The death toll has been rising in the world’s worst garment industry tragedy. I’ve been thinking about the last time I was in Bangladesh, a nation that is now the world’s second-largest clothing producer after China and one also in the news for deadly Islamist protests. Back then, I witnessed something that had seemed emblematic of the neo-colonial status of Bangladesh. After a harrowing journey to the countryside where the poverty was sub-Sub-Saharan, I found myself on the top of an office building in the capital, Dacca. Garish U.S. pop music was blaring out of the nightclub’s speakers and the lounge area was packed with U.S. military servicemen, mostly U.S. Navy. As a private went to get a Long Island Iced Tea, two giggling Bangladeshi teenagers swiped the military walkie-talkie he left on the sofa and ran off to the bathroom. Later they regaled me with the story that they had screamed “All soldiers back to base!” into the communication device, before dismantling it, piece by piece. They may have liked the U.S. dollar injection into the local economy but they didn’t like the presence of U.S. servicemen. Americans have never really ever left Bangladesh whether their presence be through crippling Bretton Woods institutions based in Washington, multinational garment brands or covert killing. I was in Bangladesh in the 1990s, when the demonstrations in the cities of this nation of around 150 million were held by the Communist Party and trade unions, desperately looking for social justice. Putting faces to appalling statistical human development indicators was easy. To me, the slums of Mumbai looked rich after Dacca. As for the fact that Bangladesh now beats India in some development indicators – as the Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen has noted – that fact only emphasises how badly India is run: not how well Bangladesh is doing. You can tell things are bad in Bangladesh because The Economist magazine and the World Bank have until very recently been lauding governance there. Things have changed in Bangladesh. For a start, the Communist Party headquarters in Dacca has just been torched as a quarter of a million Bangladeshis, around the country, marched against secularism and around fifty were killed in the ensuing rioting. It used to be just the government that torched the Communist Party headquarters. The sighs of the oppressed are getting louder and there is plenty to be angry about. It is also in the interest of unpopular Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to frighten her electorate about the advance of Islamism in Bangladesh, ahead of scheduled general elections in the next nine months. She will want to exaggerate the rise of Islamism in the country to renew support for her party – even though it was she who struck a Machiavellian deal with the Salafist bin Laden-style Khelafat-e-Majlish Party back in 2006. The rioters from the Islamist Hefazat-e Islam coalition advocate the execution of internet bloggers, the cancellation of women’s development programs and the destruction of public statues. It is all far away from the dreams of Bangladesh’s founders. References to secularism in the Bangladeshi constitution were deleted a couple of years after the 1975 CIA-backed assassination of the nation’s founder, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. The present prime minister is his eldest daughter and she has presided over a secular system that maintains extreme poverty to attract the sort of international investment that leads to ever-worse garment factory massacres and economic degradation. It is not a happy situation.Bangladesh’s main opposition – the Bangladesh Nationalist Party – has now allied with the largest Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, and they have both got into bed with statue-demolishing Hefazat-e Islam. But who is financing all the Wahhabi Takfiri ideology? Predictably, it is the backers of rebels in Syria. Not only that but some money can reputedly be traced to Britain’s biggest ever export agreement – Margaret Thatcher’s UK-Saudi Al-Yamamah arms deal. Slush funds from the BAE deal have found their way into the hands of “Al Qaeda”sympathisers in Bangladesh. It was Tony Blair who shut down the inquiry into all the money laundering. Meanwhile, there’s no sign of the U.S. Department of Justice re-opening their BAE case (it fined the weapons-seller $400m in 2010), to follow the trail of cash to Islamists in Bangladesh.Instead, as if he wants to promote anti-U.S. sentiment in Bangladesh, President Obama is thinking of moving the HQ for the U.S. Seventh Fleet from Japan to Chittagong, Bangladesh’s largest seaport. One year ago, former U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton signed a strategic partnership deal with Sheikh Hasina. Speculation has been rising that the Seventh Fleet’s 70 ships, 300 aircraft and 40,000 Navy and Marine Corps personnel are set to move to Bangladesh’s second largest city as part of President Obama’s anti-China policy. U.S. Vice Admiral Scott H Swift, Commander of the U.S. Seventh Fleet was in Dacca, one month ago for talks with senior Bangladeshi military officers. The base is also seen to be “ideal” for any U.S. bombing of Iran.Relocating the base will obviously be good for proud urban Bangladeshi teenagers – they’ll be vandalizing mislaid U.S. military equipment at Chittagong’s nightclubs. More seriously, it will lead to Saudi-backed clerics at Chittagong’s madrassas foaming at the mouth and explaining to the poor of Bangladesh that America is Satan and salvation lies only with Wahhabism. There is fertile ground here, as economic crises in the U.S. and Europe have forced a decline in demand for clothing from the sweatshops of Bangladesh, leading to soaring unemployment. Some estimate sixty million will be out of work by 2015.But Ayman al-Zawahiri shouldn’t be booking his tickets for Bangladesh just yet. Even though President Obama, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia do their best to catalyse support for creeds like