No Orietur

Sudanese woman beaten for waering trousers

2010-12-14T22:25:00.000-08:00

Look at this video from sky bolg .

The president is a criminal. The people are being entertained while the woman is beaten only for wearing trousers under her Islamic garments. The govt says, there had been a mistake. But they do not make clear where the mistake had been done!

The president is a criminal and backed by the superpowers!

Bolivia Passes Land Reform Bills

2009-03-18T14:16:00.000-07:00

BBC report:

The Bolivian Senate has approved a controversial reform bill proposed by President Evo Morales to redistribute under-used land to rural communities.

A week-long stand-off ended when three opposition senators broke ranks with their conservative parties to vote in favour of the bill.

Thousands of indigenous protesters had marched on La Paz on Tuesday to put pressure on the senate to pass the law.

It could lead to the redistribution of up to 20m hectares of land to the poor.

Big landowners oppose the move, saying it will destroy Bolivian agriculture, and have threatened to use force to defend their property.

Leftist win in EL Salvedor

2009-03-18T14:03:00.000-07:00

"Ex-Guerrillas Win El Salvador Election" says www.npr.org. They reports:

For the first time in El Salvador, a left-wing party has won the presidency. The Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front formed in 1980 as a band of Marxist guerrillas attempting to seize power. They spent 12 years fighting in the jungle and almost two decades in political opposition — and they finally accomplished their goal Sunday night.

Alarming for America. Cuba and other leftist allies along with liberation theology....

Imran Khan on Swat

2009-03-06T12:12:00.000-08:00

Former cricketer and now a politician, Imran Khan, chief of teherik-e-insaf, a political party of Pakistan said on last week criticizing the military operations started bny the PPP led government that it may lead the situations as it were in East Pakistan in 1971.

sources 1

The situation in Pakistan is very upsetting after the attack on the Srilankan Cricket team. The political unrest and the tribal forces were always been a problem for them. Adding to the Belusch problems(also comparable to Bangladesh condition in 1971) the North West Frontier Provincial problems are causing great difficulties from them recently.

Md Toaha after 1971: From Prothom -Alo

2009-03-06T11:49:00.000-08:00

An article in the prothom alo on Md Toaha the Peking Party Leader, after 1971 on the liberation war.

Another article on Sheikh Mujibar Rahman from Dailystar Forum

First Pan American Marxist School of IMT

2009-03-04T11:49:00.000-08:00

From February 27 to March 2, more than 100 revolutionaries from the American continent gathered in Mexico City to take part in the first Pan-American Marxist School of the International Marxist Tendency. Link to their magazine:

www.americasocialista.org

BDR Mutiny: How do Indian media know that fast?

2009-03-01T06:36:00.000-08:00

See this ridiculous link of timesofindia

They say:
"The preliminary interrogation of some of the rebels has thrown up the name of Salauddin Qadeer Chowdhury, a well-known shipping magnate and reportedly very close to the Pakistan military-intelligence complex and the opposition BNP. According to sources monitoring the situation, about one crore taka has already changed hands to help the mutiny along. "

Even though on the 1st march night at 2:25 IST they had this news online, I suppose no Bangladeshi media was aware of it.

Mutiny Over: now what?

2009-02-28T11:16:00.000-08:00

Some important notes on the BDR mutiny:

TV and other Media started to claim the BDR mutiny as revolution against ARMY.
Probably they did not know abut the genocide by the BDR
The starter was shown as heroic by the media
Sooner they advertised that ARMY had started to operate with helicopters and artillery
BDR started to shoot the helicopters using machine guns
There was a rumour of a curfew from 3:00pm
The leaflets were found requesting the BDR to cease their revolt

Upto this point everything was on BDR's side. They were talking about the corruption of the ARMY officers during the "dalvat" oeprations. 3 civilians died and nobody did ever accused BDR directly for the miscreants. Probably the civilian life has no value!

After the day had passed things started to change. The Government officials and ministers started a negotiating process and decided to handle the whole matter rather politically. Few of the BDR jawans submitted their arms to the state minister and supposedly everything seemed to be ok.
But the next day everything was changed. Before that some people from he acquaintance in the BDR and ARMY claimed of genocide and mass rape and loot of the higher ranked army officers, their families and their households. Several online bloggers and even rumour were spread on these happenings.

Later in the afternoon that day, some dead bodies were detected and news od massacar was confirmed and the things started to change. Media started to sing in a different tone. The Army was ready with the TANKS and the prime-minister succeded to handle the matter without that much army involvement. Now the media was called by the Information minister and warned on the situation.

The shameless media people soon changed their motives.

Even tonight on the Chanel-One there was a media personel, editor of bdnews.com saying that the fault was not on the part of the media, but the mismanagement of the govt. Govt should have taken care of the matter. Even he said that such serious matters related t national security should have been dealt with more caution. Even he gave some examples of restrictions which the govt could put on the Media.

Whern the conductor related that point to the free information flow of as a govt. committment then he changed the notion and said that there should be no information Ministry. The media should not report/governed by the ministry. Even in the next sentence he claimed the presence of some regulatory body which he could not defintely figured out exactly. The unprepared or excited bdnews editor was most probably not the best person to be there.

Another program was going on in another chanel. Former BDR dg Anwar Hossain was present and he claimed there was no wrong with the ARMY officers.

We should not forget the dead bodies of the ARMY officers and the corruption allegation against them.

Bangladesh Rifles Mutiny

2009-02-25T12:24:00.000-08:00

A group of protesters in BDR has started firing within the BDR campus today in Dhaka. Meanwhile ARMY has intervened in the matter as if they had been attacked and it was a war situation. Heavy artillery were brought and used against the BDR people while firing had been on throughout the whole day using helecopters.

Updates: http://unheardvoice.net/blog/2009/02/25/bdr-mutiny/

Great Britain suspects a summer of Rage

2009-02-25T11:25:00.000-08:00

Great Britain police has warned the govt. that there may be unrest and protests in the streets due to the huge number of sack of employees from their jobs during this lingering economical crisis. Guardian reports:

Britain's most senior police officer with responsibility for public order raised the spectre of a return of the riots of the 1980s, with people who have lost their jobs, homes or savings becoming "footsoldiers" in a wave of potentially violent mass protests.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/feb/23/police-civil-unrest-recession

9/11 and Global Terrorism - Derrida

2009-02-23T14:59:00.000-08:00

Five weeks after 9/11, Giovanna Borradori interviewed Jacques Derrida in New York City about 9/11, the state and terrorism, and the place of philosophy. This excerpt is from that interview. The interview was published in Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida by Giovanna Borradori. © 2003 by The University of Chicago.

Giovanna Borradori: September 11 [le 11 septembre] gave us the impression of being a major event, one of the most important historical events we will witness in our lifetime, especially for those of us who never lived through a world war. Do you agree?

