বিভাগ/বিষয় নিরপেক্ষ

সুপারিশকৃত লিন্ক: মে ২০১৩

আজকের লিন্ক

মুক্তাঙ্গন-এ উপরোক্ত শিরোনামের নিয়মিত এই সিরিজটিতে থাকছে দেশী বিদেশী পত্রপত্রিকা, ব্লগ ও গবেষণাপত্র থেকে পাঠক সুপারিশকৃত ওয়েবলিন্কের তালিকা। কী ধরণের বিষয়বস্তুর উপর লিন্ক সুপারিশ করা যাবে তার কোনো নির্দিষ্ট নিয়ম, মানদণ্ড বা সময়কাল নেই। পুরো ইন্টারনেট থেকে যা কিছু গুরত্বপূর্ণ, জরুরি, মজার বা আগ্রহোদ্দীপক মনে করবেন পাঠকরা, তা-ই তাঁরা মন্তব্য আকারে উল্লেখ করতে পারেন এখানে।
ধন্যবাদ।

আজকের লিন্ক

এখানে থাকছে দেশী বিদেশী পত্রপত্রিকা, ব্লগ ও গবেষণাপত্র থেকে পাঠক সুপারিশকৃত ওয়েবলিন্কের তালিকা। পুরো ইন্টারনেট থেকে যা কিছু গুরত্বপূর্ণ, জরুরি, মজার বা আগ্রহোদ্দীপক মনে করবেন পাঠকরা, তা-ই সুপারিশ করুন এখানে। ধন্যবাদ।

১৮ comments

  1. মাসুদ করিম - ২ মে ২০১৩ (১:০৫ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    একসাথে এত পোষাক কারখানা পৃথিবীর আর কোথায় পাওয়া যাবে? বিশ্বব্যাপী পোষাক শিল্পের স্বার্থেই বাংলাদেশের এই বিশেষত্বের প্রতি বিশেষ নজর দেয়া উচিত দেশি বিদেশি ক্রেতা বিক্রেতা সবাইকে, আর সরকারের উচিত এর সার্বিক উন্নয়নে পোষাক শিল্পের কাজের পরিবেশ যথাযথ রাখার যথাসাধ্য প্রচেষ্টার প্রয়োগ নিশ্চিত করা।

    962375fd-5ac7-40ed-9954-cbab58d32e16.img

    Tragedies in Bangladesh are preventable and must be stopped

    Western companies should not withdraw from the country but work to raise standards

    It is easy to forget. Most of us work in buildings where safety can largely be taken for granted, and fire drills are annoying disruptions in which a security official seizes the chance to talk loudly and repeatedly on the public address system, stopping us from doing any work.

    In the past, that was not true of US and European textile factories. The collapse of the Pemberton mill in Massachusetts in 1860, and the fire at Triangle Shirtwaist factory in Manhattan in 1911 each killed about 145 workers, mostly women. That helped to establish the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union and led to health and safety laws.

    The collapse of the Rana Plaza textile factories should be a watershed for Bangladesh. But the deaths of more than 400 women, who made garments for retailers such as Primark and Mango, will not be enough. Previous disasters, such as the Tazreen Fashions fire last November, in which at least 110 workers died, did not change attitudes.

    The only thing that could is concerted action by western retailers and brands to enforce the conditions for higher standards on Bangladesh’s 5,000 ready-made-garment factories. Without that, it will fail to overcome lack of will, poor governance and corruption, and will squander its best chance of strong growth.

    The first thing western companies need to do is the simplest: to stay in the country and to keep providing jobs for women, not to withdraw because they fear being tainted by association. Despite everything, the industry provides better-paid jobs than the alternative – working on rural farms – and has helped to emancipate women.

    “In principle, the chance for women to get out of the home and to gain money, status and independence, which used not to happen, is welcome. The last thing we want is for a boycott to stop that,” says Rachel Wilshaw, Oxfam’s ethical trade manager .

    It has also helped Bangladesh as a whole. As with China, basic factory jobs have been crucial in improving living standards. Although still poor compared with other south Asian economies, its poverty rate has fallen from 60 per cent of the population in 1992 to about 30 per cent, according to the World Bank.

    Poverty fell rapidly in the first decade of the century as western companies shifted production from an overheating China to south Asian countries including Bangladesh, Vietnam and Cambodia. “The light is starting to shine ever brighter on Bangladesh,” wrote McKinsey, the consultants, last year.

    With wages rising in China, Bangladeshi workers – whose minimum wage is now $37 a month – are a bargain. The World Bank estimates that productivity in well-run factories is on a par with China, while wages are about a fifth of China’s average. Bangladesh also has capacity – its 5,000 garment factories compare with 2,000 in Vietnam and 250 in Cambodia.

    Many factories, however, are not at all well-run. Bangladesh estimates that it has 7m child workers; fires and collapses are common; working conditions are routinely poor; labour organisers are victimised. Apparel companies and suppliers told McKinsey that only 50 to 100 of the 5,000 factories had “very high” compliance standards.

    That creates an opportunity. The gulf in wages and capacity between Bangladesh and its rivals means it can raise standards and improve conditions without threatening its competitive advantage. “Bangladesh could still be a low-cost country without being exploitative or dangerous,” says Peter McAllister, executive director of the Ethical Trading Initiative.

    The second thing brands and retailers must do is band together. The factories they directly oversee in export zones tend to be better run. But they exert weak influence over the contractors and subcontractors that comprise most of the industry. Retailers use auditors to inspect suppliers but lack the information or power to stop abuses.

    Rana Plaza shows the difficulties. Planning and building controls are lax in Bangladesh and there is no simple way to check whether a factory is properly built. Raising building standards is beyond the power of any single company – it needs concerted action.

    Collectively, companies could push the government to overcome the obstacles of corruption, hidden army influence and factory owners who double as politicians. They hold the buying power in a sector that makes up 13 per cent of gross domestic product.

    The third imperative, which comes least easily, is to open the doors to unions. Bangladesh has a dismal human rights record in relation to organised labour. Aminul Islam, a prominent activist, was abducted and killed in April, having previously been harassed and beaten.

    The refusal of managers at Rana Plaza to listen to workers’ concerns was one cause of the disaster. Cracks had been noticed in the eight-storey building and some other businesses had closed, but the textile managers told them to go inside.

    John Sifton, Asia advocacy director of Human Rights Watch, notes that retailers such as Walmart tend to “look upon organised labour as a pain in the ass”. In Bangladesh, however, labour activists – and workers themselves – can be a better source of information on potential problems than managers.

    The industry can play a big role in getting Bangladesh over the hurdle to being a middle-income country. It is also a force for equality in a Muslim country where female emancipation is contested.

