৪৮ comments

1. 

   মাসুদ করিম - ২ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (১০:৪০ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

   অনেকের নামই মৃত্যুতে প্রথম শুনি, শোকলেখনে প্রথম পড়ি, তেমনি একটি নাম মাইকেল হেনরি হাইম (Michael Henry Heim), ছিলেন সর্বকালের অন্যতম শ্রেষ্ঠ অনুবাদক। তুখোড় দক্ষতা ছিল চেক, ফ্রেঞ্চ, জার্মান, ইটালিয়ান, রাশিয়ান, সার্বো-ক্রোয়েশিয়ান ভাষায়। পড়তে পারতেন ডেনিশ, হাঙ্গেরিয়ান, ল্যাটিন, স্লোভাক, রোমানিয়ান, স্প্যানিশ। গত ২৯ সেপ্টেম্বর ২০১২ সালে মস্তিষ্কের ক্যান্সারের সাথে তার দীর্ঘ লড়াইয়ের পর তিনি মৃত্যুবরণ করেন।
   
   Michael Henry Heim (January 21, 1943 – September 29, 2012)

   Three Percent
   I’m really not sure how to write this post . . . I didn’t know Michael Henry Heim as well as a lot of other people, such as Esther Allen, Susan Bernofsky, Sean Cotter, and the like, but I did have a number of really amazing interactions with him, and his passing is incredible sad and hitting me pretty hard. We’re quickly organizing a number of events at ALTA to honor Mike, who was definitely one of the greatest translators ever (not a hyperbole), and whose kindness, brilliance, passion, and giving nature have impacted more people than can be named. Simply put, in ways explicit and secret, Michael Henry Heim accomplished more for international literature over the past half-century than probably anyone else in the world. (Read to the bottom for a truly newsworthy revelation. And yes, I know I’m burying the lede, but I have my reasons.)

   First off, just look at this incomplete list of authors that Mike translated: Milan Kundera, Bohumil Hrabal, Danilo Kis, Karel Capek, Peter Esterhazy, Dubravka Ugresic, George Konrad, Bertold Brecht, Gunter Grass, and Anton Chekhov. Yes. All of them.

   He also translated Hugo Claus’s Wonder, for which he received a great deal of praise and an award that led to this video filmed at the Flanders House: I don’t have a complete list of awards here in front of me, but I know Mike also received the Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize, the PEN Translation Award, and definitely some NEA fellowships at some point in time. I’m not at all exaggerating when I say that Mike’s translations are among the best ever written. He was a true master.

   And part of the reason he was so, so good, was he natural affinity for learning languages, and the curiosity that kept him motivated to continue exploring words and languages and literatures right up to the end. According to this interview, in which Mike explains his system for learning languages, he claims to know ten.

   CWL: I’m here with Michael Heim, who is a professor of Slavic languages and literatures at UCLA, and is a well known literary translator and an exemplary language learner. So, I guess I’d like to start by asking you, could you tell us how many languages you know?
   
   Michael Heim: The answer is no and I’m not trying to be coy. It’s just that the concept of what is a language changes with the historical situation. I started learning a language about 25 years ago – a language that was then called Serbo-Croatian, and it’s now called Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin. So did I learn four for the price of one, or is it still only one? That’s an ideological question; a more linguistic question is whether you can consider the three Scandinavian languages as one. I studied Danish but I went the extra mile to learn how to read Norwegian and Swedish as well, but I can’t speak Norwegian and Swedish. I don’t know if there is anybody who can speak all three of them, because they are very very close, so it’s not actually clear. I say that I work actively with about ten languages, and when I mean actively, I mean that I use them professionally.

   I think he’s actually hiding the truth behind the word “professionally” and that he “knew” at least 16. One of the last times I spent a lot of time with Mike was on a flight to Salzburg for a seminar on translation. At the time he was learning Chinese by translating a book. Seriously, one of the most amazing men I’ve ever met.

   I loved being on panels with MHH. For a moderator, there’s a comfort in knowing that you’re sitting beside someone who loves to share what he/she knows, and can do so in a way that’s entertaining and engaging. Mike was very much that type of person. And one who was always extremely well prepared and could blow your mind with the his most passing of comments.

   Once we were on a panel together at the Goethe Institut in Chicago to talk about Gunter Grass. I had mentioned ahead of time that I loved his translation of My Century because of the way each section of the book—one for each year in the century—was written in its own distinct voice, which shifted in dialect and vocab throughout the novel. At the event itself (which sadly is not available online), Michael presented a whole speech on how a translator can invent dialects for translation and thus avoid the trap of relying on Southern or black speech patterns—the two most “obvious” dialects in America. I remember sitting there stunned at how effortlessly he explained solutions to a seemingly insolvable problem, and honored by the fact that I was sharing a table with this genius.

   There’s so much more to say about him . . . The first time I met Mike was in Los Angeles at a reading at the now defunct Dutton’s Books. He had told me to “look for the guy who looks like Abraham Lincoln.” So I spent a few minutes searching for a man in a stovetop hat until this person walked in, smiling . . . He always seemed to be smiling: After the reading, Michael and Priscilla took me back to their house for a lovely dinner, and hours of fantastic conversation. I loved looking through his bookshelves, talking about how he came to be a translator, looking at his office, which was overrun with projects and paper . . .

   If you’re ever around a group of translators, you should mention MHH’s name just to see everyone’s face light up and hear all the gushing praise. During his time at UCLA—and his time as an active member of the translation community—he mentored and worked with everyone. I feel like the list of translators indebted to him could take up a post by itself. Translators AND publishers. This ALTA is going to be one massive love fest, which, undoubtedly, would make Mike nervous, since he was such a humble person.

   For example—and this is the lede I intentionally buried because I wanted to wax rhapsodic about MHH and his life, works, etc., and didn’t want you jumping past all that—Michael Henry Heim is the secret donor behind the PEN Translation Fund. In 2003, Michael set up a meeting with Esther Allen, and donated $734,000 to establish the Translation Fund—a fund that provides approx. 12 translators a year with $3,000+ grants to work on their projects. (So add all of these recipients, applicants, editors, and the like to the growing list of people whose lives were touched by Mike.)

   Until today, the source of this money has been kept a secret, but upon his passing, his wife agreed that this is the right time to share the information with the world. It MUST be noted though that there was no rich uncle, or stock market killing that made this gift possible. Michael’s Hungarian father was a soldier for the U.S. in WWII and the money the family received when he died was set aside untouched for 60 years. During that time, Priscilla and Michael lived a simple, frugal life, adding to the fund when they could, and then giving the whole gift to help future generations of translators share their gifts and passions with the world. And to help prod publishers into doing more to recognize and celebrate literature in translation.
   
   [I’m literally crying right now. I’ve been working on this on-and-off all day, arguing at ALTA people, stressing about the conference, and repressing the fact that Michael’s death is extremely sad and that I may never meet anyone this amazing, this giving, this selfless again my life.]

   One last note: Sometime next year, Open Letter will be publishing The Man Between, a book about Michael Henry Heim. It will contain bits of his autobiography, which was published in Romania, along with texts he used in teaching his translation classes, bits of correspondence with famous authors he translated, and essays from some of his literary admirers.

   You can read a bit of the “autobiography” section online at The Iowa Review. And please feel free to share your own thoughts, comments, and stories about Mike there at TIR or in the comments below. For everyone who ever came in contact with him, this is a terrible loss, and I’m sure most all of us will want to reminisce. And we’ll definitely raise a toast to him at ALTA. This week, translation lost one of its all-time greats.

2. 

   মাসুদ করিম - ৩ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (১:২৯ অপরাহ্ণ)

   

   গত সোমবার ৯৫ বছর বয়সে প্রয়াত হলেন ইতিহাসবিদের ইতিহাসবিদ খ্যাত শিল্পবিপ্লবের ইতিহাস অসাধারণ জীবন্ত লেখার মাধ্যমে প্রকাশ করা মহান ইতিহাস কথক কমিউনিস্ট কিন্তু আধুনিক সংস্কৃতির গণতান্ত্রিক অনুপ্রেরণায় ঋদ্ধ ব্রিটিশ ইতিহাসবিদ এরিক হবসবম (Eric Hobsbawm)।
   
   Eric Hobsbawm (9 June 1917 – 1 October 2012)

   Eric Hobsbawm changed how we think about culture
   Jonathan Jones

   The historian Eric Hobsbawm, who has died aged 95, is rightly being mourned as a great intellectual of modern times. Yet Hobsbawm was more than a powerful historian and political thinker; nor should he be remembered in solitary splendour. He was part of a group of British Marxist scholars who profoundly influenced our understanding of what culture is.

   More than 50 years ago, a bunch of dissident Oxbridge-educated academic historians changed the way the British saw culture. They understood, long before anyone else, that culture is what shapes the world. They also saw that culture is totally democratic and comes from the people. While the official guardians of the arts, such as Kenneth Clark, were praising the “civilisation” of the elite on television and in print, Hobsbawm and co were resurrecting the lost cultures of Luddites, the masked poachers and anyonymous letter writers, of William Blake and John Milton. They discovered and popularised the value of popular culture – something so integral to our lives today it seems bizarre it was ever denigrated.

   Culture, in the tradition of social analysis that took its lead from Karl Marx, was seen as a secondary and superficial aspect of human life. The economic base, according to the old Marxists, determines everything else; art and literature merely reflect that economic base. The English 18th-century portrait, for instance, reflects the rise of bourgeois individualism. Marx himself believed in the economic determinants of culture. The example he gave was Daniel Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe, which he saw as a utopian portrait of the self-helping capitalist.

   Hobsbawm was one of a generation of brilliant British historians, along with EP Thompson and Christopher Hill, who embraced Marxism but rejected its crude attitude to culture. Thompson’s classic book The Making of the English Working Class is not so much about factories and working conditions as about the rituals and symbols in which resistance is expressed: his working class made itself, through culture. Similarly, Hill draws together Milton and the Ranters in his recreations of the culture of the “English revolution” that overthrew Charles I, releasing a carnival of radical thought.

   If anything, Hobsbawm was the most conventionally Marxist of the three, but that was because he was extremely interested in economics. It is no paradox that the rightwing historian Niall Ferguson has mourned Hobsbawm in the Guardian: the two pay equally keen attention to the harsh realities of money in history.

   But Hobsbawm excelled at revealing the power of myths, symbols and rituals, the intricacies of popular culture. He studied the arcane lost language of rural protest in his collaborative book Captain Swing. He coined the terms “social bandits” and “primitive rebels”, to describe forgotten figures who had become outlaws in order to resist their oppressors – Robin Hood, for instance.

   Cinema pervades his work. Hobsbawm happened to research Sicilian outlaws at the exact moment neorealist cinema was discovering working-class Italy: the film Salvatore Giuliano, about a famous Sicilian outlaw, came out in 1962, not long after his book Primitive Rebels.. In The Age of Extremes, Hobsbawm argued that everyone who was young and savvy in 1930s Britain was also a fan of avant-garde films such as Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou and Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin. His evidence? His own memory: he recalls going to see these films as a young man. His passion for 1930s cinema was one that apparently lasted: I saw him in the audience at the Barbican in London a few years ago, glued to Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps.

   In his four-volume history of the modern world, Hobsbawm departs almost completely from Marxist attitudes to culture. He celebrates cinema and modernist art as powerful cultural forces, ones he doesn’t even attempt to reduce to economic determinants. The truly revolutionary age of art was before the first world war, he wrote, when Cezanne, Picasso and Matisse remade art completely. By the 1930s, he argued, the avant garde had become a social ritual: everyone going to see all those hip, surrealist movies. In his view, the avant garde was dead by the 1960s. Famously, Hobsbawm loved jazz, an art form that is impossible to reduce to a simple economic theory.

   Most importantly of all, Hobsbawm applied his sense of the power of culture to rethinking socialist politics. The Labour movement had lost contact with modern culture, he argued in the pages of Marxism Today magazine in the 1980s. It was Thatcherism that reflected postmodern ways of life. An avid student reader of this magazine in the 1980s, I learned that masculinity is a cultural construct, and that Madonna was a feminist. It was a long way from old Marxism, and over it all hovered the crystal-clear mind of Hobsbawm. Of course, he couldn’t have predicted that it would be Tony Blair who ended up taking Labour into a new cultural age.

   Why did these Marxists influence our understanding of culture? Because they wrote about it so well. In their books there is a powerful sense of culture as an endlessly creative field of play, where people build and destroy utopias every day. These men set out the expansive, democratic sense of culture we take for granted today, demonstrating that the rough music of the poor can be more eloquent than the duke’s landscaped garden.

   • 

     রেজাউল করিম সুমন - ৬ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (১:১২ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

     আরো দুটি শোকলেখন:

     Remember us with forbearance: the unrepentant Eric Hobsbawm, an obituary

     Historian in the Marxist tradition with a global reach

3. 

   মাসুদ করিম - ৬ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (১:৪১ অপরাহ্ণ)

   
   শন কোনারি, Diamonds Are Forever।

   জেমস বন্ডের ৫০ বছর উদযাপন চলছে। ব্রিটিশ দৈনিক ‘গার্ডিয়ান’এর এই ডাটাব্লগটি আমার খুবই ভাল লেগেছে। এই পঞ্চাশ বছরে কতজনকে মরতে হয়েছে জেমস বন্ড ফিল্মে? — ১২৯৯ জনকে, ২২টি টি ফিল্মে (অফিসিয়াল) গড়ে ৫৯ জন করে, এর মধ্যে জেমস বন্ড একাই মেরেছে ৩৫২ জনকে আর অন্যরা মেরেছে ৯৪৭ জনকে। সবচেয়ে ‘ডেডলি’ ফিল্ম ছিল You Only Live Twice, এফিল্মে বন্ড মেরেছেন ২১ জন অন্যরা মেরেছে ১৭৫ জন, সব মিলিয়ে ১৯৬টি লাশ পড়েছিল এফিল্মে। ডাটা ডাউনলোড করুন : James Bond movie body counts।

   
   Deaths by film

   What has Blackwell, Texas got in common with James Bond? The British agent has used his license to kill to bump off a population the same size as its 354 inhabitants since the films began in 1962.

   The launch of Skyfall is sure to increase that number. James Bond films are famous for two things: one is his awesome sex life; the other is the sheer numbers of people who get shot, poisoned, eaten by sharks or sliced up by a circular saw.

   How violent are Bond’s films? Perhaps unsurprisingly, the body counts are extremely controversial, with several sites with competing counts and methodology.

   Argument reigns, for example, over whether Sean Connery’s 1983 Never Say Never Again is actually a real Bond film at all: it wasn’t made by Eon Productions, which has produced the films out of Pinewood since 1962. There was also the ‘first’ Bond film: Casino Royale in 1954 (which had Barry Nelson playing Bond as, gulp, American) and another Casino Royale in swinging 1967, starring Peter Sellers, David Niven and Woody Allen.

   But the modern series starting with Dr No is well-documented by fans. There are two good sources: Commander Bond.net and the rather wonderful All Outta Bubble Gum which compiles body counts for hundreds of movies.

   So, here’s the data. And it shows a total of 1,299 deaths in all the official Bond films (excluding both the early Casino Royale’s and Never Say Never Again). Of those, 352 kills were by Bond (354 if you include Never…) and 947 by others.

   ডাটাব্লগটি সম্পূর্ণ পড়ুন : James Bond bodycount: how many people died in each film?

4. 