Jacques Derrida: Le 11 septembre, as you say, or, since we have agreed to speak two languages, "September 11." We will have to return later to this question of language. As well as to this act of naming: a date and nothing more. When you say "September 11" you are already citing, are you not? You are inviting me to speak here by recalling, as if in quotation marks, a date or a dating that has taken over our public space and our private lives for five weeks now. Something fait date, I would say in a French idiom, something marks a date, a date in history; that is always what's most striking, the very impact of what is at least felt, in an apparently immediate way, to be an event that truly marks, that truly makes its mark, a singular and, as they say here, "unprecedented" event. I say "apparently immediate" because this "feeling" is actually less spontaneous than it appears: it is to a large extent conditioned, constituted, if not actually constructed, circulated at any rate through the media by means of a prodigious techno-socio-political machine. "To mark a date in history" presupposes, in any case, that "something" comes or happens for the first and last time, "something" that we do not yet really know how to identify, determine, recognize, or analyze but that should remain from here on in unforgettable: an ineffaceable event in the shared archive of a universal calendar, that is, a supposedly universal calendar, for these are—and I want to insist on this at the outset—only suppositions and presuppositions. Unrefined and dogmatic, or else carefully considered, organized, calculated, strategic—or all of these at once. For the index pointing toward this date, the bare act, the minimal deictic, the minimalist aim of this dating, also marks something else. Namely, the fact that we perhaps have no concept and no meaning available to us to name in any other way this "thing" that has just happened, this supposed "event." An act of "international terrorism," for example, and we will return to this, is anything but a rigorous concept that would help us grasp the singularity of what we will be trying to discuss. "Something" took place, we have the feeling of not having seen it coming, and certain consequences undeniably follow upon the "thing." But this very thing, the place and meaning of this "event," remains ineffable, like an intuition without concept, like a unicity with no generality on the horizon or with no horizon at all, out of range for a language that admits its powerlessness and so is reduced to pronouncing mechanically a date, repeating it endlessly, as a kind of ritual incantation, a conjuring poem, a journalistic litany or rhetorical refrain that admits to not knowing what it's talking about. We do not in fact know what we are saying or naming in this way: September 11, le 11 septembre, September 11. The brevity of the appellation (September 11, 9/11) stems not only from an economic or rhetorical necessity. The telegram of this metonymy—a name, a number—points out the unqualifiable by recognizing that we do not recognize or even cognize that we do not yet know how to qualify, that we do not know what we are talking about.

• • •

Borradori: Where were you on September 11?

Derrida: I was in Shanghai, at the end of a long trip to China. It was nighttime there, and the owner of the cafe I was in with a couple of friends came to tell us that an airplane had "crashed" into the Twin Towers. I hurried back to my hotel, and from the very first televised images, those of CNN, I note, it was easy to foresee that this was going to become, in the eyes of the world, what you called a "major event." Even if what was to follow remained, to a certain extent, invisible and unforeseeable. But to feel the gravity of the event and its "worldwide" implications it was enough simply to mobilize a few already tested political hypotheses. As far as I could tell, China tried during the first few days to circumscribe the importance of the event, as if it were a more or less local incident. But this organized interpretation, informed by the current state of U.S.-China relations (diplomatic tensions and incidents of various sorts), ended up having to yield to other exigencies: CNN and other international media outlets have penetrated Chinese space, and China too, after all, has its own "Muslim" problem. It thus became necessary to join in some way the "antiterrorist" "coalition." It would be necessary to analyze, in the same vein, the motivations and interests behind all the different geopolitical or strategico-diplomatic shifts that have "invested," so to speak, "September 11." (For example, the warming in relations between Bush and Putin, who has been given a freer hand in Chechnya, and the very useful but very hasty identification of Palestinian terrorism with international terrorism, which now calls for a universal response.) In both cases, certain parties have an interest in presenting their adversaries not only as terrorists—which they in fact are to a certain extent—but only as terrorists, indeed as "international terrorists" who share the same logic or are part of the same network and who must thus be opposed, it is claimed, not through counterterrorism but through a "war," meaning, of course, a "nice clean" war. The "facts" clearly show that these distinctions are lacking in rigor, impossible to maintain, and easily manipulated for certain ends.

Borradori: A radical deconstruction of the distinction between war and terrorism, as well as between different types of terrorism (such as national and international), makes it very difficult to conceive of politics in a strategic sense. Who are the actors on the world stage? How many of them are there? Isn't there here the risk of total anarchy?

Derrida: The word "anarchy" risks making us abandon too quickly the analysis and interpretation of what indeed looks like pure chaos. We must do all that we can to account for this appearance. We must do everything possible to make this new "disorder" as intelligible as possible. The analysis we sketched out earlier tried to move in that direction: an end of the "Cold War" that leaves just one camp, a coalition, actually, of states claiming sovereignty, faced with anonymous and nonstate organizations, armed and virtually nuclear powers. And these powers can also, without arms and without explosions, without any attacks in person, avail themselves of incredibly destructive computer technologies, technologies capable of operations that in fact have no name (neither war nor terrorism) and that are no longer carried out in the name of a nation-state, and whose "cause," in all senses of this word, is difficult to define (there's the theological cause, the ethnic cause, the socioeconomic cause, and so on). On no side is the logic of sovereignty ever put into question (political sovereignty or that of the nation-state—itself of ontotheological origin, though more or less secularized in one place and purely theological and nonsecularized in another): not on the side of the nation-states and the great powers that sit on the Security Council, and not on the other side, or other sides, since there is precisely an indeterminate number of them. Everyone will no doubt point to existing international law (the foundations of which remain, I believe, perfectible, revisable, in need of recasting, both conceptually and institutionally). But this international law is nowhere respected. And as soon as one party does not respect it the others no longer consider it respectable and begin to betray it in their turn. The United States and Israel are not the only ones who have become accustomed to taking all the liberties they deem necessary with UN resolutions.

To answer your question more specifically, I would say that the United States is perhaps not the sole target, perhaps not even the central or ultimate target, of the operation with which the name "bin Laden" is associated, at least by metonymy. The point may be to provoke a military and diplomatic situation that destabilizes certain Arab countries torn between a powerful public opinion (which is anti-American if not anti-Western, for countless reasons stemming from a complex, centuries old history, but then also, in the aftermath of an era of colonialism or imperialism, from poverty, oppression, and ideologico-religious indoctrination) and the necessity of basing their nondemocratic authority on diplomatic, economic, and military ties with the United States. First on the list here would be Saudi Arabia, which remains the privileged enemy of everything that might be represented by a "bin Laden" (a name I use always as a synecdoche) or a Saddam Hussein. Yet Saudi Arabia (an important family and an important oil-producing power), while maintaining its ties with its American "protector," "client," and "boss," fuels all the hotbeds of Arab Islamic fanaticism if not "terrorism" in the world. This is one of the paradoxical situations, once again autoimmunitary, of what you called "total anarchy": the movements and shifts in the strategic oil alliances between the United States (self-styled champion of the democratic ideal, of human rights, and so on) and regimes about which the least that can be said is that they do not correspond to this model. Such regimes (I used the example of Saudi Arabia, though it would be necessary to speak of the equally serious case of Pakistan) are also the enemies or targets of those who organize so-called "international terrorism" against the U.S. and, at least virtually, their allies. That makes for more than one triangle. And with all the angling going on between these triangles, it is difficult to disentangle the real from the alleged motivation, oil from religion, politics from economics or military strategy. The "bin Laden" type of diatribe against the American devil thus combines such themes as the perversion of faith and nonbelief, the violation of the sacred places of Islam, the military presence near Mecca, the support of Israel, and the oppression of Arab Muslim populations. But if this rhetoric clearly resonates with the populations and even the media of the Arab and Muslim world, the governments of Arab Muslim states (the majority of which care about as much for human rights and democracy as bin Laden does) are almost all hostile in principle, as "governments," to the "bin Laden" network and its discourse. One thus has to conclude that "bin Laden" is also working to destabilize them…

