The children of Bangladesh are wonderful! It has been my privilege to teach them for eight years from the far reaches of Haluaghat to the softer life of Gulshan 2. So please forgive me if I consider I have earned the right to do some plain speaking. When well-meaning people lecture these young people from middle and upper class homes, ‘Say NO to drugs’, do they see the irony of it, not to say the cheek?
   Let us think about when and where many of such children, as they grow up, ever hear anyone saying, ‘NO!’ Oh, yes, it is used by their elders to the servant class or other people considered ‘inferior’ and to little children.
   But, on the whole, I do not think many of them hear it used very much between those who are considered equals. Pupils in English-medium schools have shared with me, since 2002, both in the classroom and out, and in their creative writing and moral education worksheets, how difficult it is to confront almost anyone about anything! They have to be careful…There are people who can react very badly if you say NO to them, especially if they are your friends! Moreover, all over the world, unfortunately, the words ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ have replaced the words ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ and who wants to be ‘negative’?
   Once they become teenagers, an awful lot of parents seem to find it very hard to say NO to their children. Some parents complain that their children watch television too much or play video games too much (‘Madam, there is a switch! And please ensure your children do not have a TV, computer or video games where they sleep or where they study or they will do little of either.’) But too many do not seem to understand how they can have a relationship of both loving support and discipline and that the two are connected! It is called Tough Love! Some give their children every gadget or item of clothing they ask for, including one girl of 14 who recently brought to her school, to show off to her friends, a receipt for a sari costing 70,000 taka! What d’ya mean — NO?
   In these parts, there is a strong (maybe unspoken) message that you cannot, you just cannot say NO to a friend or family member.
   When anyone, pupil or teacher, comes to me, wailing, ‘I am under such pressure!’ I know they are going to give in to that pressure. Are some children being trained to think that certain people have the right to put crippling pressure upon them, and that they have no right to their own bodies, lives and futures and no right to say NO?
   I think of a charming boy, an excellent pupil of Class 9, who told me he went to bed at 2 am having got back from his private coaching at 8.30 pm. I was aghast and asked his mother why she was allowing her son to damage his life, physically and mentally, and she said, ‘Everyone does it!’ Before I could stop myself, I heard myself saying, ‘Just because everyone else is stupid, do you have to be stupid?’ If ADULTS refuse to step out of line, how can you expect children to?
   Of course, I do my best to infiltrate the revolutionary idea that it can be right to say, ‘NO!’ to some things. I have got whole classes of small children chanting, ‘Don’t do that! I don’t like it!’ in an effort to help them to see that children DO have rights. (‘And look them in the eye while you say it,’ I command, ‘because you are serious!’)
   It is no good asking for campaigns against throwing acid at girls and women when there is a whole culture out there of boys and men who will NOT take NO from a woman! They think that the female sex exists to say YES to them and, if a woman doesn’t, there is obviously something wrong with her and so ‘punishment’ is therefore justified! Take a moment to think of the years of bad male role-modelling both from family members and community that goes into such an attitude and you have an idea of how long it will take to establish a woman’s right to say NO…..
   So how can we expect young people, when ‘friends’ put them under pressure to buy drugs and become part of a whole drug culture, to say NO? I do my best. I express my hope that there is someone in the class who will be the one to say, in a group of friends, ‘I think we are about to do something stupid!’ But that does not come easily here. Why not?
   But the answer is not to keep them imprisoned in their homes! Young people need some FUN!
   So little effort seems to be going in to helping them have a social and cultural life – when so many of these families have cars and drivers and some of them have really nice friends who could come for a sleepover!
   It is not new rules or government action that is needed but new hearts and an increasing number of parents who are serious about helping their children to grow up in this very difficult world that is full of tensions and key decisions to be made about lives and life-style. Love is not enough. We have to learn some skills that will help them and more parents have to put their own lives/careers on ‘hold’ in order to do so.
   Dear reader, what are you doing?
   Angela MV Robinson (Rev Mrs)
   Headmistress of the Girls’ Section, Bangladesh International Tutorial
   Gulshan, Dhaka

The political scene is getting tense and the people are again keeping their fingers crossed for fear of shape of things to come! Two headline news from the New Age on February 7 do not augur well for those of us who seek peace for this poor country. The ACC has messed up the case of Sheikh Hasina by seeking her prosecution under the emergency rules that the High Court has quashed. On behalf of the BNP, Delwar Hossain has called for a joint thrust by the two mainstream parties to send message to this government that next elections in Bangladesh will be very much with Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina leading their respective parties! On both counts, the public who a year ago were on the side of the caretaker government have now changed their preference to the politicians because of the inability of this government to do anything excepting making the lives of the ordinary people of this country worse on all counts with one notable exception –– saving them from the political disturbances under the politicians.
   If Sheikh Hasina’a case finally goes against the government, then it will be the ACC boss who should he held responsible for taking the case to court without preparing legally. A government that by its own loud claim is trying to establish transparency and responsibility in governance should ask the ACC boss to resign. In fact, if Sheikh Hasina’s case ultimately goes against the government, the precedent it will set will set free all high-profile detainees.
   Rashed Ahmed
   Gulshan, Dhaka
   

