Sheikh Yassin vs. Rachel Corrie
Shahed Amanullah the editor-in-chief of alt.muslim writes an article in the Daily Star of Bangladesh titled "Why are Muslims so 'shocked and awed' by Yassin's assassination?"
This is dubbed by Niraj as probably the most sober perspective by a Muslim writer on the killing of Hamas 'spiritual' leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin.
Shahed concludes:
Yassin's death makes it clear that violent opposition to the occupation will ultimately fail. The tactic of suicide bombing should be buried along with him. If we are to see real...
March 29, 2004
Outsourcing, unemployment, taxes etc.There are lots of discussions around the blogosphere on the outsourcing of US jobs to India. Buermann thinks:Bush gave massive tax breaks to the rich who are spending their windfall in overseas investments, creating jobs everywhere but here and leaving American workers with dirt, basically. Outsourcing is the most visible symptom of what is bad all around. Another interesting logic given by Jon H for offshore outsourcing:The tax code is written in a way that allows companies not to pay the full 35% U.S. corporate...
March 28, 2004
Bumper food grain output
This year the government of Bangladesh predicts that they will achieve a bumper food grain output according to this report. The half of the cultivable farmland of the country have been cultivated with high-yielding varieties of Boro and IRRI rice and wheat this year (which is 15% more than last year). Scarcity of fertilizer and low rainfall did not have much affect in this achievement. You see this is the marvel of our "Sonar Bangla" (Golden Bengal). This land is as fertile as ever. Yet our road to prosperity is not smooth...
Matir Moina
I watched the much acclaimed film Matir Moina (The clay bird) yesterday in Public Library auditorium. This was long due for me and I wonder how did I miss the chance in last July when it was released in public Theatres.
Joe had previously commented about the film. If you click the link to the films website on the title, you can learn many things about it. However most unfortunate was that Bangladesh govt. censor board banned the film at first. But when it had achieved the following awards/nominations:
2002 Cannes Film Festival, FIPRESCI...
March 25, 2004
The Black Night Of March 25th 1971
This is a night to remember for all the Bangladeshis.
On this night in 1971, the Pakistani Govt. launched "Operation Search Light" against the unarmed Bengalis. The Dhaka University was attacked and students exterminated in their hundreds. Death squads roamed the streets of Dhaka, killing some 7,000 people in a single night. It was only the beginning of a nine month long war of independence, which left with left millions of Bengalis dead and a country in ruins. On March 26, the nation started an armed struggle...
March 24, 2004
ALICE IN LABORATORY
I had a long chat with ALICE. It was very fascinating and she is awesome.
Hint: ALICE is an Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity. She was created by Dr. Richard S. Wallaceat Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, on November 23, 1995. She was developed on the theory of reductionism, which is the philosophy that all psychology reduces to biology, all biology to chemistry, chemistry to physics, and finally physics to mathematical logic. Therefore, according to reductionism, ALICE can understand you by means of logic alone without...
March 23, 2004
QUOTES OF THE DAY
Man is made to adore and to obey: but if you will not command him, if you give him nothing to worship, he will fashion his own divinities, and find a chieftain in his own passions.
- Benjamin Disraeli 1804-1881, British Statesman, Prime Minister
Religion is doing; a man does not merely think his religion or feel it, he ''lives'' his religion as much as he is able, otherwise it is not religion but fantasy or philosophy.
- George Gurdjieff 1873-1949, Russian Adept, Teacher, Writer
All religions have based morality...
March 22, 2004
Remittance black market
Bangladesh is among the top 10 recipient countries of workers' remittances. It has received over $2190 million US dollars from the expatriates legally during first eight months (July- February) of the current fiscal year (2003-2004). But this does not include the remittances made through illegal HUNDI system. A study published by local newspaper The Independent in 2002 found that 40 percent of remittances were being sent through the hundi system.
Usually the Hundi system operates in this way:
A person goes to an unlicensed...
Bangladeshi street vendors in NY City complain of police harassment
This isn't fair:
When police come to us, they don't give us respect, they don't ask us nothing. They just come to us, maybe they stay inside the van and say "hey food guy, bring your license." They write the ticket without even getting out of the car. Sometimes they are even smoking while writing tickets.
Last year I got 27 tickets, from $300 to $2,000. They are usually for being less than 20 feet from a store entrance, but I�m 26 feet from the door. I have a tape measure but...