Borradori: Which would be the standard objective of terrorists, to overturn but not take over, to destabilize the current situation.

Derrida: The most common strategy consists always in destabilizing not only the principal, declared enemy but also, at the same time, in a kind of quasi-domestic confrontation, those much closer. Sometimes even one's own allies. This is another necessary consequence of the same autoimmunitary process. In all wars, all civil wars, all partisan wars or wars for liberation, the inevitable escalation leads one to go after one's rival partners no less than one's so-called principal adversary. During the Algerian War, between 1954 and 1962, what sometimes looked like "fratricidal" acts of violence between different insurrectional forces proved sometimes just as extreme as those between these groups and the French colonial forces.

This is yet one more reason not to consider everything that has to do with Islam or with the Arab Muslim "world" as a "world," or at least as one homogeneous whole. And wanting to take all these divisions, differences, and differends into account does not necessarily constitute an act of war; nor does trying to do everything possible to ensure that in this Arab Muslim "world," which is not a world and not a world that is one, certain currents do not take over, namely, those that lead to fanaticism, to an obscurantism armed to the teeth with modern technoscience, to the violation of every juridico-political principle, to the cruel disregard for human rights and democracy, to a nonrespect for life. We must help what is called Islam and what is called "Arab" to free themselves from such violent dogmatism. We must help those who are fighting heroically in this direction on the inside, whether we are talking about politics in the narrow sense of the term or else about an interpretation of the Koran. When I say that we must do this for what is called Islam and what is called "Arab," I obviously mean that we must not do any less when it comes to Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia!

Borradori: Earlier you emphasized the essential role of international organizations and the need to cultivate a respect for international law. Do you think that the kind of terrorism linked to the al- Qaeda organization and to bin Laden harbors international political ambitions?

Derrida: What appears to me unacceptable in the "strategy" (in terms of weapons, practices, ideology, rhetoric, discourse, and so on) of the "bin Laden effect" is not only the cruelty, the disregard for human life, the disrespect for law, for women, the use of what is worst in technocapitalist modernity for the purposes of religious fanaticism. No, it is, above all, the fact that such actions and such discourse open onto no future and, in my view, have no future. If we are to put any faith in the perfectibility of public space and of the world juridico-political scene, of the "world" itself, then there is, it seems to me, nothing good to be hoped for from that quarter. What is being proposed, at least implicitly, is that all capitalist and modern technoscientific forces be put in the service of an interpretation, itself dogmatic, of the Islamic revelation of the One. Nothing of what has been so laboriously secularized in the forms of the "political," of "democracy," of "international law," and even in the nontheological form of sovereignty (assuming, again, that the value of sovereignty can be completely secularized or detheologized, a hypothesis about which I have my doubts), none of this seems to have any place whatsoever in the discourse "bin Laden." That is why, in this unleashing of violence without name, if I had to take one of the two sides and choose in a binary situation, well, I would. Despite my very strong reservations about the American, indeed European, political posture, about the "international antiterrorist" coalition, despite all the de facto betrayals, all the failures to live up to democracy, international law, and the very international institutions that the states of this "coalition" themselves founded and supported up to a certain point, I would take the side of the camp that, in principle, by right of law, leaves a perspective open to perfectibility in the name of the "political," democracy, international law, international institutions, and so on. Even if this "in the name of" is still merely an assertion and a purely verbal commitment. Even in its most cynical mode, such an assertion still lets resonate within it an invincible promise. I don't hear any such promise coming from "bin Laden," at least not one for this world.

Borradori: It seems that you place your hopes in the authority of international law.

Derrida: Yes. In the first place, as imperfect as they may be, these international institutions should be respected in their deliberations and their resolutions by the sovereign states who are members of them and who have thus subscribed to their charters. I mentioned just a moment ago the serious failings of certain "Western" states with regard to these commitments. Such failings would stem from at least two series of causes.

First, they would have to do with the very structure of the axioms and principles of these systems of law and thus of the charters and conventions that institutionalize them. Reflection (of what I would call a "deconstructive" type) should thus, it seems to me, without diminishing or destroying these axioms and principles, question and refound them, endlessly refine and universalize them, without becoming discouraged by the aporias such work must necessarily encounter.

But second, such failings, in the case of states as powerful as the United States and Israel (which is supported by the U.S.), are not subject to any dissuasive sanctions. The United Nations has neither the force nor the means for such sanctions. It is thus necessary to do everything possible (a formidable and imposing task for the very long term) to ensure that these current failings in the present state of these institutions are effectively sanctioned and, in truth, discouraged in advance by a new organization. This would mean that an institution such as the UN (once modified in its structure and charter—and I'm thinking here particularly of the Security Council) would have to have at its disposal an effective intervening force and thus no longer have to depend in order to carry out its decisions on rich and powerful, actually or virtually hegemonic, nation-states, which bend the law in accordance with their force and according to their interests. Sometimes quite cynically.

I'm not unaware of the apparently utopic character of the horizon I'm sketching out here, that of an international institution of law and an international court of justice with their own autonomous force. Though I do not hold law to be the last word in ethics, politics, or anything else, though this unity of force and law (which is required by the very concept of law, as Kant explains so well) is not only utopic but aporetic (since it implies that beyond the sovereignty of the nation-state, indeed beyond democratic sovereignty—whose ontotheological foundations must be deconstructed—we would nonetheless be reconstituting a new figure, though not necessarily state-related, of universal sovereignty, of absolute law with an effective autonomous force at its disposal), I continue to believe that it is faith in the possibility of this impossible and, in truth, undecidable thing from the point of view of knowledge, science, and conscience that must govern all our decisions.

Borradori: It might be said that this terrorist attack was, in one sense, an attack against the principle of sovereignty that the United States has over its own land, yet also an attack on the sovereign role the United States plays vis-à-vis the Western world, at once politically, economically, and culturally. Have these two attacks destabilized the concept of sovereignty as it has been developed by Western modernity?

