by the ghosts of its own tortured past. The Place de Martyres in downtown Beirut commemorates patriots hanged by the Ottoman Sultanate. But it also overlooks the mosque where Rafiq Hariri and his seven aides are entombed, the Al Nahar building whose owner's son Gibran Tueni and journalist Samir Kassar were murdered in car bombs.

Not far away is the Phoenicia Hotel, with its lovely swimming pool, beige marble lobbies, my favorite Wok- Wok restaurant and the swimming pool that catches the glint of the Mediterranean. Yet dozens of Lebanese pro- government MPs hide for their lives in the Phoenicia, a parliamentary majority systematically reduced to one with a succession of car bombs or ambushes?

I am the first to admit that Lebanon is not a democracy in any normal sense, with its venal warlords and sectarian politics. But this little country was once the only oasis of multiculturism in the Arab world. Yet Lebanese democracy was as fake as the fake Parisian pavement cafes and fake Mandate era mansions in Solidiere's Place de La Etoile. Its Presidents were either murdered or murderers, (in the case of Bashir Gemayel, both!). Lebanon's communal politics are a travesty of the democratic process. I never saw the golden age of Lebanon, never swam at the St George or skiied in Faraya. The Beirut I knew as a young stringer was a hell on earth, a gutted city just overrun and bloodied by Israel's Operation Peace for Galilee.

The Green Line, the museum crossing, the unspeakable horror that happened at Sabra and Chatila (or Damour, Qarantina, Tel Zataar), Beirut was the place where the PLO sailed into the Aegian sunset under Yasser Arafat, where snipers and teenage gunmen killed for the sheer hell of it. Beirut was my city of ghosts.

I appeal to my brothers and sisters in the UAE media not to become numbed by the unfolding tragedy in Lebanon. With every killing, with every car bomb, Lebanon comes closer to Armageddon. Syria, Israel, Iran, the United States and France have exploited the sectarian cleavages among Lebanese for their own selfish ends. Rue Munot and Bir Abed are on different galaxies but a civil war between Hezbollah and March 14 coalition will only plunge Lebanon once again into a second generation of slaughter, exactly as did the confrontation between the PLO and the Phalangists in the 1970s.

Lebanon was once a jewel in the crown of the Levant, a place of such exquisite beauty, of such effervescent and diverse human beings. Yet Lebanese MPs, who could easily save their skin, fly out to Paris or Dubai, hide in a luxury hotel, terrified for their lives. These are brave men and women. They deserve our outrage. But Beirut has bewitched me for life.

Lebanon's ghosts haunt me when I hear Fairuz sing the Hawa Beirut, when the twilight fog shrouds Mount Sanine, when the Mediterranean light silhouettes the Crusader castles of Sidon and Jubeil, when I wander the ancient cedar forests above Bsharre, the same cedars of the Pharoah's naval fleet and the Solomonic temple in Jerusalem. Lebanon deserves to live in all its luminous beauty. Please, please, save Lebanon.

(Matein Khalid is a Dubai-based investment banker and economic analyst)

Nirmal L. Gomes

Addressing the nation on the first anniversary of army backed-up caretaker government the Chief Adviser's speech hailed by the political parties, civil society, general public, non-resident Bangladeshis in abroad, and world leaders. CA's speech highlighted couple of things very precisely such as considering lifting restrictions on indoor politics countrywide and gradually relaxing the state of emergency depending on 'needs and circumstances,' to open dialogue with political parties, reaffirm commitment to holding the national election by December 2008 and if possible even earlier. CA also addressed caretaker governments' achievements such as set up Regulatory Reform Commission, separated the judiciary from the executive and reconstituted the Anti-Corruption Commission, Public Service Commission and University Grants Commission to promote good governance, model thana, and so on. Beside the speech it has also touched few other important issues as prices of essentials, trade and commerce, anti-corruption drive, election commission, electricity, institutional reforms, facing the challenges of flood and 'Sidr' and other national issues.

CA repeated their commitment as they pledged on the day the caretaker government took power while in the midst of growing political violence and public displeasure, President Iajuddin Ahmed stepped down on January 11 last year. The Chief Adviser hoped that with the support and cooperation of political parties, civil society, and citizens of all walks of life, the government would be able to present a free, fair, and acceptable general election which would be totally free of the influence of black money and musclemen. The upcoming general election will enable to institute honest, competent, dedicate, and efficient leadership in the nation.

The speech off course does not look like any political leader as the caretaker government is not a part of any political wing and this government does not has any desire to come to the power or it has any political intentions to be achieved. But there are some indications for political leaders though there is no any exact election date mention on the CA's speech. However, leaders of different political parties gave mixed reaction over the address of the Chief Adviser. Their demand is to withdrawal state of emergency soon, allows indoor politics, and wants to know the exact date of the general election. In the same way there are also diverse reaction come from the Bangladeshi community members in abroad.

It is no doubt that the caretaker government created peaceful environment not allowing mass public meetings, hortal, strike, vandalizing cars, bus, and many other properties due to occur violent activities by the various political parties. In the last year people did not suffer in their daily life as they suffered before 1/11 due to call hortal and other political events. There have been some daily essentials challenges going through the nation which are very common problems for every government. Without full cooperation of all sectors none of the government could over come these challenges. Political parties and civil society can talk about this crises and can advice how to over come these problems, but must not take it as issue to call disturbance events that citizens will suffer and nations economic will slow down.

It is no doubt that CA's speech indicating to open dialogue with political parties and reaffirming their commitment for holding the national election and to allow indoor politics and also lifting of emergency from the country brings a great hope for the nation. The nation sees a bright light in the deep canal.