The New Nation - Internet Edition

Disparity at workplace

A REPORT in this paper has quoted an International Labour Organisation (ILO) report that a typical female factory worker earns on average 21 per cent less than her male counterpart in Bangladesh. The report said that work place discrimination is seen more at menial jobs than at well-paid white-collar jobs requiring higher education and expertise. But the menial female workers are far greater in number than the office workers. They are joining the labour force from a desire to supplement their income to take care of themselves as well as their families.

Thus, it is very undesirable and a case of gross inequity if they are paid less for the same work done by male co-workers. There is a need for making employers conscious of their duty and obligation to pay the female workers equally for the same type of work done by male workers. The position of women, their expected contribution to the national economy, their desirable social and family roles need to change under clear cut policies. It must be realised that there are formidable social barriers to be overcome for women to get their due and make a far bigger contribution to the economy.

The traditional view in Bangladesh society is that the best place for a woman is within the confines of her home. This is an antithesis of the functioning of a modern economy that invites paid work in different sectors of the economy by both males and females to maximise production, income and consumption. The socio-cultural hurdles to females coming into the mainstream of employment and getting fair remuneration for their work, need to be crossed with the building of widespread social awareness, framing and execution of appropriate policies.

Raising official prices of land

ACCORDING to media reports the public works and housing ministry has planned to raise the price of land, possibly by hundred per cent, in a bid to increase non-tax revenue, as official prices of land turned 'unrealistic' while the prices of private lands all over the country was much higher. Justifying the need for hiking land prices in the capital and other cities, land ministry officials said, the government suffers huge revenue loss as land registration fees are charged on the basis of officially set prices of land. A proposal was made accordingly and placed before the council of advisers of the interim government for approval which was not granted due to lukewarm response from the caretaker administration.

The ministry has also prepared a proposal for simplifying land registration for approval. The finance ministry is now reviewing both the proposals. The official land prices were last fixed some 15 years back and these prices were much lower than the present market prices. Besides, the government has planned to increase the per 'katha' land mutation fee to Tk 30,000 from Tk 10,000 in the commercial areas and to Tk 10,000 from Tk 4,000 in residential areas as media reported.

The government earns about Tk 12,000 crore per year as non-tax revenue which is 20 per cent of the total revenue income. It has been stated in the government's medium term budgetary framework that the non-tax revenue income will have to be increased to 15,000 crore by fiscal year 2010. It may be noted that the Washington-based International Monetary Fund, also asked the government to increase the base price for land sales valuation in the city's posh areas.

Israel's new election war

Uri Avnery

Just after midnight, Aljazeera's Arabic channel was reporting on events in Gaza. Suddenly the camera was pointing upwards towards the dark sky.

The screen was pitch black. Nothing could be seen, but there was a sound to be heard: the noise of airplanes, a frightening, a terrifying droning.

It was impossible not to think about the tens of thousands of Gazan children who were hearing that sound at that moment, cringing with fright, paralysed by fear, waiting for the bombs to fall.

"Israel must defend itself against the rockets that are terrorising our Southern towns," the Israeli spokesmen explained. "Palestinians must respond to the killing of their fighters inside the Gaza Strip," the Hamas spokesmen declared.

As a matter of fact, the ceasefire did not collapse, because there was no real ceasefire to start with. The main requirement for any ceasefire in the Gaza Strip must be the opening of the border crossings.

There can be no life in Gaza without a steady flow of supplies. But the crossings were not opened, except for a few hours now and again. The blockade on land, on sea and in the air against a million and a half human beings is an act of war, as much as any dropping of bombs or launching of rockets.

It paralyses life in the Gaza Strip: eliminating most sources of employment, pushing hundreds of thousands to the brink of starvation, stopping most hospitals from functioning, disrupting the supply of electricity and water.

Those who decided to close the crossings - under whatever pretext - knew that there is no real ceasefire under these conditions.

That is the main thing. Then there came the small provocations, which were designed to get Hamas to react. After several months, in which hardly any Qassam rockets were launched, an army unit was sent into the Strip "in order to destroy a tunnel that came close to the border fence".