those of Osama bin Laden’s, the future need not look so bleak. Islamism has yet to take hold of significant sections of the urban and rural poor as it did in other countries where the U.S. has sponsored Al Qaeda-linked groups. There are flickers of light, too. Aminul Islam of the Bangladesh Garment and Industrial Workers Federation was tortured and killed after successfully negotiating workers’ rights with the owners of Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein, Nautica, Kenneth Cole and Timberland. But there will be many others to take his place and who will take inspiration from him.The way to curb Saudi-backed Islamism in Bangladesh is to improve the material lives of Bangladeshis. Ironically, the most courageous economic decision of recent times was made by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, herself: when she ordered the World Bank out of her country over the massive Padma Bridge infrastructure project. The multi-billion dollar deal with the China Railway Engineering Corporation is estimated to one day be worth an extra 1% of GDP growth a year. Next, Sheikh Hasina should default on outstanding IMF loans. The Fund approved one of its largest loans ever offered to a member country this time last year – in return for gruesome structural adjustment.Any attempts by the democratically-elected Bangladeshi government to take control of Bangladesh will lead to vicious Western media vituperation. You can expect a lot of Western propaganda against the country in the run-up to the next general election, including mainstream media corruption exposés. As to the future of Bangladesh, only a wholesale recalibrating of democratic systems and manufacturing ownership as well as a carefully tuned national unity government look set to be the long-term answer to the threat of a Bangladeshi … Read More
Seven arrested in New York for alleged ‘criminal flash mob’ ATM cybercrime
Authorities in New York have arrested seven people in connection with a hacking scheme in which perpetrators stole $45 million from ATMs around the world. The attackers hacked into computer systems of banking and financial institutions in two separate but coordinated attacks, according to the US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement… … Read More
Warren’s proposal: Offer college students the same interest rates as banks
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) introduced a bill on Wednesday that would give college students the same interest rates on their federal student loans as banks do when borrowing from the Federal Reserve. “If the Federal Reserve can float trillions of dollars to large financial institutions at…
US government sites brace for ‘nuisance-level’ OpUSA hacking spree
Though it remains to be seen to what degree the Anonymous-affiliated “N4m3le55 cr3w“ group will be able to mount a widespread threat to American websites, a DHS alert obtained by prominent online security reporter Brian Krebs suggests that the government is taking the threat seriously. Already the #OpUSA campaign seems to have caused some activity on Monday, though the main event is scheduled for Tuesday May 7. Claims by a group calling itself “X-Blackerz Inc” claimed to have penetrated “100 US websites” while an anonymous user via Pastebin appeared to have posted a database of logins and passwords belonging to the Honolulu Police Department.According to Analysis Intelligence, #OpUSA is comprised of “self-proclaimed online freedom fighters” such as a collective calling itself the “ZCompany Hacking Crew.” In his own analysis, Krebs, the tech security reporter, posited that, should the May 7 action include the participation of Hamas’ Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters (which claims ties with Palestinian political party Hamas) then the disruption could be far more serious.Rodney Joffe, a senior vice president with the US security and intelligence firm Neustar believes that “all bets are off” if the Qassam Cyber Fighters join the fray, Krebs reported. The group has been held responsible for a series of high-profile breaches of US financial institutions in response to the notorious Innocence of Muslims film promoted by Koran-burning American pastor Terry Jones.Though there is widespread speculation as to the exact origins of the Qassam Cyber Fighters, since December of 2012 the group has successfully disrupted the websites of JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America and the New York Stock Exchange.“I think we learned our lesson with the al-Qassam Cyber Fighters,” Joffe told Krebs via his news blog, KrebsOnSecurity. “The damage they’re capable of doing may be out of proportion with their skills, but that’s been going on for seven months and it’s been brutally damaging,” he added. An expansive declaration posted by the N4m3le55 cr3w threatens US websites with denial-of-service attacks, as well as defacement in retaliation to its military operations abroad.“On that day anonymous will start phase one of operation USA. America you have committed multiple war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and recently you have committed war crimes in your own country. We will now wipe you off the cyber map. Do not take this as a warning. You can not stop the internet hate machine from doxes, DNS attacks, defaces, redirects, ddos attacks, database leaks, and admin take overs.”A range of links appended to the #OpUSA notice send Internet users out to online tools that participants can use to try and overwhelm websites with web traffic, though analysts generally agree that only the use of a large “botnet” – or rather, an involuntary network of “zombie” computers – and other tools in use by groups such as the Qassam could present a real threat.In its notice, the DHS acknowledges the May 7 campaign but downplays the danger as largely a publicity stunt, noting that the attacks “likely will result in limited disruptions and mostly consist of nuisance-level attacks against publicly accessible webpages and possibly data exploitation. Independent of the success of the attacks, the criminal hackers likely will leverage press coverage and social media to propagate an anti-US message.”The choice of the May 7 date seems to be deliberate, as it will be one month to the day since another large hacktivist operation known as #OpIsrael. That campaign involved hacktivist groups such as AnonGhost Team and TheHackersArmy, and targeted the Israeli online government domain.The director of a Tel-Aviv-based network security firm, Ronen Kening, told KrebsOnSecurity that the #OpIsrael campaign, which resulted in several database breaches, failed due to the campaign’s inability to recruit and deploy more powerful disruption tools.