A little relief from debt burden
Japan recently relieved Bangladesh of repaying a debt of Tk 8,395 crore ($1.46 billion). The Bangladesh government has been exempted from the repayment of principals and interests for the loan agreements signed with Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) before 1988. Japan has proved itself a great friend of Bangladesh in need. The Japanese ambassador said:
"The people and the government of Bangladesh have made great efforts towards social and economic development of the country. There are a number...
March 20, 2004
Blog Survey:
Expectations of Privacy and Accountability
Fernanda Viegas of sociable media group, MIT media laboratory has conducted the above titled blog survey in which I was one of the 486 participants. The period of the online survey was from January 14th to January 21st, 2004.
Some excerpts from the report:
- the great majority of bloggers identify themselves on their sites: 55% of respondents provide their real names on their blogs; another 20% provide some variant of the real name (first name only, first name and initial of surname,...
March 18, 2004
BLOG NOTES* Another Indian Blogmela is up at Shanti's blog. A nice collection of recent posts by Indians.* Whoman explores the roots of islamic terrorism and asks "How would you have fought the war on terror?".* US Military blogger Bob Zangas died last Wednesday in an ambush south of Baghdad. You can post your condolence here.* Scientists are developing an early disease warning system combined with field data and satellite images.They expect to be able to give warnings of high disease risk for a given village or area up to a month in advance.Via...
March 17, 2004
DARING TO BE DIFFERENT
Jivha has a fear, fear of being a normal person, a nondescript person who was born, lived and then died unnoticed. He fears insignificance, conformance. He fears normalcy and safety.
Then again he fears chance. Because the odds of him being "different" are quite remote. Read his thought provoking post.
I had this thought long ago. At a point of time when I was so involved with a cultural group and I had just started my job. I saw a vision that through cultural activities and propagating the voices of development I could...
March 15, 2004
E-MAIL IN BANGLA
Rifat from Chittagong starts a blog titled "Close your eyes and try to see". He is studying electrical engineering. Wish him luck and he wants your support too!
He tells about a wonderful tool with which you can mail in bangla from your existing web-based email account(like yahoo or hotmail). I have tested it and works quite well. Learn about the advantages of this tool from his post.
The tool can be found at Banglaexpress....
March 14, 2004
QUOTES OF THE DAY
It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire and many things to fear.
- Francis Bacon 1561-1626, British Philosopher, Essayist, Statesman
There are only two forces that unite men -- fear and interest.
- Napoleon Bonaparte 1769-1821, French General, Emperor
When you face your fear, most of the time you will discover that it was not really such a big threat after all. We all need some form of deeply rooted, powerful motivation -- it empowers us to overcome obstacles so we can live our dreams.
- Les...
PEOPLES' VOICESSpaniards took the street of Madrid by millions last friday to protest the train bombings (aka 3/11) that killed 199 peoples. They have showed that they are not afraid of the terrorists.They chanted amidst the rain:"Cowards!", "Assassins!", "No to Terror", "Today Our Tears Reach Heaven.", "Who and Why?" and aptly "Send the terrorists to the firing squad!"I believe that if people rise and protest every evil deed of the terrorists, the govt and the international community is bound to take prompt and right actions. It is the time...
March 13, 2004
A JOURNEY BY TRAIN
I made a short trip to Chittagong yesterday with a group of people. We took the train in the morning to reach Chittagong. I like train journey because of its consistent pace and the continuous sound of the train moving over the joints of rail tracks. We started 20 minutes late. The first half an hour was depressing with the stenches and sites of slums of the city (thanks to the poor maintenance of the train, station, and the tracks by the Bangladesh Railway). It was like exposing your rotten infections and we were cursing our...
March 11, 2004
WHO LET THE CAT OUT?
A stray cat sneaked aboard a domestic Bangladesh flight and later sent airport guards on a 2-hour chase around the runway before it was caught, reports AP. Read the whole story here.
Latest report is that 6 employees of the Civil Aviation of Bangladesh have been suspended for that incident. Nobody knows what happened to the poor c...
CRICKET: A LONG AWAITED VICTORY
After 5 years and 47 matches Bangladesh registered yesterday their 5th ODI victory against Zimbabwe at Harare. Bangladesh players as well as their fans in Bangladesh are simply overjoyed.
The Wisden verdict is that Zimbabwe's weak performance was due to complacency. But it was an all-round performance of the Bangladesh team. And Dav Whatmore, the Bangladesh coach says the win was no fluke.
This wasn't just a flash in the pan, they fought back like tigers to win this match.
I wish Bangladesh team to be more confident...