Bravo, what an outstanding accomplishment to cleanse the institutionalisation of pandemic corruption! The news made my day.
   Although the news stated that ‘136 unscrupulous members of the staff of Titas, including 13 officers, ‘voluntarily’ surreendered their documents of assets amassed by illegal means’, my gut feeling is that a lot of work has been done to unearth this and the result must have come from a combination of actions taken by the anti-corruption task force. Anyhow, it is the ‘quantifiable’ result that matters to me. A job well done!
   Now it is time to look back and research. Find out what took them to corruption? Why it was so easy for them to get the easy money? As we can infer form the news that they are ‘as if’ like a clay pot, with a solid agenda and defined intention can lead them to their senses back. I see a huge opportunity for the educators and students of post-graduate to get their hands dirty on this case. Dhaka University may take a close look at this case and do a research to understand the psyche of those 136 guinea pigs. I would urge any professor from any university from Bangladesh to team up and study this case. Talk to those 136 people and understand the driving force behind the derailment.
   Going forward, I would like to see a repetition of the news from the PDB, BTTB, RAJUK, Department of Roads and Highway and police. And then a team of experts on corruption and social injustice may sit down and understand the root causes of corruption. They need to find out what is missing on the institutional work practice guideline and what management is lacking to enforce. What are the holes and how to plug them.
   Abu Abdullah
   On e-mail

Like Muhammad Mizanur Rahaman (February 3) I too have been very annoyed to find Fakhruddin Ahmed described as the PM of Bangladesh. Since such misrepresentations are seen even in official media sites of the United Nations [http: //www.un.org/ media/ accreditation /print_alert.asp?date=29/9/2007], I suspect that some people in the foreign ministry are deliberately touting him as the prime minister.
   In fact, I think his position as the chief adviser is also only de facto, as his appointment was extra-constitutional, completely out of the blue.
   Sudhir Mitra
   Tantibazar, Dhaka

‘Super Tuesday’ — the day 24 states voted on both the sides — was supposed to pick out the front-runners in the 2008 presidential election in the US. It did pick out a front-runner i.e. John McCain (from the Republican side), but not from the Democratic side as the race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama still remains far open.
   On the Republican side, McCain, without a doubt, looks to be the clear front-runner as he won the big states such as New York, New Jersey, Illinois and also picked up wins in two important states — Missouri and California. But the only worrying factor for McCain is that the ‘conservative’ base of the GOP does not endorse him. The most hardly hit candidate was Mitt Romney as he faced stiff competition from Huckabee. In other words, Huckabee surprised everyone by winning the conservative southern states i.e. the states where anti-McCain feeling was strong and hence Romney had thought that he would get votes there.
   On the Democratic side, the race is still alive and well. Hillary won the big states such as California, New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts but that does not mean the race is over. This is because she has won 100 delegates more than that of Obama but 1700 more delegates are still required to secure the nomination and only half of the delegates have been chosen so far. And this means that Obama can still stage a comeback strongly in the forthcoming primaries and caucuses i.e. he is expected to win in Louisiana (since he is strong in the South); he can win in Nebraska and Washington (he does well in caucuses) and the February 12th ‘Potomac primary’ in Maryland and Virginia and the District of Columbia is likely to be won by him too. However, big states like Ohio and Texas are likely to be snatched by Hillary. One striking fact is that race- and gender-based votes have entered into the Democratic race. And if this trend continues then in the long run McCain may eventually win the presidency, which will mean that ‘change’ will not return in America. So it is vital that the Democratic Party candidates show maturity in the forthcoming campaigns and do not indulge in scathing attacks against one another as the Hillary-Obama did in South Carolina.
   Wasif Wahed
   Old DOHS, Dhaka