   অদিতি কবির - ৬ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (৪:৫০ অপরাহ্ণ)

   শ্যন কনারির পাশে দাঁড়ান মেয়েটি লানা উড। নাটালি উডের বোন।

   • 

     মাসুদ করিম - ৬ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (৬:০০ অপরাহ্ণ)

     লানা উড
     Provocative and ever the temptress in her prime, the dark-maned, gorgeous-looking Lana Wood was born Svetlana Gurdin in Santa Monica, California, the younger daughter of Nicholas Zacharaenko, a Russian émigré who changed the family surname to Gurdin before Lana was born. Both her parents’ families fled their Russian homeland following the communist takeover and the couple met and married in San Francisco. Lana’s more famous acting sister was christened Natalia eight years earlier and the third girl in the family was a half-sister named Olga, her mother’s child.

     নাতালি উড
     Natalie Wood appeared in 56 films for TV and the silver screen and received 3 Oscar nominations before turning 25.

     Her real name was Natasha Gurdin, and she was born in San Francisco on Wednesday, July 20th, 1938, to Russian émigrés Maria and Nicholas Zakharenko (they had changed their last name to Gurdin before coming to America). Natalie has one sister, Lana Wood, who is younger. They have a half-sister, Olga Viriapaeff, who is older. When she was just 4 years old, Natalie made her film debut in Happy Land (1943), although she had less than 10 seconds of screen time. When she was 7, she was cast in a major role opposite the legendary Orson Welles in Tomorrow Is Forever (1946). The following year, she starred as Susan Walker in one of the most famous films of all time, Miracle on 34th Street (1947), which for many people has become a traditional viewing every Christmas. Natalie stayed very busy as a child actress and appeared in over 20 films, including The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay! (1948), Our Very Own (1950).

5. 

   মাসুদ করিম - ৭ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (১০:২৩ অপরাহ্ণ)

   আজ দ্বাদশ বর্ষে প্রবেশ করল আফগান যুদ্ধ।

   
   
   
   

   “People could not find bread or water, but rockets were everywhere,” said Wahidullah, who now hobbles around on red-handled crutches.

   The dilapidated palace is a reminder of the horror of the civil war when rival factions, who had joined forces against Soviet fighters before they left in early 1989, turned their guns on each other.

   Tens of thousands of civilians were killed.

   Fed up with the bloodletting, the Afghan people longed for someone who would restore peace and order. The Taliban did so.

   But once in power, they imposed harsh Islamic laws that repressed women and they publicly executed, stoned and lashed people for alleged crimes and sexual misconduct. The Taliban also gave sanctuary to al Qaeda in the run-up to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S. When the Taliban refused to give up the al Qaeda leaders who orchestrated 9/11, the U.S. invaded on Oct. 7, 2001.

   বিস্তারিত পড়ুন : Afghanistan war enters 12th year।

6. 

   মাসুদ করিম - ৮ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (৯:৩১ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

   চতুর্থ বারের মতো ভেনিজুয়েলার প্রেসিডেন্ট নির্বাচিত হলেন হুগো শাভেজ।

   Gracias Dios mío! Gracias a todos y a todas!!

   — Hugo Chávez Frías (@chavezcandanga) October 8, 2012

   There have been six candidates competing for the presidency in the current election. However since the very beginning, opinion polls suggested the race was between just two potential leaders.Incumbent President Hugo Chavez, representing the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, has proven prominent, but opposition candidate Henrique Capriles, representing the Coalition for Democratic Unity, has been biting at his heels throughout campaigning.Capriles is the first opposition candidate in Chavez’s 13 years in power. The current leader and his young pro-US rival have been neck-and-neck in opinion polls.

   Chavez was first elected in 1998 and since then has been waging what he calls a “Bolivarian revolution” towards socialism. He has received a lot of negative coverage from Western media, many regarding him as a reactionary, seeking to cling to power for another presidential term. His controversial foreign policies have provoked the anger of the US on more the one occasion.

   He has condemned the support of the opposition in Syria and advocates Iran’s right to enrich uranium. In addition, he has been a key figure in the movement for Latin American integration and the exclusion of the US regarding internal policies.

   In contrast, 40-year-old Capriles has resolved to radically change Venezuelan foreign policy upon election, heralding a possible strengthening of ties with the US. Born in 1972, Venezuelan politician and lawyer Capriles was mayor of Baruta Municipality of Caracas. Since November 2008 has been governor of the country’s Miranda state.

   বিস্তারিত পড়ুন : Chavez wins Venezuelan presidency।

7. 

   মাসুদ করিম - ৮ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (১২:৫৫ অপরাহ্ণ)

   
   ২০০৭এ বুকারে : চিনুয়া আচেবে

   not substance over style, but substance as style

   চিনুয়া আচেবের আত্মজীবনী,There Was a Country, আলোকপাত করা হয়েছে মূলত ১৯৬৭-৭০এর নাইজেরিয়ার গৃহযুদ্ধের স্মৃতিকে, বাজারে আসবে ১১ অক্টোবর ২০১২।

   “There Was a Country”: Chinua Achebe’s Memoir of War

   I met Chinua Achebe for the first time when I was in high school, but I knew him through his works long before that. “Uncle,” as my siblings and I were told to call him, came to our house in Washington, D.C., for a teatime reception my mother had organized. She had just co-written a biography of him for children, inspired in part by my lament that there were few books about the lives of famous Africans. It was hard to reconcile the taciturn, elderly, black-beret-wearing gentleman in his wheelchair beneath the bougainvillea with the unapologetic in-your-face voice of Africa I had imagined while reading his seminal work, Things Fall Apart, or the determinedly angry man I had pictured working through the arguments of his ever-relevant 1982 essays, The Trouble With Nigeria. The man who sat in our living room reminiscing with my father—who remarked to my best friend’s mother when she apologized for presenting a dog-eared copy of Things Fall Apart for him to sign, “Well I know that you have truly read the book!”—was unassuming, not substance over style, but substance as style.

   
   It is perhaps for this reason that Achebe’s works have become the foundational texts for much of African literature and his person a role model for many Africans, writers and nonwriters alike. Things Fall Apart, his first and most influential novel has sold more than 12 million copies since it was published in 1958. It is a staple in any course on the modern English-language novel, and has even inspired an eponymous hip-hop album by the The Roots. His essay on Conrad’s Heart of Darkness has so profoundly shaped the way Conrad is read that the two texts are now taught alongside each other. Achebe’s refusal twice to accept Nigeria’s National Honors on the grounds that many of the problems with governance he illuminated in The Trouble With Nigeria remain unsolved, has only solidified his reputation as a man of ultimate principle. But the cultural, historical, and personal antecedents of this “Teacher of Light” have largely remained the focus of postcolonial theorists who have often rendered the world’s most accessible author inaccessible.

   It seems fitting, then, that Achebe who turns 82 this November, would attempt to offer himself to us in his new memoir, There Was a Country. The book has all the elements of an author’s journey through his own life. There is the story of how his orphaned father’s conversion to Christianity set the stage for Achebe’s education and love of reading; how his own personal early experiences with both traditional religion and Christianity created internal conflicts that form the subject matter of his early novels; how he bounced from studying medicine to English, into a career at the Nigerian Broadcasting Corp., and through that into the arms of Christie Okoli, his wife for the last 56 years. But this narrative stops short, as if Achebe partially subscribes to the thinking of Toni Morrison, who famously canceled a memoir, saying, “There is a point at which your life is not interesting, at least to me.” For Achebe it appears that his life is only interesting within the context of the Nigerian Civil War (also known as the Nigeria-Biafra War) of 1967–70, which claimed up to 3 million lives, most of them from the Igbo ethnic group of which Achebe and I are both members. This war began after the mass slaughter of Igbos in northern Nigeria inspired the flamboyant Oxford-educated Col. Odumegwu Ojukwu to declare an independent state in the Igbo-dominated southeast, and inspired many to humanitarian action, even as it became a proxy battleground for corporate and Cold War interests.

   Forty years on, it is impossible not to see the impact of that civil war. For many Igbos, the impact is still very personal. Both of my grandmothers can only shake their heads and repeat “It was so terrible” when asked about that time in their lives. As does Achebe in There Was a Country, my grandfather can recount numerous near brushes with death at the hands of often-ruthless Nigerian fighter and bomber pilots. My mother and father speak vividly of the initial excitement following Ojukwu’s declaration of Biafran independence followed by fear, deprivation, and eventually an absolute weariness as the conflict dragged on. For the children and grandchildren of Igbos who lived through the war, these stories of trauma have left an indelible impression that underlies a certain mistrust of Nigeria’s attempt at national unity. Equally devastating is the war’s impact on our national political system. Achebe writes that after the war, “the Igbo were not and continue not to be reintegrated into Nigeria, one of the main reasons for the country’s continued backwardness, in my estimation.” A trip to the Igbo-dominated southeast reveals abysmal roads, bridges threatening to collapse, and a power grid that is all but entirely useless, all what many Igbos believe is a deliberate policy of neglect as punishment for the sin of secession. The country has suffered as a result of what Achebe calls the evil of tribalism.

8. 

   মাসুদ করিম - ৮ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (৬:২৩ অপরাহ্ণ)

   পরিণত দেহকোষ আবার প্রোগ্রাম করা যাবে! এই আবিষ্কারের জন্য এবারের চিকিৎসাবিজ্ঞানের নোবেল পেলেন জাপানের শিনইয়া ইয়ামানাকা এবং ব্রিটেনের স্যার জন বি. গার্ডন।
   

   The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2012 was awarded jointly to Sir John B. Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka “for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent”

   
   A female Xenopus frog – the first sexually mature adult vertebrate produced by nuclear transplantation – which Gurdon created in the 1950s. Photograph: J B Gurdon

   • 

     মাসুদ করিম - ১৪ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (১২:৩৩ অপরাহ্ণ)

     মুক্তমনায় প্রদীপ দেব : চিকিৎসাবিদ্যায় নোবেল পুরষ্কার ও একটি সনদপত্র।

     গর্ডন ভাবলেন এতদিনের বদ্ধমূল ধারণাতো ভুলও হতে পারে। একটা কোষ যখন এক অবস্থা থেকে অন্য অবস্থায় রূপান্তরিত হয় তখন কি তার প্রাথমিক অবস্থার সব স্মৃতিই মুছে যায়? যে জিনেটিক কোড তাদের পরিবর্তন নিয়ন্ত্রণ করে সেই কোডের কিছুই কি অবশিষ্ট থাকে না? যদি কিছু স্মৃতিও কোষের নিউক্লিয়াসে থাকে তাহলে সেই স্মৃতি কাজে লাগিয়ে পরিণত কোষের মধ্যে নবীন কোষের বৈশিষ্ট্য ফিরিয়ে আনা সম্ভব। ১৯৫৮ সালে তিনি ব্যাঙের ডিম্বকোষের অপরিণত অবিশেষায়িত নিউক্লিয়াস সরিয়ে সেখানে পাকস্থলির প্রবীণ কোষের নিউক্লিয়াস ঢুকিয়ে দেন। এই পরিবর্তিত ডিম্বকোষগুলো যথাসময়ে স্বাভাবিক ব্যাঙাচিতে পরিণত হয়। তারপর পি-এইচ-ডি থিসিস জমা দিয়ে ব্যাঙাচিগুলো প্রফেসর ফিশবার্গের কাছে রেখে তিনি পোস্ট-ডক্টরেট করতে চলে যান আমেরিকায়। ক্যালটেকে ব্যাকটেরিয়ার বংশগতির ওপর তিন বছর গবেষণা করে ফিরে আসেন অক্সফোর্ডে। ১৯৬২ সালে প্রাণিবিদ্যা বিভাগে যোগ দেন সহকারী প্রভাষক হিসেবে।

     ততদিনে ব্যাঙাচিগুলো পূর্নাঙ্গ ব্যাঙে পরিণত হয়েছে। সফল ভাবে ব্যাঙের ক্লোন তৈরি হয়েছে। সে বছরই প্রকাশিত হলো তাঁর কালজয়ী গবেষণাপত্র “দি ডেভেলপমেন্টাল ক্যাপাসিটি অব নিউক্লিয়াই টেকেন ফ্রম ইন্টেস্টাইনাল এপিথেলিয়াম সেলস অব ফিডিং ট্যাডপোলস”। জন গর্ডন আবিষ্কার করলেন যে পরিণত প্রবীণ কোষগুলোকে আবার ঝকঝকে নবীন কোষে রূপান্তরিত করা যায়। ‘ক্লোন’ শব্দটি গাছের ক্ষেত্রে অনেক আগে থেকে প্রচলিত হলেও প্রাণির ক্ষেত্রে প্রথম ব্যবহার করেন ব্রিটিশ জীববিজ্ঞানী হ্যালডেন ১৯৬৩ সালে গর্ডনের গবেষণালব্ধ ফলাফল ব্যাখ্যা করতে গিয়ে।

     গর্ডনের আবিষ্কারকে শুরুতে পাত্তা দিতে চাননি অনেকেই। কিন্তু পৃথিবীর বিভিন্ন দেশের বিজ্ঞানীরা যখন গর্ডনের পদ্ধতি ব্যবহার করে সাফল্য পেতে শুরু করলেন – স্টেমসেল গবেষণার পালে হাওয়া লাগলো। নিম্ন-প্রজাতির প্রাণী থেকে শুরু করে স্তন্যপায়ী প্রাণীর ক্লোন তৈরি করার চেষ্টা চললো। ১৯৯৬ সালে স্কটল্যান্ডের রোজলিন ইনস্টিটিউটের বিজ্ঞানী আয়ান উইলমুট ও কিথ ক্যাম্পবেলের নেতৃত্বে যখন প্রথম স্তন্যপায়ী ক্লোন ভেড়া ডলির জন্ম হলো পৃথিবীব্যাপী হৈ চৈ পড়ে গেলো।

     …

     জন গর্ডনের পদ্ধতিতে একটা পরিণত বিশেষায়িত কোষকে অপরিণত অবিশেষায়িত কোষে রূপান্তরের জন্য একটা কোষ থেকে নিউক্লিয়াস বের করে সেখানে অন্য পরিণত কোষের নিউক্লিয়াস স্থাপন করতে হয় পরীক্ষাগারে একটার পর একটা। এই জটিল পদ্ধতির কোন বিকল্প কি আছে? পুরো একটা পরিণত কোষকে কি সরাসরি নবীন কোষে পরিণত করা সম্ভব? প্রফেসর ইয়ামানাকা প্রমাণ করেছেন এটা সম্ভব।

     ২০০৭ সালের নোবেল বিজয়ী মার্টিন ইভান্স ইঁদুরের এমব্রায়োনিক স্টেমসেল তৈরি করতে সক্ষম হয়েছেন ল্যাবরেটরিতে। ইঁদুরের ভ্রুণ থেকে অবিশেষায়িত নবীন কোষ আলাদা করে নিয়ে ল্যাবোরেটরিতে সেই কোষগুলোর সফল বিভাজন ঘটিয়ে অনেকগুলো স্টেমসেল তৈরি করেছেন। ইয়ামানাকা সেই ব্যাপারটাকে কাজে লাগালেন। তিনি দেখতে চাইলেন নবীন কোষগুলোকে নবীন থাকতে সাহায্য করে কোন্ কোন্ জিন? ইয়ামানাকা বিভিন্ন রকমের জিনের সমন্বয় করে পরীক্ষা চালালেন। চার ধরনের জিনের একটা সহজ সমন্বয় এনে দিল তাঁর গবেষণার সাফল্য।

     ইয়ামানাকা ইঁদুরের শরীর থেকে একটা বিশেষায়িত প্রবীণ কোষ নিয়ে সেখানে চারটা জিন প্রবেশ করিয়ে পুরো কোষটাকেই অবিশেষায়িত নবীন কোষে রূপান্তরিত করতে সফল হলেন। তিনি এই কোষগুলোর নাম দিলেন ইনডিউজড প্লুরিপোটেন্ট স্টেম সেল বা আই-পি-এস সেল। এই আই-পি-এস সেল থেকে পূর্ণাঙ্গ ইঁদুর তৈরি করতে সক্ষম হয়েছেন ইয়ামানাকা। ২০০৬ সালে ইয়ামানাকা’র গবেষণাপত্র “ইনডাকশান অব প্লুরিপুটেন্ট স্টেম সেলস ফ্রম মাউস এমব্রায়োনিক এন্ড এডাল্ট ফাইব্রোব্লাস্ট কালচারস বাই ডিফাইন্ড ফ্যাক্টরস” প্রকাশিত হয় ‘সেল’ জার্নালে।

     প্রবীণ কোষকে নবীন কোষে পরিণত করার পদ্ধতি যখন জানা হয়ে গেল চিকিৎসাবিজ্ঞানীরা আশা করছেন অনেক জটিল রোগের সমাধান হয়তো পাওয়া যাবে এখন। পার্কিনসন্স, ডায়াবেটিস ইত্যাদি রোগ নিয়ন্ত্রণ সহজ হবে। আই-পি-এস কোষ কাজে লাগিয়ে শরীরের সব প্রত্যঙ্গের কোষ তৈরি করা সম্ভব। যেমন একজন রোগীর ত্বক থেকে একটা কোষ নিয়ে তাকে আই-পি-এস কোষে রূপান্তর করে আবার বাড়তে দিলে দেখা যাবে কীভাবে রোগের সংক্রমণ ঘটে। ফলে রোগ প্রতিরোধ করা সহজ হবে।

9. 