March 10, 2004
MORE BANGLADESHI BLOGGERS
Meet Bangladeshi girls Tarfia & Antora. The latter is less active. Considering the no. of active Bangladeshi bloggers, female bloggers are not far behind.
Shihab tells a tragic story about his fight with cancer. He fears chemotherapy and sad but the truth is that he has to embrace it soon.
Hiwamy had his birthday couple of days ago and thinks (sadly) that it should not be treated as a special occasio...
March 09, 2004
BLOG NOTES
1) Laura has this wonderful post about the motivations she gets for helping others. Truly notable.
2) Faramin writes on "International Womens' Day" showing the grim figures about how women have been and are still being treated in this world. He points to this striking truth:
In order to see how terrible this (the atrocities against women) is, we all have to remember that our mothers are all women.
3) Jivha tries to discover why & how more & more Indian actors/actresses are turning politicians. One such actress turned politician's...
The rise of the freepers
The freepers are also called the conservative click Guerillas.
Free Republic: Disturb, manipulate, demonstrate for the right thing
Read this "Der Spiegel" article to learn more about freepers and their good(?) deeds. You'll have to excuse the losses during translation.
Here & here are some of the proofs for the online vote manipualtio...
March 08, 2004
Depression blues
I am pretty much depressed these days. My loved one is in bed rest. She is recuperating but doctor ordered her to rest for a couple of weeks more. She is not going to work and thus is getting very much bored. I am quite a busy person myself but now I feel the urge to rush to home to be with her as soon as the office hours are over. The last weekend I spent all the time with her. The problem is that we can't go dining out, go to theatre or go visit relatives or friends. I am deffering many of my works so that I could give her some...
March 07, 2004
Anti-Semiticism revisited
This is an interesting article written by Hasnat Abdul Hye, whom I regard as a true intellect of the country. The bottomline:
The Jews themselves, particularly their organizations and Israel, must try to live down the image by which they have been associated and known. The problem is not with the term �Semitic�. It centers around what the Jews did in the past and are still doing....
March 06, 2004
CROWN ENERGY, WHERE HAVE YOU GONE AWAY?The above is part of the lyrics of a commercial for Crown malt beverage. Recently two such beverages (Crown & Hunter) became popular among the young who have found the replacement of beer in these. I have also tasted crown and it looks & tastes like beer. I wonder why it is called energy drink. However Its alcohol content is 4.8% and so it is legally defined as malt beverages in the country. Any beverages...
QUOTES OF THE DAY
Words like ''freedom,'' ''justice,'' ''democracy'' are not common concepts; on the contrary, they are rare. People are not born knowing what these are. It takes enormous and, above all, individual effort to arrive at the respect for other people that these words imply.
- James Baldwin 1924-1987, American Author
The demand for equal rights in every vocation of life is just and fair; but, after all, the most vital right is the right to love and be loved.
- Emma Goldman 1869-1940, American Anarchist...
March 04, 2004
CRICKET: BANGLADESH BEAT AUSTRALIA
Bangladesh have won the final of the Under-19 Plate Championship by eight runs in a thrilling match at Fatullah, near Dhaka today. Well don't be surprised because its not the super league of the under-19 world cup and Bangladesh will only secure the 9th position of this tournament edging past Australia.
We expected Bangladesh to fight in the super leagues but unfortunately they lost the first match against New Zealand and India was too strong for them. They won all other matches.
But it is a pretty disappointing...
Shiite attacks
I got pretty depressed day before yesterday when I was watching the footage of the massacre of about 150 people in Iraq and 50 people in Pakistan. I don't believe that any sane persons would do this.
Tim Blair thinks if fundamentalists can't kill infidel westerners overseas so they are killing Muslims in the Middle East. He wants to know the "root cause" that these Muslims should blame for their deaths.
According to this news, Mohammad Ali Abtahi, Iran's vice president for legal and parliamentary affairs thinks that it is an war...
March 01, 2004
THE REPRESSION OF HUMAN RIGHTS
Prominent editor Mahfuz Anam writes how Bangladesh govt. is becoming more repressive towards the opposition.
Some examples:
* The leader of opposition, Sheikh Hasina barred from going inside the Cantonment.
* Ex President Ershad and leader of Jatyio Party barred from going abroad, without prior notice.
* The home minister brazenly misrepresented facts in parliament about the attack on Dr Kamal's motorcade, saying that it was the latter's own people and he said it while an investigation is pending.
* Phones are...
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