Derrida: Those called "terrorists" are not, in this context, "others," absolute others whom we, as "Westerners," can no longer understand. We must not forget that they were often recruited, trained, and even armed, and for a long time, in various Western ways by a Western world that itself, in the course of its ancient as well as very recent history, invented the word, the techniques, and the "politics" of "terrorism." Next, one has to divide, or at least differentiate, all the "wholes" or "groups" to which we might be tempted to attribute responsibility for this terrorism. It's not "the Arabs" in general, nor Islam, nor the Arab Islamic Middle East. Each of these groups is heterogeneous, filled with tensions, conflicts, and essential contradictions, with, in truth, what we have been calling self-destructive, quasi-suicidal, autoimmunitary processes. The same goes for the "West." What is, to my eyes, very important for the future, and I will return to this later, is also a difference, indeed up to a certain point and within certain limits, an opposition, between the United States (or let's say, more honestly, so as not to be too unfair to American society, what dominates and even governs in the United States) and a certain Europe. And precisely in relationship to the problems we are discussing. For the "coalition" that has just formed around the United States remains fragile and heterogeneous. It is not only Western, and the "front" without front of this "war" without war does not pit the West against the East or against the Far East (indeed China ended up joining, in its own way, the coalition), or the Middle East, where every country condemned, more or less sincerely, the terrorism and agreed to fight it. Some are doing so with rhetoric alone, others by providing military and logistical support. As for the European nations and NATO, their commitment to the so-called "coalition" remains very complex; it varies from one country to the next and public opinion is far from being won over to the American initiatives. The shifts in these alliances, the warming in relations between Putin's Russia and Bush's United States, the at least partial solidarity of China in the same struggle, are changing the geopolitical landscape and strengthening, though also complicating, the American position, which needs all these agreements in order to act.

What would give me the most hope in the wake of all these upheavals is a potential difference between a new figure of Europe and the United States. I say this without any Eurocentrism. Which is why I am speaking of a new figure of Europe. Without forsaking its own memory, by drawing upon it, in fact, as an indispensable resource, Europe could make an essential contribution to the future of the international law we have been discussing. I hope that there will be, "in Europe," "philosophers" able to measure up to the task (I use quotation marks here because these "philosophers" of European tradition will not necessarily be professional philosophers but jurists, politicians, citizens, even European noncitizens; and I use them because they might be "European," "in Europe," without living in the territory of a nationstate in Europe, finding themselves in fact very far away, distance and territory no longer having the significance they once did). But I persist in using this name "Europe," even if in quotation marks, because, in the long and patient deconstruction required for the transformation to come, the experience Europe inaugurated at the time of the Enlightenment (Lumières, Aufklärung, Illuminismo) in the relationship between the political and the theological or, rather, the religious, though still uneven, unfulfilled, relative, and complex, will have left in European political space absolutely original marks with regard to religious doctrine (notice I'm not saying with regard to religion or faith but with regard to the authority of religious doctrine over the political). Such marks can be found neither in the Arab world nor in the Muslim world, nor in the Far East, nor even, and here's the most sensitive point, in American democracy, in what in fact governs not the principles but the predominant reality of American political culture. This final point is complex and tricky. For such a philosophical "deconstruction" would have to operate not against something we would call the "United States" but against what today constitutes a certain American hegemony, one that actually dominates or marginalizes something in the U.S.'s own history, something that is also related to that strange "Europe" of the more or less incomplete Enlightenment I was talking about.

Source

Beauty Contest for nuns

2008-08-28T02:59:00.000-07:00

Image: Sophia Loren in White Sister (1972) displays an inner beauty to aspire to

Times online reports:

"An Italian priest is holding a beauty contest with a difference — it will be open only to nuns.

Father Antonio Rungi, of Mondrag-one, near Naples, said he expected at least 1,000 nuns to enter the Sister Italia contest. It would run online at first, but he hoped that it would become a “real pageant” along the lines of the annual Miss Italy contest."

Where is orthodoxy going? Recently the Russian church commented on the incident.

A Maoist Prime Minister in Nepal

2008-08-16T03:12:00.001-07:00

Pushpa kamal Dahar has been elected the PM of the newly formed Nepal Government. He was voted by 464 candidates while his opponent Sher Bahadur Dueba from Nepali Congress got 113 votes. Nepal blog reports:

"In what will go on the pages of the history books as one of the most important days of Nepal, Maoist revolutionary (and leader of an outfit that was branded terrorist until two years ago) Pushpa Kamal Dahal (aka Prachanda) has been elected the Prime Minister of Nepal by a majority of votes in the Constituent Assembly..."

Bangladesh wins Silver in Beijing for National Anthem

2008-08-14T03:43:00.000-07:00

From 205 countries and their national anthems ours is chosen to be musically 'of quality' after that of Uruguay. Thanks to Rabindranath Tagore. The ranking is done by Alex Marshall, freelance journalist and specialist on music.

He says "National anthems are the same the world over - a short, classical piece meant to stir up pride", and on "Amar Sonar Bangla", "...A wonderful anthem that sounds like it was written for a stroll along the Seine..."

The Rank:
1. Uruguay
2. Bangladesh
3. Tajikistan
4. Mauritania
5. Dominica
6. US Virgin Isles
7. Senegal
8. Nigeria
9. Nepal
10. Japan

War against Iran ?

2008-08-12T01:41:00.000-07:00

Centre of research on Globalization reports today that US imperialism and its jointly allied force is planning for a Naval Blockade and war against Iran. It says:

....This was the joint US/UK/French naval war games in the Atlantic Ocean preparing for a naval blockade of Iran and the likely resulting war in the Persian Gulf area. The massive war games included a US Navy supercarrier battle group, an US Navy expeditionary carrier battle group, a Royal Navy carrier battle group, a French nuclear hunter-killer submarine plus a large number of US Navy cruisers, destroyers and frigates playing the "enemy force"......They are joining two existing USN battle groups in the Gulf area: the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN72) with its Carrier Strike Group Nine (CCSG-9); and the USS Peleliu (LHA-5) with its expeditionary strike group........

Picture of the day : from Olympic

2008-08-11T14:00:00.000-07:00

In 1992, I had first seen Olympics in TV, before that i had only read them in the "General Knowledge" kind of books, and wondered how USSR and USA were fighting each other in the Olympics. That time, I liked the US Flag and i was not happy that CIS was topping the list of medals. It was always politics in Olympics. Also going on now in 2008. AFP on Bush's current odyssey in Beijing"Bush trip to Asia a mix of sports and politics".

Thanks to the two athletes of Georgia and Russia, that they did act in a way that a stupid human being is also supposed to do. link

World in War again

2008-08-11T13:45:00.000-07:00

This week though olympic, the greatest sport event of our time had its way on in Beijing, the attention was drawn by the Georgian attack in South Ossetia followed by the clash between Russian and Georgia. Russia blames NATO and US for making Georgia to start the aggression, while the Georgians are saying, "the russian aggression must not go unanswered". Thousands of people are already killed, though Georgia are claiming less than that.

