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Friday, May 20, 2011

Re: [chottala.com] Fw: A Run on Grameen Bank's Integrity - Founder's Career Ends in Disgrace

All need to be united against the injustice for action and do work against the wrong doers..

--- On Fri, 20/5/11, abid bahar <abid.bahar@gmail.com> wrote:

From: abid bahar <abid.bahar@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [chottala.com] Fw: A Run on Grameen Bank's Integrity - Founder's Career Ends in Disgrace
To: chottala@yahoogroups.com, abid.bahar@gmail.com, shadinakash@yahoo.com
Received: Friday, 20 May, 2011, 8:11 AM

 

India-Bangladesh Relations:
Interesting Mujib era revealations in Videos on facebook
by Mohammed Asafudduwllah, former Commerce Secretary of Bangladesh (1974)
Says "150 Million Bangladeshis are all confused today! " 
---------------
 
 
part 1
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=147156782015654 Almost 150 Million Bangladeshis are all confused today
Length: ‎10:11
 
 
part 2
Almost 150 Million Bangladeshis are all confused today
 


On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 11:11 AM, Shadin Akash <shadinakash@yahoo.com> wrote:
Azad Shaheb,

Your AL government appeared to be dissatisfied with the  thousands of crore taka of the poor investors they looted from Share market now it is going to get all the money of 8 million poor village women. Supporting such an corrupt leader like Hasina can not be an act of gentleman like you but it can be act of chor chechor. Every brick of AL office knows that Hasina took 9 crore taka bribe from Ersahd in 1986. Mr. Azad also knows this but still his sycophant nature will keep him in the side of the corrupt people. If Yunis were wrong people of the whole world would not have supported him. Read the article of Dr, Zafar Iqbal, Mahfuz Anam and others whose patriotism is unquestionable.

----- Forwarded Message ----
From: AbdurRahim Azad <arahim.azad@gmail.com>
To: n
Sent: Thu, May 19, 2011 7:19:45 PM
Subject: A Run on Grameen Bank's Integrity - Founder's Career Ends in Disgrace

 