From a purely military point of view, it would have made more sense to lay an ambush on our side of the fence. But the aim was to find a pretext for the termination of the ceasefire, in a way that made it plausible to put the blame on the Palestinians.

And indeed, after several such small actions, in which Hamas fighters were killed, Hamas retaliated with a massive launch of rockets, and - lo and behold - the ceasefire was at an end. Everybody blamed Hamas.

What was the aim? Tzipi Livni announced it openly: to liquidate Hamas rule in Gaza. The Qassams served only as a pretext. Liquidate Hamas rule? That sounds like a chapter out of "The March of Folly".

After all, it is no secret that it was the Israeli government, which set up Hamas to start with. When I once asked a former Shin-Bet chief, Yaakov Peri, about it, he answered enigmatically: "We did not create it, but we did not hinder its creation."

For years, the occupation authorities favoured the Islamic movement in the occupied territories. All other political activities were rigorously suppressed, but their activities in the mosques were permitted. The calculation was simple and naive at the time, the PLO was considered the main enemy, Yasser Arafat was the Satan. The Islamic movement was preaching against the PLO and Arafat, and was therefore viewed as an ally.

With the outbreak of the first intifada in 1987, the Islamic movement officially renamed itself Hamas (Arabic initials of "Islamic Resistance Movement") and joined the fight. Even then, the Shin-Bet took no action against them for almost a year, while Fatah members were executed or imprisoned in large numbers. Only after a year, were Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and his colleagues also arrested.

Since then the wheel has turned. Hamas has now become the current Satan, and the PLO is considered by many in Israel almost as a branch of the Zionist organisation. The logical conclusion for an Israeli government seeking peace would have been to make wide-ranging concessions to the Fatah leadership: ending of the occupation, signing of a peace treaty, foundation of the State of Palestine, withdrawal to the 1967 borders, a reasonable solution of the refugee problem, release of all Palestinian prisoners. That would have arrested the rise of Hamas for sure.

But logic has little influence on politics. Nothing of this sort happened. On the contrary, after the murder of Arafat, Ariel Sharon declared that Mahmoud Abbas, who took his place, was a "plucked chicken". Abbas was not allowed the slightest political achievement.

The negotiations, under American auspices, became a joke. The most authentic Fatah leader, Marwan Barghouti, was sent to prison for life. Instead of a massive prisoner release, there were petty and insulting "gestures".Abbas was systematically humiliated, Fatah looked like an empty shell and Hamas won a resounding victory in the Palestinian election - the most democratic election ever held in the Arab world. Israel boycotted the elected government. In the ensuing internal struggle, Hamas assumed direct control over the Gaza Strip.

And now, after all this, the government of Israel decided to "liquidate Hamas rule in Gaza" - with blood, fire and columns of smoke.

The official name of the war is "Cast Lead", two words from a children's song about a Hanukkah toy.

It would be more accurate to call it "the Election War".

The timing was chosen meticulously. The attack started two days after Christmas, when American and European leaders are on holiday until after New Year.

The calculation: even if somebody wanted to try and stop the war, no one would give up his holiday. That ensured several days free from outside pressures.

Another reason for the timing: these are George Bush's last days in the White House. This blood-soaked moron could be expected to support the war enthusiastically, as indeed he did. Barack Obama has not yet entered office and had a readymade pretext for keeping silent: "there is only one President". The silence does not bode well for the term of president Obama.

The main line was: not to repeat the mistakes of Lebanon War II. This was endlessly repeated on all the news programmes and talk shows. This does not change the fact: the Gaza War is an almost exact replica of the second Lebanon war.

Some time ago I wrote that the Gaza blockade was a scientific experiment designed to find out how much one can starve a population and turn its life into hell before they break. This experiment was conducted with the generous help of Europe and the US. Up to now, it did not succeed.

Hamas became stronger and the range of the Qassams became longer. The present war is a continuation of the experiment by other means.

It may be that the army will "have no alternative" but to re-conquer the Gaza Strip because there is no other way to stop the Qassams - except coming to an agreement with Hamas, which is contrary to government policy.

As seen by Arabs, one fact stands out above all others: the wall of shame. Seeing the demonstrations throughout the Arab world and listening to the slogans, one gets the impression that their ?leaders seem to many Arabs pathetic at best, and miserable collaborators at worst.