   মাসুদ করিম - ৯ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (১২:৫৯ অপরাহ্ণ)

   গ্রিসের সাথে সংহতি প্রকাশে বিলম্ব হল এঙ্গেলা মারকেলের? আজ তার গ্রিস সফরে এটাই মূল প্রশ্ন।

   Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman says her trip to Athens on Tuesday is a “normal visit.” Judging by the security arrangements, it is anything but. Merkel has become a hate figure to many in Greece in the euro crisis. Critics say her visit has come too late. She wants to show solidarity, but her scope to offer any concessions on aid is limited.

   German Chancellor Angela Merkel will undertake what is being billed as the toughest trip of her career on Tuesday when she travels to Athens for the first time since the start of the euro crisis.

   Merkel, hated by many Greeks who hold her personally responsible for their economic plight, will encounter massive protests by Greece’s left-wing opposition and trade unions.

   “She does not come to support Greece, which her policies have brought to the brink. She comes to save the corrupt, disgraced and servile political system,” said Alexis Tsipras, who leads the opposition Syriza alliance. “We will give her the welcome she deserves.”

   Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, made the surprise announcement of her visit at a regular government news conference last Friday. “I say it’s a normal visit because Greece and Germany are close partners within the EU and the euro zone and because we work very closely together,” said Seibert.

   German Left Party Chief to Join Athens Protests

   The head of Germany’s opposition Left Party, Bernd Riexinger, said he would travel to Athens to join the demonstration against Merkel and to hold a speech. “Merkel’s visit to Athens will heighten internal conflicts in Greece,” Riexinger told Stuttgarter Nachrichten newspaper. “I will express our solidarity with the Greek workers and pensioners who are taking to the streets to protest against income cutbacks that are threatening their livelihoods.”

   Carsten Schneider, a member of parliament for the opposition center-left Social Democrats, noted that Merkel had last been in Athens in 2007 and should have visited Greece more recently. “The crisis has being going on since 2009 and just giving advice from one’s desk in Berlin looks bad,” he told German public television channel ARD in an interview on Monday.

   Members of Merkel’s center-right coalition said her trip was about acknowledging and supporting their reform efforts. “The visit isn’t intended to bring any presents for the Greeks,” said Volker Kauder, head of the conservative parliamentary group.

   Hermann Gröhe, general secretary of Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union, said the visit would be a “sign of solidarity” with Greece. “We support Greece on its difficult path. We want this country to make progress,” he said.

   German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle called Merkel’s trip “a European gesture, an act of acknowledgment of the Greek government which is under great pressure with its reform policy.”

   “The Greek government must and will do its homework. I refuse to just write the country off. The Greeks deserve fairness and respect,” he told Bild.

   Little Leeway for Concessions

   Merkel sounded conciliatory last week, telling a conference of young conservatives in the city of Rostock: “Just imagine what is demanded of the people in Greece. That is not easy. And if we are good Europeans than we cannot pretend not to care.”

   Some German media commentators urged Merkel to make some concessions in her talks with Samaras, such as giving Greece more time to meet its austerity requirements. But her leeway is limited. Merkel faces an election next year and can’t risk upsetting voters by signing Germany up to a third Greek bailout. She could face a damaging rebellion in her party in a parliamentary vote on any new aid for Greece.

   Her visit may, however, repair a little of the damage done in recent months by some of Merkel’s conservative allies who have been openly urging Greece to quit the euro zone.

   She, by contrast, has evidently decided that a Greek euro exit would prove too expensive and too risky in terms of the potential fallout for other ailing euro zone members. Her visit, analysts say, is a sign that she wants Greece to stay in the euro.

   Greece is currently locked in talks with inspectors from the “troika” of the International Monetary Fund, European Commission and European Central Bank over budget cuts for the next two years, a condition for getting the next tranche of the current €130 billion bailout program. Athens says it needs more time to meet the conditions attached to the bailout.

   বিস্তারিত পড়ুন : Merkel Ventures to Athens in Late Show of Solidarity।

10. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ৯ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (২:৩৯ অপরাহ্ণ)

    চেতনা। বস্তু। মস্তিষ্ক। মন। সমন্বিত তথ্য। মনন। আত্মা। বড় কঠিন পরিক্রমা। একজন স্নায়ুবিজ্ঞানী গ্যালিলিওর স্বপ্নের অভিযাত্রার প্রবাদ লিখলেন।

    Peering Inside the Black Box

    Of the many mysteries remaining about the brain, perhaps the greatest is the existence of consciousness. The question is how to build private, subjective experience from physical pieces and parts. Imagine that I were to hand you one hundred trillion Tinkertoys and ask you to arrange their connections and interactions in any way you’d like. At what point would you step back from your sprawling handiwork and declare, Now it is having private experiences? Now it can feel the joy of cinnamon, suffer in the jaws of pain, enjoy the dazzle of a sunset?

    For much of the 20th century, the question of building mind from matter was considered so difficult that consciousness was a topic non grata. The Behaviorist school of thought held that consciousness was an illusion: The brain was to be understood simply as an input-output black box of reflexes, and that’s where the investigation must end. Private, subjective experience, immeasurable by definition, was not on the scientific map.

    But the past several decades have seen a shift. Giants of biology, such as the late Francis Crick, began to take the problem seriously. They asked if consciousness could be addressed just like any other scientific problem. Once they started down that road, some basic insights began to emerge. Consciousness does not rely on all brain parts equally: Some tiny areas can be damaged with devastating consequences (such as coma) while other, large areas can be damaged with no appreciable loss of interior experience.

    Onto this stage steps Giulio Tononi, a pioneering neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. In “Phi: A Voyage From the Brain to the Soul,” Mr. Tononi expounds a theory of consciousness that he has been developing for well over a decade. His central idea goes roughly like this: First, consciousness is not an all-or-nothing property but instead exists on a gradient and can be quantified. A human may have a high degree of consciousness, a dog somewhat less, a worm even less and so on. But all can be conscious, assuming that their brains have the right sort of arrangement.

    And what does that arrangement need to be? Mr. Tononi suggests that consciousness arises from complex systems that can take on many configurations: “Our brains can be in one of trillions of states. Not only can we tell the difference between a Chaplin movie and a potato chip, but our brains can go into a different state from one frame of the movie to the next.” Moreover, the pieces of the system must be able to communicate richly with one another. A grid made up of a million photodiodes in a digital camera can capture a picture, but the information in each diode is independent from all the others. You could cut the grid into two pieces and they would still capture the same picture. By this account, a camera would not be conscious.

    Consciousness, then, is “integrated information”—”the information generated by the whole above and beyond its parts.” Drawing on the area of mathematics known as information theory, Mr. Tononi has devised a set of equations that capture an organism’s levels of differentiation (the ability to distinguish many states) and integration (communication across the system). His final measure for the degree of consciousness—a single number—is denoted by the Greek letter phi. Whether the theory is correct remains to be seen, but it is the first of its kind to rigorously define a metric for such an elusive quality.

    But I haven’t yet told you the most remarkable part about this book: It’s not a science text. Instead, it’s a narrative fiction in the style of Dante’s “Divine Comedy” or Dickens’s “Christmas Carol,” in which the protagonist is nudged toward insight by a helpful interlocutor. In “Phi,” the character whose eyes we see through is not a modern narrator, but Galileo Galilei. As such, the narrative spills out in the language of a bright early-17th-century thinker. Galileo, elderly and a bit doddering, is swept from scene to scene, shepherded by three protean guides: Francis Crick, the mathematician Alan Turing and the naturalist Charles Darwin—all of them mischievously funneling him through the next set of clues he requires.

    Following along in Galileo’s peculiar adventures, the reader meets a medley of historical figures, many of whom have various cases of brain damage. (The author, freely admitting his neuro-historical license, makes up clinical cases as necessary.) Copernicus, the victim of a stroke that laid waste to his cortex and thalamus, lies in a persistent vegetative state. Although his eyes move, he fundamentally lacks consciousness. Galileo’s former love, the beautiful Veronica, has damaged a small part of the brain called the hippocampus. She has consciousness but no memory. (As she laments, “the gift of memory was stolen from my jewel box.”) In later visits Galileo meets Gian Paolo Lomazzo, a painter who has gone blind because of eye problems: He cannot see his canvas but can still imagine it. In contrast, another blind painter, Sofonisba Anguissola, has sustained damage to her visual cortex, leaving her much worse off—she can neither see nor visualize.

    Indeed, much of what we know about the brain comes from Mother Nature’s cruel experiments, such as strokes, tumors and brain injury. (As Mr. Tononi writes, “the circus of disease has endless numbers.”) And through Galileo’s eyes we canvass a series of clinical cases that reveal an outline. Galileo comes to realize that not all brain areas are equal for the internal experience of consciousness, and he collects clues with the reader by his side.

    The book is bold and experimental. At one point the narrative is delivered by a blind, echolocating bat, whose subjective experience is meaningful to itself but impossible for humans to understand. In other places the storytelling ascends to beautiful fabulism. One chapter tells of a king who so fretted about scheming among his citizens that he commanded his masons and carpenters to confine all the people into individual cubicles. It’s a compelling image, and the resulting kingdom, devoid of communication and therefore of “soul,” ends up being a metaphor for the circuitry of the cerebellum, a part of the brain with many neurons but little communication between them. The writing is often gorgeous, a lyrical flight that tells an enchanting scientific story without jargon. It is the love child of Oliver Sacks and Italo Calvino, carrying the best genes of both genres.

    Throughout the book there is an interesting conflation of old and new, of past and present. When Galileo is handed a digital camera, he understands it as “an instant painter.” Among the numerous figures, modern brain scans and drawings of microcircuitry alternate with famous paintings and statues—different worlds abutting to make something new.

    Not all of the experiment works perfectly. Some readers will find the road a little uneven. Most chapters are inspired, but a couple are overwrought with difficult analogies. Each chapter ends with notes from the author, and even these are unusual: Mr. Tononi refers to himself in a disembodied way, admitting confusion, giving purposefully incomplete references, allowing that a historical event in the story may or may not be true—as though he were merely reporting the events like a journalist. At some points, he admits that the preceding chapter was unsatisfactory, a strange but interesting exercise in humility and commiseration.

    Despite these minor shortcomings, the book is a masterwork. Mr. Tononi could have turned his science into a sequence of monographs that only a handful of academic colleagues would read—but he chose an unusual, courageous approach.

    There are a handful of scientists who write fiction, but “Phi” is an almost unique poetical work about science. I say “almost” because there was another like it, two millennia ago: Lucretius’s poem “On the Nature of Things.” But as Mr. Tononi points out in an endnote, that the genre “has not had much success since.”

    “Phi” may represent our best hope for this genre’s change of fortune.

    Phi: A Voyage from the Brain to the Soul

11. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ৯ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (৫:১৯ অপরাহ্ণ)

    সূক্ষ্মতম ঘড়ি ও অত্যন্ত দ্রুতগতির কম্পিউটার তৈরিতে যেআবিষ্কার কাজে লাগবে সেই বস্তুগত কোয়ান্টাম প্রক্রিয়ার পরিমাপণ ও হস্তক্ষেপণের পদ্ধতির দুই গবেষক, একজন ফরাসি সের্জ আরশ আরেক জন আমেরিকান ডেভিড জে. ওয়াইনল্যানড, এবারের পদার্থবিজ্ঞানের নোবেল পেলেন।

    
    David J. Wineland | Serge Haroche

    The Nobel Prize in Physics 2012 was awarded jointly to Serge Haroche and David J. Wineland “for ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems”

12. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ১০ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (৬:০০ অপরাহ্ণ)

    রসায়নে নোবেল দুই আমেরিকানের। ভবিষ্যতে আরো কার্যকরী ওষুধ বানাতে অবদান রাখবে রবার্ট জে. লেফকোউইটজ ও ব্রায়ান কে. কোবাইলকারের প্রোটিন রিসেপ্টর কিভাবে দেহের কোষকে বাইরের সংকেত অনুভব করতে ও সাড়া দিতে সহায়তা করে এবিষয়ক গবেষণালব্ধ পর্যবেক্ষণ।

    
    Robert J. Lefkowitz | Brian K. Kobilka

    The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2012 was awarded jointly to Robert J. Lefkowitz and Brian K. Kobilka “for studies of G-protein-coupled receptors”

13. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ১১ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (৫:৩৬ অপরাহ্ণ)

    লোককথা, ইতিহাস ও সমসাময়িকতাকে একাকার করে এক বিভ্রমবাস্তব গাথা রচনা করেন চীনের লেখক মো ইয়ান, এবং তিনিই এবারের সাহিত্যের নোবেল বিজয়ী।
    
    Mo Yan | 莫言 | Mò Yán

    The Nobel Prize in Literature 2012 was awarded to Mo Yan “who with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary”.

    

    

    এখানে আমাজনের লুক ইনসাইডে : মো ইয়ানের বিখ্যাত উপন্যাস Red Sorghum।

    
    চীনের রাষ্ট্রীয় সংবাদসংস্থা চিনহুয়ার মো ইয়ানকে নিয়ে ফটোগ্যালারি

    
    CCTV: Mo Yan Feature

    • 

      মাসুদ করিম - ১২ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (১২:১৩ অপরাহ্ণ)

      যখন অর্থ ‘কথা বলো না’ তখন ছদ্মনাম হিসেবে ‘মো ইয়ান’ খারাপ নয়। এখন প্রশ্ন হচ্ছে চীনের ভগবানরা নিদ্রা গিয়েছেন তাদের ঘুমের ক্ষতি হবে বলে বলা হচ্ছে ‘কথা বলো না’, নাকি গুয়ান মোয়ে আমাদের বলতে চান চীনের রাগী ভগবানেরা কথা শুনতে চান না তাই তোমরা কেউ ‘কথা বলো না’। চীনের ক্ষমতাসীনদের ‘মো ইয়ান’কে পছন্দ হয়েছে, এখন দেখা যাক শেষ পর্যন্ত চীনের ‘নোবেল কমপ্লেক্স’ এই লেখককে কোথায় নিয়ে যায়।

      Born Guan Moye, Mr. Mo adopted the pen name of Mo Yan — meaning “don’t speak” in Chinese. Mr. Mo revealed in a speech in Hong Kong that he chose the name to remind himself of the lines he could not cross as a writer in a country where the government routinely censors the works of authors and artists.