Founder's Career Ends in Disgrace

A Run on Grameen Bank's Integrity

By PATRICK BOND
Bangladesh's once-legendary banking environment is now fatally polluted. The rot is spreading so fast and far that the entire global microfinance industry is threatened. Controversy ranges far beyond poisonous local politics, the factor most often cited by those despondent about Grameen Bank's worsening crisis.
True, at first glance we see an oppressive state's persecution of a courageous academic-turned-entrepreneur and 2006 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, a man passionate about uplifting poor women's socio-economic status through unsecured credit and group borrowing: Muhammad Yunus. On April 5, the Bangladeshi Supreme Court confirmed that notwithstanding huge aid inflows he catalysed for one of Asia's poorest countries – based on Bangladesh's world-leading 25% microfinance market penetration rate – Yunus must be ousted from Grameen Bank's leadership.
At second glance, observe that the notorious corporation Burson-Marsteller (B-M) is spin-doctoring for Yunus, and as MSNBC television social critic Rachel Maddow has observed, "When Evil needs public relations, Evil has Burson-Marsteller on speed-dial." B-M did PR for Three Mile Island's nuclear operator after its meltdown, the US tobacco industry (to organize the 'National Smoker's Alliance'), the Argentine military dictatorship which killed 35,000, the Indonesian regime which committed massacres in East Timor, Nigeria's military, Union Carbide against residents of Bhopal, the late Romanian president Nicolae Ceausescu and the Saudi royal family.
In February, Mary Robinson, Ireland's first woman president and the main public face of Friends of Grameen, began helping B-M defend Yunus. It didn't work: in early March, Yunus was fired by the government of Sheikh Hasina Wazed, whose Awami League party won the 2008 election by a landslide.
The current power struggle between state and bank began, according to Hasina's son, Sajeeb Wazed, when "massive financial improprieties at Grameen" were revealed by a documentary on Norwegian state television late last year. The film, Caught in Micro Debt, showed how fifteen years ago, $100 million in aid was irregularly moved from the (non-profit) bank to one of dozens of lucrative private firms controlled by Yunus, Grameen Kalyan.
Norwegian aid bureaucrats were furious and demanded that $30 million be returned. Yunus' own personal correspondence about the matter is embarrassing, even damning. "In several cases," Wazed charges, his behavior "was completely illegal and constitutes embezzlement."
Wazed also alleges usury: "Grameen Bank charges up to 30 percent in interest rate on loans and up to an additional 10 percent in 'forced savings' to the poorest sections of society. Their collection methods are draconian and collection officers who fail to collect payment have the uncollected amounts deducted from their pay. There are many documented cases which constitute abuse and the criminal offence of 'molestation' under Bangladesh law."
The country's central bank and courts have ruled that Yunus must immediately leave Grameen, on an absurdly ageist technicality: he is older than 60, hence disqualified to run a bank (a matter ignored the previous 11 years). More seriously, on April 25, the 90-page report of the state's formal committee of inquiry found that "in all the activities [researched]… there has been a tendency to violate laws and rules in Grameen Bank. In fact, the organisation did not follow rules and laws, rather grew completely dependent on one individual."
Years back at a World Bank conference, Hasina had firmly endorsed Grameen's work, but in the meantime, Yunus attacked the existing political class in a short-lived 2007 attempt to start his own party. Last December, Hasina labeled Yunus a "bloodsucker of the poor."
The roles of Robinson, her Friends of Grameen co-chair James Wolfensohn (World Bank president during its most protest-ridden decade, from 1995-2005), B-M, the US State Department, and the Bangladeshi government are emblematic of the messiness of state, capital and civil society working at cross-purposes.
To illustrate, Wolfensohn visited Hasina in March. After his demands were apparently rejected, suddenly the Bank and International Monetary Fund cut $500 million in loans Hasina was expecting. Another factor in that decision was the $756 million Hasina was charging Grameenphone for a 15-year license, similar to other cellphone providers pro-rated by marketshare. As New Age newspaper reported, the World Bank considered this fee "far too high" – yet another case of that institution's pro-corporate, fiscal-shrinkage bias?
Hasina was also prime minister from 1996-2001, when Transparency International considered Bangladesh the world's most corrupt country. In 1975, the army had assassinated her father, considered the local equivalent of Nelson Mandela, and her mother and three brothers. Hasina and senior Awami League leaders have since been attacked – and several killed – on other occasions.
Another woman's political icon, Hillary Clinton, has entered the fray, demanding that Hasina halt the attack, even though her Bangladeshi "Hillary Village" is considered a prime case of microfinance failure. Last month, US Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake threatened that US-Bangladeshi bilateral relations would be 'impacted' if Yunus was fired.
WikiLeaks recently disclosed that under George W. Bush, the State Department had an overtly political agenda four years earlier, as Yunus "could offer a possible out from the present Hasina-Zia zero-sum game that cripples Bangladesh's democratic process." The same leaked cable revealed Yunus' desire to have Grameen finance a Bangladeshi "megaport" to promote regional trade, including with Burma. Yet like Robinson, Yunus is joined on Mandela's "Elders" group of notables by Burmese democracy activist (and fellow Nobel laureate) Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been a strong advocate of sanctions.
To assess genuine feminist perspectives on Yunus' financing legacy, beyond the maneuvers of politicos Robinson, Hasina and Clinton, consider an important new scholarly work on Grameen by University of Oregon anthropologist Lamia Karim: Microfinance and Its Discontents: Women in Debt in Bangladesh.
In a recent interview with my colleague Khadija Sharife, Karim pointed out, "Bangladeshi women give the loans to their husbands. Women are the conduits for the circulation of capital in rural society. This has resulted in increased domination and violence for indivdual women both at the household and community levels." As a result, she argues, women have become "custodians of honor and shame in rural society. By instrumentalizing these codes, NGOs shame rural women to recover their defaulted sums of money."