    But it is unacceptable for hundreds of workers to die in preventable industrial tragedies that were largely eliminated a century ago in other countries. It must stop.

    john.gapper@ft.com

  2. মাসুদ করিম - ৮ মে ২০১৩ (৪:২২ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    পাকিস্তানের নির্বাচনী প্রচারকে জঙ্গি হানার লক্ষ্য করে রক্তবন্যা বইয়ে দিচ্ছে তেহরিক-ই-তালেবান ও অন্যান্য চরমপন্থী ইসলামবাদী সন্ত্রাসীরা। মূলত হামলা হচ্ছে পাকিস্তান পিপলস পার্টি, আওয়ামী ন্যাশনাল পার্টি ও মুত্তাহিদা কওমি মুভমেন্ট এই তিন দলের নির্বাচনী সমাবেশে। কিন্তু এতকিছুর পরও এই রাজনৈতিক দলগুলো একদিনের জন্যও তাদের নির্বাচনী প্রচারণা বন্ধ করছে না। পাকিস্তানের গণতান্ত্রিক এই দলগুলোর সাহসী অগ্রযাত্রা তাদেরকে কী ফল এনে দেবে ১১ মে’র নির্বাচনে? অনেকে যদিও আশা করছেন তালেবানদের সহযোগিতা পেয়ে নওয়াজ শরিফের মুসলিম লীগ ও ইমরান খানের তেহরিক-ই-ইনসাফ ভাল ফল করবে — কিন্তু অনেকে মনে করছে নানা প্রতিকূলতার মধ্যে প্রচার চালিয়ে যাওয়া পাকিস্তান পিপলস পার্টি, আওয়ামী ন্যাশনাল পার্টি ও মুত্তাহিদা কওমি মুভমেন্টই ভাল ফল করবে। ব্যক্তিগতভাবে আমারও মনে হচ্ছে ওই তিনটি দলই ভাল ফল করবে।

    As Election Bloodbath Continues, Parties Solider On

    So far, Awami National Party, Muttahida Qaumi Movement and Peoples Party are on the hit list of militant group Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). The increasing attacks within the past few days have raised a lot of questions about the credibility of the upcoming elections – the violence has also helped create a rift among various political groups.

    MQM’s Farooq Sattar says that the act of not condemning the attacks is not only selfish but also indifferent. “They (political parties) need to understand that they can be in a similar situation too,” Sattar said, adding that, he fails to understand what the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) and the interim government is up to, in the wake of attacks on three major political parties. “My question is, are these militants even bigger than the law enforcing agencies and the ECP, to openly declare war on three political parties, while leaving out the rest?”

    In order to answer similar security and safety questions, an All Parties Conference was held in Karachi on April 30, attended by 22 political parties. But the general secretary of ANP, Bashir Jan, spoke vehemently against it. It was held to make political parties sign the code of conduct prepared by the ECP, says Jan. “When I complained to the chief minister that their rules are not being followed, he ‘requested’ the party involved to please follow the rules. So, I asked him to make an appeal to the terrorists as well, if something can be achieved by appealing,” he added.

    Haroon Bilour (R), an Awami National Party (ANP) candidate for the upcoming elections, meets constituents seeking help for problems at his house in Peshawar, May 2, 2013. Since April, the Pakistani Taliban have killed more than 70 people in attacks targeting three major political parties – the Awami National Party (ANP), the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM), preventing many of their most prominent candidates from openly campaigning.

    With a recent attack on ANP that killed one of its candidates on a general seat, Sadiq Zaman Khattak, along with his four-year-old son in Karachi’s Korangi area, the party is seriously reconsidering its election campaign. Bashir Jan says that they have decided not to take out rallies or hold huge gatherings; rather, their workers will go door-to-door and ask for votes. “But we’ll contest elections, irrespective,” he added firmly.

    Amid reports of a threat on Bilawal Bhutto’s life, the PPP has chosen to keep its election campaign “constituency specific” senator Taj Haider explained. He said the party is focusing on distributing door-to-door pamphlets and believes that irrespective of the circumstances, the election result will be good. “There’s a handicap for sure. But it all depends on the day of result. I think a low profile campaigning won’t affect the results.”

    But MQM’s Sattar, who said they were also making a door-to-door request for votes, pointed out the recent attacks on election offices, affected their campaign.

    An ECP spokesperson, who was not authorised to speak to the media, said that the provincial government is responsible for ensuring law and order and security of the polling staff as well as political groups. The spokesperson said that in a meeting with the National Crisis Management Cell on April 25 last month, it was outlined that ECP’s job is to make sure the elections are held in time. It was also decided in the same meeting that a response team of 70,000 law enforcement officials will be spread across the country for the Election Day. There’ll be 50 teams per polling stations, apart from local police and levies etc and 500 officials per district. The spokesperson added that the ECP is also holding talks with the military as well. When countered whether the upcoming elections are going to be free and fair, the spokesperson responded: “The atmosphere can’t be ideal, as it is not ideal anywhere in the world.”

    In a ninth terror strike in Karachi, the interim government and ECP have come under severe criticism from political parties being attacked. Special advisor to Interim Chief Minster, Sindh, Khursheed Memon said that the anger is understandable. He said that political parties are rightly protesting and criticising. According to Memon, “We have a police force of 67,000 and 15,000 polling stations across Sindh. We do have handicaps but have a procedure to take care of it too.” Speaking about the fairness of the upcoming elections being questioned by political parties, Memon said that the ECP as well as the interim government was appointed by the political parties themselves, “so there’s no point questioning the fairness of the election now.”

    President of the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (Pildat), Ahmed Bilal Mehboob, believes that the elections are “not as free and fair” as they were expecting it to be. There is a new threat, he says, which was not there before. He said that separatists in Balochistan are targeting election offices without any distinction of religion, ethnicity or party affiliation. At the same time, there is TTP which is more distinctive and vowed to target three parties in particular. “But what I feel is that they’ll eventually target independent candidates too. The attacks won’t be limited to the ANP, MQM or PPP, which will have its own consequences.” He added that eventually the elections will be held even if it is “flawed.”

    As ANP and MQM are looking for new ways of reaching out to the masses, despite attacks, columnist Ayaz Amir sees a silver lining. “Political parties would have boycotted the elections in ‘old Pakistan’ if there was even half of the kind of threat that exists today. It could have been a sufficient alibi to boycott elections. But parties are pressing on and it is something very positive, I believe.”

    • মাসুদ করিম - ১০ মে ২০১৩ (১২:৪৩ অপরাহ্ণ)

      পাকিস্তানের আগামীকালের ভোটের ফল কত ঝুলবে এটাই সম্ভবত সবচেয়ে বড় প্রশ্ন। ইমরান খান আসলে কতদূর যেতে পারবে, তার ফর্কলিফট থেকে পড়ে গিয়ে আহত হওয়া কত সহানুভূতি জাগাবে ভোটারদের মধ্যে এটাই এখন মহাজল্পনা। তবে যখন আশঙ্কা ঝুলন্ত সংসদের তখন ভোটের আগের চেয়ে ভোটের পরের ঘটনার ঘনঘটার জন্য সবার অপেক্ষা এখন তুঙ্গে।

    • মাসুদ করিম - ১৩ মে ২০১৩ (১০:১৪ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

      না, তেহরিক-ই-তালেবানের বাধায় কাজ হয়েছে এবং তার চেয়েও বড় কথা পাঞ্জাবের ভোটাররা নওয়াজ শরিফের বিদ্যুৎ উৎপাদনের প্রতিশ্রুতিতে বিশ্বাস করেছে এবং অকাতরে ভোট দিয়েছে। পাকিস্তানের সরাসরি ভোটের ২৭২ সংসদীয় আসনের ১৪৮ আসনই পাঞ্জাবে, আর এখানেই এখনো পর্যন্ত ১১০ আসনে জয়ী হয়েছে নওয়াজ শরিফের দল, আর এর উপর ভর করেই একক ভাবে সরকার গঠনের প্রয়োজনীয় ১৩৭ আসনের খুব কাছাকাছি পৌঁছে যাবে পাকিস্তান মুসলিম লীগ(নেওয়াজ)। কাজেই বিশেষজ্ঞদের নির্বাচনের ফলে ঝুলন্ত সংসদ হবে এবার পাকিস্তানে এই বিশ্লেষণ সম্পূর্ণই মার খেয়েছে।

      The election result may be a step forward for Pakistani democracy. It is a step backward for the Pakistani federation. Given the history of complaints about Punjabi domination, Nawaz Sharif will have to reach out to the leaders of other provinces. Authoritarian rule has undermined national unity in the past because of Punjab’s overwhelming supremacy in the armed forces, judiciary and civil services. Democracy should not breed similar resentment among smaller ethnic groups through virtual exclusion from power at the centre.