      Literature Nobel for Chinese | ANANTH KRISHNAN

      
      মো ইয়ানের বাবা গুয়ান ইফান (৯০) গাওমিতে তাদের গ্রামের বাড়িতে। প্রতিদিনের মত আজ সকালেও তিনি তার চাষেরক্ষেতে কাজ করছিলেন।

      My colleagues, Max Duncan and Michael Martina, are in Gaomi. They found Mo Yan’s 90-year-old father harvesting beans at 7am. #nobel #moyan

      — Sui-Lee Wee 黄瑞黎 (@suilee) October 12, 2012

    • 

      মাসুদ করিম - ১২ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (১:৪৯ অপরাহ্ণ)

      এর মধ্যেই চীনের শিল্পী আই ওয়েইওয়েই মো ইয়ানকে সাহিত্যের নোবেলে ভূষিত করায় নোবেল কমিটির সমালোচনা করে টুইট করেছেন।

      RT @suilee: Ai Weiwei: “I think the Nobel organisers have removed themselves from reality”.#China‘s Mo Yan wins Nobel. reut.rs/QTJy0w

      — 艾未未Ai Weiwei (@aiww) October 11, 2012

      জার্মান পত্রিকার সাথে কথা বলতে গিয়ে আই ওয়েইওয়েই বলেছেন

      Ai Weiwei kritisiert Nobelpreis für Mo Yan
      Er akzeptiere das politische Verhalten von Mo Yan in der Realität nicht, führte Ai aus: “Er ist möglicherweise ein guter Schriftsteller. Aber er ist kein Intellektueller, der die heutige chinesische Zeit vertreten kann.” Moderne Intellektuelle hätten eine tiefgehende Beziehung zur aktuellen Realität des Landes.

      Im Kurznachrichtendienst Twitter schrieb Ai sogar: “Ein Schriftsteller, der sich nicht der Realität stellt, ist ein Lügner.”

      Mo war am Donnerstag der diesjährige Literaturnobelpreis zugesprochen worden. Chinesische Literaturprofessoren sahen einen “historischen Durchbruch”, Dissidenten werfen dem Autor zu große Staatsnähe vor. Der 57-Jährige, der unter anderem “Das rote Kornfeld” geschrieben hat, ist einer der erfolgreichsten Schriftsteller der Volksrepublik.

      ইংরেজিতে গুগলঅনুবাদ
      He does not accept the political behavior of Mo Yan in reality, resulted from Ai: “He may be a good writer, but he is not an intellectual, who can represent the present Chinese time..” Modern intellectuals have a deep relationship with the current reality of the country.

      In the short message service Twitter wrote Ai even: “A writer who is not the reality, is a liar.”

      Mo on Thursday of this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded. Chinese Literature professors saw a “historic breakthrough”, dissidents accuse the author is too great proximity to state. The 57-year-old, who has written include “Red Sorghum”, is one of the most successful writers of the People’s Republic.

    • 

      মাসুদ করিম - ১৩ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (২:৩৩ অপরাহ্ণ)

      When you were young you were probably once smitten with a certain girl but for some reason this girl has now become someone else’s wife and that memory is indeed rather sad. For the past thirty years we have witnessed China undergoing dramatic progress, whether it be in living standards or in intellectual or spiritual levels of our citizens; the progress is visible but undoubtedly there are many things that we are not satisfied with in our day-to-day life. Indeed, China has progressed but progress itself brings up many issues, for instance environmental issues and the decline in high moral standards. So, the melancholy that you talk about is for two reasons – I realize that my youth has already gone and secondly I worry about the current status quo in China, especially the things I’m not satisfied with.: Mo Yan

      একটু কেমন যেন আন্কেল মো আন্কেল মো! গ্রানটা ম্যাগে মো ইয়ানের সাক্ষাৎকার : Granta Audio: Mo Yan।

      Mo Yan is one of China’s most celebrated and widely translated writers. Born in the Shandong province in 1955 into a family of farmers, he enlisted in the People’s Liberation Army at the age of twenty and began writing stories at the same time. Since then he has written several novels and story collections, including Red Sorghum, Big Breasts & Wide Hips, Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out and most recently, Frog. This week he spoke to Granta editor John Freeman at the London Book Fair, about writing strong women, retaining idioms and puns even in translation and avoiding censorship.

      JF: Many of your novels are located in a half-fictionalized town based on your Gaomi hometown, in a way similar to, say, Faulker’s American South. What is it that makes you return to this half-imagined community and does having a global readership alter the focus at all?

      MY: When I first started writing the environment was there and very real and the story was my personal experience. But with an increasing volume of my work being published, my day-to-day experience is running out and so I need to add a little bit of imagination, sometimes even some fantasy, in there.

      JF: Some of your writing recalls the work of Günter Grass, William Faulkner and Gabriel García Marquez. Were these writers available to you in China when you were growing up? Can you tell us a little about your influences?

      MY: When I first started writing it was the year of 1981, so I didn’t read any books by García Marquez or Faulkner. It was 1984 when I first read their works and undoubtedly those two writers have great influence on my creations. I found that my life experience is quite similar to theirs, but I only discovered this later on. If I had read their works sooner I would have already accomplished a masterpiece like they did.

      JF: Early novels like Red Sorghum seem to be more overtly historical or even considered by some as ‘romances’ whereas in recent times your novels have moved to more overtly contemporary settings and themes. Is that a conscious choice?

      MY: When I wrote Red Sorghum I was less than thirty years old, so I was quite young. At that time my life was full of romantic factors when considering my ancestors. I was writing about their lives but didn’t know much about them so I injected many imaginations into those characters. When I wrote Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out I was over forty years old so I have transformed from a young to a middle-aged man. My life is different. My life is more current, more contemporary and the cutting throat cruelty of our contemporary times limits the romance that I once felt.

      JF: You often write in the language of the local Laobaixing, and specifically the Shandong dialect, which gives your prose a flinty edge to it. Does it frustrate you that some of the idioms and puns might not make it into an English translation or are you able to work around that with your translator, Howard Goldblatt?

      MY: Well, indeed, I use quite a substantial amount of local dialect, idioms and puns in my earlier works because at that time I didn’t even consider that
      my work would be translated into other languages. Later on I realized that this kind of language creates a lot of trouble for the translator. But to not use dialect, idioms and puns doesn’t work for me because idiomatic language is vivid, expressive and it is also the quintessential part of the signature language of a particular writer. So, on the one hand I can modify and adjust some of my usage of puns and idioms but on the other I hope that our translators, during their work, can echo the puns I use in another language – that is the ideal situation.

      JF: Many of your novels have strong women at their core – Big Breasts & Wide Hips, Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out and Frog – do you consider yourself to be a feminist or are you simply drawn to write from a female perspective?

      MY: First of all, I admire and respect women. I think they are very noble and their life experience and the hardship a woman can endure is always much greater than a man. When we encounter great disasters, women are always more brave than men – I think because they have their due capacity, they are also mothers. The strength that this brings is something we can’t imagine. In my books I try to put myself in the shoes of women, I try to understand and interpret this world from the perspective of women. But the bottom line is I am not a woman: I’m a male writer. And the world I interpreted in my books as if I were a woman might not be well received by women themselves but that is not something I can do anything about. I love and admire women, but nonetheless I am a man.

      JF: Is avoiding censorship a question of subtlety and to what extent do the avenues opened up by magical realism, as well as more traditional techniques of characterization, allow a writer to express their deepest concerns without resorting to polemic?

      MY: Yes, indeed. Many approaches to literature have political bearings, for example in our real life there might be some sharp or sensitive issues that they do not wish to touch upon. At such a juncture a writer can inject their own imagination to isolate them from the real world or maybe they can exaggerate the situation – making sure it is bold, vivid and has the signature of our real world. So, actually I believe these limitations or censorship is great for literature creation.

      JF: Your last book that was translated into English, a very short memoir, Democracy, narrates the end of an era within China from your own experiences as a young boy and man. There are some melancholic tones about it, which coming from the West is to some degree a surprise: we often believe ‘Progress’ with a capital ‘P’ always means betterment but your memoir suggests something has been lost. Is that a fair characterization?

      MY: Yes, the memoir you mention is full of my personal experience and my daily life however it also presents something imagined. The melancholy tone you talk about to is indeed very accurate, because the story features a forty-year-old man thinking back on a youth that is now gone. For example, when you were young you were probably once smitten with a certain girl but for some reason this girl has now become someone else’s wife and that memory is indeed rather sad. For the past thirty years we have witnessed China undergoing dramatic progress, whether it be in living standards or in intellectual or spiritual levels of our citizens; the progress is visible but undoubtedly there are many things that we are not satisfied with in our day-to-day life. Indeed, China has progressed but progress itself brings up many issues, for instance environmental issues and the decline in high moral standards. So, the melancholy that you talk about is for two reasons – I realize that my youth has already gone and secondly I worry about the current status quo in China, especially the things I’m not satisfied with.

      JF: What will be your next book in English?

      MY: Sandalwood Penalty.

      • 

        মাসুদ করিম - ১৩ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (৭:০৭ অপরাহ্ণ)

        তার চেয়ে ফরাসি জানা থাকলে এটা পড়া যেতে পারে, অনেক ইন্টারেস্টিং : Mo Yan, prix Nobel de littérature।

        L’image se grave pour toujours dans l’esprit du petit paysan : “Pendant quarante ans, j’ai vécu avec cet homme au visage bleu qui revenait me hanter. Quand j’ai commencé à écrire, dans les années 1980, je savais qu’il fallait que j’en fasse quelque chose.” Mais quoi ? Ce n’est que vingt-cinq ans plus tard qu’il trouve, du jour au lendemain. “Tout est venu d’un coup. J’ai écrit le livre en quarante-trois jours.” Il ricane doucement à notre haussement de sourcils involontaire. En Chine, certains lecteurs et critiques le lui ont reproché : trop court. Mais “cela faisait plus de quarante ans qu’il mûrissait dans ma tête”, siffle-t-il. Il hausse les épaules : de toute façon, c’est sa manière. Il écrit mentalement pendant des mois avant de tout régurgiter à la chaîne, sans respirer, “dix heures par jour. Ensuite, je reprends et je corrige certains détails, ici et là”. A titre de comparaison, il évoque La Mélopée de l’ail paradisiaque (Seuil, 2005) : “trente jours”. Mais le livre est plus court, environ la moitié de La Dure Loi du Karma. Certes.

        Quand on lui demande des précisions sur cette écriture mentale, Mo Yan réfléchit quelques instants : “Il me faut du temps pour trouver la structure la plus adéquate, celle qui correspond à mon intrigue. Parfois, c’est le hasard qui vient me tirer d’affaire.” Comme lorsqu’il conçoit l’architecture de La Dure Loi du Karma juste après la visite d’un temple des environs de Pékin : “Au mur, il y avait des fresques qui représentaient différentes étapes animales de la métempsycose. J’ai eu comme une révélation.”

        গুগলঅনুবাদ

        The image is etched forever in the minds of the small farmer: “For forty years I lived with this man in blue face coming back to haunt me. When I started writing in the 1980s, I knew that I had to do something. “But what? It is only twenty-five years later he finds overnight. “Everything came at once. I wrote the book in forty-three days.” He chuckles softly to our involuntary eyebrow. In China, some readers and critics accused him: too short. But “it was more than forty years he was maturing in my head,” he hisses. He shrugs: anyway, it is his way. He writes mentally for months before regurgitating all the chain without breathing, “ten hours a day. Secondly, I rebuke and correct some details here and there.” For comparison, it evokes the Mélopée paradise of garlic (Seuil, 2005): “thirty days”. But the book is shorter, about half of the Hard Law of Karma. Certainly.

        When asked for clarification on this writing mental Mo Yan thought for a moment: “I need time to find the most suitable structure, which corresponds to my plot. Sometimes it’s just the chance to shoot me case. “As when designing the architecture of Hard Law of Karma just after visiting a nearby temple in Beijing: “On the wall, there were frescoes representing different stages of animal metempsychosis. I had as a revelation. “

14. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ১১ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (৭:৪৭ অপরাহ্ণ)

    মজেনা তো বলছেন, US team coming to explore shale gas prospects।

    US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is sending a delegation to explore possibilities of cooperation in shale gas sector, US Ambassador to Bangladesh Dan Mozena says.

    “The team will arrive soon. There is great potential for energy cooperation between the US and Bangladesh,” he said at the announcement ceremony of USAID development assistance programmes in Dhaka Thursday.

    Shale gas is natural gas trapped in shale formations and the US has expertise in extracting it.

    A Foreign Ministry source said Clinton expressed interest in shale gas during her visit to Bangladesh in May and it was also discussed in the Bangladesh-US partnership dialogue in September.

    According to Mozena, Bangladesh is not an ‘energy-poor country’ and it has significant reserve of gas.

    “The US is the biggest investor in Bangladesh and significant portion of the investment has gone into the energy sector.”

    Chevron had announced half-a-billion dollar investment plan for additional gas production, while ConocoPhilips would release its primary exploration report on Bay of Bengal soon, he said.

    ConocoPhilips is now exploring the Bay to find gas offshore in one block, and the Ambassador hoped more blocks would be made available in the future.

    About the coal sector, he said Washington would also like to develop it.

    “The US will like to develop coal … We have specialised equipment,” he said.

    “Bangladesh has huge reserve of best quality coal and it can satisfy energy needs for the next 50 years,” he said adding, “Bangladesh can also export coal and power.”

    তাহলে হিলারি ক্লিন্টন কথার টানে শেইল গ্যাসের কথা বলেননি।

    
    এই মানচিত্র কতটুকু আপডেটেড জানি না। কিন্তু ‘শেইল গ্যাস’এর এই মানচিত্র অনুযায়ী বাংলাদেশ ‘গ্রে জোনে’: Countries out side scope of report। তার মানে এখন রিপোর্ট করার জন্য ‘স্কোপ’ হতে চলেছে? দেখা যাক।

15. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ১২ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (৩:১৮ অপরাহ্ণ)

    এবারের শান্তির নোবেল প্রতিষ্ঠানের ঘরে, পেল ইউরোপিয়ান ইউনিয়ন : ছয় দশকের ওপরে শান্তি গণতন্ত্র মানবাধিকার নিয়ে অব্যাহত কর্মকাণ্ডের স্বীকৃতি স্বরূপ।
    

    The Nobel Peace Prize 2012 was awarded to European Union (EU) “for over six decades contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe”.

16. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ১৩ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (১২:২৪ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    হুগো শাভেজ জেতার পরে ফিদেল কাস্ত্রোর কোনো অভিনন্দন বার্তা দেখা যায়নি এর ভিত্তিতে তার শারীরিক অবস্থা নিয়ে আবার গুঞ্জন, কাস্ত্রোর এক পুত্র বলছেন কাস্ত্রো ভাল আছেন।

    Fidel Castro son says father is fine, amid rumors
    One of Fidel Castro’s sons reportedly says his father is in good shape despite a long public silence that has again fueled speculation about the 86-year-old former president’s health.

