politics

 I don't know Bangladeshi political history well enough to evaluate the arguments, but as a primer on Bangladesh, it's well written, readable, and worth taking a glance at.  The news hook is that the Bangladeshi Supreme Court recently upheld a 5-year-old decision banning the use of religion in politics.

Additionally, I've been meaning to put a plug in for the source, Newsline, which is among the best publications I've seen out of Pakistan - if not South Asia - in a while.   Take a browse around.

A few weeks back, in a meeting with a political advisor of a bilateral development organization, I discovered a new phrase ‘discipline in violence’. He used the phrase while talking about the unruliness and fundamentalism within the state security apparatus. The phrase hit me – I wasn’t sure how there can be discipline in violence; in my mind an image of a methodical violent person emerged. I also thought about well organized acts of violence, something along planned ethnic cleansing or systemic violence against women on grounds of morality.

Spring was short this year, it arrived late and is in a hurry to go –dusty winds are taking over fast. But there’s a bloom in my backyard, the least likely place in the guesthouse. Not many in the guesthouse know that my room has a backyard.

Our favorite Clintonian Desi, Sonal Shah, has been appointed to a subcabinet level post in the Obama Administration as I had suggested she might be to those who had argued it didn't matter that she was on Obama's transition team even though she has well documented ties to American arms of Hindu right groups in India that she hasn't fully explained beyond offering basic statements that she doesn't like violence or communalism.  Among unanswered questions:

First person report on a Times of London reporter's deportation from Sri Lanka.  The lede:

"The Sri Lankan immigration officer’s eyes narrowed as she swiped my passport at the international airport in Colombo last week. “Come this way,” she said, leading me into a side room, where a colleague typed my details into a computer.