      In addition to bringing the provinces other than Punjab on board, Sharif’s other major headache would be to evolve a functioning relationship with Pakistan’s military establishment. Although he rose to prominence as General Zia-ul Haq’s protégé, Sharif clashed with General Pervez Musharraf over civilian control of the military. He might be tempted to settle that issue once and for all, partly because of the sentiment generated by his overthrow and imprisonment by Musharraf.

      Changing the civil-military balance in favour of the civilians would be a good thing. But if it is done without forethought and caution, it could end up risking the democratic gains of the last several years. The PML-N’s view of Pakistani national identity being rooted in Islam and the two-nation theory does not differ much from that of the Pakistani establishment. His real difference with the establishment is over his belief that he, as the elected leader, and not the military must run the country.

      Many Pakistan-watchers, particularly in India, allow our contempt, fear and distrust of the Pakistani army to so cloud our judgement, we fail to see a fundamental, and virtuous, change. For a full five years, Zardari ran a bumbling, waffling government, marred by indecision, corruption and confusion. But his opposition did not pull him down. And his generals stayed in their headquarters. This was a fundamental shift. It has only happened because the people of Pakistan have decided to take charge of their own destiny.

      Over the years (post-Sharm el-Sheikh, let’s say), our view of Pakistan has become re-militarised as its own society’s has become de-militarised. Anybody in Pakistan is willing to say to you now that the beheading of the Indian soldier was carried out by the military establishment only to block the Zardari government giving India the MFN status. And we walked straight into the trap: calling off sporting exchanges, the PM himself saying it can’t be business as usual, the leader of the opposition demanding 10 heads for one.
      – See more at: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/allah-and-aam-aadmi/1115527/0#sthash.TWYpxehE.dpuf

      Despite of having enough presence in National and Punjab assemblies to form governments on its own, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) is ready to accommodate all political forces including MQM and PTI to form a likely political coalition, says PML-N leader Senator Pervez Rashid.

      Consultations are underway to form the next government, said Rashid while speaking to media representatives on Sunday.

      বিস্তারিত পড়ুন : Pakistan Election 2013, Live Blog, Dawn.com।

  3. মাসুদ করিম - ৮ মে ২০১৩ (৪:৩৯ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    তেমন গুরুত্বপূর্ণ কিছু নেই, তারপরও নোয়াম চমস্কির সাক্ষাৎকার বলে কথা, তাও আবার পাকিস্তানের আসন্ন নির্বাচন নিয়ে। আমি ছাড়া ছাড়া পড়ে গেছি, আপনি কিভাবে পড়বেন — আপনার ব্যাপার।

    Exclusive interview with Noam Chomsky on Pakistan elections

    As a country which has spent almost half of its existence under some sort of direct military rule how do you see this first ever impending transition from one democratically-elected government to another?

    Noam Chomsky: Well, you know more about the internal situation of Pakistan than I do! I mean I think it’s good to see something like a democratic transition. Of course, there are plenty of qualifications to that but it is a big change from dictatorship. That’s a positive sign. And I think there is some potential for introducing badly needed changes. There are very serious problems to deal with internally and in the country’s international relations. So maybe, now some of them can be confronted.

    Coming to election issues, what do you think, sitting afar and as an observer, are the basic issues that need to be handled by whoever is voted into power?

    NC: Well, first of all, the internal issues. Pakistan is not a unified country. In large parts of the country, the state is regarded as a Punjabi state, not their (the people’s) state. In fact, I think the last serious effort to deal with this was probably in the 1970s, when during the Bhutto regime some sort of arrangement of federalism was instituted for devolving power so that people feel the government is responding to them and not just some special interests focused on a particular region and class. Now that’s a major problem.

    Another problem is the confrontation with India. Pakistan just cannot survive if it continues to do so (continue this confrontation). Pakistan will never be able to match the Indian militarily and the effort to do so is taking an immense toll on the society. It’s also extremely dangerous with all the weapons development. The two countries have already come close to nuclear confrontation twice and this could get worse. So dealing with the relationship with India is extremely important.

    And that of course focuses right away on Kashmir. Some kind of settlement in Kashmir is crucial for both countries. It’s also tearing India apart with horrible atrocities in the region which is controlled by Indian armed forces. This is feeding right back into society even in the domain of elementary civil rights. A good American friend of mine who has lived in India for many years, working as a journalist, was recently denied entry to the country because he wrote on Kashmir. This is a reflection of fractures within society. Pakistan, too, has to focus on the Lashkar [Lashkar-i-Taiba] and other similar groups and work towards some sort of sensible compromise on Kashmir.

    And of course this goes beyond. There is Pakistan’s relationship with Afghanistan which will also be a very tricky issue in the coming years. Then there is a large part of Pakistan which is being torn apart from American drone attacks. The country is being invaded constantly by a terrorist superpower. Again, this is not a small problem.

    Historically, several policy domains, including that of foreign policy towards the US and India, budget allocations etc, have been controlled by the Pakistani military, and the civil-military divide can be said to be the most fundamental fracture in Pakistan’s body politic. Do you see this changing with recent elections, keeping in mind the military’s deep penetration into Pakistan’s political economy?

    NC: Yes, the military has a huge role in the economy with big stakes and, as you say, it has constantly intervened to make sure that it keeps its hold on policy making. Well, I hope, and there seem to be some signs, that the military is taking a backseat, not really in the economy, but in some of the policy issues. If that can continue, which perhaps it will, this will be a positive development.

    Maybe, something like what has happened recently in Turkey. In Turkey also, for a long time, the military was the decisive force but in the past 10 years they have backed off somewhat and the civilian government has gained more independence and autonomy even to shake up the military command. In fact, it even arrested several high-ranking officers [for interfering in governmental affairs]. Maybe Pakistan can move in a similar direction. Similar problems are arising in Egypt too. The question is whether the military will release its grip which has been extremely strong for the past 60 years. So this is happening all over the region and particularly strikingly in Pakistan.

    In the coming elections, all indications are that a coalition government will be formed. The party of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif is leading the polls with Imran Khan’s (relatively) newly-emerged party not far behind. Do you think an impending coalition government will be sufficiently equipped to handle the myriad problems facing the country that you have just pointed out, such as civil-military imbalance, drone attacks, extremist violence etc.

    NC: Well, we have a record for Nawaz Sharif but not the others. And judging by the record, it’s pretty hard to be optimistic. His [Sharif’s] previous governments were very corrupt and regressive in the policies pursued. But the very fact that there is popular participation can have impact. That’s what leads to change, as it has just recently in North Africa (in Tunisia and Egypt). As far as change goes, significant change does not come from above, it comes through popular activism.