    A journalist for the state-run newspaper Venceremos quotes Alex Castro as saying “the comandante” is going about daily life as normal, reading and exercising.

    Arlin Alberty Loforte posted the quote Friday on her blog from the eastern city of Guantanamo, where she met with Alex Castro the previous evening at an exhibit of his photographs of the retired leader.

    Rumors of Fidel Castro’s purportedly declining health surfaced anew this week after he did not publicly congratulate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on his re-election. He has not been seen in public since late March.

    • 

      মাসুদ করিম - ২১ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (৭:৪৩ অপরাহ্ণ)

      কাস্ত্রোর মস্তিষ্কে রক্তক্ষরণ, শোনা যাচ্ছে, অফিসিয়ালি কিছু জানার উপায়ও নেই, বৃদ্ধ বিপ্লবীর জন্য প্রার্থনা করছে কিউবাবাসীরা গির্জায় গির্জায়। পড়ুন এখানে।
      

      খবরের লিন্ক এখানে।

      এইমাত্র অ্যাসোসিয়েটেড প্রেসের টুইট

      BREAKING: Ex-Venezuela VP confirms 5-hour meeting with Fidel Castro, shows AP photos.

      — The Associated Press (@AP) October 21, 2012

      • 

        মাসুদ করিম - ২১ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (১১:৪৮ অপরাহ্ণ)

        অ্যাসোসিয়েটেড প্রেসের খবর : Hotel official: Fidel Castro appears in public।

        Fidel Castro has appeared in public for the first time in months, a top hotel executive told The Associated Press on Sunday, challenging persistent rumors that the aging revolutionary is near death.

        The 86-year-old retired leader dropped off a Venezuelan guest at the Hotel Nacional on Saturday afternoon, then stayed to chat with hotel staff, commercial director Yamila Fuster said.

        “Fidel Castro was here yesterday, he brought a guest and spoke to workers and hotel leaders for 30 minutes,” Fuster said. She said she was not present but that the news was being released officially by the state-owned establishment.

        “They told me he looked very good. He was wearing a checked shirt and a hat,” she said.

        Fuster would not release the name of the Venezuelan guest, but witnesses at the hotel say former Venezuelan Vice President Elias Jaua is staying there. A car with Venezuelan diplomatic plates was parked Sunday outside the hotel, and Cuban officials were seen carrying a photo album similar to ones the government gives as gifts to distinguished guests, normally filled with official pictures.

        No photos have yet been released of Fidel’s visit, but Fuster said they may be soon.

        Asked to confirm the news, the Cuban government referred all questions to the hotel.

        The Nacional is Cuba’s most famous hotel and a common choice of many distinguished guests to the island.

        Castro’s health has been the subject of intense speculation for years, but the rumors gained force in recent days after he failed to publicly congratulate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a top ally, on his Oct. 7 electoral victory. The former Cuban leader has not appeared since March, when he was shown greeting visiting Pope Benedict XVI, and he has also ceased writing his once-constant opinion pieces, the last of which appeared in June.

        Twitter and other social media sites have been abuzz with claims of Castro’s demise. Late last week, a Venezuelan doctor purported to have information that Castro had suffered a stroke, but the same doctor has previously claimed knowledge that turned out to be false.

        Sunday’s news from the Hotel Nacional appeared to be Cuba’s attempt to hit back against what it says are false and malicious rumors. A letter attributed to Castro was published Thursday by Cuban state media. In it, he congratulated graduates of a medical school on the occasion of its 50th anniversary.

        Two close family members of Castro have also recently denied he is in grave condition. Juanita Castro, the former leader’s sister, told the AP in Miami that reports of her brother’s condition are “pure rumors” and “absurd.”

        Son Alex Castro told a reporter for a weekly Cuban newspaper that his father “is well, going about his daily life.”

        Castro stepped down in 2006 following a severe illness, handing power to his brother Raul.

17. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ১৪ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (৬:৩৬ অপরাহ্ণ)

    প্রত্যেকটি অর্থঅপরাধের কারিগরি দিকের খোঁজ নিতে গেলে আর্থিক প্রতিষ্ঠানের একটা ঢালাওভাবে ব্যবহৃত মূল মুনাফা অর্জনকারী ‘টুল’ বেরিয়ে আসে। যেমন আমেরিকার ২০০৮এর ‘সাবপ্রাইম লোন’, যেমন বাংলাদেশের ২০১১এর ‘প্রিআইপিও+অমনিবাস অ্যাকাউন্ট’ এবং এবারের হলমার্কের ঋণজালিয়াতির ‘আইবিপি – মানে ‘ইনল্যান্ড বিল পার্চেজ’। এবং এটা শুধু সোনালী ব্যাংককেই নয়, এখনই এই টুলের বড় রকম সংস্কার না করলে বাংলাদেশের অর্থব্যবস্থাকেই একটা বড় সমস্যার সম্মুখীন করবে। তাই একে শুধু হলমার্কের ঋণজালিয়াতি হিসাবে না দেখে ‘আইবিপি’ সংকট হিসাবে দেখা উচিত।

    হলমার্ক’, সোনালী ব্যাংক :টাকা আদায়ের মামলা ও জটিলতা | ড. আর এম দেবনাথ | ইত্তেফাক

    সোনালী ব্যাংকের সামনে এই মুহূর্তে বহু বিপদ, বলা যায় মহাবিপদ! ব্যাংকটি সরকারি—শতভাগ সরকারি। দেশের সবচেয়ে বড় ব্যাংক। দেশের বিভিন্ন জায়গায় সোনালী ব্যাংক সরকারের ‘ট্রেজারি’ ফাংশন করে। এমন একটি ব্যাংক অজ্ঞাত-কুলশীল ‘হলমার্ক’ নামীয় একটি কোম্পানির জালিয়াতি নিয়ে পড়েছে স্মরণকালের বৃহত্তম গাড্ডায়। প্রতি মুহূর্তে তার দরকার নীতিনির্ধারণী সিদ্ধান্ত, কাজের গাইড লাইন। অথচ ব্যাংকটির হাত-পা আছে, মাথা নেই—পরিচালনা পর্ষদ নেই। তিন বছর মেয়াদে দায়িত্বপ্রাপ্ত পরিচালকদের মেয়াদ শেষে অধিকাংশ পরিচালকের পদ শূন্য অনেকদিন। চেয়ারম্যানসহ পর্ষদে এখন আছেন চারজন। অথচ পর্ষদ সভা করতে লাগে ৭ জন। অতএব ‘নো মিটিং’। আতঙ্কিত ব্যবস্থাপনা পরিচালক মন্ত্রণালয়কে এ কথা স্মরণ করিয়ে দিয়ে বোর্ড গঠনের জন্য তাগিদ দিয়েছেন। ভাবা যায় দেশের এক নম্বর ব্যাংকের ‘বোর্ড’ নেই। এর অনুপস্থিতিতে ব্যাংক চলছে অভিভাবকহীনভাবে। এই হচ্ছে সোনালীর এক বিপদ! তাও এমন সময়ে যখন ‘দুর্নীতি দমন কমিশন’ (দুদক) বলেছে টাকা আদায়ের জন্য সোনালী ব্যাংক মামলা না করলে ‘দুদক’ সোনালী ব্যাংকের বিরুদ্ধেই মামলা করবে। এই হচ্ছে দুই নম্বর বিপদ, খুবই বড় বিপদ!

    ‘হলমার্ক’-এর মামলা হতে হবে দুটোই। একটি হচ্ছে জালিয়াতির জন্য। অর্থাত্ জালিয়াতি করে ব্যাংক থেকে ঋণ নেয়ার জন্য। কাগজপত্র-ডক্যুমেন্ট ছাড়া, অস্তিত্বহীন প্রতিষ্ঠানের নামে টাকা নিয়ে নেয়ায় যে জালিয়াতি সংঘটিত হয়েছে তার বিরুদ্ধে মামলা হবে। সেটা যথারীতি ‘দুদক’ করেছে। লোকজন গ্রেফতার হচ্ছে, রিমান্ড চলছে। এই হচ্ছে একদিক। এতে বিচারে যদি ‘দুদক’ তথ্য প্রমাণ দিয়ে কোর্টকে বোঝাতে পারে তাহলে সংশ্লিষ্টদের সাজা হবে-জেল ও জরিমানা। মানি লন্ডারিং প্রিভেনশন আইনে এই দুটোই আছে। কিন্তু মুশকিল হচ্ছে টাকা আদায় তো হল না। অথচ দেশের মানুষ চায়, ব্যাংক চায় টাকাটা উদ্ধার হোক। কিন্তু উদ্ধার হবে কী করে? যে ঋণ ‘হলমার্ক’ নিয়েছে বলে মিডিয়ায় বলা হচ্ছে তার তো কোন কাগজপত্র-ডক্যুমেন্ট নেই। একটি ঋণের টাকা তোলার আগে ব্যাংক প্রচুর সংখ্যক ‘চার্জ ডক্যুমেন্ট’ সই করিয়ে নেয় ঋণগ্রহীতার কাছ থেকে। যেহেতু বেশিরভাগ জালিয়াতির ঘটনা তাই ‘চার্জ ডক্যুমেন্ট’ সই করা নেই ঋণগ্রহীতার। ঋণের সিকিউরিটি হিসাবে প্রাইমারি সিকিউরিটি লাগে, লাগে কোলেটারেল সিকিউরিটি। মিডিয়া রিপোর্ট অনুযায়ী এসবের অনেক কিছুই নেই। এর অর্থ এইসব ঋণ হলমার্কের নয়। অতএব প্রথমে চার্জ ডক্যুমেন্টগুলো সই করিয়ে নিয়ে ঋণের ‘স্বীকৃতি’ আদায় করতে হবে হলমার্কের মালিক অথবা সংশ্লিষ্টদের কাছ থেকে। শত শত কাগজ ও ডক্যুমেন্টে তার সই লাগবে। তারপর লোনগুলোকে সিকিউরিটাইজ করতে হবে যথাযথ মর্টগেজ নিয়ে। সম্পত্তি চিহ্নিত করতে হবে, তার ভ্যালুয়েশন করতে হবে, মালিকানার নিশ্চয়তা পেতে হবে। যতদূর জানা যাচ্ছে এসবের অনেক কিছুই হয়নি। হলেই কী মামলা হয়ে যাবে?

    ব্যাংক তার ঋণ আদায়ে মামলা করবে অর্থঋণ আদালতে। এটা বিশেষ কোর্ট। কিন্তু যে ঋণের কোন ডক্যুমেন্ট নেই, চার্জ ডক্যুমেন্ট নেই, মর্টগেজ করা সম্পত্তি নেই সেই ঋণ তো ‘ঋণ’ই নয়। তার বিরুদ্ধে মামলা হবে কীভাবে? অথচ ‘দুদক’ বলছে সোনালী ব্যাংকের বিরুদ্ধেই মামলা হবে। সকলের জানা দরকার কোন ব্যাংকেরই টাকা আদায়ে মামলা করা ছাড়া উপায় নেই। কিন্তু তার জন্য নিয়ম-বিধি আছে। সেই বিধি-নিয়ম কেন্দ্রীয় ব্যাংকের। এর ব্যত্যয় ঘটানোর সুযোগ নেই। এমতাবস্থায় সোনালীর বিপদ—ব্যাংকটি কী বাংলাদেশ ব্যাংকের নিয়মে চলবে, না ‘দুদক’-এর নির্দেশ মোতাবেক চলবে? মামলা করতে গেলে প্রথম দরকার ঋণের স্বীকৃতি—তানভীর মাহমুদ সাহেব চার্জ ডক্যুমেন্ট সই করে বলবেন—হ্যাঁ ঋণ আমি নিয়েছি। যদি তিনি বলেন, বিচার করছে ‘দুদক’- চলুক বিচার। এটা ক্রিমিন্যাল বিচার। জেল আছে, জরিমানা আছে। আর যাই হোক ফাঁসি তো নেই। সম্পত্তি বাজেয়াপ্তের বিধান আছে কী? কী মজা না, বিষয়টা! তারপরের নিয়ম হচ্ছে ঋণটি ‘ক্লাসিফাইড’ হতে হবে অর্থাত্ শ্রেণীবিন্যাসিত এবং হতে হবে একেবারে ‘ব্যাড এন্ড লস’। ঐ ক্যাটাগরিতে গেলে তারপর শতভাগ ‘প্রভিশন’ রাখতে হবে। তারপর হবে মামলা। আমার জানা মতে এই হচ্ছে বিধান। ধরা যাক ঋণটি বাংলাদেশ ব্যাংক গুণগত বিচারে ‘ব্যাড এন্ড লস’ করেছে। এখন প্রশ্ন ‘প্রভিশনের’। যদি ২০০০ কোটি টাকার ঋণ হয় তাহলে ২০০০ কোটি টাকা মুনাফা থেকে কেটে ‘প্রভিশন’ করতে হবে। সোনালী ব্যাংকের বাত্সরিক মুনাফা কত? হাজার কোটি, না হয় একটু বেশি। তাহলে দেখা যাচ্ছে ২০০০ কোটি টাকা ‘প্রভিশন’ করলে ব্যাংকটি যাবে লোকশানে। ধরবে বাংলাদেশ ব্যাংক। অর্থাত্ দেখা যাচ্ছে এই সমস্যায় জড়িত হয়ে পড়বে ‘বাংলাদেশ ব্যাংক’ এবং অর্থ মন্ত্রণালয়ের ব্যাংকিং ডিভিশন। তিন সংস্থার সমন্বয় করবে কে? করবে ‘বোর্ড’। বোর্ড তো নেই। বোর্ডের অনুপস্থিতিতে কী ব্যবস্থাপনা পরিচালক কোন ক্ষমতাবলে এসব করতে পারবেন? আমার জানা নেই। ‘হলমার্ক’ এখন সোনালীর বিপদ নয়, বিপদ বাংলাদেশ ব্যাংকের, বিপদ অর্থ মন্ত্রণালয়ের।