“There were some Web site defacements, but OpIsrael was not successful from the attackers’ point-of-view,” said Kenig. “The main reason was the fact that the groups that initiated the attack were not able to recruit a massive botnet. Lacking that, they depended on human supporters, and those attacks from individuals were not very massive.” … Read More
Huge blast near Damascus school targets Syrian PM, at least 10 killed
The explosion struck near a school in a southwestern district of Damascus, and at least ten were killed in the attack.The attack was reported by Syrian state television. “The terrorist explosion in al-Mezze was an attempt to target the convoy of the prime minister. Doctor Wael al-Halqi is well and not hurt at all,” the report said.“The Secretary-General condemns the terrorists attack on the convoy of Srian Prime Minister Wael al-Halki in Damascus earlier today, which resulted in deaths and injuries,” Ban Ki-moon’s press office said in a statement.At least 19 people, including one of Halqi’s bodyguards, were killed and 25 others were wounded in the attack, local correspondent Abdullah Mawazini told RT. Syrian media reported that up to 10 people may have been killed in the explosion.Halqi’s driver and a second bodyguard were seriously wounded in the explosion, AFP said, quoting the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.An explosive device was placed under a black BMW vehicle that was parked along the route of Halqi’s convoy. The explosion took place near a kindergarten and a school. No children were killed in the attack, but two were injured, Mawazini said.Despite the attack, Halqi continued on to a planned meeting with an economic committee, state TV station Al-Ikhbariya reported.He condemned the terrorist attack in Damascus at the meeting of the Cabinet’s Economic Committee after the explosion. He said that the recent attacks were “evidence of the bankruptcy and frustration of the armed terrorist groups and the powers backing them due to the victories of the Syrian Arab Army,” according to SANA news agency.No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.Halqi replaced former Prime Minister Riyad Hijab last August, after Hijab was sacked and was later rumored to have fled to Jordan, state television reported.The neighborhood of Mezze, where the blast occurred, is an upscale area home to many government and military institutions and senior Syrian officials.Until recently the neighborhood was relatively untouched by violence, but in March Syrian rebels began pushing into government-held areas, with a number of car bomb attacks shaking previously secure neighborhoods.The conflict in Syria has entered its third year. According to UN estimates, at least 70,000 people have been killed since the uprising against President Bashar Assad began in March 2011. … Read More
Rush Limbaugh: Boston bombing suspects influenced by “liberal elite intellectual thought”
After arguing the same point earlier that day, Rush Limbaugh once again accused American educational institutions and “liberal elite intellectual thought” of radicalizing young people in the United States — including Boston bombing suspects Tamerlan and Dzokhar Tsarnaev.In response to a caller who called Boston a “liberal hotbed” and suggested that the residents of Boston themselves were somehow to blame for the attack allegedly committed by the Tsarnaevs, Limbaugh ditto-headed him:Continue Reading… … Read More
Russian CB ready to provide $60 billion to support domestic banks
The announcement was made by the outgoing governor of the Russian CB Sergey Ignatyev during a special meeting on the measures of securing sustainable economic growth in Russia with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Ignatyev said that he estimates the current situation as stable. He underlined that last year nominal lending increased 20%, adding that liquidity was in his words ‘normal’.“I wouldn’t say the situation with lending is bad, it is rather what we want it to be,” Ignatyev is quoted by Interfax as saying. “Growth of around 15%-20% in nominal terms is a normal growth for the present situation in Russia.”He added that in case the situation with liquidity worsens, “the Central Bank is ready to provide up to 1.5-2 trillion rubles using traditional instruments of refinancing.”At the beginning of last year the Russian Central Bank also said it was ready to give local banks up to 1 trillion roubles in case of liquidity deficit. However it was not needed.During the financial crisis of 2008-2009 the Russian CB issued unsecured loans to domestic financial organizations. After providing two trillion roubles ($62billion) the bank stopped loaning in 2010 when Russia overcame the peak of the crisis. In autumn 2010 reports said that the financial institutions had repaid the money. Now Russian banks use repo loans to replenish their liquidity. Repo, or a repurchase agreement, is a form of short-term borrowing for dealers in government securities. Within repos the seller agrees to buy back the securities at a later date and for a price greater than the original sale price, the difference effectively representing interest. Over the past years the upper limit for repo auctions was set at the level of several hundreds of billions of roubles, while during the crisis the limit approached 1 trillion rubles ($31.5 billion). … Read More