    In the past month or so, statements from the US State Department and the American ambassador to Pakistan have indicated quite a few times that they have ‘no favourites’ in the upcoming elections. What is your take on that especially with the impending (formal) US withdrawal from Afghanistan?

    NC: That could well be true. I do not think that US government has any particular interest in one or another element of an internal political confrontation. But it does have very definite interests in what it wants Pakistan to be doing. For example, it wants Pakistan to continue to permit aggressive and violent American actions on Pakistani territory. It wants Pakistan to be supportive of US goals in Afghanistan. The US also deeply cares about Pakistan’s relationship with Iran. The US very much wants Pakistan to cut relations with Iran which they [Pakistan] are not doing. They are following a somewhat independent course in this regard, as are India, China and many other countries which are not strictly under the thumb of the US. That will be an important issue because Iran is such a major issue in American foreign policy. And this goes beyond as every year Pakistan has been providing military forces to protect dictatorships in the Gulf from their own populations (e.g. the Saudi Royal Guard and recently in Bahrain). That role has diminished but Pakistan is, and was considered to be, a part of the so-called ‘peripheral system’ which surrounded the Middle East oil dictatorships with non-Arab states such as Turkey, Iran (under the Shah) and Pakistan. Israel was admitted into the club in 1967. One of the main purposes of this was to constrain and limit secular nationalism in the region which was considered a threat to the oil dictatorships.

    As you might know, a nationalist insurgency has been going on in Balochistan for almost the past decade. How do you see it affected by the elections, especially as some nationalist parties have decided to take part in polls while others have decried those participating as having sold out to the military establishment?

    NC: Balochistan, and to some extent Sindh too, has a general feeling that they are not part of the decision-making process in Pakistan and are ruled by a Punjabi dictatorship. There is a lot of exploitation of the rich resources [in Balochistan] which the locals are not gaining from. As long as this goes on, it is going to keep providing grounds for serious uprisings and insurgencies. This brings us back to the first question which is about developing a constructive from of federalism which will actually ensure participation from the various [smaller] provinces and not just, as they see it, robbing them.

    It is now well-known that the Taliban’s creation was facilitated by the CIA and the ISI as part of the 1980s anti-Soviet war. But the dynamics of the Taliban now appear to be very different and complex, in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, as they attack governments and mainstream parties. Some people say that foreign intelligence agencies are still behind the Taliban, while others consider this a denial of home-grown problems of extremism and intolerance. How do you view the Taliban in the context of Pakistan?

    NC: I can understand the idea that there is a conspiracy. In fact, in much of the world there is a sense of an ultra-powerful CIA manipulating everything that happens, such as running the Arab Spring, running the Pakistani Taliban, etc. That is just nonsense. They [CIA] created a monster and now they are appalled by it. It has its roots in internal Pakistani affairs. It’s a horrible development and phenomenon which goes back to radical Islamisation under Zia and taking away the long standing rights of people in the tribal areas (who were left largely alone). The Pashtuns in particular are kind of trapped. They’ve never accepted the Durand Line nor has any Afghan government historically accepted it. Travel from what is called Pakistan to Afghanistan has been made increasingly difficult and people are often labelled terrorists, even those who might be just visiting families. It is a border which makes absolutely no sense. It was imposed by the needs of British imperialism and all of these things are festering sores which have to be dealt with internally. These are not CIA manipulations.

    Actually, US government policies are continuing to do exactly the same thing [produce terrorism]. Two days after the Boston marathon bombings, there was a drone strike in Yemen attacking a peaceful village, which killed a target who could very easily have been apprehended. But of course it is just easier to terrorise people. The drones are a terrorist weapon, they not only kill targets but also terrorise other people. That is what happens constantly in Waziristan. There happened to be a testimony in the Senate a week later by a young man who was living in the US but was originally from that village [in Yemen which was bombed]. And he testified that for years the ‘jihadi’ groups in Yemen had been trying to turn the villagers against the Americans and had failed. The villagers admired America. But this one terrorist strike has turned them into radical anti-Americans, which will only serve as a breeding ground for more terrorists.

    There was a striking example of this in Pakistan when the US sent in Special Forces, to be honest, to kill Osama Bin Laden. He could easily have been apprehended and caught but their orders were to kill him. If you remember the way they did it, the way they tried to identify his [Osama’s] position was through a fake vaccination campaign set up by the CIA in the city. It started in a poor area and then when they decided that Osama was in a different area, they cut it off in the middle and shifted [the vaccination campaign] to a richer area. Now, that is a violation of principles which go as far back as the Hippocratic Oath. Well, in the end they did kill their target but meanwhile it aroused fears all over Pakistan and even as far as Nigeria about what these Westerners are doing when they come in and start sticking needles in their arms. These are understandable fears but were exacerbated. Very soon, health workers were being abducted and several were murdered (in Pakistan). The UN even had to take out its whole anti-polio team. Pakistan is one of the last places in the world where polio still exists and the disease could have been totally wiped out from this planet like smallpox. But now, it means that, according to current estimates, there will be thousands of children in Pakistan at risk of contracting polio. As a health scientist at Columbia University, Les Roberts, pointed out, sooner or later people are going to be looking at a child in a wheelchair suffering from polio and will say ‘the Americans did that to him’. So they continue policies which have similar effects i.e. organising the Taliban. This will come back to them too.

  4. রেজাউল করিম সুমন - ১৪ মে ২০১৩ (৮:৪৪ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    American radical feminist Shulamith Firestone was a leading theorist of 70s feminism who died a lonely death last summer. Responding to Susan Faludi’s psychological profile of Firestone in The New Yorker last month, Kathleen B. Jones examines Firestone’s contribution to women’s liberation.

    লেখার লিংক এখানে।

  5. মাসুদ করিম - ১৫ মে ২০১৩ (৫:৫৭ অপরাহ্ণ)

    আবার কলোনি ভাবনা। স্বাভাবিক ভাবেই এবার গ্রহান্তরে — লাল মঙ্গলগ্রহ সবুজ হবে জেনেটিক্যালি মডিফাইড শস্য বুনে, আর ২০৩০এর মধ্যে আবাসন গড়ে উঠবে মঙ্গলে — এছাড়া আর পথ নেই আমাদের সভ্যতাকে বাঁচিয়ে রাখার! আবার সেবাসস্থান হবে চিরস্থায়ী!

    How to build a Mars colony that lasts – forever

    “Mars can’t just be a one-shot mission,” says Apollo 11 astronaut Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, the second person to walk on the moon.

    He’s part of a group who met last week in Washington DC for the first Human to Mars Summit, or H2M. The astronauts, researchers and space flight firms aim to chart a path to the Red Planet by 2030.

    And they are thinking beyond mere visits. Though it won’t be easy, they say establishing a permanent, sustainable outpost on the Red Planet may be our civilisation’s only chance of long-term continuity.

    “Single-planet species don’t survive,” says former astronaut John Grunsfeld, who still works at NASA. “That’s a pretty sound theorem – just look at the dinosaurs. But we don’t want to prove it.”

    Modular base

    As the only other planet in the solar system we are likely to be able to settle on, Mars looks like the best first step towards establishing an off-Earth foothold. But making Mars a sustainable destination will require a few advances beyond those needed for one-off trips.

    For a start, humans who plan on seeding a colony will need bigger living quarters – both to accommodate life-support systems and supplies, and to minimise psychological trouble, said David Dinges at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He recently reported on the behaviours of participants in the mock Mars 500 project, in which six men spent 520 days in a 3.6-by-20-metre habitat on Earth.