    সোনালী ব্যাংকের তৃতীয় বিপদ তার ইমেজ সংকট। অবশ্য ইমেজ সঙ্কট দেখে সমস্যা সেভাবে তৈরি করবে না। হতে পারে বিদেশে। বিদেশে প্রত্যেক ব্যাংকেরই করেসপনডেন্ট ব্যাংক আছে, অনেকের সাথে আছে এজেন্সি এ্যারেঞ্জমেন্ট। নিয়মিত ঋণপত্র (এলসি) খুলতে হয়। বাংলাদেশের ব্যাংকগুলো সম্বন্ধে যেভাবে ক্রমাগত মিডিয়ায় রিপোর্ট হচ্ছে তাতে খুব সঙ্গত কারণেই বিদেশি ব্যাংকগুলো সতর্কতা অবলম্বন করবে। ৪৭টি ব্যাংকের মধ্যে ২৬টি ব্যাংক বর্তমান স্প্যামের সাথে জড়িত। বলা যায়, পুরো ব্যাংকিং খাতই। অতএব সোনালীর সমস্যা এখন শুধু সোনালীর নয়, সকলের। অবশ্য সোনালীর বিপদ আছে আরো। অনেক ব্যাংকের মত সোনালী ব্যাংকও কেন্দ্রীয় ব্যাংক থেকে ঋণ করে চলে। এমনকী ‘লিক্যুইডিটি’ রক্ষার জন্যও। এটা সোনালীর একার সমস্যা নয়। অনেক ব্যাংকেরই এই সমস্যা। ঋণ বেশি দেয়া হয়ে গেছে। আমানতের প্রবৃদ্ধি কম। অথচ কেন্দ্রীয় ব্যাংক থেকে ‘রেপোর’ (রিপার্চেজ অর্ডার) মাধ্যমে সোনালীসহ সবাইকে ঋণ নিতে হচ্ছে। এখন সোনালীর সমস্যা আগামী দিনে। সোনালী ব্যাংক অনেক ‘আইবিপি’র (ইনল্যান্ড বিল পার্চেজ) বিপরীতে একসেপটেন্স দিয়েছে। এসব এই মুহূর্তে পরিশোধযোগ্য নয়। কিন্তু দুতিন মাসের মধ্যেই ঐ টাকা সোনালীকে পরিশোধ করতে হবে। কারণ ‘একসেপটেন্সে’র টাকা আটকিয়ে রাখা যাবে না। সোনালীর এমনিতেই ‘লিক্যুইডিটি’ নেই। তার ওপর ঐসব টাকার তাগিদ—কোত্থেকে তা মেটাবে তারা? তাদের একটা রক্ষাকরচ আছে। সরকার তাদেরকে দিয়ে অনেক ট্রেজারি বিল, বন্ড জোর করে কিনিয়েছে। ‘লিক্যুইডিটির’ জন্য এত বিল ও বন্ড দরকার নেই। সোনালী বলছে ঐ টাকা তাদেরকে ফিরিয়ে দেয়া হোক। তাহলে তারা তারল্য সঙ্কট কিছুটা কাটিয়ে উঠতে পারবে। সরকার কী পারবে টাকা ফেরত দিতে? মনে হয় না। তবে সঞ্চয়পত্র বিক্রি বাড়ানোর যে জোরালো উদ্যোগ সরকার নিয়েছে তা যদি সফল হয় তাহলে সরকার তার ব্যাংকঋণ কিছুটা শোধ করে দিতেও পারে।

    এবার শুধু সোনালী ব্যাংক নয়, অনেক ব্যাংকেরই সমস্যা হবে। সবচেয়ে বেশি সমস্যা হবে গার্মেন্টস ব্যবসায়ীদের। যে জালিয়াতির ঘটনায় ‘হলমার্ক’ অভিযুক্ত হয়েছে তা ‘আইবিপি’ সম্পর্কিত। ‘আইবিপি’ মানে ‘ইনল্যান্ড বিল পার্চেজ’। এটা রপ্তানির সাথে জড়িত। রমরমা ব্যবসা অনেকদিন থেকে। ব্যাংকগুলো ত্বরিত্ মুনাফা অর্জনের জন্য, ম্যানেজাররা মুনাফার টার্গেট পরিপূরণের জন্য এই ব্যবসার দিকে প্রলোভিত হয়। এর সুযোগ নেয় এক শ্রেণীর অসাধু গার্মেন্টস রপ্তানিকারক। এই ব্যবসায়ীদেরকে রপ্তানির ‘এলসি’ পেয়ে ঐ রপ্তানির জন্য প্রয়োজনীয় সূতা, কাপড় বা একসেসরিজ আমদানি করতে হয়। এতে গার্মেন্টস সেক্টরে ‘ভ্যালু এডিশন’ ছিল সামান্য। যা রপ্তানি হত তার প্রায় সবটাই চলে যেত বাইরে আমদানির জন্য। এই যে রপ্তানির বিপরীতে আমদানি তাকে কেন্দ্র করে গড়ে উঠে ‘ব্যাক-টু-ব্যাক এলসি’। সরকার ‘ভ্যালু এডিসন’ বাড়ানোর জন্য রপ্তানিকারকদেরকে দেশীয়ভাবে সূতা, কাপড় ব্যবহার করতে উত্সাহিত করে। এতে অনেকেই দেশীয় সূতা-কাপড়ের মিল থেকে কাপড় নিয়ে গার্মেন্টস তৈরি করে রপ্তানি করে। লোকাল ইন্ডাস্ট্রির এই বিক্রিকে রপ্তানি বলে গণ্য করা হয়। এই সুযোগে দেখা যায় গার্মেন্টস ব্যবসায়ী বা রপ্তানিকারক নিজেই দেশীয় কাপড়ের প্রস্তুতকারী। একই মালিকানায় হয়ে পড়ে রপ্তানিকারক ও আমদানীকারক। রপ্তানিকারক কী করে অনেক ক্ষেত্রে নিজের কোম্পানির ওপরই এলসি খোলে কাপড়ের জন্য। এলসি খোলা হয়, মাল ডেলিভারি বা রপ্তানি দেখানো হয়। অনেক ক্ষেত্রেই এসব ভুয়া। রপ্তানিকারক গার্মেন্টস ওয়ালারা এভাবে ব্যাংক থেকে টাকা তুলে নিয়ে অন্য কাজে লাগান, জমি কেনেন, বিদ্যুত্ বিল দেন, গ্যাসের বিল দেন, শ্রমিকদের বেতন দেন। এইসব ‘কীর্তি’ ব্যাংকও জানে। রপ্তানিকারকও জানে, জানে সকল সংশ্লিষ্টরা বাংলাদেশ ব্যাংকসহ। কার্যত যে ‘একোমোডেশন বিল’ করে ব্যাংক থেকে টাকা নিতে হচ্ছে এটাই সুবিদিত ঘটনা। ‘আইবিপি’ ব্যবসার কমপক্ষে ৩০ শতাংশই হচ্ছে এই ঘটনা। এতে ব্যাংকের মুনাফা হয় বেশি। এই ব্যবসা করার জন্য ম্যানেজারদেরকে প্রায় সকল ব্যাংকই অফুরন্ত ‘পাওয়ার’ দিয়ে রেখেছে। এখন বিপদ কোথায়? ‘হলমার্কের’ ঘটনার পর সকল ব্যাংক এখন ‘আইবিপি’ করতে আর রাজি নয়। তারা এখন কড়াকড়ি করছে। ম্যানেজারদের পাওয়ার অনেক ক্ষেত্রে ‘সিজ’ করে নিয়ে নেয়া হয়েছে। এখন ফলাফল? ফল হচ্ছে: গার্মেন্টস মালিক ও বস্ত্রশিল্পের মালিকরা হৈ-চৈ শুরু করেছেন। ‘ইনল্যাণ্ড বিল পার্চেজ’ বন্ধ করলে রপ্তানি বন্ধ হয়ে যাবে। তাদের দাবির যৌক্তিকতা নেই বলব না। কিন্তু তাদের মধ্যকার প্রভাবশালী একটা অংশের ব্যবসায়ীরা যে ‘আইবিপি’র অপব্যবহার করছে তার সুরাহা কী? ‘হলমার্ক’ যে সমস্যার সৃষ্টি করল তার সুরাহা কী? একটা ভাল ‘ক্রেডিট ফেসিলিটি’ নষ্ট করল কে? শুধুই কী ব্যাংকাররা? না, লোভী, অতিলোভী, মুনাফাখোর গার্মেন্টস ব্যবসায়ীরা? কাগজে দেখলাম ‘হলমার্কে’র ব্যবস্থাপনা পরিচালক তানভীর আহমদকে গ্রেফতার করায় ‘এফবিসিসিআই’ সরকারকে ধন্যবাদ জানিয়েছে। এটা যথেষ্ট নয়। এই জালিয়াত যে অপকর্ম করেছে, এরা অপকর্মের মাধ্যমে যে টাকা মেরেছে তা উদ্ধারে এফবিসিসিআইয়ের উচিত সরকারকে, সোনালী ব্যাংককে সহায়তা করা। তা না করে তারা যদি আবার ‘আইবিপি’ সুবিধাটা ঢালাওভাবে চান তাহলে তা হবে দেশের জন্য স্বার্থবিরোধী। বাংলাদেশ ব্যাংকের কাছে ‘এফবিসিসিআই’ ‘বিজিএমইএ’ এবং ‘বিটিএসএ’র অঙ্গীকার করা উচিত যে, তারা রপ্তানির নামে ‘আইবিপি’র যথেচ্ছ ব্যবহার করবেন না। সবচেয়ে বড় কথা ব্যাংকাররা যদি তার বাক্স খুলে দেয় তাহলে ব্যবসায়ীরা বসে থাকবে কেন? এটাই সোনালীর ক্ষেত্রে হয়েছে। এটা সোনালীর স্থায়ী বিপদ। যতক্ষণ পর্যন্ত না সোনালী ব্যাংক তার বাক্স নিয়মের অধীনে খুলবে ততক্ষণ পর্যন্ত ব্যবসায়ীরা ‘থাবা’ মারবেই। কারণ আমাদের দেশের এক শ্রেণীর ব্যবসায়ী এতই ‘দেশপ্রেমিক’ যে, তারা সব টাকাকেই নিজেদের টাকা মনে করেন। তাই নয় কী?

18. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ১৪ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (৬:৪৭ অপরাহ্ণ)

    অপু দুর্গার বাড়িতে কিভাবে ভ্রমণে যাবেন, তার বিবরণ। পড়ুন এখানে।

    

19. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ১৫ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (১০:১৭ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    এটাকে কি লাফ বলা যায়? ‘ফ্রিফল’ই সই, ১২০০০০ ফুট উপর থেকে ডাইব, আহা, ফেলিক্স বাউমগার্টনার তোমার মতো এই মুক্তপতনের অভিজ্ঞান হয়তো কখনো নিতে পারব না — কিন্তু যা দেখলাম তার কোনো তুলনা হতে পারে না।

    

    Felix Baumgartner has done it.

    It may have taken a few attempts, but the 43-year-old daredevil from Austria successfully completed his 24-mile jump from high in the stratosphere on Sunday.

    It wasn’t immediately clear whether Baumgartner had exceeded the speed of sound during his free-fall, which had been one of the goals of the jump, the Associated Press reported. But the death-defying leap (which could have ended in gruesome disaster) apparently broke one stupefying record — that of the highest skydive ever.

    To achieve this feat, ‘Fearless Felix’ Baumgartner jumped from a huge helium-filled balloon above New Mexico at a height of more than three times that of the average cruising altitude of jetliners.

    Baumgartner was expected to hit a speed of 690 mph.

    বিস্তারিত পড়ুন, ছবি ও ভিডিও দেখুন : Felix Baumgartner Photos: Pictures Of Sunday’s Record-Breaking Parachute Jump।

    

    • 

      মাসুদ করিম - ১৫ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (১২:৩৬ অপরাহ্ণ)

      গতির রেকর্ড করেছেন ফেলিক্স বাউমগার্টনার মাটি স্পর্শ করার আগের শেষ দশ মিনিট ৮৩৩.৯ মাইল/ঘন্টা আর ইউটিউবে হয়েছে অনলাইনে দেখার রেকর্ড ৮০ লাখ লোক একসাথে দেখেছে এবং ইউটিউবের জন্য দুঃখজনক আমাদের দেশে ইউটিউব নিষেধাজ্ঞার (আমাদের দেশের জন্য এটা লজ্জাজনক বললেও কম বলা হবে) কারণে দেখার সংখ্যার রেবকর্ডটি আরো বড় হল না।

      Skydiver sets speed and YouTube record

      Highest jump from a platform: 128,100 feet
      Longest distance freefall: 119,846 feet
      Maximum vertical velocity: 833.9 mph (Mach 1.24)

      Remarkable images of a man free-falling from the edge of space have set new records, not just for daredevil stunts but for live online viewing, as more than 8m people watched the Red Bull Stratos stunt on YouTube.

      Felix Baumgartner, 43, became the first skydiver to break the speed of sound as he jumped from an altitude of 128,100 feet above New Mexico on Sunday, falling at an estimated 833.9 miles per hour (Mach 1.24) during his ten-minute descent.

      “On the step, I felt that the whole world is watching,” Mr Baumgartner said after the event. “I said I wish they would see what I see. It was amazing.”

      The giant leap highlights the opportunity for the internet to attract substantial audiences for live events, traditionally TV broadcasters’ most lucrative asset.

      Millions of viewers were able to see what Mr Baumgartner saw through a carefully choreographed set of cameras positioned on the capsule from which he leapt.

      While Mr Baumgartner’s statistics are yet to be verified by the relevant authorities, the stunt is already expected to mark a new high for live internet broadcasting.

      A spokesman for Google-owned YouTube confirmed that Red Bull’s video feed of Mr Baumgartner’s slow ascent and rapid return to earth topped 8m concurrent live streams, the largest number in the site’s history.

      That beats what is believed to be the previous high, when 7m online viewers simultaneously watched President Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009, according to Akamai, a digital content provider.

      In comparison, the BBC’s sports website received 8.3m visitors from around the world on the first Sunday of this summer’s Olympics, the site’s busiest day ever.

      YouTube said that total viewing figures for other recent media spectaculars, such as the London Olympics and last year’s Royal Wedding would have come close to Stratos’ total reach, but were “not close” in terms of the number of people watching the skydive simultaneously.

      As well as the exposure for Red Bull’s energy drink, YouTube viewers were shown a “pre-roll” advertisement for Chrysler, the automaker, according to media industry blog Adland.tv.

      The stunt was also broadcast on traditional television, including on the Discovery Channel in the US and more than 40 other networks across 50 countries. A documentary about the stunt, two years in the making, is set to air later this year.

      YouTube – the web’s largest video site by some distance – still has some way to go before it can attract a live audience to match TV blockbusters such as the Super Bowl. Some 111m people watched February’s American football game, setting a TV ratings record in the US.

      Although print media has seen its audiences and advertising income plunge since the emergence of the internet, TV has remained relatively resilient.

      As people around the world turned to their computers and mobile devices to watch Mr Baumgartner’s death-defying feat, they also flocked to social-media sites.

      Red Bull had used Facebook and Twitter to stoke anticipation about the event in recent weeks, sharing photos of the Austrian skydiver’s preparation and a computer-generated simulation of the leap. More than 366m people have viewed videos on Red Bull’s YouTube channel.

      Twitter said that 2m tweets were posted about Mr Baumgartner and a total of 3m about the jump on Sunday. During the final day of the US Democratic party convention in Charlotte last month, 4m tweets were posted.

      Earlier this month, South Korean pop hit “Gangnam Style” became one of the fastest videos to enter YouTube’s all-time top 10 with 464m views since it was uploaded in July.

      

20. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ১৫ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (৬:৪৬ অপরাহ্ণ)

    অর্থনীতির নোবেল ধরাবাঁধা আমেরিকান তাত্ত্বিকদের জন্য এবং গেমথিওরির জন্য। লয়েড এস. শ্যাপলে এবং আলভিন ই. রথ দুজনেই একই ‘Stable allocations’ থিওরি নিয়ে স্বাধীনভাবে নিজ নিজ থিওরি প্রদান করার জন্য এই পুরস্কার পাবেন। শ্যাপলে (ইউনিভার্সিটি অফ ক্যালিফর্নিয়া) প্রধানত কাজ করেছেন সমবায় সমিতি নিয়ে, সমবায় সমিতিগুলোতে নির্দিষ্ট সদস্যরা যারা তাদের গন্ডির বাইরে কাউকে নিয়ে কাজ করতে উৎসাহী নয় তারা কিভাবে ‘Stable allocations’ থিওরি ব্যবহার করে পারষ্পরিক সর্বোচ্চ লাভের সুযোগ পেতে পারে — এটাই তিনি গেমথিওরি দিয়ে প্রতিপন্ন করেছেন। রথ (হাভার্ড ইউনিভার্সিটি) ‘Stable allocations’ থিওরিকে হাতে কলমে ব্যবহার করেছেন — একজন ডাক্তার কিভাবে তার জন্য সর্বোচ্চ ফলদায়ক হাসপাতাল, একজন অর্গানদাতা কীকরে সবচেয়ে কাঙ্ক্ষিত গ্রহীতা ও একজন ছাত্র কীকরে তার সাথে সর্বোচ্চ খাপখাওয়া শিক্ষাঙ্গন খুঁজে পেতে পারে এই কাজে।

    

    The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2012 was awarded jointly to Alvin E. Roth and Lloyd S. Shapley “for the theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design”

21. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ১৬ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (৯:৫৩ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    Norodom Sihanouk: Mercurial politician who led Cambodia through years of turbulence

    

    Norodom Sihanouk, politician: born Phnom Penh, French Indochina 31 October 1922; several wives and concubines and at least 14 children; died Beijing 15 October 2012.