The crisis is of world importance because it reflects the limits of microfinance, and comes on the heels of suicidally-high interest rates (literally) charged by lenders elsewhere in South Asia. As London's Guardian reported last month, 30 million Indian households had borrowed more than $3 billion in microcredit since the mid-1990s. "In recent months, the industry has been thrown into crisis as it has become clear that a significant number of borrowers – between a tenth and a third, depending on the estimate – cannot afford to repay their loans."
This predatory lending parallels the 2007-09 'sub-primate mortgage' crisis in the US. According to the Guardian: "The past five years have seen the aggressive selling of loans to often illiterate villagers, followed by equally aggressive debt collection." As a result, the past decade witnessed more than 200,000 farm suicides in India. Reports India's leading rural journalist, The Hindu's P. Sainath: "Those who have taken their lives were deep in debt."
Another major Bangladeshi NGO operator, BRAC, engaged in "loan pushing," its microfinance programme head Shameran Abed concedes. This was due to "excess liquidity" and "lack of communication between lenders," and as a result, "In the mid 2000s, the microfinancing industry grew too fast."
As Karim describes even the main Bangladeshi microcredit NGOs, "Many of these organizations operate like loan sharks! The idea that the poor are bankable and they pay back their loans at 98% is like music to the ears of donors and large corporations. Grameen Bank exemplifies neoliberal ideas of development: individual entrepreneurship and competition."
Karim concludes, "Let's replace the word credit with debt. Debt as a human right? How does that sound? Debt is a relationship of power and inequality between the loan institution and the borrower."
Milford Bateman of the Overseas Development Institute criticizes Yunus and Hernando de Soto, the Peruvian economist who authored The Mystery of Capital: "The microfinance industry makes a fatal mistake in believing that sustainable poverty reduction and 'bottom-up' development actually lie within the gift of the informal microenterprise sector."
The filmmaker behind the Norwegian documentary, Tom Heinemann, makes similar arguments against microcredit evangelism. Heinemann was named the leading Danish investigative journalist in 2007 and 2009, and his earlier work won prizes at the Prix Italia, Aljazeera Documentary Film Festival, GZ Docs in China, and Envirofilm festivals.
He is preparing a follow-up, because rebuttals from Friends of Grameen have focused on the film's misnaming of Grameen's first borrower (done originally by Yunus), comparative interest rates, and the Norwegian government's continued support to Yunus. Yet this latter defense says a great deal more about Norway's internationally-ambitious Minister of Environment and International Development, Erik Solheim, who broke his party's 2006 "Soria Moria" pledge to defund the World Bank, than it does about the merits of Grameen's case.
For Solheim, Clinton, Wolfensohn and Robinson, it may seem appropriate, even urgent, to defend Grameen. But looking more closely, it would be better to move on, towards post-microfinance strategies that genuinely reduce poverty and empower women. These strategies typically are strongest when grounded in collective action usually associated with social movements and organized labour.
In the last decade, one of the best examples is access to AIDS medicines, won in Brazil, Thailand, India and especially South Africa, against the US State Department's self-described "full court press", under Bill Clinton, to prevent Mandela's government from providing generic medicines using US-copyrighted drugs. The secret to the victory was not entrepreneurialism but instead popular mass activism, democratic organization and a vigorous critique of the post-Mandela South African government's AIDS denialism, intellectual property rights and medical monopolies, the World Trade Organisation's Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights system, Washington's WTO representative Robert Zoellick (now World Bank president) and Big Pharmaceutical corporate profiteering.
The impressive results: Mandela's successor Thabo Mbeki was fired by his own party, TRIPS now has an exemption to allow local production of medicines (and the US government is helping fund these), and for those who need the AIDS treatment, whereas once it cost above $10,000/year, today the medicine is free. In contrast, South Africa has a notoriously bankrupt microfinance sector.
Given the usury accusations and suicide wave, the industry's reputation is so tainted that in a recent New Age interview, Yunus publicly backtracked: "Unfortunately, not everyone who uses the word 'microcredit' is dedicated to serving the needs of the poor. This is not the microcredit I had in mind."
As Cambridge University economist Ha-Joon Chang confirmed to Heinemann, "They will never get out of poverty because when you have to pay between 30-40-50, sometimes 100% interest rate. What business makes that kind of profit?"
But Washington-based Grameen Foundation chief executive Alex Counts defends his Nigerian affiliate, LAPO, for its 100% rate: "Well – as it happens – many Nigerian banks that operate in the rural areas charge twice as much as LAPO… What microfinance is trying to do, with very little subsidy from the philanthropic sector is trying to provide a service – on a commercial basis on a business basis to give them a better deal."
Yet profit-seeking through microfinance represents, even Yunus concedes, "a terrible wrong turn." Still, Yunus defended his own role to the last, saying of the Norwegian documentary's allegations, "These attacks have no basis in reality." Claiming that Grameen interest rates – over 30% including fees, according to Bangladeshi economist Q.K. Ahmad – are reasonable, he continued to insist, "Access to affordable credit is a human right."
Still, it is difficult to ignore overwhelming evidence that not only for-profit lenders but also non-profit NGOs pushing microfinance as a silver-bullet fix to women's poverty often do more harm than good. In league with the State Department, the World Bank and Burson-Marsteller, even those like Mary Robinson who strive to raise women's standing, are actually stumbling straight into the path of both the collapsing Grameen founder and microcredit's fast-decaying reputation.
Patrick Bond is based at the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society in Durban.
 