This will have historic consequences. A whole generation of Arab leaders, a generation imbued with the ideology of secular Arab nationalism, the successors of Gamal Abd-al-Nasser, Hafez Al -Assad and Yasser Arafat, may be swept from the stage. In the Arab space, the only viable alternative is the ideology of Islamic fundamentalism.

This war is writing on the wall: Israel is missing the historic chance of making peace with secular Arab nationalism. Tomorrow, It may be faced with a uniformly fundamentalist Arab world, Hamas multiplied by a thousand.My taxi driver in Tel-Aviv the other day was thinking aloud: Why not call up the sons of the ministers and members of the Knesset, form them into a combat unit and send them off to head the ground attack on Gaza?

(Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom)

Why war isn't an option

Barkha Dutt

I just got an email from a friend in Pakistan. He had written just five words: do something; stop this war.

War? I wrote back arguing that there was no war to run scared from and that the illusion of an imminent catastrophe had been manufactured on the other side. Our dialogue collapsed in a dead-end, which may work well for TV talk but not in real life. Most Pakistanis I have been speaking to in the last one month are convinced that the Indians are coming. And most Indians, with the inarticulateness that comes with rage, want the government to 'do something'. We just aren't sure what that 'something' can or should be.

We are frustrated and angry that even a month after the Mumbai attacks, there is no tangible shift in the way Islamabad is responding. If anything, things have only got worse. Even the UN-pushed crackdown on the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (the ideological launch pad and political front of the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba) has turned out to be cosmetic. And Masood Azhar - the terrorist who walked free in exchange for the safety of the IC-814 passengers - has vanished, after being declared under house arrest. The flip-flops are brazen enough to destroy diplomacy.

And yet, the truth - painful as it may be to families who have suffered directly in the Mumbai attacks - is this: war is not an option; it is neither practical nor desirable. First, there are the commonsensical reasons to rule it out. A military conflict will not manage to eliminate the seeds of terrorism that are sown deep into the subsoil of Pakistan's strategic architecture. Washington cannot be treated as the automatic deterrent to nuclear conflict; the stakes are too high, the game too risky. A civilian establishment that does not trust its own institutions to investigate the assassination of Benazir Bhutto (the centre-piece of the PPP's election campaign was the promise of a UN probe) will hardly be able to control rogue players with a mind of their own, in case of a war. Even surgical strikes (bound to escalate into a full-blown conflict) don't have ready targets to plan with. Terror camps can be swiftly dismantled and resurrected at new locations once the conflict is over. A military conflict does not even guarantee that the Indian forces can come home with Dawood Ibrahim, Hafiz Saeed or Masood Azhar. So, what would we really achieve by risking the lives of our soldiers?

But for those who dismiss all this as arguments made by the fainthearted, there's a more compelling reason not to consider war: India would be playing straight into the hands of Pakistan's military regime. Talk to Pakistani commentators and they agree that a war with India strengthens the Pakistan army like nothing else has or could in the past year. Some even suggest that precision air strikes by India will present a near-perfect scenario for the Pakistan military. Islamabad will retaliate without immediately risking the fatalities of on-ground conflict; Washington will jump in within days and the military will be back in the centre-stage of public approval. This, in a country, where just a few months ago, General Pervez Musharraf was pushed out unceremoniously and the army was blamed for everything from the rise of the Taleban to the price of onions.

Bhutto's tragic assassination (blamed by her own people on elements in the security establishment) was meant to usher in a political revolution. Exactly a year back, in December, I remember sitting in the Bhutto House at Larkana, and feeling goose bumps when Bilawal Bhutto announced in a trembling voice that that 'democracy' would be the 'best revenge' for his mother's murder. But we have seen that democracy being whittled down systematically. Many in Pakistan believe that sections of the ISI and the Army have moved in with quiet, but brutal aggression because President Asif Ali Zardari was moving too quickly in peace talks with India. The offer of a no-first use of N-weapons; the consent to start border trade across the line of control, the attempts to reign in the ISI and the willingness (at least on paper) to investigate its role in the Kabul bombings - none of this made Zardari popular with his own security establishment. And frankly, in the last month it has become clear that neither Zardari nor Nawaz Sharif is the author of this script any longer. The refusal to send the ISI chief to India, pushing Sharif to retract his statement on Pakistani involvement in the Mumbai attacks, and now the artificial war hysteria created by moving troops and flying air force jets over residential areas - all have the imprint of a larger plan - one that goes well beyond the terrorist strikes in Mumbai.