The Nobel Prize is an international award administered by the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm, Sweden. The prize was established from Alfred Bernhard Nobel’s will on November 27 1895.
   Every year, since 1901 the Nobel Prize has been awarded for outstanding contributions in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and for peace. In 1968, Sveriges Riksbank established The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, founder of the Nobel Prize.
   All prizes are presented on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death. Each prize consists of a medal, personal diploma, and cash award (over 1 million Euros). For the past few decades, the Nobel Prize is considered to be the most prestigious prize in the world.
   Alfred Nobel was the Swedish inventor of dynamite and also founder of the Nobel Prize, chemist, scientist, inventor, engineer, entrepreneur, author, weapons manufacturer, and pacifist. Alfred Nobel invented dynamite in 1866 in Krummel, Germany, and patented it later in 1876. After his death he left 31 million Swedish Kronor (103,931,888.00 USD in 2007) to fund the prizes.
   Alfred Nobel was a pacifist which is highly contradictory, since he invented dynamite which has enormous use in wars as well as in industry. Furthermore, he owned a company named Bofos, which was a major weapons manufacturer. Bofos was founded in 1873, but it originates from the iron and steel mill called Boofors, established in 1646.
   From the first Nobel Prize awarding in 1901, this prize had many criticisms and controversies in the proceedings, nominations, awardees and exclusions. Many individuals who really had contributed to the greatest benefit of the mankind did not win the Prize, for instance: 1) Thomas Edison, American inventor and businessmen, who developed many devices such as the phonograph and light bulb. He was the first one to apply principles of mass production to the process of invention; 2) Nikola Tesla, Serbian inventor, physicist, electrical and mechanical engineer. He invented things that marked the modern era. He is called ‘the man who invented the 20th century’ and ‘the man out of his time’. He is most known for alternating current (AC), induction motor, rotating magnetic field, wireless technology, among many others; 3) Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleyev, Russian chemist and inventor. He was the originator of the periodic table of the elements; 4) Oswald Theodore Avery, an American physicist who is known for the discovery (along with his co-workers) that DNA is the material of which genes and chromosomes are made; 5) Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, political and spiritual leader of India and the Indian Independence Movement. He is well-known to the world for non-violence and truth advocacy. His birthday, October 2, is a national holiday in India and is the International Day of Non-Violence. He was nominated five times for the Nobel Prize, but never got it.
   Here are a few individuals who won the Nobel Prize that many believe to be controversial: 1) Philipp Eduard Anton von Lenard, Hungarian-German physicist. He is the winner of the Prize in physics for his research on cathode rays. Later he was adviser to Adolf Hitler, Chief of Aryan Physics and active proponent of Nazi ideology; 2) Alexander Fleming, Scottish biologist and pharmacologist. He is the winner of the Prize (shared prize) in medicine for his discovery of penicillin. Many contest the fact that he was the first to discover penicillin; 3) Theodore Roosevelt Jr., American President and the first American who received the Nobel Prize. He is the winner of the Peace Prize in 1905. During his presidency he played an important role in the suppression of a revolt in the Philippines; 4) Henry Alfred Kissinger (Heinz Alfred Kissinger), the US Secretary of State and National Security Adviser. He is the winner of the Peace Prize along with Le Duc Tho. However, Tho declined the award. There is evidence that he was involved in the secret campaign of bombing against infiltrating NVA in Cambodia and Operation Condor. He also supported the invasion of Cyprus. Kissinger is wanted for questioning by officials in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, France and Spain for war crimes that he might have committed; 5) Mohammed Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini (Yasser Arafat), Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin are winners of the Peace Prize for the negotiations in Oslo. Arafat was accused of being associated with many violent acts. On the other hand, Rabin was an Israeli military general who ordered the expulsion of Arabs from areas captured by Israel during the war in 1948; 6) Albert Arnold ‘Al’ Gore Jr., vice-president of the United States from 1993-2001. He is the winner of the Peace Prize (shared) ‘for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about manmade climate change and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change’. During his service in the office under President Clinton, the US was involved in many military operations in which many people lost their lives and which had great impact on climate change, pollution, illness, among others. For instance: NATO bombing of Bosnian Serbs, the US-led bombing of Iraq, the US-led bombing of Serbia. Al Gore is a fine actor, in fact, Academy awarded actor, and for his role in ‘The Inconvenient Truth’ he won the Oscar.
   There are people among us who dedicated their lives to make a valuable contribution to mankind in areas of physics, economics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, peace, and these individuals are expected to win the prize. However, many never got it, nor will get it. On the other side, many of those with suspicious backgrounds and those who gave just a few months of their lives for some cause won the prize.
   If this trend continues, then in the next five years we will probably see George W. Bush (the present US president) as a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for his noble efforts to bring peace to all mankind by creating new wars in order to prevent wars and terrorism. And maybe, he will win the Nobel Prize in Economics for his efforts in making the highest-ever oil price per barrel in history and making war industry wealthier than ever and for his contribution in creating a devastating financial situation in the United States, and promising recessions.
   Ivan Simic
   Belgrade, Serbia