 
PatrickBond.jpg 
The writer Patrick Bond (born 1961, Belfast, Northern Ireland) is professor at the
University of KwaZulu-Natall, where he has directed the Centre for Civil Society since 2004. His research interests include political economy, environment, social policy, and geopolitics.
 
Related: 


নোবেল বিজয়ী ড. ইউনূস এবং অপরাধ থেকে দায়মুক্তির সংস্কৃতি
শাহরিয়ার কবির
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 

ড. মুহাম্মদ ইউনূস কাদের লোক?

http://www.sonarbangladesh.com/article.php?ID=5015

ড. ইউনূস ও গ্রামীণ ব্যাংকের কর্মকাণ্ড প্রসঙ্গে 
http://www.sonarbangladesh.com/article.php?ID=4266
ড. ইউনূস ও গ্রামীণ ব্যাংকের কর্মকাণ্ড প্রসঙ্গে-৩
 
 
 

[chottala.com] Hasina in Canada, Khaleda in London



Two interesting news:
 
1. Hasina in Canada:

Canadian Media concerned about harsh treatment of labour and human rights advocates.

 
2. Khaleda in London:
 
UK:  worried over Grameen Bank future, concerned over the share market
Khaleda: Moeen ran the country for 2 years, pushed the country back 10 years, democracy is being interrupted and human rights violated in Bangladesh
 

 
Regards,
NK
' ' ,
'Awami League' is not a name of a political party, it's a name of disease of Bangladesh.


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[chottala.com] My New Book



My new book, collection of essays on Higher Education is now available in Chittagong. You can get a copy from Current Book Center, Jalsha Cinema Building or Grantha Niloy, Jamal Khan, (Sanmar Building).

Thanks and warm wishes.

Mannan

--
_________________________________
Abdul Mannan
Professor
School of Business
University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh
House # 56, Road # 4/A
Dhanmondi R/A, Dhaka-1209
Bangladesh.
BDT=GMT +6
Working Days Sunday-Thursday
E-mail: abman1971@gmail.com
 http://www.ulab.edu.bd



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[chottala.com] Obama Call For 1967 Borders For Israel



Obama Call For 1967 Borders For Israel May Make For Awkward Meeting With Netanyahu

First Posted: 05/19/11 06:43 PM ET Updated: 05/19/11 10:42 PM ET

Obama Speech

WASHINGTON -- The headlines made it clear. From New York to Tel Aviv, President Obama's call for a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians with borders based on the lines following the Six Day War of 1967 was a first for a sitting American president.

"The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states," the president said toward the end of a broader speech on the Middle East. "The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves and reach their potential in a sovereign and contiguous state."

While the president's position that Israel's borders should return to the borders it had before it occupied the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights marks a new government stance, the idea is hardly a breakthrough among experts and professional peace negotiators. At least one Washington think tank has already drawn several maps detailing possible swaps.