    Despite screenings, four had extensive problems with lethargy, insomnia and productivity, which Dinges attributes in part to their tight confinement. Just imagine how this would play out on much longer missions.

    But building larger habitats will require a rethink in transport, as landing heavy loads on Mars is a huge challenge. The International Space Station, which was built in stages during a series of launches, provides some inspiration. The parts for a Martian base could be delivered similarly, by landing modules in a series of missions.

    Phobos first

    Then it could be built by a crew already on the surface, by robots in orbit or even by a crew based on a Martian moon. At H2M, Aldrin suggested sending three people to spend 18 months on Phobos, where they would remotely construct a base on Mars. Phobos has a nearly constant view of the Martian surface and is easier to land on than Mars because its lack of an atmosphere removes the need for technologies such as heavy heat shields and supersonic retro-rockets.

    Assuming a large enough base can be built, the next challenge will be a sustainable food supply. Growing vegetables is an option, but plants may need to deal with higher radiation, low air pressure and reduced gravity. If Mars gardeners are to use Martian soil, a knowledge of how crops respond to its contents, such as sulphates and perchlorates will be required.

    To get around any difficulties, genetically modified crops may come in useful, says Robert Ferl, director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Biotechnology Research at the University of Florida in Gainesville: “This is the era of understanding what happens to organisms at the genetic level.”

    We now know the patterns of gene expression behind how many plants on Earth assimilate key nutrients such as sulphates. This could eventually allow the right genes to be added to crops bound for Mars. Terrestrial plants growing in extreme places could also be adapted or mined for their hardier genes.

    Printed noodles

    For a less conventional meal, Anjan Contractor of Systems and Materials Research Corporation in Austin, Texas, has NASA funding to develop a 3D printer for hot food on deep-space missions. The food powders are UV sterilised, fortified with nutrients and have a shelf life of at least 15 years, says Contractor. His team has so far printed noodles, turkey loaf, basil paste, bread and cake – though they won’t taste their creations until a new, food-only printer is used for the job.

    There could be longer-term challenges to sustaining a colony, however. Richard Zurek, Mars chief scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, fears a colony will only sustain itself if it can find a resource to trade with Earth. “But that seems unlikely unless the cost of transport between planets is greatly reduced,” he says.

    Still, high public interest and the emergence of private space flight suggest that the dream of reaching Mars is closer to becoming reality, says Aldrin. “By implementing a step-by-step vision for Mars, we’ll plunge further outward into the solar system,” he says.

  6. অবিশ্রুত - ১৯ মে ২০১৩ (১:১৯ অপরাহ্ণ)

    ভোটার তালিকা থেকে ১৯৭২ সালের দালাল আইনে (বিশেষ ট্রাইব্যুনাল) দণ্ডিতদের নাম বাদ দেওয়ার চিন্তাভাবনা করছে নির্বাচন কমিশন। তাই যদি হয়, তবে তা হবে নিশ্চয়ই গুরুত্বপূর্ণ ঘটনা।

    ১৮ দলের অনেকে নির্বাচনে দাঁড়াতে পারবেন না

    ১৯৭২ সালের দালাল আইনে (বিশেষ ট্রাইব্যুনাল) দণ্ডিতদের নাম ভোটার তালিকা থেকে বাদ দেওয়ার সিদ্ধান্ত নিয়েছে নির্বাচন কমিশন। এরই অংশ হিসেবে নির্বাচন কমিশন দণ্ডিতদের তালিকা চেয়ে স্বরাষ্ট্র মন্ত্রণালয়ে একটি চিঠি দিয়েছে। স্বরাষ্ট্র মন্ত্রণালয় নামের তালিকা সংগ্রহ করতে ইতোমধ্যেই উদ্যোগ গ্রহণ করেছে বলে জানা গেছে। তালিকাটি সংগ্রহের পর তা নির্বাচন কমিশনে পাঠাবে মন্ত্রণালয়। সূত্র জানায়, দালাল আইনে দণ্ডিতদের নাম ভোটার তালিকা থেকে বাদ দেওয়া হলে বিএনপি-জামায়াতসহ ১৮ দলীয় জোটের বেশ কয়েকজন নেতা জাতীয় সংসদ নির্বাচনে অংশগ্রহণ করতে পারবেন না। খেলাফত মজলিশের একাংশের আমির মাওলানা মোহাম্মদ ইসহাকসহ জোটটির আরও বেশ কয়েকজন নেতা দালাল আইনে দণ্ডিত হয়েছিলেন বলে জানা গেছে। মাওলানা ইসহাক মুক্তিযুদ্ধকালে পাকিস্তানি সেনাবাহিনীর সমর্থনে গঠিত ডা. মালেক মন্ত্রিসভার সদস্য ছিলেন। একাত্তরের মুক্তিযুদ্ধকালে যেসব রাজাকার, আলবদর, আলশামস পাকিস্তানি হানাদার বাহিনীর সদস্যদের সহায়তা করে বাংলাদেশের বিরুদ্ধে ষড়যন্ত্র করেছিল, তাদের বিচারের জন্য ১৯৭২ সালের ২৪ জানুয়ারি ‘দ্য বাংলাদেশ কোলাবরেটরস (স্পেশাল ট্রাইব্যুনাল) অর্ডার ১৯৭২’ বা দালাল আইন আদেশ শিরোনামে একটি আইন প্রণয়ন করা হয়। এই আইনের অধীনে ৭৩টি ট্রাইব্যুনাল গঠিত হয়। দালাল আইনে গ্রেপ্তার করা হয় ৩৭ হাজার রাজাকার, আলবদর, আলশামস সদস্যকে। ট্রাইব্যুনালগুলোয় ৭৩ সালের অক্টোবর পর্যন্ত ৭৫২ জন যুদ্ধাপরাধীর মৃত্যুদণ্ডসহ বিভিন্ন মেয়াদে কারাদণ্ড হয়। এসব যুদ্ধাপরাধী ভোটাধিকার প্রয়োগের সুযোগ হারিয়েছিলেন। ওয়ার ক্রাইমস ফ্যাক্ট ফাইন্ডিং কমিটির আহ্বায়ক ডা. এম এ হাসান বলেছেন, জিয়াউর রহমান দালাল আইন বাতিলের মাধ্যমে যুদ্ধাপরাধের বিচার বন্ধ করে দিয়েছিলেন। তিনি কারাবন্দি যুদ্ধাপরাধীদের শুধু মুক্তিই দেননি, ভোটাধিকার প্রয়োগসহ রাজনীতি করারও সুযোগ করে দিয়েছিলেন। তার আমলে জারিকৃত সামরিক ফরমান উচ্চআদালত অবৈধ ঘোষণা করেছেন। ফলে দালাল আইনে দণ্ডপ্রাপ্তদের ভোটার তালিকায় নাম থাকাটাও অবৈধ। এ ব্যাপারে যে-কোনও নাগরিক উচ্চ আদালতে রিট করতে পারে। জানা গেছে, ১৯৭৩ সালের ৩০ নভেম্বর সরকার সাধারণ ক্ষমা ঘোষণা করলে গ্রেপ্তারকৃত ৩৭ হাজার যুদ্ধাপরাধীর মধ্যে ২৬ হাজার কারাগার থেকে মুক্তি পান। তবে যারা খুন, ধর্ষণ, লুটতরাজ, অগ্নিসংযোগ, বাংলাদেশের বিরুদ্ধে ষড়যন্ত্রসহ মুক্তিযুদ্ধকালে ১৮ ধরনের অপরাধ করেছিলেন তারা সাধারণ ক্ষমার আওতা-বহির্ভূত ছিলেন। এ ধরনের অপরাধে জড়িত ১১ হাজার যুদ্ধাপরাধীর বিচার চলছিল। ১৯৭৫ সালের ৩১ ডিসেম্বর জিয়াউর রহমান দালাল আইন বাতিল করলে দণ্ডপ্রাপ্তরাসহ কারাবন্দি ১১ হাজার যুদ্ধাপরাধী জেলখানা থেকে ছাড়া পায়।

