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Bangladesh imposes curfew after dozens killed in anti-government protests

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Re: Bangladesh imposes curfew after dozens killed in anti-government protests

#121

Post by sagman »

esafak wrote: post #3
jamal-kumar wrote: post #2

I think it's worth noting why this is happening. The country has been giving out degrees and jobs to people who instead of working and studying hard, to descendants of veterans in the country's war against pakistan, and this level of nepotism has been going on since the 70s which as you can easily imagine is not great for those who see the value in getting these "basic livelihood for hard work" things. So when people…

People who run a country into the ground are happy to maintain the status quo as long as they're getting their share? Who knew!?

I don't know about running a country to the ground. They are economically doing quite well with metrics exceeding those of neighboring countries like India.

Re: Bangladesh imposes curfew after dozens killed in anti-government protests

#122

Post by alephnerd »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #120
BadHumans wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very uninformed about Bangladeshi and South Asian politics but yes the violent suppression of protests and killing of protestors are the parts that sound a bit fascist to me.

Look I realize on lefty parts of the internet that fascism has colloquially become the same as authoritarianism but they are not the same thing. Fascist movements are usually authoritarian but not all authoritarian regimes are fascist. It's an especially bad lens when you look outside the West because the second and third world has had plenty of trouble with left authoritarian regimes and comparatively less trouble w…

^^^ THIS

If you're part of the minority Hindu and Christian community in Bangladesh you support Hasina, because the opposition made a coalition deal with hard-core Islamists (JeI) who are supporting the gold digger wife of the former (1980s) Military Dictator who was a puppet (like every other politician in Bangladesh sadly)

This does NOT mean Hasina is good.

Anything but.

Authoritarian quasi-secularism means the only organized opposition is fundamentalist, like in Central Asia like Tajikia, Uzbekia, Kyrgyzia, Afghanistan, Parts of Pakistan, etc, or the India my parents grew up in during the 1980s.

Sheikh Hasina (literally) based her public persona on Indira Gandhi. All the Desis on HN know what that implies.

Sheikh Hasina is a left-leaning autocratic. She protects the Hindu, Christian, and Buddhist minority, but her authoritarianism against the religious Islamic community of Bangladesh (plus Khalida Zia's and moreso Shaibur Rahman's Pakistani funded bullshit) means the only organized opposition are non-secular.

As a Koshur-Hindu American, Hasina (and her enabler across the border) are playing with fire.

Bangladesh has strong institutions , diaspora, and economic relations (most factories in WB moved to BD because of bad policies and the FTA). Hasina is squandering them because of her childhood traumas.

Please please please become a Indonesia instead of a Myanmar

Re: Bangladesh imposes curfew after dozens killed in anti-government protests

#123

Post by alephnerd »

Rinzler89 wrote: post #87
alephnerd wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good question! There absolutely is nepotism in the political sphere in every political system - but that's not what students are opposed about alone. Basically, every government job (teacher, doctor, tax collector, bureaucrat, bus driver, etc), government funded service (college, hospital, etc), and PSU (eg. govt owned banks, energy companies, factories) will have a quota in favor of those who are the descendants of…

>This does not happen in developed countries Yeah it does. >and in situations where biased hiring is found, you have a slam dunk corruption case. Except when you don't because that's what corruption does. Should I start listing every major German and Austrian corruption scandal where nobody got punished off the top of my head? >From the Romanian government press release I linked - The total monthly average income ) w…

Can reply to you now (or maybe actually working on a Friday helps).

I edited my response to take your VALID critiques into account. I appreciate it - we need to keep all of us internet commentators honest.

Re: Bangladesh imposes curfew after dozens killed in anti-government protests

#124

Post by alephnerd »

david_shi wrote: post #109
alephnerd wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slight quibble - the student paramilitary IS part of Hasina's party (BAP). It's the student wing. In South Asia, all party student wings are basically paramilitaries and gangs.

It reminds me a lot of the Red Guards - the greatest disaster could come from the party losing control of these groups.

Basically. Similar ideological (as in anti-authoritarian turned authoritarian) background.

I have a thesis musting somewhere in Cambridge MA about this parallel.

Re: Bangladesh imposes curfew after dozens killed in anti-government protests

#125

Post by dyauspitr »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #75

My friends are mostly Bdesh expats at this point. I wonder how dangerous it would be to setup a link from Bdesh into India. It would be a useful lifeline. Best wishes for the students and the people of Bdesh, but the stuff we were seeing as late as yesterday on Twitter was ugly. I hope those that can are using their mobiles to take proof.