Chomsky says:

"What's happening seems to me obscure. In Russia, the Putin-Khodorkovsky affair
looks like a battle between two mafias, one state-centered, the other
oligarchy-centered. But information is too low credibility to be confident, at
least what I've seen. I don't see much of an issue of democracy. And when we
are told how Bush looks into Putin's soul and finds a comrade -- need anything
more be said? Undoubtedly the NSC is worried about "the investment and
business climate." And the "rule of law" insofar as it maintains that
properly. How about the "rule of law" in Chechnya? That's someone else's
department.

Have nothing useful to say about what's happening in Georgia."- link

One question that i can't answer: "Why USA are fearing Russia? the nationalism??" - it seems obscure to me. just joking.

Latest News

2008-05-26T11:55:00.000-07:00

America started to contact the Nepal's Maoist government though they called them terrorist few years back. Nepal blog Reports.

News says that Bangladesh has the drafts ready for a truth commission. Another process by which the current government try to make their stay steady.

It was probably yesterday that i heard that the Rohinga refugees of Myanmar were given voting rights. Another news says, "Myanmar refugees in Bangladesh say won't return".

Communist party membership no longer a fireable offence in California

2008-05-22T14:43:00.000-07:00

Guardian reports:

The California Senate yesterday passed legislation that would delete membership in the Communist party as a reason for firing a public employee, a Cold War-era prohibition intended to root out communists.

Democratic Senator Alan Lowenthal called communism a "failed system," and said his bill - Senate Bill 1322 - was intended to protect "the constitutional freedoms that we have fought so valiantly for," including freedom of political affiliation.

California is the only state that allows public employees to be dismissed for membership in a political party.

In addition, current law requires that any organisation that applies to use a public school facility can be asked to sign a statement that "the applicant is not a communist action organisation or a communist front".

"SB 1322 seeks to protect the rights of free speech and political affiliation by repealing the no-longer necessary statute from the books," Lowenthal said.

The bill, he said, would "still allow employees to be fired for any activity to overthrow the state or federal government".

The legislation, which will now be considered by the assembly, was approved on a 24-15 vote, with Democrats in support and Republicans opposed.

Republican senator Jeff Denham warned: "the Communist party is not a dead organisation ... and [is] actively repressing human beings in Cuba and China in brutal ways.

"The state has every right to hold school employees accountable for their political standing, especially if that employee belongs to an organisation that favours the violent overthrow of the government," Denham said during the debate on the bill.

Denham said that it's also "reasonable that use of public school property should be limited to groups who support our democracy and do not advocate the overthrow of government by force, violence or other possible means."

But Lowenthal argued, "the communist party does not advocate the overthrow of the U.S. government.

"This is a very conservative bill," he said. "[It] says we must uphold the constitution."

The legislature cannot repeal California's loyalty oath, which was added to the state constitution by voters in 1952, but its current use was debated yesterday.

The oath requires public employees in California to swear to "defend" the US and California constitutions "against all enemies, foreign and domestic".

The law is sporadically enforced, but since the end of the Cold War some potential employees - including Quakers and Jehovah's Witnesses - have declined to sign the pledge over religious or political issues.

In a recent high-profile case, California State University, Fullerton, cancelled the appointment of an American Studies lecturer after she declined to sign the oath.

Problems in Nepal

2008-05-22T14:36:00.000-07:00

If elections are the way to measure popularity then Maoists are the largest in Nepal. But the recent conditions in Nepal are serious and the party has a lots of challenges to follow:

"CPN-Maoist activists of Rautahat district today burnt down the effigy of party Chairman Prachanda and demanded for his resignation in protests of the inclusion of no nominees from the district by the party leadership in the closed list for proportional representation system. This is the first incident of open protests against Maoist Chairman Prachanda by activist from his own party. The activists have also alleged that non-Madhesis have been nominated in the Madhesi quotas in the party’s closed list. They claimed that the PR list submitted by the party has emphasized on the hilly region and demanded the party’s central committee to amend the list. The activists have also burnt down the effigy of lawmaker Prabhu Sah. The Maoist became the largest political party in the recent CA elections"

"the power! It changes people, makes people and breaks people. Most people that is, and Maoists are included. It appears that there is a serious power struggle going on within the Maoist party. Baburam Bhattarai versus supporters of Prachanda, the chairman. Today’s op-ed article in Kantipur daily by Bishwodeep Pandey, personal secretary of Baburam Bhattarai, brings the feud to the public. The article, in Nepali, titled “Baburam a New Pushpalal?” refers to the latest verbal attacks against Baburam by some “opportunist elements inside and outside the party.”Click here to read the article in Nepali. Click here to read as it appeared in the newspaper’s page."

Link to United we blog, nepal

A Comedian’s Perspective on Pakistan

2008-05-07T04:13:00.000-07:00

Kalsoom reports an interview of a pakistani comedian who is trying to send messeges via satire. The name of that man is Saad Haroon.

"...In any country, satire is a very powerful tool used to convey social and political messeges and Pakistan is no different. Recently, with the advent of so many new channels and the freedom given to the media, people have seen a new wave of political satire shows that always prove to be the most popular on television. And even when the media was not free, satire shows like ‘ 50/50′ would always find a way to convey their messages whilst working under strict censorship laws..."

The Politics of Cluster Bombs

2008-05-06T10:51:00.000-07:00

Asia Times Online reports :

" .... Nang Wan lies in a hospital bed in this remote area's provincial hospital, her body covered in small black wounds. The 35-year-old woman was digging a shallow drainage ditch around her house on April 16 when her world exploded.

Her youngest, five-year-old, son was killed instantly in the blast. Her other two young children are in the room across the hall, with shrapnel wounds to their bodies and faces. Their injuries are tragically common in this northern province of Laos, a legacy of the country's war with the United States.

During the US's so-called "Secret War" in Laos, which spanned from 1964-1973, the US military dropped more than 2.4 million tons of bombs on the country, including around 270 million cluster bomb sub-munitions..."

Photography: Saiful Haque Omi

2008-05-02T13:52:00.000-07:00

A photography exhibition started from yesterday at the Drik gallery(dhanmondi Rd 27). It would remain open from 3-8 pm till 10th of May. The show titles "Partnership in Practice".

Back to his earlier works, I found some today from Zahid sir's table. "Heroes never die:; Political Violence in Bangladesh 1989-2005".

Link to the Daily Star Forum link that I found later > link

Paraguay’s Man of God and Politics

2008-04-26T11:10:00.000-07:00

Earlier we know that the Bank of South is formed in Latin America to get rid of the IMF of World Bank. Thats a great news so far as the unity of South American countries are concerned against capitalist west. Here is an wonderful interview of Chomsky.

