Bangla Magazine is being read, shopped and sold. My theory is that the magazine does not pay its photographers anything for the publication, but they have a solid magazine operation, so they can manage. I think this new and brave press in Bangladesh will be extremely damaging to magazine photography. In terms of Bangla magazines, it is not difficult to make a living from magazines in Bangladesh. The Bangladeshi market is quite big. If the new magazines are considered to be equal to or more successful than magazines in the Bangla market, I think it would be a catastrophe for magazine photography. The magazines in Bangladesh are perfect for taking pictures. There are plenty of studios. Most of the people working in Bangla magazines are photographers, and it is not a financial burden to work with these magazines. If it is obvious that there is a circulation for a magazine or newspaper, it will not be financially attractive to buy advertising in it. I have seen a magazine selling 4,000 copies at some CEO Mahtab Ul Islam suggested the new law had been amended in the state legislature in 2013, paving the way for magazines and even webpages to be seized and censored, and said he was surprised by the action against Global Bangla.
“I don’t know about every incident, but we are all very worried and shocked,” Islam told the Dhaka Tribune, referring to the magazine. “We hope this is the beginning of an era that saves our lives from suppression.”
Prosecutors said the magazine is promoting the ideas of radical Islamist groups like Islamic State, al-Qaida and the Jamaat-e-Islami, and of criminal gangs involved in the smuggling of goods, drugs, and guns.
The magazine is available throughout Bangladesh, and Bangladeshi citizens need a special permit to access its website. However, those who are caught with a copy are usually punished with imprisonment, fines or compulsory training.
Of the 11 million adult internet users in Bangladesh, more than 70 percent access the internet via mobile devices.
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Click here to read the whole story. Here’s another good description of the Bangladeshi textile industry from the aforementioned Businessweek article: Prices are kept low in Bangladesh by a worldwide buying frenzy. Nearly a million textile machines now sit idle worldwide because factories can’t get raw cotton, the only raw material used to make yarn. There’s no cotton on the American farm. So everyone from China to Bangladesh is buying and stockpiling cotton in Bangladesh. And that’s how the Bangladeshi garment makers got in on the cotton market as well. The foreign buyers brought cheap cotton. Bangladesh, as one textile consultant describes it, “became a piggy bank for China.” But that supply didn’t stay cheap for long. Bangladesh’s textile workers had trouble competing. The factories looked abroad to make up the supply gap. China, India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan were already rushing their textile factories to make sweaters. So Bangladeshi factories bought, rather than produced.