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OpEd News Member for 935 week(s) and 2 day(s)
82 Articles, 31 Quick Links, 80 Comments, 8 Diaries, 0 Polls
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Saturday, August 27, 2022
Tragedy Salman Rushdie's knife attack resulted in the felling of forests. Go back 21 years, and you'll find a man occupying Parliament Square between 2001 and 2011. We've never heard of him, and he won't constitute even a footnote in history, notwithstanding being a prophet-and-saint in this and the last terrible century. His name was Brian Haw. He was ignored.
Saturday, August 27, 2022Tragedy Salman Rushdie's knife attack resulted in the felling of forests. Go back 21 years, and you'll find a man occupying Parliament Square between 2001 and 2011. We've never heard of him, and he won't constitute even a footnote in history, notwithstanding being a prophet-and-saint in this and the last terrible century. His name was Brian Haw. He was ignored.
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Tuesday, August 2, 2022
John Locke, and the Atheist Societies "God and property." These Lockean tenets made America and Bangladesh partners(1975-90). Today, an Islam-hating, faux nationalist dynasty tyrannises us. The anti-clerical West finds Islam once more the enemy. Academics seem never to consider the fact of how atheist Russia and China killed millions. All evil comes from religion in general, and Islam in particular. Demonised, it is open season on Islamists.
Tuesday, August 2, 2022John Locke, and the Atheist Societies "God and property." These Lockean tenets made America and Bangladesh partners(1975-90). Today, an Islam-hating, faux nationalist dynasty tyrannises us. The anti-clerical West finds Islam once more the enemy. Academics seem never to consider the fact of how atheist Russia and China killed millions. All evil comes from religion in general, and Islam in particular. Demonised, it is open season on Islamists.
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Friday, April 23, 2021
Masculinity, and Indian Fascism The self-contempt of the Indians has been exploited by the politicians in time-honoured fashion. They have generated "libidinous feelings" (Freud's term) and the opposite against "outsiders". Their femininity, alleged by the British and believed by themselves, have created fantasies of glory and hatred.
Friday, April 23, 2021Masculinity, and Indian Fascism The self-contempt of the Indians has been exploited by the politicians in time-honoured fashion. They have generated "libidinous feelings" (Freud's term) and the opposite against "outsiders". Their femininity, alleged by the British and believed by themselves, have created fantasies of glory and hatred.
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Saturday, April 3, 2021
Our Fascist Circus Totalitarianism on both sides of the Indo-Bangladesh border claimed yet more victims. Protest and dissent signal betrayal of the group, and are brutally punished. Particularistic thoughts constitute crimes, thinking in unison carries rewards.
Saturday, April 3, 2021Our Fascist Circus Totalitarianism on both sides of the Indo-Bangladesh border claimed yet more victims. Protest and dissent signal betrayal of the group, and are brutally punished. Particularistic thoughts constitute crimes, thinking in unison carries rewards.
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Saturday, December 12, 2020
The Art of Demonization: West vs. China Demonizing and valorizing are dark arts of illogic, best performed by those intimate with fallacies as well as reason. Suborning the intellect comes easiest to those able to err consciously. The Chinese are strangers to rhetoric and deduction alike. They cannot match the West spin for spin, sham for sham.
Saturday, December 12, 2020The Art of Demonization: West vs. China Demonizing and valorizing are dark arts of illogic, best performed by those intimate with fallacies as well as reason. Suborning the intellect comes easiest to those able to err consciously. The Chinese are strangers to rhetoric and deduction alike. They cannot match the West spin for spin, sham for sham.
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Sunday, November 22, 2020
Meddlesome Monk Fr. Timm recently passed away, besmirching in later life the memory of when he and the priests at Notre Dame College fed 1,000 people every day during the great famine of 1974 in Bangladesh. Knowing fully well that the famine had been caused by the democratically elected government of the Awami League, he persisted in his faith that democracy would deliver.
Sunday, November 22, 2020Meddlesome Monk Fr. Timm recently passed away, besmirching in later life the memory of when he and the priests at Notre Dame College fed 1,000 people every day during the great famine of 1974 in Bangladesh. Knowing fully well that the famine had been caused by the democratically elected government of the Awami League, he persisted in his faith that democracy would deliver.
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Sunday, August 9, 2020
Porn, and the Born Taxpayer In this part of the world, we have given government carte blanche: to direct us, and to tax us without a fuss. "Born taxpayers" never see government as a problem, but the solution to every problem. The result is self-inflicted misery.
