CNN Talk Asia had an interview yesterday with Dr. Muhammad Yunus, the Bangladeshi winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. His initiatives in microcredit eventually gave birth to Grameen Bank, which has issued over $5 billion in loans to millions of people since 1976. Grameen uses the system of solidarity lending to ensure the loans get repaid. Under this system, solidarity groups act as a distribution channel, leveraging “various types of social capital like peer pressure, mutual support and a healthy culture of repayment”.

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Well, it seems like our neighbors to the West think that the whole state of emergency idea isn’t something only Bangladesh should be privy to. So last night Pervez Musharraf (right) decided that it was time to go to the mattresses, and declared martial law. Like our Bangladeshi cou…er…state of emergency (still in effect), constitutional rights have been suspended and numerous arrests have been made (in the name of “corruption”, no doubt - it’s interesting that the corrupt ones are always found out when they are in opposition to the current government). Musharraf’s measures have also involved replacing the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, shutting down land and mobile lines and taking private TV stations off the air. All this in spite of Friday’s fervorous assurances by attorney general Malik Muhammad Qayyum that “Martial law will not be imposed, not be imposed, not be imposed.”

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Here are a few pictures from last week’s Dhaka Stage presentation of Working. Apologies to those who didn’t get showcased in the pics, I picked the best of the lot and probably missed a couple of people. Click the slideshow to see the Picasa photo album!

The best thing about doing this was meeting a whole bunch of wonderful people that I would have never run into otherwise. Getting to know these folks was worth all the hours of rehearsal!

Here are a couple videos from the Dhaka Stage musical we put on last week: Working. Many hours of rehearsal and preparation went into the production, and we were quite pleased with the results. The clips below are of the two songs I sang in. It was a lot of fun! Read More »»

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