    সন্দেহ নেই, বেশির ভাগ মানুষই এ সিদ্ধান্তকে স্বাগত জানাবেন।

  7. মাসুদ করিম - ২১ মে ২০১৩ (২:১৬ অপরাহ্ণ)

    জাতিসংঘের অফিস ফর দ্য কোঅরডিনেশন অব হিউম্যানিটারিয়ান অ্যাফেয়ার্স (ওসিএইচএ) সোমবার এক সংবাদ বিজ্ঞপ্তিতে জানায়, ঘূর্ণিঝড় মহাসেন আশঙ্কার চেয়ে দুর্বল হয়ে উপকূলে পৌঁছায়। সঙ্গে সরকার এবং অন্যান্য সংস্থাগুলোর প্রস্তুতিমূলক ব্যবস্থা থাকায় হাজার হাজার জীবন বাঁচানো গেছে।

    বৃহস্পতিবার মহাসেন উপকূল অতিক্রম করার আগেই ১৩টি উপকূলীয় জেলা থেকে প্রায় দশ লাখ মানুষকে সরিয়ে নেয়া হয়। ঘূর্নিঝড় প্রস্তুতি কর্মসূচির আওতায় সরকার হাজার হাজার স্বেচ্ছাসেবকদের সংগঠিত করা, ঝুঁকির মুখে থাকা জনগোষ্ঠীর কাছে সতর্ক সংকেত ও তথ্য পাঠানো এবং নগদ অর্থ সাহায্য দেওয়ার মতো উদ্যোগ নেয়।

    বিজ্ঞপ্তিতে বলা হয়, সরকারের হিসেব অনুযায়ী মহাসেনে ১৩ জন নিহত হয় এবং ১২ লাখ মানুষ ক্ষতিগ্রস্ত হয়।

    জাতিসংঘের আবাসিক সমন্বয়ক প্যাসকেল ভিলেনিউভ বলেন, “দুর্ভাগ্যজনকভাবে কিছু প্রাণহানি হলেও সরকার দুর্যোগ ঝুঁকি কমাতে প্রয়োজনীয় সব প্রস্তুতিমূলক পদক্ষেপগুলো নিয়েছিল।”

  8. মাসুদ করিম - ২২ মে ২০১৩ (১:৩৬ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

  9. মাসুদ করিম - ২২ মে ২০১৩ (৭:৪৬ অপরাহ্ণ)

    স্টেনলি কুব্রিক, আমার চিনদিনের সেরাদের একজন। তার ত্রিশটি ‘সিনেমাগ্রাফ’দেখুন: 30 Amazing Stanley Kubrick Cinemagraphs।

    সিনেমাগ্রাফ কী?

    Cinemagraphs are still photographs in which a minor and repeated movement action occurs. The term “cinemagraph” was coined by U.S. photographers Kevin Burg and Jamie Beck, who used the technique to animate their fashion and news photographs beginning in early 2011.

    They are produced by taking a series of photographs or a video recording, and, using image editing software, compositing the photographs or the video frames into an animated GIF file in such a manner that motion in part of the subject between exposures (for example, a person’s dangling leg) is perceived as a repeating or continued motion.

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  10. মাসুদ করিম - ২৩ মে ২০১৩ (২:১৮ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    আবার লন্ডন অ্যাটাক। কিন্তু এবারের এই আক্রমণের চরিত্র সম্পূর্ণ ভিন্ন — কোনো ধরনের বোমা হামলা নয়, একেবারে দিনেদুপুরে দক্ষিণ-পূর্ব লন্ডনের ব্যস্ত এলাকা উলউইচে গাড়ি দিয়ে ধাক্কা দিয়ে এক ব্রিটিশ সৈনিককে আল্লাহু আকবর চিৎকার করতে করতে কুপিয়ে হত্যা করা হয়েছে( প্রত্যক্ষদর্শীর ভাষ্য)। কয়েক মাসে আগে আমাদের দেশে ব্লগার রাজীবকে কুপিয়ে হত্যার সাথেই যেন এই সন্ত্রাসী হামলার মিল — অস্ত্র ছুরি, চাপাতি, লক্ষ্য মস্তক ছিন্ন করা। বড় নেটওয়ার্কে না জড়িয়ে ‘নিজে কর সন্ত্রাস’ বা ‘ডু ইট ইউরসেল্প (ডিআইওয়াই)সন্ত্রাস’ — এধরনের সন্ত্রাসই এখন নতুন লক্ষ্য জিহাদিদের।

    woolwich-killing-emergency-cameron

    Man who filmed Woolwich video: I was not afraid from Masud Karim on Vimeo.

    Eyewitness: Man in Help for Heroes t-shirt attacked with knife

    Two people have been shot in Woolwich, south east London, after armed police were called to an incident in which a man wearing a Help for Heroes t-shirt was attacked with a machete-style knife and dumped in the street, eyewitnesses said.

    লাইভ ব্লগ : One dead in Woolwich attack।

    ব্রিটিশ সংবাদপত্রের শিরোনামে উলউইচ সন্ত্রাসী আক্রমণ : British newspapers on harrowing Woolwich attack।

    • মাসুদ করিম - ২৬ মে ২০১৩ (২:১২ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

      সংক্রামক, সংক্রামক তো অবশ্যই — লন্ডনে চাপাতির কোপের পর আজ প্যারিসের বাণিজ্যিক অঞ্চল ‘লা দেফঁস’এ কর্তব্যরত নিরাপত্তাকর্মীর ঘাড়ে ছুরিকাঘাত।

      A French soldier patrolling a business neighbourhood west of Paris was stabbed in the neck on Saturday by a man who quickly fled the scene and is being sought by police, President Francois Hollande said.

      The soldier was patrolling in uniform with two other men as part of France’s Vigipirate anti-terrorist surveillance plan when he was approached from behind around 1800 p.m. and stabbed in the neck with a knife or a box-cutter.

      Hollande, in the Ethiopian city of Addis Ababa, commented on the stabbing to say that the man was still on the run and police were exploring all leads.

      “We still don’t know the exact circumstances of the attack or the identity of the attacker, but we are exploring all options,” Hollande told journalists.

      Pierre-Andre Peyvel, police prefect for the Hauts-de-Seine area, said the soldier had lost a considerable amount of blood but would survive, and was being treated in a nearby military hospital.

      “The wound appears to be quite serious, but it’s not life-threatening,” he told iTele news television.

      Peyvel said the man was able to flee into a crowded shopping area in the La Defense business neighbourhood before the two other soldiers, who were walking in front of him, were able to react.

      French daily Le Parisien cited a police source as saying the suspected attacker was a bearded man of North African origin about 30 years old, and was wearing an Arab-style garment under his jacket.