The last thing India wants is Bangladeshi refugees. I mean the Modi government is actively in the process of trying to expel the Muslim Bangladeshis that came in the 1970s.

Re: Bangladesh imposes curfew after dozens killed in anti-government protests

#126

Post by alephnerd »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #119
trompetenaccoun wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Independent of points for or against their rule, the ageist argument makes little sense. 25 year olds are generally politically naive and easily manipulated. The average person in their twenties has no idea about economics, geopolitics or other such topics that are important to understand for running a country. When you look at uprisings against ancient leaders in countries with very young populations, they regularly…

If that's the lens you're looking at, the majority of uprisings in history have ended up worse than they started. Bangladesh is struggling with a democracy that has degraded into authoritarian gerontocracy. It's not as simple as young people dumb old people experienced, there's a lot of issues involved.

^^^ this.

Revolutions turn into civil wars.

We forget but this is the sad reality.

This doesn't mean the students in Gulistan Maidan are wrong, but "Allah, Suriya, y Bashar" and the converse means a 15 year civil war like in Syria or 15 miles away from Chittagong in Myanmar (aka Asian Syria/Libya)

Khuda ki kasm - please walk off this brink Bangladesh (if someone Hasina adjacent is reading).

Re: Bangladesh imposes curfew after dozens killed in anti-government protests

#127

Post by Karrot_Kream »

dyauspitr wrote: post #125
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #75

My friends are mostly Bdesh expats at this point. I wonder how dangerous it would be to setup a link from Bdesh into India. It would be a useful lifeline. Best wishes for the students and the people of Bdesh, but the stuff we were seeing as late as yesterday on Twitter was ugly. I hope those that can are using their mobiles to take proof.

The last thing India wants is Bangladeshi refugees. I mean the Modi government is actively in the process of trying to expel the Muslim Bangladeshis that came in the 1970s.

Sorry when I meant link I specifically meant a network link. A way to route net traffic out of the country. It wouldn't be too hard given how far the outskirts of Dhaka are from the West Bengal border and plenty of Indian Bengalis have ties in Bangladesh.

Re: Bangladesh imposes curfew after dozens killed in anti-government protests

#128

Post by candiodari »

alan-hn wrote: post #114
BadHumans wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement,characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy. Source: Wikipedia This sounds like the very d…

Many people want to either tiptoe around or flat out ignore the far right leanings of fascism to avoid what it says about the US

[dead]

Re: Bangladesh imposes curfew after dozens killed in anti-government protests

#129

Post by JumpCrisscross »

alephnerd wrote: post #54
hackerlytest wrote: post #14

Some context: Students are protesting to reform the quota system. Which was abolished in 2018 after protest but recently brought back again. The Quota system basically reserves 56% of public sector jobs, i.e. 30% to relatives of war veteran. The war happened in 1971. To get public job and avail the quota, it must be their 3rd or 4th generation now. Which is plain unfair. But it’s not about that, the gov loyalists and…

> Now the fascist gov has closed all internet I agree that Sheikh Hasina is extremely authoritarian and corrupt dictator but imo JeI are the actual fascists, and the BNP has absolutely been enabling them. That said, I agree with you that Hasina's authoritarianism needs to end. Ideally all these old fossils (Hasina, Zia, Rahman, etc) need to be purged and the actual youth (who are the majority of Bangladesh) get a cha…

> agree that Sheikh Hasina is extremely authoritarian and corrupt dictator but imo JeI are the actual fascists

The challenge of escalating partisanship is self-reïnforcing polarisation. The worse the leadership, the worse the opposition.

The operant question, thus, is not who is good but who is less evil, in the hope that this ratchet, a few times turned, yields goodness.

Re: Bangladesh imposes curfew after dozens killed in anti-government protests

#130

Post by blackeyeblitzar »

It is really odd to me that Bangladesh even exists as a nation, and that it is an officially Islamic nation. This country was formed as a result of the partition of India, where the British empire left a mess on their way out by subdividing India into what is now Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. But really these countries should be recombined into India - their status as religious ethnostates is unacceptable in the modern world and given that Islam came to the region through brutal genocidal invasions by Arabs in the Middle East, it seems strange to give those colonizing invaders their own land and ethnostate. Pakistan and Bangladesh have also been messy throughout their existence, and continually on the brink - as current conditions show.
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