Sunday, August 9, 2020Porn, and the Born Taxpayer In this part of the world, we have given government carte blanche: to direct us, and to tax us without a fuss. "Born taxpayers" never see government as a problem, but the solution to every problem. The result is self-inflicted misery.
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Sunday, June 28, 2020
History to the Defeated Was Derek Chauvin a "bad apple" in an otherwise excellent barrel, as claimed by Donald Trump? The bad-barrel theory was first propounded by George Bush in relation to the Abu Ghraib scandal. Social psychologist Philip Zimbardo, author of the Stanford Prison Experiment, emphatically declared the barrel to be bad.
Sunday, June 28, 2020History to the Defeated Was Derek Chauvin a "bad apple" in an otherwise excellent barrel, as claimed by Donald Trump? The bad-barrel theory was first propounded by George Bush in relation to the Abu Ghraib scandal. Social psychologist Philip Zimbardo, author of the Stanford Prison Experiment, emphatically declared the barrel to be bad.
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Tuesday, December 3, 2019
Demos Democracy came to Bangladesh in 1990, our annus mirabilis/horribilis, after a hiatus of 15 years (1975 - 1990) when the Cold War required maintenance of the military in power by the West. Democracy has claimed victims of all kinds - bystanders burnt alive, beaten to death, student politicians murdered by each other.... The poems give poetic voice to the carnage, mendacity and manipulation of the miraculous/horrible years.
Tuesday, December 3, 2019Demos Democracy came to Bangladesh in 1990, our annus mirabilis/horribilis, after a hiatus of 15 years (1975 - 1990) when the Cold War required maintenance of the military in power by the West. Democracy has claimed victims of all kinds - bystanders burnt alive, beaten to death, student politicians murdered by each other.... The poems give poetic voice to the carnage, mendacity and manipulation of the miraculous/horrible years.
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Friday, November 29, 2019
The Great Unwatched Psychological experiments have repeatedly shown that when people are watched, they are less antisocial and more prosocial. These findings are at odds with the facts on the ground in Bangladesh. A plausible explanation is that the psychological subjects are mostly WEIRD: White, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic.
Friday, November 29, 2019The Great Unwatched Psychological experiments have repeatedly shown that when people are watched, they are less antisocial and more prosocial. These findings are at odds with the facts on the ground in Bangladesh. A plausible explanation is that the psychological subjects are mostly WEIRD: White, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic.
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Thursday, November 14, 2019
Meeting a White Mennonite For rational reasons (foreign aid, foreign jobs, foreign education) as well as extra-rational reasons (the long colonial experience under the British from 1757 to 1947), the educated elite of Bangladesh financially, psychologically and emotionally prostrate themselves before the West. Nowhere is this more pronounced than in the democratic choice by a coterie of self-interested and self-deprecating few.
Thursday, November 14, 2019Meeting a White Mennonite For rational reasons (foreign aid, foreign jobs, foreign education) as well as extra-rational reasons (the long colonial experience under the British from 1757 to 1947), the educated elite of Bangladesh financially, psychologically and emotionally prostrate themselves before the West. Nowhere is this more pronounced than in the democratic choice by a coterie of self-interested and self-deprecating few.
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Saturday, November 9, 2019
"Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay" The political development of Western Europe, with its incessant change and internal and external strife, contrasts sharply with the tranquility and continuity of Asia. These facts have gone unappreciated by historians until today.
Saturday, November 9, 2019"Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay" The political development of Western Europe, with its incessant change and internal and external strife, contrasts sharply with the tranquility and continuity of Asia. These facts have gone unappreciated by historians until today.
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Wednesday, July 24, 2019
The Linnet and the Leaf Ingroup-outgroup hatred is easily generated. In fact, "-social psychologists have generated it again and again in laboratories. Demagogues know how to manipulate our deepest emotions and anxieties to create hostility. They take us back to our pre-civilisational past, when we lived in compact groups, fearful of others outside and clinging to those inside.
Wednesday, July 24, 2019The Linnet and the Leaf Ingroup-outgroup hatred is easily generated. In fact, "-social psychologists have generated it again and again in laboratories. Demagogues know how to manipulate our deepest emotions and anxieties to create hostility. They take us back to our pre-civilisational past, when we lived in compact groups, fearful of others outside and clinging to those inside.