"It's somewhere between a big deal and no big deal," said Aaron David Miller, who spent 25 years as a Middle East negotiator for six U.S. secretaries of state. "And that is exactly what the administration wanted."

Obama's speech on the eve of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's arrival here for meetings comes at a low point in a "peace process" that has brought little peace while becoming bogged down in process.

In his remarks at the State Department, Obama took both sides to task for the continuing stalemate.

"Efforts to delegitimize Israel will end in failure," the president warned.

Alluding to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' plan to ask the United Nations General Assembly in September to unilaterally recognize a state of Palestine, President Obama warned that "symbolic actions to isolate Israel at the United Nations in September won't create an independent state. Palestinian leaders will not achieve peace or prosperity if Hamas insists on a path of terror and rejection. And Palestinians will never realize their independence by denying the right of Israel to exist."

But while President Obama noted the bond with the Jewish state is "rooted deeply in a shared history and shared values," he added that "precisely because of our friendship, it is important that we tell the truth: The status quo is unsustainable."

Obama noted "a growing number of Palestinians live west of the Jordan River" and stated flatly in words not often heard uttered by American presidents that "the dream of a Jewish and democratic state cannot be fulfilled with permanent occupation."

Analysts said the president broke new -- and, from the Israeli perspective, controversial -- ground by focusing first on borders and security and leaving the stickier issues of Jerusalem and refugees for later, an approach the liberal pro-Israel group J Street has been advocating for since last year.

Obama appeared to suggest he was willing to push back against a long-time Israeli demand that any peace agreement allow it to keep troops stationed along the Jordanian border.

"The full and phased withdrawal of Israeli military forces should be coordinated with the assumption of Palestinian security responsibility in a sovereign, non-militarized state," Obama said.

Daniel Levy, a veteran Israeli peace negotiator now at the New America Foundation, said, "Obama seemed to make clear that a sovereign Palestinian state means no permanent Israeli presence in the Jordan Valley or at Palestine's external borders with third countries."

University of Maryland Middle East expert Shibley Telhami said Obama's "very important wording" does not seem to preclude the possibility of international peacekeepers along the Jordanian border.

Robert Satloff, of the right-leaning Washington Institute for Near East Policy, wrote that Obama's statement that a Palestinian state should have borders with Egypt, Jordan and Israel "implies categorical American opposition to any open-ended Israeli presence inside the future Palestinian state," a departure from previous understandings during the Clinton administration.

"In certain Israeli circles, notably much of the media commentariat and business elites, the particulars of the Obama speech will be considered an admonition to Netanyahu and evidence of Netanyahu's failed policy and diplomacy," Levy said.

Indeed, before boarding a plane for Washington, Netanyahu reiterated that "the defense of Israel requires an Israeli military presence along the Jordan River."

Obama's speech "is going to create a fair amount of awkwardness and upset in what already is a contentious relationship with Netanyahu," Miller said.

"The Israelis are not going to be happy with Obama's push on the peace process," said Reva Bhalla, a Middle East expert at the research group Stratfor. "But it's not like the peace process is going to go anywhere." With settlement building continuing on the West Bank, an uncertain partner in Egypt and Hamas and Fatah agreeing to form in a unity Palestinian government, the prospect for renewed talks are "dead in the water, even as things intensify in the lead-up" to the September UN session, Bhalla said.

"The president's comments about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will lead nowhere," wrote Elliott Abrams, a conservative Middle East adviser to George W. Bush, in a post that originally appeared at the Council on Foreign Relations' website. "It is striking that he suggested no action: no meeting, no envoy, no Quartet session, no invitations to Washington."

Abrams said Obama's decision to delay negotiations on Jerusalem and refugees was unrealistic. "A successful negotiation will require trade-offs, so reducing the number of issues on the table may actually make success harder," he wrote. "But it is possible that the White House understands all this, and was mostly seeking to park the issue for the coming year through some 'balanced' rhetoric. They may have achieved that goal."

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/19/obama-call-for-1967-borde_n_864440.html

 

 

 


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