Blog Day

I almost forgot that today is the 4th blog day. Celebrate!Here is my recommendation of Five English blogs on Bangladesh:An ordinary citizen - A pediatrician's musing on politics and current affairs.Joi Bangla.info - Events and travel in Bangladesh.Dhaka - A photoblog on Dhaka cityBack to Bangladesh - An expatriate returns to his homeland after 30 yearsDesher Chobi - The face of my motherland, a photoblog.Five Bangla Blogs:গ্লোবাল ভয়েসেস বাংলা সংস্করণ...

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On Sarah Palin

US Presidential candidate John McCain has chosen Sarah Palin, the current governor of the U.S. state of Alaska as his running mate. She is a model US citizen but many do not know about her. The Wikipedia entry on her is a starter but Joho the blog reveals there are even more interesting information in the Wikipedia discussion page on information filter...

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Dating tips

How To Date A Japanese GirlView SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: 31o5 barcamp)How to date a Japanese girl - by a real Japanese girlVia Preetam ...

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Image of the day

The Federal Chancellor office in Ber...

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Makeover

This was long due. I was planning to change the template of my blog for better management of contents and I was already getting complaints from the users. I realized that the layout which looks alright in my laptop's wide screen may be shown broken in others pcs. So I have chosen a new template. I am still fine tuning it. Please let me know your feedba...

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Paintings by Rabindranath Tagore

The Art of Piece is an online tour hosted by The British MuseumImage credit: The British Museum…our family hasbeen a confluence ofthree cultures, Hindu, Mohammedan and British.'(Rabindranath Tagore, Hibbert Lectures, Oxford, 1930)"Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) is the most famous South Asian literary figure of the twentieth century. He was a poet, writer, statesman, educator and musician whose work and achievements earned him worldwide respect.Born...

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A historic speech

I know you are probably troubled by the media and public attention US presidential candidate Barack Obama is getting. But this is truly an outstanding speech:Mash reacts:America and the world took a historic step forward tonight.A country that was founded on the noble but unfulfilled notion that all men are created equal, a country that until the Thirteenth Amendment legally allowed men to own Black men as slaves, a country that within our lifetime has witnessed the lynching of Black men, has now put a Black man in a position to vie to lead it....

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Violence for peace

Yesterday there was renewed violence in Dhaka. There was a rumor spread in Dhaka city that BNP leader and the son of ex-Prime Minister Tarique Rahman injured himself in custody of law enforcers slipping on a bathroom floor. After that pro-BNP students went on a rampage on and around campuses of Dhaka University, Dhaka College and BUET.The Daily Star reports:The mob also vandalised around 30 vehicles and set two ablaze during the rioting.In a related late development in Bogra, BNP backed Jatiyatabadi Chhatra Dal (JCD) activists set fire to the engine...

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Amendment of RPO act

The Bangladesh government has recently amended the Representation of the People Order Act, 1972 to regulate the activities of political parties. According to this act government officials who resigned or retired after November 2005 would not be able to contest the elections. There are allegations that some bureaucrats had exploited their positions to lay the groundwork for their political careers. So this act will deter them.The other features of this law are mandatory registration for political parties, candidates should not be defaulters of utility...

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Photos of Mughal Edifices in ruins

This is a great collection. Shows the rich past of Dhaka city.Also check this new photoblog from Banglade...

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Technology empowers the poor

!--Citing Bangladesh's example Iqbal Quadir explains how technology is empowering the po...

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Culture vs. Rituals

Habib posts two scanned pages of a book by Major Gen. M. A. Matin titled "The continuation of our liberation struggle":He actually made some disturbing and illogical accusations. Such as cultural activities like singing, recitation, theater as Bengali nationalistic motivations and which are derailing the youths. He even accused the celebrations of the international mother language day (Ekushey February) as Hindu cultural activities. He even has...

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A Gem of Asia you have overlooked

Bangladesh(Thanks ...

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Dhaka's cab service collapse and the choice of the vehicle

Taxi cabs were introduced in Dhaka in 1998. We had seen a variety of cars at the beginning, from Indian Ambassador to Japanese Toyota cars. Later on many brands from India like Maruti, Tata were imported as taxi cabs. After the ban of baby-taxis or engine run-three wheelers in 2003 growing number of AC & Non-AC Taxis were imported and the the total number of taxis plying in Dhaka streets are about 11,000.According to BDNews24.com Dhaka's cab...

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Decrease in national savings certificates & relation to corruption

Sales of national savings certificates (Sanchaypatras) are down by almost 50% in 2007-08 (Tk 2,228.29 crore). Analysts say this is because of the price hike and inflation. But from the stats we can see that in the year 2006-2007 (during the end of BNP rule) there was an increase of almost 40% than previous year (4,174.92 crore in 2006-07 & Tk 2,996.58 crore in 2005-06). Many black money were cleaned white by buying Sanhcaypatra's in relatives and family members name. There is a bar of purchasing Sanchay Patras by an individual. This was not...

