The Cadre’s Training School ULAB

Every dictatorship needs its own institution of higher learning to train cadres outside of the military academies. China has its Central Party School; the USSR had its The Higher Party School or VPSch. Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had its Saddam University (now called Nahrein University). The purpose for all these was to train smooth faced interlocutors to connect with the civil side of things—and even internationally—to become the ‘modern’ face of the regime. Bangladesh’s regime has been a step ahead by farming out the thing to an entity called the University of Liberal Arts of Bangladesh or ULAB, which is owned by the family of one of the ruling junta’s “Members of Parliament” and his American wife, and where an assorted set of pro-regime European or American third rate  ‘scholars’ teach or lecture or sound off or on, including the Scandinavian Arild Ruud, the American Forrest Cookson, the British Tim Steele, and a few others of similar ‘my loyalty for any dictatorship for the right amount of dollars’ vintage. It is a smart move since Bengalis are mightily impressed by white people saying nice things about them and graduate interns in Western think tanks and newspapers are equally impressed when a white guy writes something profound defending a dictatorship.