Marxist.com reports on Fernando lugo:

...A self-confessed "Bishop of the Poor," Fernando Armindo Lugo Méndez is a former Roman Catholic priest of 30 years. He will be sworn in as President 31 years to the day of his ordination, which he had to renounce on January 11th 2005 before he could, in his own words, collaborate in "the search for solutions to the country's problems."...

in Wikipedia

The Nigerian judiciary and electoral fraud

2008-04-25T10:37:00.000-07:00

In Nigeria last year, again there was fraud on a grand scale, in fact on a scale never seen in the past. The leaders of the western powers may fool themselves that there is real democracy in Nigeria or, to put it better they fool the general public that that is so. The masses in Nigeria know full well that the elections were not fair. They know that there was blatant fraud, stealing of ballot boxes, falsification of results, physical threats and even murder.

Full article at: marxist.com

60 Jumma Houses Burnt Down In Sajek

2008-04-21T23:02:00.000-07:00

ILLEGAL Bengali settlers backed by a strong contingent of army personnel have burnt down at least 60 Jumma houses in four villages under Sajek Union of Rangamati district. Many Jummas are reported to have been wounded and women raped during the attack that began at 9:45 p.m. on 20 April. Details of the incident are yet to come.

Sources said tension had been mounting in the area since the settlers began constructing houses in March after grabbing Jumma people's lands.

Sensing an impending attack, the Jummas, 50 - 60 of them, gathered at a point of the village to defend themselves. This somehow leaked to the army who went up to them and asked them not to worry. "Since we are here, nothing will happen and settlers will not attack you" an RP Habilder, Harun, was reported to have told the Jummas.

The CO (Commanding Officer) of Baghaihat zone was also present there. However, he did not speak to the Jummas.

While the army engaged the Jummas in talks, a group of Bengali settlers mounted an attack on four Jumma villages namely Gangaram Mukh, Simana Chara, Purbo Para and Baibachara.

They torched the houses, beat up whomever they caught hold of and raped the Jumma girls and women. However, details as to how any have been raped and wounded could not be known immediately.

The Hill Students Council, a front organisation of the United People's Democratic Front, will hold a demonstration in Dhaka later in the day, today, in protest against the barbarous Sajek settler attack.

April 21, 2008

Rail line links London with Bangladesh

2008-04-20T05:15:00.000-07:00

RAIL enthusiasts with a sense of adventure and 23 days to spare will be able to travel by train from London to Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital, when a new link opens later this year and it would be the longest rail route of the world longer than the trans-siberian one. Times Online reports:

"...The 7,000-mile Trans-Asia railway will follow one of the old Silk Roads through Istanbul, Tehran, Lahore and Delhi....The UN said the link would open up new trade routes within Asia and give the former Soviet republics of central Asia rail access to Iran’s strategic sea port at Bandar Abbas on the Gulf....."

Politics is the price of rice

2008-04-20T01:11:00.000-07:00

Here is an excellent article by Rahnuma Ahmed published in New Age April 14,2008:

Recently, the chief adviser, in the light of accusations of poor food distribution, said shortages occur even in countries which have elected governments. Of course they do. That is not the point. The new system of corruption is individualistic, sector-oriented, and technocrat-elitist. It is not tied to constituencies and vote banks which have a nationwide spread, albeit with party lines of exclusion and inclusion. The new system is an introverted one. When it comes to food and other resources, the distribution is random. It is queue-oriented, linear. It does not encompass. Its reach is limited. Most are left out,  writes Rahnuma Ahmed*

BHAT dey haramjada (Give rice, you bastard) – screamed the graffiti on a wall. It had stunned pedestrians in Dhaka. This was 1974. 

In early March, six months before the famine had reached its peak, news of starvation deaths could be heard. Two to three months later, they had become common enough. Occasionally, dead bodies could be seen lying on the street. What had caused the famine of 1974? Amartya Sen, a Nobel Laureate, says that it was a reduction in the ability of people to command food through legal means available in society – in their entitlements to food – that led to the famine. Food crisis, says Sen, is caused not by food shortage but by the shortage of income and purchasing power. On a person’s ability to command commodities, particularly food, under entitlement relations. Starvation and famine are not only economic, says Sen. These are multi-dimensional subjects, they include social, political and legal issues. If groups of people lack purchasing power they can starve, even though markets are well-stocked. Even though food prices are low. 

What had caused the famine of 1974? For Devinder Sharma, it was the US government’s decision to withhold 2.2 million tonnes of food aid that was at fault. The US government had wanted to ensure that the Mujib regime ‘abandoned plans to try Pakistani war criminals’. When the Bangladesh finance minister had called upon the US secretary of state, in August 1973, to appeal for food aid, the latter had advised the speedy settlement of disputes with Pakistan. Referring to Bangladesh government’s proposal of ‘war crimes’ trials of the Pakistan army, he had said it was ‘not good to have such trials’. ‘Humanity’ had never learned from war crimes trials, he said. Of course, the Americans had good reasons for saying so. The US ex-secretary of state Henry Kissinger’s name had repeatedly come up. War objectors had demanded that he be tried for US massacres in Vietnam, for America’s role in Bangladesh’s liberation war. That humanity never learns is best exemplified by the US and its allies. Pakistan. Israel. Humanity never learns unless, of course, the criminals are Nazis or Serbians. 

But that is not the end of ‘famine is a political weapon’ for the US story. Pressure on the Mujib government returned. In 1974, the US ambassador said no food aid would be given to Bangladesh if it exported jute to Cuba. The Mujib government gave in to US pressure. Jute exports to Cuba were stopped, but by the time food shipments reached, it was too late. Most famine victims had succumbed. 

Were there other causes? Some researchers say successive natural disasters, floods and droughts had prefaced the food crisis. Others mention the Awami League government’s lack of foresight in importing foods. In directing subsidised food to the politically vocal urban population, at horrific costs to far poorer rural people. Others stress political and administrative corruption which had encouraged massive hoarding, and the smuggling of food-grains. Many others say it was the gross mismanagement of the economy. 

Why do I rehearse these instances from history? Because there are lessons to be learnt. Because it is not enough for either the chief adviser, his advisers, or the army chief to repeatedly say there is no shortage of rice, the markets are well-stocked, more rice is being imported, it will reach soon. Simplistic reasoning, simplistic assertions are not enough. There have been too many famines, too many deaths. Each death was one too many. We must learn from history. That lessons are not being learnt is obvious from what is being said. From the little that is being done. The rice queues keep getting longer. 

