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Your correspondent’s report on the subject (August 21) based on the home ministry spokesman’s briefing states that ‘26 suspects were taken in the Joint Interrogation Cell in Dhaka and more would be interrogated for information on the attack and the attackers.’ So far so good, though unfortunately no timeframe was indicated. Maybe it could be twelve days, or even twelve months, no one knows! Suspects seem to be international, hence the investigation time interminable. That is the ruling party’s logic and fallacy we have to live with!
   Interestingly enough, in the next column, another correspondent states that the Jamaat-e-Islami Amir Moulana Motiur Rahman Nizami on Saturday accused RAW of India as the mastermind, AL as patronizer and also indirectly Mossad of Israel.
   With such a minefield of information available, one wonders when he will be quizzed by the JIC? Or is it that he is above and beyond quizzing? If that be so, I fear our home ministry is not doing a professional job. Another person who needs to be quizzed is the home minister himself who earlier publicly said that he knew of intelligence reports about anticipated terrorist activity as published in some papers on August 19!
   Without quizzing these two honourable prime informants, will the government be able to collect all the important clues? Or is it that the much published statement of these two important personalities is all hot air with no substance? If that be so, are they not legally punishable for providing misleading information? One can only wonder!
   A frightened citizen
   Dhaka

The rules of the game have changed, claimed the British prime minister; he challenged the British public who had taken for granted many civil liberties and rights so long, which made British society so attractive and commendable as a world model. No doubt his warning has raised many eyebrows and caused many frowns for many.
   One can and will argue if changing the fundamental rules of the game (inferring that civil rights are a mere game like ‘monopoly’, for example, and not to be given the status of non-negotiable rights) is a right step whatever be the excuse or the provocation.
   In a different context, civil protests or debates on issues of life and liberty, of war and peace, are already failing to register seriously with rulers; increasingly of late, civil protests are being ignored as irrelevant at best or unarmed protesters are being bludgeoned into silence at worst.
   The above tactics had in the past been the trademark of totalitarian, autocratic or dictatorial regimes; these have characterised the response by many junior league democracies or pseudo democracies masquerading military rule. But only recently, we see the emergence of a new phenomenon that in the absence of a better term we may call ‘imperial democracy’. These are powerful (in a power dominated world) and the most powerful is on a march to establish an empire. Having had a colonial past, some turn imperial with ease while the new player flexes its muscle with extraordinary gusto and arrogance. When the elected rulers refuse to be restrained by the electorate, what the electorate, unarmed, civil and peaceful can do to make its voice heard and respected?
   We have seen imperial democracies at their best as they ignored the millions who marched on the streets of Europe, America, and Asia in protest against the war on Iraq. We have seen civil (and not so civil) protests against the workings of global institutions like the IMF, WTO, World Bank. Yet, nothing changed. The war on Iraq not only happened but is continuing to destroy a country and a people. The scene is getting all too familiar and predictable.
   Millions again gathered in public squares and watched Live-8 concert on TV; joined a clarion call upon the Rich-8 to ‘make poverty history’. Yet, the war on Iraq happened; the war on poverty may never start.
   Imperial democracy is coming of age fast. Electoral democracy is becoming more ‘electoral’ and less ‘democracy’. Even elections are being decided by the efficiency of hired media and volume of expenditures on campaigning than on polling by popular opinion.
   A thought comes to mind. Marching and singing is fine, civilised, even entertaining but is clearly not enough to change the conduct of the rulers elected by their electorates. By today’s definition, leadership has come to be synonymous with propensity to flout the opinion of the people being led. Leadership has assumed an unmistakable military connotation; civil leaders extract sacrifice from the poor to protect the privilege of the rich and powerful few.
   If civil protests are not registering or making a difference, and if ‘elected’ rulers would not care for the opinion of their electorate, what is there to do? Will it require not so civil disobedience, for example refusal to pay taxes to the government, boycotting business outlets of corporations in cahoots with establishment and war machine, or barricading key nerve centres of the government? Activists protesting the WTO or IMF became predictable when they got trapped into the pattern they established, compelled to shift from cause to cause but to no lasting effect.  The predictability of the pattern they adopted made it easy to be countered even with violence if necessary.
   A new form of activism, if you like, seems to be needed. One that is on the ground and location specific; project sites for example, military industry for example.
   Living in the age of ‘imperial democracy’, popular protest by the electorate need to change the rules; while it could well be a mere ‘game’ for the ruling few to rule with scant regard to the electorate once elected, it is a matter more serious than a ‘game’ as far as the electorate is concerned. True, the electorate does not control the state apparatus of suppression of protests. Yet, the power of electorate should not be belittled.  Though not immediately apparent, power ultimately rests with the people. Powerful empires have fallen and dictators have abdicated. Today’s imperial president and his powerful establishment fears only one adversary: that is the power of the civil society and the will of the people.
   Husain
   Dhaka