By whipping up the impression of imminent war, Islamabad's security establishment is hoping to catapult itself back into the role of saviour. It isn't my argument that India should be overly concerned about the inner failings of Pakistan's experiment with democracy. Our decisions should be guided by self-interest. And so we must ask, does India want to strengthen the very section of the Pakistani power structure that it sees as innately hostile to us?

Yes, the domestic mood remains one of 'enough is enough.' And contrary to the rather over-imaginative understanding of some TV-bashers that this was an exhortation to war, it's a simple, effective phrase (first used passionately by Shobhaa De) to capture the mood of a country that is no longer willing to accept a system that lets us down and fails to protect us.

But before we demand quick-fix solutions on moving against Pakistan, let us ask ourselves this: are we helping India? India must now look for an unconventional solution that lies somewhere between war and peace.

Did Al Zaidi think only of Bush?

Reem Al Faisal

No matter how many times the scene is played on TV channels or Internet sites, one simply can't get enough of it.

Every time I see Montadar Al Zaidi throw the pair of shoes at US President George W. Bush, I feel I need to pinch myself so as to make sure I'm not hallucinating, but then I realise it really happened.

An Arab journalist truly took his shoes off and threw them at the tyrant who was the cause of the death and misery of millions of Muslims.

This man who dragged his nation into a mindless war and brought down on them the scorn and hatred for generations to come.

The most amazing thing to me is that there is still anyone left in the Arab world who has it in him to stand alone and defy tyranny in any one of its forms and I think that is what made Al Zaidi's actions produce such violent reactions in the Arab and Muslim world. His act spelled not only the bravery of individual action - for no one can deny his bravery - but it touched the much deeper wound which is the utter insignificance of the Arab states and the people they represent. We as a region have become invisible on the geopolitical map. If at all we are seen, it is as mere pawns in the hands of Western imperial powers and their desired dominance of other rising powers such as Russia or China.

Al Zaidi didn't just throw the shoe at Bush but in a symbolic gesture he was throwing it at us, at our own failures and cravenness.

He threw it most of all at those who have made us what we are today - an inconsequential nation worth mentioning only for its shocking violence. We can only make headlines by our failures, defeats and deaths. Al Zaidi's shoe went out as a scream of protest at the state at which we find ourselves - a people with no voice and no power.

If there is a gush of enthusiasm in the long-suffering Arab street for Al Zaidi's shoe, it is because in Bush they see not only the man who destroyed Iraq but also a generic tyrant which could be any Arab leader and the minions that serve them.

They would have wished it to be directed at those who stripped us of all the means of strength and power leaving us pickings for the predator nations that divide us into colonies as in the case of Iraq or protectorates.

We are left with no possibility to defend ourselves or ability to demand our rights either within our own countries or in international forums such as the UN that has become just another tool in the hands of imperial powers.

After all who sits in the Security Council except those who have bigger guns?

So as much as it makes me happy and as proud as I'm of the few Arabs who still have it in them to stand up and say to the mighty, "No, I will not surrender," it also makes my heart break that they are very few in number.

Where are all the Arab armies to defend us? Where are all the tanks, the missiles, the plans, and the entire arsenal that we have wasted our national wealth to acquire? Why aren't our armies out there on the front fighting to protect us, to liberate us to save the starving and defend the weak? Why should we wait for a lone warrior to lob a grenade?

Why should a journalist abandon his greatest weapon, the pen, and choose to express our misery with such a dramatic act?

How many of us should die and suffer for the Arab nation to wake up and take its destiny in its own hands? Al Zaidi maybe one of the bravest men on this globe because not only did he defy and humiliate the emperor but also he knew very well what to expect at the hands of those who created Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and all the other secret prisons in every dark corner of the earth. It is time that Arabs stopped ?to wait for those lone heroes who ?appear here and there, throwing?them like sacrificial offering to the powerful.