In 1974 too, world food prices had risen. But the situation is far more grave now. Hard-hit consumers across the globe are protesting. Mexicans rioted in December 2007. Tortilla prices had jumped up; in some parts of Mexico, it was four times higher. In Indonesia, people have protested against the rise in soybean prices. In Burkina Faso, protestors attacked government offices and shops. Demonstrations have also taken place in Guinea, Mauritania, Morocco, Senegal, Uzbekistan, Yemen. Severe weather, rising population, rapid increases in demand for food grain (China, India), speculation in commodity markets are listed as reasons. Also, a growing trend to turn food into fuel. Four hundred and fifty pounds of maize can be converted into enough ethanol to fill the 25-gallon tank of an SUV with pure ethanol at one time. Or it can be used to provide enough calories to feed one person for a year. The competition between food and fuel is encouraged by governmental subsidies given to biofuel in western countries. In non-western nations, that those hardest hit should be provided with income support to help them purchase food is something all concerned agree upon. Simultaneously, it is agreed that governments should increase their investments in agriculture in order to improve agricultural productivity. 

The situation in Bangladesh is made peculiar because of its rule by a caretaker government. Because of the fifteen-month-long state of emergency. Recently, the chief adviser, in the light of accusations of poor food distribution, said shortages occur even in countries which have elected governments. Of course they do. That is not the point. The new system of corruption is individualistic, sector-oriented, and technocrat-elitist. It is not tied to constituencies and vote banks which have a nationwide spread, albeit with party lines of exclusion and inclusion. The new system is an introverted one. When it comes to food and other resources, the distribution is random. It is queue-oriented, linear. It does not encompass. Its reach is limited. Most are left out.   

The army chief’s versatile kitchen 

The army chief, General Moeen U Ahmed, had said, on a visit to Chelopara in Bogra, Bangladeshis should increase the intake of potato in their daily diet. ‘We should not depend only on rice. Of course, we will eat rice but we must increase the intake of potato.’ That will reduce the food crisis, specially the pressure on rice. Potato yields this year have been very high. 

A few days later, General Moeen invited the country’s leading editors to the army headquarters. The meeting was followed by a lunch where nine potato dishes were served with plain rice, fresh salad, fried ruhi fish. The potato-based dishes were: potato country curry, potato malai curry, potato noborotno curry, potato pudina curry, potato roller gravy, potato kofta curry, potato pulse curry, potato shak (spinach) curry. (Jaijaidin, April 9, 2008). 

The list only proves that the army chief has versatile cooks, a versatile kitchen. But that was never in doubt. Just as his promotion, or his extension was never in doubt.   

Street humour 

The language of the streets is different from the language of those who rule the land. Emergency restrictions, and the intolerable food crisis has generated jokes that comprise a secret language of sorts between common people. Food jokes, queue jokes have been common elsewhere too.

Such as this one.

A man is queuing for food in Moscow. Finally he’s had enough. He turns round to his friend and says, ‘That’s it. I’m going to kill that Gorbachev,’ and marches off.

Two hours later he comes back. ‘Well,’ says the friend, ‘did you do it?’ ‘No,’ replies the other, ‘there was an even longer queue over there.’ 

A recent joke, overheard by a friend in Muktagaccha, between two rickshawallas: 

So, shorkar says, we have to eat more potatoes. What do you say? 

Well, get those high-talking advisers over, have rice, chaff, flour, and potatoes in charis (cattle troughs), let’s see what they eat. I’ll eat what they eat. 

Nine types of any food would fill a rickshawalla’s stomach.

*Rahnuma Ahmed is an Anthropologist based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. She can be reached at: rahnuma@drik.net

Maoists Celebrate Victory in Nepal

2008-04-13T00:09:00.000-07:00

It had been a historical election in Nepal help this month accoladed by the international delegates. Blog Nepal reports:

...The Maoist’s success has demonstrated the brilliant combination of bullet and ballot to rise to the power. Chairman Prachanda will be cited as an example of success in world communist movement. His challenge: turn the flowery promises into reality....

Links and Notes

2008-04-11T23:43:00.000-07:00

Here are the links of some You Tube videos relating to the genocides of 1971 by the Pakistani army:

Bangladesh Genocide 1971 : Jogannath Hall, Dhaka University Massacre

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMg9Ly9nK0g&feature=related

Bangladesh Genocide 1971: Khulna Massacres

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Z6SgETOjug&feature=related

Bangladesh Genocide 1971: Rape Victims

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwwPbkyZVJo&feature=related

Protecting Pakistan's Hindus

Guardian reports on the state of condition of the minority hindu in Pakistan:

...Pakistan, according to many accounts, was founded as a way to protect the rights and existence of the minority Muslim population of Colonial India in the face of the larger Hindu majority. Pakistan's founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, is reported to have said in 1947: "In due course of time Hindus will cease to be Hindus and Muslims will cease to be Muslims - not in a religious sense for that is the personal faith of an individual- but in a political sense as citizens of one state." It is therefore a travesty of Pakistan's own founding principles that its Hindus - and not to exclude Christians and Ahmadis - have suffered so grossly...

When schools ‘teach' untouchability

In Gujrat, India still the teachers are practicing discriminition towards the untouchables unabashedly. DNA correspondent report:

...In village schools of Gujarat, SC children are forced to sit at the back, actively discouraged from participating in class activities, and even subjected to food and water taboos.....Dalit teachers and cooks are never allowed to serve food during the mid-day-meals to kids. Whenever Dalit cooks serve food, only Dalit children eat their mid-day meal...

Scientists find a fingerprint of evolution across the human genome

2008-04-11T11:24:00.000-07:00

[I was first introduced to the Human Genome Project while preparing my Undergrad project]
Splicing exerts selective pressure on DNA sequence

The Human Genome Project revealed that only a small fraction of the 3 billion “letter” DNA code actually instructs cells to manufacture proteins, the workhorses of most life processes. This has raised the question of what the remaining part of the human genome does. How much of the rest performs other biological functions, and how much is merely residue of prior genetic events"

Scientists from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) and the University of Chicago now report that one of the steps in turning genetic information into proteins leaves genetic fingerprints, even on regions of the DNA that are not involved in coding for the final protein. They estimate that such fingerprints affect at least a third of the genome, suggesting that while most DNA does not code for proteins, much of it is nonetheless biologically important – important enough, that is, to persist during evolution.

Conservation of genetic information

To gauge how critical a particular stretch of DNA is, biologists often look at the detailed sequence of “letters” it consists of, and compare it with a corresponding stretch in related creatures like mice. If the stretch serves no purpose, the thinking goes, the two sequences will differ because of numerous mutations since the two species last shared an ancestor. In contrast, it’s believed that the sequences of important genes will be similar, or “conserved,” in different species, because animals with mutations in these genes did not survive. Biologists therefore regard conserved sequences as a sign of biological importance.

To test for conservation, researchers need to find matching stretches in the two species. This is relatively easy for stretches that “code” for proteins, where scientists long ago learned the meaning of the sequence. For “noncoding” regions, however, the comparison is often ambiguous. Even within a gene, stretches of DNA that code for pieces of the target protein are usually interspersed with much larger noncoding stretches, called introns, that are removed from the RNA working copy of the DNA before the protein is made.