      However, Peyvel declined to confirm or deny that description and said further details about the attacker’s identity would be forthcoming.

      বিস্তারিত পড়ুন : French soldier stabbed in Paris area।

  11. মাসুদ করিম - ২৪ মে ২০১৩ (২:৫৫ অপরাহ্ণ)

    রাশিয়ার দূরপূর্বে কামচাটকা উপদ্বীপে অকহটক্স (Sea of Okhotsk) সমুদ্রে ৮.২ মাত্রার ভূমিকম্পে ৪০০০ হাজার মাইল দূরের মস্কোও কেঁপে উঠেছিল আজ। শাখালিন ও কুরিল দ্বীপে এজন্য সুনামি সতর্কতাও জারি করা হয়েছিল এবং ঘোষণার কিছুক্ষণ পরেই সেই সতর্কবার্তা তুলেও নেয়া হয়। এখনো পর্যন্ত জানমালের ক্ষয়ক্ষতির কোনো খবর পাওয়া যায়নি।

    181321429
    Russia, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy

    Earthquake Hits Russia’s Far East, Tremors Felt in Moscow

    – An earthquake measuring 8.2 on the Richter scale struck Russia’s Far East on Friday, with slight tremors felt thousands of miles away in Moscow.

    There were no reported injuries or damage.

    The earthquake occurred in the Sea of Okhotsk off the Kamchatka Peninsula, the US Geological Survey (USGS) reported.

    Emergency agencies in the Far East issued a tsunami warning for Sakhalin and the Kuril islands, but lifted it soon afterwards.

    The epicenter of the quake was located 385 km (244 miles) west northwest of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy at a depth of 608 km (385 miles), the USGS said.

    Russia’s Emergencies Ministry said 850 people had been evacuated from two buildings in central Moscow, over 6,400 km (4,000 miles) from the epicenter of the quake, but there was no danger to life or property.

  12. মাসুদ করিম - ২৮ মে ২০১৩ (১:৪৪ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

  13. মাসুদ করিম - ২৮ মে ২০১৩ (১:০৬ অপরাহ্ণ)

    মানুষ যেমন কথায় বাঁচে, মানুষ তেমন রান্নায় বাঁচে — ভাষা আর আগুন মানুষকে মানুষ করেছে। সবচেয়ে মজার কথা হল কেউ যেমন তৃণভোজী, কেউ যেমন স্তন্যপায়ী, কেউ যেমন মাংসভোজী জীব — আমরা মানুষেরা তেমনি রান্নাভোজী জীব। আর সবচেয়ে গুরুত্বপূর্ণ কথা হল রান্নাভোজী জীব বলেই আমাদের মস্তিষ্কের আয়তনও বেড়েছে।

    Mind-on-Fire-brain-expansion-2
    The expansion of the brain, seen in fossils from different branches of our family tree, may have been aided by fire, first used at least a million years ago. (NMNH, SI )

    Why Fire Makes Us Human

    Wherever humans have gone in the world, they have carried with them two things, language and fire. As they traveled through tropical forests they hoarded the precious embers of old fires and sheltered them from downpours. When they settled the barren Arctic, they took with them the memory of fire, and recreated it in stoneware vessels filled with animal fat. Darwin himself considered these the two most significant achievements of humanity. It is, of course, impossible to imagine a human society that does not have language, but—given the right climate and an adequacy of raw wild food—could there be a primitive tribe that survives without cooking? In fact, no such people have ever been found. Nor will they be, according to a provocative theory by Harvard biologist Richard Wrangham, who believes that fire is needed to fuel the organ that makes possible all the other products of culture, language included: the human brain.

    Every animal on earth is constrained by its energy budget; the calories obtained from food will stretch only so far. And for most human beings, most of the time, these calories are burned not at the gym, but invisibly, in powering the heart, the digestive system and especially the brain, in the silent work of moving molecules around within and among its 100 billion cells. A human body at rest devotes roughly one-fifth of its energy to the brain, regardless of whether it is thinking anything useful, or even thinking at all. Thus, the unprecedented increase in brain size that hominids embarked on around 1.8 million years ago had to be paid for with added calories either taken in or diverted from some other function in the body. Many anthropologists think the key breakthrough was adding meat to the diet. But Wrangham and his Harvard colleague Rachel Carmody think that’s only a part of what was going on in evolution at the time. What matters, they say, is not just how many calories you can put into your mouth, but what happens to the food once it gets there. How much useful energy does it provide, after subtracting the calories spent in chewing, swallowing and digesting? The real breakthrough, they argue, was cooking.

    Wrangham, who is in his mid-60s, with an unlined face and a modest demeanor, has a fine pedigree as a primatologist, having studied chimpanzees with Jane Goodall at Gombe Stream National Park. In pursuing his research on primate nutrition he has sampled what wild monkeys and chimpanzees eat, and he finds it, by and large, repellent. The fruit of the Warburgia tree has a “hot taste” that “renders even a single fruit impossibly unpleasant for humans to ingest,” he writes from bitter experience. “But chimpanzees can eat a pile of these fruits and look eagerly for more.” Although he avoids red meat ordinarily, he ate raw goat to prove a theory that chimps combine meat with tree leaves in their mouths to facilitate chewing and swallowing. The leaves, he found, provide traction for the teeth on the slippery, rubbery surface of raw muscle.

    Food is a subject on which most people have strong opinions, and Wrangham mostly excuses himself from the moral, political and aesthetic debates it provokes. Impeccably lean himself, he acknowledges blandly that some people will gain weight on the same diet that leaves others thin. “Life can be unfair,” he writes in his 2010 book Catching Fire, and his shrug is almost palpable on the page. He takes no position on the philosophical arguments for and against a raw-food diet, except to point out that it can be quite dangerous for young children. For healthy adults, it’s “a terrific way to lose weight.”

    Which is, in a way, his point: Human beings evolved to eat cooked food. It is literally possible to starve to death even while filling one’s stomach with raw food. In the wild, people typically survive only a few months without cooking,pollan even if they can obtain meat. Wrangham cites evidence that urban raw-foodists, despite year-round access to bananas, nuts and other high-quality agricultural products, as well as juicers, blenders and dehydrators, are often underweight. Of course, they may consider this desirable, but Wrangham considers it alarming that in one study half the women were malnourished to the point they stopped menstruating. They presumably are eating all they want, and may even be consuming what appears to be an adequate number of calories, based on standard USDA tables. There is growing evidence that these overstate, sometimes to a considerable degree, the energy that the body extracts from whole raw foods. Carmody explains that only a fraction of the calories in raw starch and protein are absorbed by the body directly via the small intestine. The remainder passes into the large bowel, where it is broken down by that organ’s ravenous population of microbes, which consume the lion’s share for themselves. Cooked food, by contrast, is mostly digested by the time it enters the colon; for the same amount of calories ingested, the body gets roughly 30 percent more energy from cooked oat, wheat or potato starch as compared to raw, and as much as 78 percent from the protein in an egg. In Carmody’s experiments, animals given cooked food gain more weight than animals fed the same amount of raw food. And once they’ve been fed on cooked food, mice, at least, seemed to prefer it.

