Know hope?

"Against all odds, Bangladesh is on the move," says Tahmima Anam.

Shifting baselines

"I used to think that this work was really nasty," [says Mohammed Harun]. "But I'm used to it now, its just my job, and it brings me money."

-- from Living off the sewers of gold in Bangladesh.

Development and freedom

A friend working in Bangladesh notes Flat and Wet, a post by David Miliband about his recent visit to a development project in that country.

There are things here to welcome, but I think the line about ID cards, for one, is disingenuous. The Bangladeshi system is unlikely to be similar to the one proposed by his govt in the UK, on which see Timothy Garton Ash:Our state collects more data than the Stasi ever did. On democracy promotion, Garton Ash (drop Iraq, add Europe) is also worth reading.

What's good for business is good for Bangladesh

Good news! Climate change increases trade!:

One unexpected consequence of the rising water levels in Bangladesh is that river erosion has reduced the number of operable ferry berths, so men wait longer to cross, which in turn increases the demand for prostitution.

-- from a FOOC piece by Claudia Hammond.

Inequality

In the Grandpont area of Oxford where I live we were concerned a couple of weeks ago about flooding after what may have been the the heaviest rains in a 24 hour period recorded in Britain. In the event we remained above the flood water. And, of course, our concerns seem ridiculously, even grotesquely petty and selfish compared to what is happening to some people in Bihar and other parts of South Asia. I heard one item on the radio last night which featured a grandmother and her family of nine somewhere in Bangladesh stranded on the roof of their hourse for the last five days with only a few kilos of rice.

[P.S. 9 August: Surviving on snails and rats in Bihar; 10 August: Extreme Floods Hit 500 Million People a Year - UN]

Geldof, baby killers and power's bitch

I have been more tolerant of the likes of Bob Geldof than, for example, my good friend and co-orchardeer Paul Kingsnorth, but something snapped when I saw this photo. Does Saint Sir Bling Bob find himself a winking bubble in the froth topping the champagne (1) that intoxicates the powerful?

Diving beneath the surface, George Monbiot skillfully cuts and pastes some press releases and other material from Baby Milk Action and ibfan to recount the pushing of unsafe formula milk down the throats of babes while the fine words flow at Heiligendamm. (The example is the Philippines, but this is the third report in as many weeks in The Guardian, following Johanna Moorhead's first hand investigation into goings on by Nestlé and other companies in Bangladesh, and Marie McGrath on the deadly effects of formula in disaster zones).

Mark Danner (Words in a time of war) might respond "Well, D'oh!":

[The attitude of the Bush administration] is brilliantly encapsulated in a single sentence drawn from the National Security Strategy of the United States of 2003: "Our strength as a nation-state will continue to be challenged by those who employ a strategy of the weak using international fora, judicial processes and terrorism." Let me repeat that little troika of "weapons of the weak": international fora (meaning the United Nations and like institutions), judicial processes (meaning courts, domestic and international), and.... terrorism. This strange gathering, put forward by the government of the United States, stems from the idea that power is, in fact, everything.

[ (1) I first typed "champagne" as "champaign", which RB suggests be defined as "a cause that celebrities get involved in".]