Signs of splicing

Previous researchers assumed that mutations in the middle of introns do not affect the final protein, so they simply accumulate. In the new work, however, the researchers found signs that evolution rejects some types of mutations even in these regions of the genome. Although the selection is weak, “introns are not neutral,” in their effect on survival, says CSHL professor Michael Zhang, a bioinformatics expert who headed the research team.

To look for selection, CSHL researcher Chaolin Zhang, a doctoral candidate at Stony Brook University, looked in the human genome for a subtle statistical imbalance in how often various “letters” appear. The researchers attribute this imbalance to special short stretches of DNA that mark regions to be removed. Unless these signal sequences are sprinkled throughout an intron, the data suggest, it may not be properly spliced out, with potentially fatal consequences. Other sequences must likewise be preserved in the regions to be retained.

The scientists found a preference for some “letters” across intron regions, and the opposite preference in coding regions. Together, these regions make up at least a third of the genome, which is thus under selective pressure during evolution. The result supports other recent studies that suggest that, although most DNA does not code for proteins, much of it is nonetheless biologically important.

In addition to demonstrating how splicing affects genetic evolution, the statistical analysis identified possible signaling sequences, some that were already known and others that are new. According to co-author Adrian Krainer, a CSHL professor and splicing expert, “the exciting thing will be to experimentally test whether these predicted elements are really true.”

###

“RNA landscape of evolution for optimal exon and intron discrimination” appears in the April 15, 2008 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The complete citation is as follows: Chaolin Zhang, Wen-Hsiung Li, Adrian R. Krainer, and Michael Q. Zhang. The paper is available online at http://www.pnas.org_cgi_doi_10.1073_pnas.0801692105.

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is a private, nonprofit research and education institution dedicated to exploring molecular biology and genetics in order to advance the understanding and ability to diagnose and treat cancers, neurological diseases, and other causes of human suffering.

For more information, visit www.cshl.edu.

Source : http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-04/cshl-sfa040808.php

Flowers' Fragrance Diminishing by Pollution

2008-04-11T11:03:00.000-07:00

A University of Virginia study indicates that continuous air pollution causes the scent molecules to travel less distance and as result the insects can not follow the scent trail and pollination rate diminishes. Science Daily reports:

..."The scent molecules produced by flowers in a less polluted environment, such as in the 1800s, could travel for roughly 1,000 to 1,200 meters; but in today's polluted environment downwind of major cites, they may travel only 200 to 300 meters," said Jose D. Fuentes, a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and a co-author of the study. "This makes it increasingly difficult for pollinators to locate the flowers."...

Olympics and Politics

2008-04-11T10:57:00.000-07:00

While China claims that Dalai Lama and his allies are trying to destroy Olympics Dalai Lama supports olympics in China and agrees to be present at the event if China invites as khaleejtimes says:

"If China invites him, he can attend the Beijing Olympics, but under one condition, that is there must be a relaxation of suppression in Tibet,” Prime Minister Samdong Rinpoche said in Dharamsala, the exiled government’s base in north India.

According to Reuters:

"It is really deserving for the Chinese people to host the Olympic Games," he told reporters in Japan. "(Despite) the recent unfortunate event in Tibet, my position won't change."

Islamist protest in Bangladesh

2008-04-11T10:44:00.000-07:00

Islamist organizations in Bangladesh protests against the Women Development Policy of the current Govt. Reuters said:

...Hundreds of members of a group campaigning for Islamic rule in Bangladesh clashed with police on Friday over a plan to give women equal inheritance rights...

Local daily Shamakal and Daily Star also make report.

Java No longer Free

2008-04-08T09:08:00.000-07:00

After years of offering Java for free, Sun Microsystems introduced a new model to the Java line that is fee-based, says internetnews.com.

While all the old editions will remain, for enterprises looking for extra support, there is now the Java Platform Standard Edition for Business.

This product subscription platform is designed to offer more than double the time Sun will offer support for each platform release, provide faster access to technology updates and fixes and offer enterprise deployment features for customers.

Biman Hijacked!!!

2008-04-08T04:19:00.000-07:00

A plane of a Bangladesh Airlines(Probably GMG airlines) plane made an emergency landing at Bangkok. The news says it was suspected to be hijacked.
links to the news 1 2

At least its a joke, bad joke.

On Minority

2008-04-07T14:07:00.001-07:00

I had done a small research work on the minority conditions in India and Bangladesh. During that time I found the former Prime Minister of India, Mr. Rao to have silently supported the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Two Circles.net reports:

...Addressing a press conference on 3rd April in the capital, Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) leader Ashok Singhal made sensational disclosure. He said Rao had information about the demolition and he had asked the then-RSS chief Bala Saheb Deoras to inform him about the actual act of demolition at least a day before. Babri Masjid was demolished on 6th December 1992 by thousands of Hindu fanatics while police and civil administration remained mute spectator...

A review of Minority in Pakistan by Daily Times:

...Out of Karachi's total Hindu population of 9,000, the merchant class dominated...The non-Muslims of Pakistan have had a raw deal since 1947 when they decided to remain in the new state...Hindus, Christians, Sikhs and Parsis have been short-changed by the Pakistan Muslim League on a moderate programme; the party succumbed to the hardline religious politics of the very clerics who had opposed the idea of Pakistan...The state got out of hand after 1947 and threatened the non-Muslims, and then gradually journeyed towards eating its own children

Daily Notes

2008-04-07T11:31:00.000-07:00

BJP declares to abandon the minority welfare policies taken by current Indian Government in order to consolidate their Hindu vote bank. Times of India says :

Party president Rajnath Singh, in an interview to a news agency, said the BJP would withdraw all minority-appeasement policies of the UPA government...He said his party believed in providing equal opportunity to all sections of society, especially to the economically backward among all communities..."If NDA comes to power, we will cancel all schemes announced by UPA government on the basis of religion," Singh said.

This is revealing the fundamentalist nature of the party.

Srilanka watch reports another minority leader has been assassinated in Srilanka today by LTTE.

Dr. Julia Ljubimova found that air pollution may cause serious brain damage. Last night I was reading a comprehension on the diseased that is created by the enormous stress that the astronauts undergo during their space travels.

The daily times reports that more than 50 rivers of Philipines are endangered due to the pollution.

...Fifty rivers in the Philippines have been destroyed because people are using them to dump their rubbish, leaving some ecologically dead, an official said Wednesday.

Some days ago when I was reading some parts of the book "Power and Terror" I found Turkey to be a great ally of USA and how USA tolerates the crimes or state terrors of Turkey. Have a look:
....It has become a matter of dogma for the foreign policy establishment and much of the American media that Turkey is a "secular democracy". On the basis of strategic considerations and mythical views about the alleged moderation of Turkey, the Western world has stood by and tolerated acts of terror and violence against peaceful Christian communities that would have been denounced and opposed had they occurred elsewhere...