    In essence, cooking—including not only heat but also mechanical processes such as chopping and grinding—outsources some of the body’s work of digestion so that more energy is extracted from food and less expended in processing it. Cooking breaks down collagen, the connective tissue in meat, and softens the cell walls of plants to release their stores of starch and fat. The calories to fuel the bigger brains of successive species of hominids came at the expense of the energy-intensive tissue in the gut, which was shrinking at the same time—you can actually see how the barrel-shaped trunk of the apes morphed into the comparatively narrow-waisted Homo sapiens. Cooking freed up time, as well; the great apes spend four to seven hours a day just chewing, not an activity that prioritizes the intellect.

    The trade-off between the gut and the brain is the key insight of the “expensive tissue hypothesis,” proposed by Leslie Aiello and Peter Wheeler in 1995. Wrangham credits this with inspiring his own thinking—except that Aiello and Wheeler identified meat-eating as the driver of human evolution, while Wrangham emphasizes cooking. “What could be more human,” he asks, “than the use of fire?”

    Unsurprisingly, Wrangham’s theory appeals to people in the food world. “I’m persuaded by it,” says Michael Pollan, author of Cooked, whose opening chapter is set in the sweltering, greasy cookhouse of a whole-hog barbecue joint in North Carolina, which he sets in counterpoint to lunch with Wrangham at the Harvard Faculty Club, where they each ate a salad. “Claude Lévi-Strauss, Brillat-Savarin treated cooking as a metaphor for culture,” Pollan muses, “but if Wrangham is right, it’s not a metaphor, it’s a precondition.” (Read about what it’s like to have dinner with Pollan)

    Wrangham, with his hard-won experience in eating like a chimpanzee, tends to assume that—with some exceptions such as fruit—cooked food tastes better than raw. But is this an innate mammalian preference, or just a human adaptation? Harold McGee, author of the definitive On Food and Cooking, thinks there’s an inherent appeal in the taste of cooked food, especially so-called Maillard compounds. These are the aromatic products of the reaction of amino acids and carbohydrates in the presence of heat, responsible for the tastes of coffee and bread and the tasty brown crust on a roast. “When you cook food you make its chemical composition more complex,” McGee says. “What’s the most complex natural, uncooked food? Fruit, which is produced by plants specifically to appeal to animals. I used to think it would be interesting to know if humans are the only animals that prefer cooked food, and now we’re finding out it’s a very basic preference.”

    Among Wrangham’s professional peers, his theory elicits skepticism, mainly because it implies that fire was mastered around the time Homo erectus appeared, roughly 1.8 million years ago. Until recently, the earliest human hearths were dated to about 250,000 B.C.; last year, however, the discovery of charred bone and primitive stone tools in a cave in South Africa tentatively pushed the time back to roughly one million years ago, closer to what Wrangham’s hypothesis demands but still short. He acknowledges that this is a problem for his theory. But the number of sites dating from that early period is small, and the evidence of fire might not have been preserved. Future excavations, he hopes, will settle the issue.

    In Wrangham’s view, fire did much more than put a nice brown crust on a haunch of antelope. Fire detoxifies some foods that are poisonous when eaten raw, and it kills parasites and bacteria. Again, this comes down to the energy budget. Animals eat raw food without getting sick because their digestive and immune systems have evolved the appropriate defenses. Presumably the ancestors of Homo erectus—say, Australopithecus—did as well. But anything the body does, even on a molecular level, takes energy; by getting the same results from burning wood, human beings can put those calories to better use in their brains. Fire, by keeping people warm at night, made fur unnecessary, and without fur hominids could run farther and faster after prey without overheating. Fire brought hominids out of the trees; by frightening away nocturnal predators, it enabled Homo erectus to sleep safely on the ground, which was part of the process by which bipedalism (and perhaps mind-expanding dreaming) evolved. By bringing people together at one place and time to eat, fire laid the groundwork for pair bonding and, indeed, for human society.

    We will now, in the spirit of impartiality, acknowledge all the ways in which cooking is a terrible idea. The demand for firewood has denuded forests. As Bee Wilson notes in her new book, Consider the Fork, the average open cooking fire generates as much carbon dioxide as a car. Indoor smoke from cooking causes breathing problems, and heterocyclic amines from grilling or roasting meat are carcinogenic. Who knows how many people are burned or scalded, or cut by cooking utensils, or die in cooking-related house fires? How many valuable nutrients are washed down the sink along with the water in which vegetables were boiled? Cooking has given the world junk food, 17-course tasting menus at restaurants where you have to be a movie star to get a reservation, and obnoxious, overbearing chefs berating their sous-chefs on reality TV shows. Wouldn’t the world be a better place without all that?

    Raw-food advocates are perfectly justified in eating what makes them feel healthy or morally superior, but they make a category error when they presume that what nourished Australopithecus should be good enough for Homo sapiens. We are, of course, animals, but that doesn’t mean we have to eat like one. In taming fire, we set off on our own evolutionary path, and there is no turning back. We are the cooking animal.

  14. রেজাউল করিম সুমন - ৩০ মে ২০১৩ (৩:৩৮ অপরাহ্ণ)

    মাত্র ৪৯-এই চিরবিদায়! অবিশ্বাস্য!

    অকাল প্রয়াত ঋতুপর্ণ

    অকালে চলে গেলেন প্রখ্যাত চলচ্চিত্র পরিচালক ঋতুপর্ণ ঘোষ। বেশ কয়েক দিন ধরে তিনি প্যানক্রিয়াটাইটিসে আক্রান্ত ছিলেন। আজ সকালে হৃদরোগে আক্রান্ত হয়ে কলকাতায় প্রিন্স আনওয়ার শাহ রোডে নিজের বাড়িতেই মারা যান তিনি। জানা গিয়েছে, ঘুমের মধ্যেই মৃত্যু হয় তাঁর। ১২টি জাতীয় পুরস্কারের বিজেতা তিনি। তাঁর মৃত্যুতে মূহ্যমান শিল্পীমহল। শোকপ্রকাশ করেছেন মুখ্যমন্ত্রী মমতা বন্দ্যোপাধ্যায়।

    ১৯৬৩ সালের ৩১ আগস্ট কলকাতায় জন্ম হয় ঋতুপর্ণ ঘোষের। বিজ্ঞাপন সংস্থার চাকরি দিয়ে জীবন শুরু করে সিনেমা পরিচালনার কাজ শুরু করেন তিনি। প্রথম ছবি ১৯৯৪ সালে শীর্ষেন্দু মুখোপাধ্যায়ের কাহিনি অবলম্বনে হীরের আংটি। প্রথম জাতীয় পুরস্কার আসে ১৯৯৫ সালে উনিশে এপ্রিল ছবির জন্য। জাতীয় পুরস্কার পান দহন, শুভ মহরত্‍, চোখের বালি, রেনকোট প্রভৃতি ছবির জন্য। মাত্র ৪৯ বছর বয়সে চলে গেলেন তিনি।

    ঋতুপর্ণ ঘোষের প্রয়াণে সোশ্যাল নেটওয়ার্কিং সাইট ট্যুটারে শোক প্রকাশ করেছন সমাজের বিভিন্ন স্তরের মানুষ। শোকপ্রকাশ করেছেন অভিনেতা অনুপম খের, পরিচালক মধুর ভাণ্ডারকর, সুহেল শেঠ, তরণ আদর্শ। ঋতুপর্ণ ঘোষে অকাল প্রয়াণে শোক প্রকাশ করেছেন গুজরাটের মুখ্যমন্ত্রী নরেন্দ্র মোদীও।

  15. Pingback: ঋতুপর্ণ ঘোষ | প্রাত্যহিক পাঠ

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