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Digital dossier

Just about all of us have a digital dossier. Your dossier is the accumulation of all the digital tracks you make. But how aware are you of the tracks you leave behind? Find out more he...

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Marina Mahathir in Bangladesh

Marina binti Mahathir is a human rights activist and the daughter of the 4th Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohammad. She is well known as a leader in many non-governmental organizations such as the Malaysian AIDS Foundation and is currently an active socio-political blogger.Marina Mahathir is in Bangladesh for a visit. She describes her visit in Bangladesh in her blog:Bangladesh is an interesting place, far more than we give it credit for. Since January 2007, it has had an Interim Government which is provided for in its Constitution. Basically...

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Propaganda

I was going through a remote town in Czech Republic and was curious to see presence of a series of poles with speakers everywhere. I was told by a German companion that these are reminiscent of the old communist era. With these speakers communist propaganda was preached to the population whole day. These were also used to inform about local events or a political gatherings. This kinds of propaganda speakers can also be seen in other parts of the world also used by communist regimes, e.g. in Vietnam.A huge TV screen has been put in Dhaka's Shahbag...

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India wasn't the architect of Bangladesh

Ahmad Ferdous Bin Alam vents his frustration reading certain Indian media's claim that India and the 13 day Indo-pak war in 1971 was solely the creator of Bangladesh ignoring the nine month long liberation war struggle of Bangladesh and bloods of millions of Bengalis who died:Bloody birth of Bangladesh was a by-product of that so-called Indo-Pak war? With this statement, the sacrifice of our freedom fighters and martyrs has been brazenly belittled. It's downright despicable!India's help in our war of liberation has always been aptly appreciated...

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Finding Bangladesh

A new three part series documentary on “Historical Places of Bangladesh” has recently been released in DVDs and its now available in Bangladesh. (Via Angelmorn)Here is a trailer of the first part:The first part covers the following landmarks:From Dhaka Division: Ahsan Manzil, Lalbagh Fort, Dhakeswari Temple, Star Mosque and Sonargaon (Panam City, Bara Sardar Bari and the Sonakanda Fort).From Rajshahi Division: Ramshagor Dighi, Kantajee’s Temple,...

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Cyber campaign

Its great to see a candidate for Dhaka Mayor election using internet as a campaign tool. This means Bangladesh is going forward. However, Internet is also a good resource of information. It archives your internet presence and tells a lot about you including how popular you are. See here, here and here for detai...

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Locked up in Bangladesh

In early 1992, 18-year-old Lia McCord got an offer she couldn't refuse.: Go to Bangladesh, pick up some packages and return home to Texas with $20,000. Simple. However, the packages were in fact heroin and her contact was violent and controlling. Following a botched escape from her hotel McCord was arrested at Zia International Airport in Dhaka with 7 lbs. of heroin strapped to her body. It was then that her descent into hell really began. She narrowly escaped the death penalty, but was sentenced to 30 years.As a model prisoner, she came to the...

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Facebook users in Bangladesh

Justin Smith from Inside Facebook shared the latest data regarding the growth of Facebook worldwide (via Lova).Most interesting is the statistics of Asia, especially India & Bangladesh:While India has about 60 million internet users only 200,000 of them use Facebook. Whereas about 100,000 Bangladeshis use Facebook out of a total number of internet users of only 500,000 (some claim it is 1 million). (Stat source ITU)Here is a graph showing the...

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I have got a new notebook!

After the initial frustrations thanks to a local dealer I finally bought a notebook which could be customized to English version. I have never heard of MSI brand before but this baby looks great with widescreen and is well balanced with configuration at a competitive price. Only I found no webcam attached as advertised. Normal posting will resume short...

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Bangladesh Elections

The recent City Corporation and Pourashava election has ended in Bangladesh successfully (except some reports of mismanagement). One limitation was that BNP boycotted the elections although some of their candidates ran independently. The election commission's outlook was to make this election free from political party representations but the court has given a verdict against that only a few days ago.The European and American diplomats said that "they were impressed by the high turnout and efficient running of local elections" calling the polls...

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Update: I am not a spam

It seems like ages (actually about 10 days) when I last updated my blog. Well a series of unfortunate events unsettled my internet presence. First it was the Google spam bot which identified my blog as a splog and locked it. It said if not proven otherwise they were going to delete this blog. It could be the bot or some people may have reported it as so. I panicked first and tried to contact blogger.com. They only had an automated process of reporting that it is not a spam blog and said it will take them minimum 2 days to review it by a service...

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