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Friday, July 19, 2019
Unholy Sonnets Donne wrote his Holy Sonnets at a time that was infused with God. Perhaps more, or less, wise than before, we live in what appears a God-forsaken world. Hence these Unholy Sonnets.
Friday, July 19, 2019Unholy Sonnets Donne wrote his Holy Sonnets at a time that was infused with God. Perhaps more, or less, wise than before, we live in what appears a God-forsaken world. Hence these Unholy Sonnets.
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Thursday, July 4, 2019
Asian Values Asia and Europe have had divergent historical trajectories, with the slavery-freedom distinction absent"- or prominent"-, respectively. Asian culture stresses collective harmony over individual difference, and is remarkably free of ideology (which, when imported, ha"-s"- had unfortunate consequences).
Thursday, July 4, 2019Asian Values Asia and Europe have had divergent historical trajectories, with the slavery-freedom distinction absent"- or prominent"-, respectively. Asian culture stresses collective harmony over individual difference, and is remarkably free of ideology (which, when imported, ha"-s"- had unfortunate consequences).
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Saturday, June 15, 2019
Mendacity in Bangladesh Thanks to colonial hangover, western foreign policy and our own avaricious ambition, mendacity has become entrenched in Bangladeshi political and social life. No lie is too prodigious to whitewash the pathologies of democracy on both sides of the Indo-Bangladesh border.
Saturday, June 15, 2019Mendacity in Bangladesh Thanks to colonial hangover, western foreign policy and our own avaricious ambition, mendacity has become entrenched in Bangladeshi political and social life. No lie is too prodigious to whitewash the pathologies of democracy on both sides of the Indo-Bangladesh border.
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Monday, June 10, 2019
Huxley, and the Meaning of Words The meaning of a word resides in the rules for its use in a way of life. Meaning amputated from a way of life becomes merely a word. This is the finding of Wittgenstein and the Sapir-Whorf thesis. It implies that one cannot translate between languages, nor transplant a word to another society that must necessarily be incapable of understanding the meaning. Words are portable; not ideas. Democracy is such a word.
Monday, June 10, 2019Huxley, and the Meaning of Words The meaning of a word resides in the rules for its use in a way of life. Meaning amputated from a way of life becomes merely a word. This is the finding of Wittgenstein and the Sapir-Whorf thesis. It implies that one cannot translate between languages, nor transplant a word to another society that must necessarily be incapable of understanding the meaning. Words are portable; not ideas. Democracy is such a word.
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Thursday, May 30, 2019
Verses of Violence Since the democratic transition of 1990, people in Bangladesh have been burnt alive, beaten to death, decapitated and disarticulated -- without a murmur from the populace. These poems reflect the descent into less than animality in Bangladesh. They all recount true incidents.
Thursday, May 30, 2019Verses of Violence Since the democratic transition of 1990, people in Bangladesh have been burnt alive, beaten to death, decapitated and disarticulated -- without a murmur from the populace. These poems reflect the descent into less than animality in Bangladesh. They all recount true incidents.
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Thursday, May 9, 2019
The Club "Outgroup favoritism" is the term used by social psychologist Jim Sidanius to refer to the deference shown by members of subordinate groups to those of dominant groups. He gives the example of Uncle Tomming in the segregated South. But outgroup favoritism was, and is, common in South Asia, where the British ruled for 200 years.
Thursday, May 9, 2019The Club "Outgroup favoritism" is the term used by social psychologist Jim Sidanius to refer to the deference shown by members of subordinate groups to those of dominant groups. He gives the example of Uncle Tomming in the segregated South. But outgroup favoritism was, and is, common in South Asia, where the British ruled for 200 years.
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Tuesday, April 16, 2019
Bangladesh, and the Lucifer Effect - The Allure of Toxicity: A Situationist Explanation of the Evil in Bangladesh The question of evil in comtemporary political psychology is explained in terms of dispositions or situations. Dispositionists maintain that people have inherent tendencies to act the way they do, while situationists emphasize that circumstances cause bevaviour to go off-track. The current evil in Bangladesh must be explained using the latter methodology.
Tuesday, April 16, 2019Bangladesh, and the Lucifer Effect - The Allure of Toxicity: A Situationist Explanation of the Evil in Bangladesh The question of evil in comtemporary political psychology is explained in terms of dispositions or situations. Dispositionists maintain that people have inherent tendencies to act the way they do, while situationists emphasize that circumstances cause bevaviour to go off-track. The current evil in Bangladesh must be explained using the latter methodology.