    The legendary Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia guided his country through half a century of revolution and war in Indo-China. Although he began and ended his career as king, Sihanouk served for much of his time as Crown Prince, elected Prime Minister and for 20 years as ruler-in-exile. This interregnum began in 1970 when he was overthrown in his absence by a right-wing general, Lon Nol. Five years later, the Lon Nol regime was overthrown by the murderous Khmer Rouge communists, who subjected the land to the horror of the “Killing Fields”.

    From 1979, the Khmer Rouge engaged in a devastating war against Communist Vietnam. It was not until 1990 that Sihanouk came home from exile in Beijing to join in elections organised by the United Nations. In his last spell as ruler he helped to restore what was left of the country’s cultural and religious institutions. Sihanouk became King once more but renounced the title in 2004, 50 years after his first abdication.

    Sihanouk was a schoolboy when he came to the throne of a country still under French occupation. Although the Cambodians did not follow the Vietnamese in armed rebellion against the French, King Sihanouk saw the conflict in the adjoining land as a way of obtaining independence, which came in 1954. Even before then, Sihanouk had announced his intention to abdicate and to seek election as popular ruler.

    Whether as King or elected Prime Minister, Sihanouk counted upon the loyalty, indeed veneration of the devoutly Buddhist peasants. He never ceased to remind the Khmers of their glorious past in the Kingdom of Angkor, which once reigned over much of modern Thailand, Laos and Vietnam. He was the patron and impresario of the Royal Ballet, whose dancing girls also formed his harem. Sihanouk travelled about the country, hearing complaints, administering justice, doling out gifts of money or bundles of clothes, and exchanging lewd jests with the peasant women.

    Sihanouk marched with the times as patron of football, jazz – in which he excelled as saxophonist – and cinema, in which he performed as actor, cameraman and director. Yet Sihanouk’s greatest performance came each year when he blessed the confluence of the Mekong and Tonle Sap rivers just at the place and time when the waters reverse with the tide and flow upstream to the lake between Phnom Penh and Angkor, producing a second abundance of rice and fish.

    Although Sihanouk flattered the pride of the Khmers in their ancient empire and their distinctive dark appearance, he did not encourage resentment against the light-skinned Chinese and Vietnamese, who formed the majority of the trading and artisan classes. Nevertheless, Prince Sihanouk frequently quarrelled and broke off diplomatic relations with Thailand, Laos, Communist North Vietnam and anti-Communist South Vietnam, where some of his own domestic foes had taken asylum.

    A broadcast from Saigon in December 1963, including some rude remarks about Sihanouk’s sexual adventures, led him to break with South Vietnam and its friend the United States. Sihanouk asked for help from China and seemed to have joined the Communist bloc. As a mark of respect for Communist China, Sihanouk closed down all Cambodia’s nightclubs, at any rate all those not owned by his wife. Yet in spite of his newly found support and financial aid from China, Sihanouk frequently rounded up and expelled the Maoists in Phnom Penh’s Chinese community.

    During his heyday in the 1960s, Sihanouk relished state visits from foreign dignitaries such as De Gaulle and Tito and glamorous women like Princess Margaret and Jackie Kennedy. The monthly magazine Kambudja – editor: Prince Norodom Sihanouk – gave much space to these state occasions, with scores of photographs of the Prince. A prolific journalist, Sihanouk wisely kept out all those foreign colleagues who wrote rude things about Cambodia, in particular those who called it “small”, or worse, “tiny”. He once published a list of all the countries in the world ranked by population and size, proving that “tiny” Cambodia was far from the smallest.

    An eclectic statesman, Sihanouk borrowed from England the concept of having a parliamentary opposition. In October 1966, a general election had brought in too many “wrong” MPs, critical of the Prince. As head of state he could have dismissed the elected regime and installed himself as Prime Minister. He sagely resisted this, saying instead that Cambodia now was to have a “Loyal Opposition”. The Opposition was formed and started to publish a daily Bulletin of the Counter-Government – under the editorship of Sihanouk. Savage articles from his pen accused the government of corruption, sloth and incompotence, until the Prime Minister grew so upset that he had to resign – to be replaced by Prince Norodom Sihanouk.

    The new Prime Minister continued to edit the Bulletin of the Counter Government, which like most of Cambodia’s press, frequently carried reports on the Prince’s dieting visits to Grasse or Vichy, with headlines like: “This week Prince Norodom Sihanouk lost 10 kilos”. During his dieting visit to France in 1968, the Prince lost several kilos but then regained them when, in a visit to a local school, he first made a speech than took all the pupils out for a feast at a local pastry shop, matching them cake for cake.

    Those aspects of Cambodian life that foreigners found strange, or even absurd, were nevertheless true to the country’s tradition and culture. Buddha himself taught that the truth, the Middle Way, was sometimes arrived at through paradox and confusion. Sihanouk’s parliamentary group was called the Royal Buddhist Socialist Party. Prince Sihanouk ruled in the style of emperors from Europe’s Middle Ages. They too had been cultural mentors, priests of the state religion, philosophers of the national will and masters of public ceremony.

    Prince Sihanouk had a distrust of westernisms and -ocracies. He was often attacked because Cambodia would not admit the hippies who roamed the East in the 1960s. An article in the Bulletin of the Counter-Government set out to justify this apparently harsh attitude. The writer first explained that Cambodians sympathised with the hippy dislike of modern western society; the Cambodians, too, were in revolt against industrialism, violence and hypocrisy. But in Cambodia, the article went on, “the advance of science has not yet destroyed the foundation of our culture, which remains firm. The visiting hippies would have more to learn from us than to teach us. And in order to learn they should modify their behaviour out of respect for our culture and thought.”

    After a visit to Cambodia in 1968, I wrote in parody of an American journalist visiting Lenin’s Russia: “I have seen the past – and it works”. Prince Sihanouk accepted this as a compliment.

    We still do not know how or why Sihanouk fell from power during his absence abroad in March 1970. For some years the North Vietnamese had used Cambodia as a supply base and staging post for their troops in South Vietnam. Since 1969, the US had been bombing the North Vietnamese inside Cambodia. After his deportation, Sihanouk claimed the bombing was done without his knowledge or approval, but this is unlikely. Cambodia prospered during the 1960s by selling rice to the Vietnamese Communists in return for dollars bought on the black market in Saigon. However Sihanouk fretted about this Vietnamese presence, which offered encouragement to the local Communists to whom who he had given the nickname “Khmer Rouge”.

    On his return to power in the 1990s, Sihanouk reminded the Khmer that whatever the horror and suffering of the last two decades they still could look back with pride to medieval Angkor. Whatever the hungry years of war and collectivisation, the Mekong and Tonle Sap rivers would still continue to change direction, filling the land with rice and fish.

    Of all the politicians and generals from many nations who strutted through Indo-China during the last five decades, only Prince Norodom Sihanouk came away with a certain glory.

22. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ১৬ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (১২:৪৪ অপরাহ্ণ)

    সেপ্টেম্বর ১১, ২০১২এর রাতে লিবিয়ার বেনগাজিতে আমেরিকার দূতাবাসে হামলা নিয়ে আমেরিকার প্রেসিডেন্ট নির্বাচনের রিপাবলিকান প্রচার উত্তপ্ত হয়ে উঠেছে গত কয়েকদিন ধরেই। এতে সরাসরি ক্ষমতাসীন ডেমোক্রেট প্রেসিডেন্ট ও ভাইস-প্রেসিডেন্টকে দায়ী করা হচ্ছিল এবং হিলারি ক্লিন্টনের দায়িত্বে অবহেলার কথা বলা হচ্ছিল। এপ্রসঙ্গে হিলারির নিশ্চুপ থাকায় দলের উপর আরো চাপ বাড়ছিল। শেষ পর্যন্ত গতকাল সিএনএন-এর সাথে সাক্ষাৎকারে হিলারি মুখ খুললেন এবং বেনগাজির দূতাবাসে নিরাপত্তায় অবহেলার সব দায় তার নিজের বলে উল্লেখ করলেন।

    Hillary Clinton takes the rap for security lapse in Libya

    After Vice President Joe Biden, it’s now the turn of the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to save the president under attack from his Republican challenger Mitt Romney over the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

    The bucks stops with her when it comes to who is blame for a deadly assault on the US mission on the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, she said in a series of interviews ahead of the second presidential debate in New York.

    Clinton, who as America’s top diplomat has stayed away from the campaign, insisted Obama and Biden are not involved in security decisions. “I want to avoid some kind of political gotcha,” she added, noting that it is close to the election.

    “I take responsibility” for what happened Sep 11, Clinton said soon after arriving in Lima, Peru for a visit.

    The interview, one of a series given to US television networks Monday night, were the first she has given about the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi. The attack killed Chris Stevens, the US ambassador to Libya, and three other Americans at the consulate.

    The Obama administration has been heavily criticized after Biden said during last week’s vice presidential debate that the White House did not know of requests to enhance security at Benghazi, contradicting testimony by State Department employees that requests had been made and rejected.

    Following the debate, the White House said the vice president did not know of the requests because they were handled, as is the practice, by the State Department.

    Clinton also sought to downplay the criticism that administration officials continued to say the attack was a spontaneous product of a protest over an anti-Muslim film, a theory that has since been discarded.

    In the wake of an attack, there is always “confusion,” Clinton said. But the information has since changed.

    Clinton said her mission now is to make sure such an attack will never happen again – but also that diplomacy, even in dangerous areas like Benghazi, is not stopped.

    “We can’t not engage,” she said. “We cannot retreat.”

    • 

      মাসুদ করিম - ১৭ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (১২:৫৬ অপরাহ্ণ)

      হিলারির পর এবার ওবামাও বললেন, লিবিয়িায় বেনগাজির আমেরিকান দূতাবাসে নিরাপত্তা ব্যর্থতার দায় তারও যেহেতু তিনি প্রেসিডেন্ট এবং হিলারি তার হয়েই কাজ করেন।

      Benghazi Attack: After Clinton, Obama Takes Responsibility

      President Barack Obama today took “responsibility” for the security failure in Libya as he clashed with his Republican rival in the second presidential debate, denouncing as “offensive” Mitt Romney’s remark that his team played politics over the Benghazi attack.

      “I’m the president and I’m always responsible, and that’s why nobody’s more interested in finding out exactly what happened than I do,” Obama said during the 90-minute face-off at the Hofstra University here for a town hall style debate.

      His comments came a day after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took “responsibility” for the security failure in defending an attack on the Benghazi Consulate last month that left US Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others dead.

      Obama praised Clinton for the work she has done but said ultimately the responsibility for the safety of Americans posted abroad lies with him. “Secretary Clinton has done an extraordinary job. But she works for me,” he said.

      The “suggestion that anybody in my team whether the Secretary of State, our UN Ambassador, anybody on my team would play politics or mislead when we’ve lost four of our own, governor, is offensive.

      “That’s not what we do. That’s not what I do as president, that’s not what I do as Commander-in-Chief,” an aggressive Obama then told Romney looking directly in his eyes with an angry stare before heading back to his seat.

      Obama also accused Romney of trying to use the Libya attack to score political points saying that is not how a President and Commander-in-Chief operates.

      “While we were still dealing with our diplomats being threatened, Governor Romney put out a press release, trying to make political points, and that’s not how a commander in chief operates. You don’t turn national security into a political issue,” a visibly testy Obama said.

      Libya attack evoked strong reactions and a fiery back and forth between Obama and Romney with the Republican candidate accusing the Obama administration of being unclear for days on whether the Benghazi assault was a spontaneous demonstration over an anti-Islam video or a terrorist attack.

23. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ১৭ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (১:২১ অপরাহ্ণ)

    ইদের আগে লঞ্চে একটু রঙের প্রলেপ। এই, এর চেয়ে আর বেশি কিছু কি করতে হয়, করে লঞ্চ কোম্পানিগুলো? আর এই করেই পুরনো লক্কড়ঝক্কড় লঞ্চের ‘ফিটনেস’ ছাড়পত্রও নিশ্চয় পেয়ে যায় প্রশাসন থেকে?

    
    
    

24. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ১৮ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (১০:৩৫ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    Mitt Romney যাকে আমি বাংলায় অনুবাদ করেছিলাম ‘রমণীমোহন মিত্র’ এবং নামের সাথে তার চেহারা নিয়ে কটাক্ষ করেছিলাম — মিন্সের যা চেহারা, দ্বিতীয় প্রেসিডেন্সিয়াল বিতর্কে নারী পুরুষের কর্মক্ষেত্রে সমান অধিকারের প্রশ্নে তিনি এভাবে রমণী বাইন্ডার হিসাবে বিশ্ববিশ্রুত হবেন এবং নারীদের অধিকারের বিরুদ্ধে তার দাঁত এভাবে বেরিয়ে পড়বে সত্যিই ভাবিনি।

    In a binder

    The latest instalment of the spectacle that is the US presidential election conformed to the script — as expected, a more aggressive Barack Obama showed up for the second of three presidential debates and gave the Republican challenger a hard time. The debate — in a town hall format this time, thought to foster a more conversational atmosphere — was a combative event, as befits a close race where the candidates have serious disagreements on the role of the government in public and private life. After a soporific performance in the first debate, Obama supporters will be glad to note that insta-polls this time around gave him a lead of anywhere between 7-15 percentage points, arresting Romney’s momentum.

    But just as in the last debate, it is a Romney statement that is dominating the post-debate conversation. If last time his threat to cut funding to Sesame Street and Big Bird was the line that launched a thousand memes, this time it was a phrase from his answer about equal employment. Romney patronisingly described how he, as Massachusetts governor, tried to find qualified women to fill his cabinet and how his “concerted effort” in that direction led him to “women’s groups” that gave him “binders full of women”.

    Perhaps spoiled by Romney’s past gaffes, an expectant internet grabbed the opportunity with both metaphorical hands and before the hour was out, “binders full of women” became a meme with its own Twitter handle (@Romneybinders has over 30,000 followers), a Tumblr and a Facebook page that has 2,00,000 likes. Romney one-upped himself; this time he didn’t need a Muppet to create a pop culture phenomenon. His tone-deafness and condescension was enough.

    
    ‘Binders full of women’ Dave Granlundএর কার্টুন

    তার এই উক্তির পর তাৎক্ষণিকভাবে তৈরি টুইটার হ্যান্ডেল @RomneyBinders কিছু টুইট

    Binders Full Of Men Against Romney

    — Romney Binders (@RomneyBinders) October 17, 2012

    Out of the binders and into the kitchen — Romney/Ryan 2012

    — Romney Binders (@RomneyBinders) October 17, 2012

    Gov. Romney clearly misspoke. What he meant to say was that his platform wants to bind women to the 19th century.