‘They kill 40 Iraqis to get one American,’ Hussein Saidi, an Iraqi roadside salesman, told Nasser Nouri, a correspondent for The Washington Post, after a suicide bombing in Baghdad on August 9. The so-called insurgents are killing Iraqi children, women and men in the name of fighting the Anglo-American forces.
   In fact, these terrorists, mostly belonging to the once-dominant Sunni minority, are systematically murdering mostly Shiite Iraqis. In many ways, the mass murder by the Sunni insurgents of the Shiites is a continuation of the earlier mass murder of the Shiite majority and the Kurdish minority by Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime. The so-called Sunni Arab insurgents have attacked Shiite mosques filled with worshippers and markets full of shoppers. Although the Iraqi police and security forces remain their favourite targets, the terrorists have shown no scruples in killing women and children.
   On August 9, at least 22 Iraqis were killed in a suicide bombing. Two more were killed by the insurgents in eastern Baghdad in a drive-by shooting while 12 police officers were killed in another attack. And a US marine was killed by small arms fire. All on the same day. As such, the insurgents killed far more Iraqis in a single day in their brutal acts of violence against the people of Iraq. Earlier in the year, they shot dead an Iraqi journalist and his 3-year-old son. They shot and killed an Iraqi judge and his son. They killed a dedicated aid worker, Margaret Hassan, who was against the US-led invasion of Iraq. The killed diplomats from Egypt and Algeria — the countries without any troops in Iraq.
   Amnesty International, in its recent report, In Cold Blood, has denounced this ‘continuing pattern of war crimes and crimes against humanity,’ by the so-called insurgents in Iraq. As the organisation puts it, ‘Those who order or commit such atrocities place themselves beyond the pale of acceptable behaviour. There is no honour or heroism in blowing up people going to pray or murdering a terrified hostage.’
   Why are mostly minority Sunni insurgents killing the Shiite and the Kurdish Iraqis in the name of resisting US-led invasion of Iraq? The answer may be that they are hoping to bring back Saddam’s reign of terror when the Shiites and the Kurds had no rights. Only by empowering the Shiites majority and the Kurdish minority, with safeguards for the Sunni Arab minority, Iraqis will be able to defeat these terrorists.
   Mahmood Elahi
   Ottawa, Canada

The recent editorial ‘Rights of garment workers’ was excellent; it raised the question of the rights of human beings in a modern Bangladesh.
   I have been writing for some time now that the true culprit is an almost complete absence of management acumen in Bangladesh garment manufacture.
   Running a garment factory in Bangladesh is a feudal exercise. The owners usually have no concept of good management principles. They rule by force and fear, as probably they do in their own families.
   This way, productivity will always be low, worker turnover will be high, deaths will occur due to lack of safety, and finally Bangladesh will lose orders to China, and other countries in which good management principles are understood and practiced. For heaven’s sake, Bangladesh, wake up, before it’s too late.
   Dr Richard J Murphy
   On e-mail