    — Romney Binders (@RomneyBinders) October 17, 2012

25. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ১৮ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (১২:৪৩ অপরাহ্ণ)

    রপ্তানি পণ্যের বৈচিত্রের উপরই নির্ভর করছে বাংলাদেশের অর্থনীতির ভবিষ্যৎ, আমরা একথা বারবার আলোচনায় তুলছি, এবং সরকারও বলছে সরকার এবিষয়ে লক্ষ্য স্থাপন করেছে। কিন্তু কথা হল ঠিক কিভাবে পলিসি নির্ধারণ করা হচ্ছে তার এখনো কোনো স্পষ্ট ছবি আমরা পাচ্ছি না। শ্রমের মূল্য নিয়ে প্রচুর কাজ করার আছে, কারণ শুধু কম শ্রমের মূল্য দিয়ে কতটুকু গভীর দীর্ঘমেয়াদি শিল্পায়ন হবে তাতে যথেষ্ট সন্দেহ আছে। আর জনশক্তি রপ্তানি নিয়ে গতানুগতিক অবস্থানে আর কত দিন পড়ে থাকবে বাংলাদেশ, পরবর্তী প্রজন্মের জনশক্তি রপ্তানি উদ্ভাবনা সম্ভব না হলে এখাত থেকেও বাংলাদেশের প্রবৃদ্ধি বাধাগ্রস্ত হবে। আর অবকাঠামো নির্মাণ নিয়ে বাংলাদেশে একটা স্থবিরতা বিরাজ করছে, স্পষ্টত এমন স্থবিরতা দীর্ঘস্থায়ী হলে বাংলাদেশের উন্নতির গল্প আপনি ধ্বসে পড়বে। পড়ছিলাম WTO reviews Bangladesh’s trade policies & practices , এটা পড়তে পড়তেই এভাবনাগুলো আসল।

    The fourth review of the trade policies and
    practices of Bangladesh takes place on 15 and 17 October 2012. The basis for the review is a report by the World Trade Organization (WTO) Secretariat and a report by the Government of Bangladesh.

    Summary

    The Bangladesh economy emerged relatively unscathed from the global economic crisis though the country remains vulnerable because its exports are not diversified and it depends heavily on migrant workers’ remittances. Although the economy has become increasingly open in recent years, total merchandise exports have remained limited, averaging 18% of GDP since 2006.

    Exports remain highly concentrated both in terms of products and destinations, which carries some risk, with readymade-garment (RMG) exports to the EU and the U.S. the current mainstay. However, as a reputable low-cost producer of garments, Bangladesh has gained global market share in recent years.

    This trend is expected to continue over the medium term, which could partially mitigate the impact of slow growth in advanced economies.

    Economic Developments

    The average annual real GDP growth of the Bangladesh economy during the last six years was over 6%, aided by conducive macroeconomic policies, strong export growth and favourable weather. GDP growth was broad based with agriculture, industry and service sectors performing well.

    According to preliminary estimates, GDP growth in FY2012, although still estimated to be over 6%, has slowed slightly. The performance of exports, a key growth driver, has declined as the year has progressed, largely due to weaknesses in Bangladesh’s key market, the EU.

    Click here to read more summary:

    Outlook

    Bangladesh has enjoyed robust growth during the review period and, given its inherent strengths – especially a vibrant private sector and a large pool of inexpensive labour – the prospects for continuation of such growth are relatively good. Unit labour costs in the dominant garment industry are well below those of the nearest competitors.

    Foreign investors are showing interest in large-scale relocation of labour-intensive industries, particularly garments and related textile manufacturing. In addition, sectors such as shipbuilding, pharmaceuticals, ceramics, and processed and frozen foods have shown dynamism in recent years.

    Although the outlook appears optimistic, both RMG exports and remittances are vulnerable to shocks: external demand with garments, domestic labour unrest, and changes in market access; and remittances from changes in labour regulations and policies, or shocks in Kuwait or Saudi Arabia, which absorb over half the migrant Bangladeshi population.

    Deterioration in the outlook for both could cause significant external pressure, particularly as FDI flows remain low by mostmeasures, constrained by the trade regime, poor infrastructure, governance problems and a difficult business climate. Longer-term growth prospects hinge on generating sufficient resources to relieve infrastructure bottlenecks and ensuring a competitive business environment focused on labourintensive activities.

    World Trade Organization (WTO)

26. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ১৮ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (২:৪৪ অপরাহ্ণ)

    দারিদ্রপীড়িত বার্মার গ্রামগুলো থেকে অবাধে নারীপাচার হচ্ছে অস্ট্রেলিয়ায় বেবিসিটারের কাজের প্রলোভন দেখিয়ে। তাদের নিয়ে যাওয়া হচ্ছে থাইল্যান্ডকে ট্রানজিট হিসাবে ব্যবহার করে এবং থাইপুলিশের গোপন সহায়তায়। অস্ট্রেলিয়ায় নিয়ে যাওয়ার পর ওদেরকে বিক্রি করে দেয়া হচ্ছে যৌনকর্মী হিসাবে। বিস্তারিত পড়ুন এখানে।

    

27. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ১৮ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (৩:০৯ অপরাহ্ণ)

    এক নেতা তার জন্মদিন নিয়ে ঘোল পাকিয়েছেন এটা তারা নিশ্চয় জানে তাই আরেক নেতার জন্মদিনও প্রোফাইল থেকে বাদ দিয়ে দিয়েছে চীনের রাষ্ট্রীয় সংবাদসংস্থা চিনহুয়া।

    Here is the profile of Khaleda Zia.

    Khaleda, 63, aspires to form the next government through the parliamentary elections on Monday. Her BNP leads a four-party alliance that includes the country’s largest Islamic party Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami.

    Here is the profile of Sheikh Hasina.

    Hasina, 61, is aspiring to form the next government through the parliamentary elections on Monday. Her Awami League formed a grand election alliance with former president Hussain Mohammad Ershad’s Jatiya Party.

    এটা কিন্তু চিনহুয়ার কালচার নয় যে তারা জন্মদিন বাদ দিয়ে প্রোফাইল করে। দেখুন মনমোহন সিংয়ের প্রোফাইল।

    Profile: Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh

    Born in Gah, west Punjab (now in Pakistan), on Sept. 26, 1932, Singh was educated at Punjab University in India and at Oxford and Cambridge universities in the United Kingdom and won Cambridge University’s prestigious Adam Smith prize in 1956.

    চিনহুয়ার খালেদার প্রোফাইলে আরো লেখা আছে

    Khaleda actively participated in the movement of anti Ershad. Khaleda was detained several times at her Dhaka Cantonment house during the nine-year rule of Ershad.

    হাসিনার প্রোফাইলে এরশাদবিরোধী আন্দোলনে তার অংশগ্রহণ নিয়ে কিছু লেখা নেই। চিনহুয়ার প্রোফাইল পড়লে যেকারো মনে হবে খালেদা একাই এরশাদকে ক্ষমতা থেকে হটিয়েছিলেন এবং এরশাদের সব নির্যাতন তিনি একাই সয়েছিলেন।

28. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ১৯ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (২:৫৩ অপরাহ্ণ)

    খালেদা জিয়ার চীন সফরের সবচেয়ে গুরুত্বপূর্ণ বৈঠকটি হয়েছে গতকাল চীনের বর্তমান ভাইস প্রেসিডেন্ট এবং ভবিষ্যতের সম্ভাব্য প্রেসিডেন্ট চি জিনপিং-এর সাথে। এনিয়ে আমাদের দেশের পত্রিকাগুলো লিখেছে। কিন্তু চীনের রাষ্ট্রীয় সংবাদ সংস্থা চিনহুয়া কী লিখেছে তাও আমাদের পড়ে রাখা উচিত। কোনো গূঢ় কারণে নয় শুধুমাত্র রেকর্ড রাখার জন্য।

    

    CPC, Bangladesh Nationalist Party to further cooperation

    BEIJING, Oct. 18 (Xinhua) — Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping said on Thursday that the Communist Party of China (CPC) is willing to further exchanges and cooperation with Bangladeshi political parties, including the Bangladesh Nationalist Party.

    He made the remarks in a meeting with Chairwoman of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and former Prime Minister of the country Khaleda Zia at the Great Hall of the People.

    “The CPC is ready for closer friendly exchanges with all Bangladeshi political parties including the Nationalist Party, and deepening exchanges on national governance experiences, so as to contribute to the development of China-Bangladesh relations with new achievements in party-to-party cooperation,” said Xi, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee.

    Khaleda Zia said the Bangladesh Nationalist Party regards China as a true friend and natural ally. The party will always adheres to the one-China policy and make positive efforts to promote friendly exchanges and cooperation between the two nations.

    She also expressed hope that the upcoming 18th National Congress of the CPC a great success.

    Xi hailed the healthy and smooth development of China-Bangladesh relations, featured by deepening political mutual trust, expanding cooperation in economic and trade as well as cultural fields.

    He said further development of the bilateral ties and comprehensive cooperation is in the fundamental interests and practical needs of the two countries and the two peoples.

    The vice president called on the two countries to join hands to speed up exchanges and cooperation in all areas and push forward the China-Bangladesh all-round partnership of cooperation to a new high.

    Zia expressed thanks for China’s assistance and support to her country’s infrastructure construction and national defense since the establishment of the ties, and expressed the hope that Bangladesh can continue to receive aid from China.

29. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ১৯ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (১১:৩৮ অপরাহ্ণ)

    পৃথিবীটা কি আবার বোমা হামলার শিরোনামের দখলে চলে যাচ্ছে? আজ বৈরুতের খ্রিস্টান অধ্যুষিত এলাকায় শক্তিশালী গাড়ি বোমার আঘাতে লেবাননের নিরাপত্তা বাহিনীর প্রধানসহ আটজন নিহত হয়েছেন এবং প্রায় ৭৮ জন আহত হয়েছেন।

    

    

    

    Today’s Middle East news has been dominated by a bomb attack in the Lebanese capital which is reported to have killed eight people, including security chief Wissam al-Hassan.

    The political consequences remain to be seen but there are fears that the bombing could seriously increase tensions in Lebanon.

    Wissam al-Hassan had been heavily involved in investigating former information minister Michel Samaha – a supporter of the Assad regime in neighbouring Syria – who has been accused of plotting terror attacks in Lebanon.

    বিস্তারিত পড়ুন : Security chief dies in Beirut blast – live updates।

30. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ২০ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (৩:০৫ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    চীনের কবি লিআও ইউ-এর (LIAO YIWU) এই বক্তৃতাটি কবিতাই মনে হচ্ছে। পিস প্রাইজ অফ জার্মান বুক ট্রেডের পুরস্কার গ্রহণে সম্মতি প্রদান করে তিনি যেবক্তৃতাটি দিয়েছেন তা অবলম্বনে নিচের লেখাটি তৈরি করা হয়েছে।

    
    Liao Yiwu | 廖亦武

    This Empire Must Break Apart

    According to Chinese tradition, a dynasty that massacres children and tortures truth cannot stand, writes author and poet Liao Yiwu.

    Once upon a time, there was a nine-year-old boy called Lu Peng, who was in the third grade at Shun Cheng Jie primary school in Beijing. On the night of June 3-4, 1989, curiosity led him to sneak out of the house, behind his parents’ backs. Riots were raging in the streets. Lu Peng was hit and struck down by a bullet head on.

    Many others died at that same moment in the hail of bullets. But he was the youngest. According to the eyewitness reports of a group around Ding Zilin, who as leader of the Tiananmen Mothers has made it her mission to shed light upon the events of that night, Lu Peng was also the youngest of all of the victims of the Tiananmen massacre.

    He will forever be nine years old. I would like us never to forget that. Which is why I have recorded the news of his death. But here, today, I would like to announce the news of another death, that of the Chinese empire. A country that massacres little children must break apart. That is in keeping with the Chinese tradition.

    Over 2,500 years ago in his work “The Tao Te Ching,” the philosopher Laozi spoke often of two entities at once weak and yet superlative: a newborn child and water. The newborn stands for the propagation of the human race, and water for the expansion of nature. Looking after a child means preserving the primary energy, the qi of humankind.

    Accordingly, in the Chinese healing practice qigong, it is essential to begin by freeing oneself of all troubling thoughts and gathering the qi life-energy in one’s abdomen in order to return to the original state of an embryo in the womb. Laozi goes one step further, describing humanity’s desire for home, for the return to the native land, which is as important to old people as a mother’s breast is to an infant. Satisfying this basic human desire requires no “great nation.” Rather, what is needed is a country divided into small units.

    The dictatorial Chinese empire of today was originally composed of countless smaller splinter states, up until the Spring and Autumn Period and Warring States period. It is true that, during that time, the fires of war raged constantly and one state was always occupying or annexing the other. Yet historians agree that it was a previously unsurpassed time of glory, a time of unprecedented political, economic and cultural blossoming. Never since has there been the same degree of freedom of speech and debate, with science and the arts engaged in eager competition.

    And today? Today, after having turned every aspect of tradition on its head, the Communist Party goes forth, usurping and shamelessly distorting this intellectual legacy, setting up Confucius Institutes around the world. Haven’t they read the classics? Don’t they know that Confucius wasn’t a “Chinese nationalist” but an inhabitant of the small state of Lu?

    Confucius was 56 years old when he picked an argument over political questions with the ruler of his state. Fearing for his life, he took flight in a mad rush, only to remain living in exile, roving through a whole range of states on his travels. Seen in this light, Confucius should be considered the spiritual forefather of the politically persecuted, and what are called “Confucius Institutes” today should be known as “Confucius Institutes for Exiles.”

    The nominally united Chinese empire has left enormous bloody trails through history. The empire’s first unifying figure, Qin Shi Huang, spent his entire life waging wars in every direction and swallowing up neighboring states to expand his territory. It is said that the population of this territory shrank by two-thirds under his rule. His two major deeds will ensure that the name of the first Emperor of Qin will stink to high heaven for all eternity: the building of the Great Wall and the burning of books, which went hand-in-hand with the murdering of scholars.

    The erection of the Great Wall was meant to prevent people from having contact with the outside world, turning China into the ultimate prison. To this end, the entire country was forced into slave labor in the service of this massive project. In turn, the burning of books and murdering of scholars were intended to cut people off from their own traditions. The Emperor of Qin cunningly published a “Call to All Scholars,” with which he lured 460 philosophers from all parts of the country to the capital, only to have them buried alive.

    Two thousand years later, he won great praise from a new despot by the name of Mao Zedong. Mao boasted: Qin Shi Huang interred just 460 Confucians, whereas we have done away with tens of thousands of counterrevolutionaries.

    Murdering people. That was the method upon which the new state was founded. It was tacitly understood, from Mao Zedong to Deng Xiaoping. During the great famine from 1959-62, nearly 40 million people starved to death across the country. In June 1989, once again feeling that its power was at risk, the Communist Party mobilized 200,000 soldiers to massacre the city of Beijing.

    It seems just a heartbeat ago that, because of the dissemination of my poem “Massacre” after that night, I wandered into and back out of prison. I once encountered another old writer by the name of Liu Shahe, whom—in 1957, long before I was born—Mao Zedong had also suspected of “denigrating the Party,” declared an enemy and thrown into prison because of a poem. He told me that the wounds that a stroke of fate like that inflicts upon you never heal. We are no longer poets; we have become witnesses of history.

    That means preserving the truth for future generations. Children and the truth have always been closely connected in history. A dynasty that is so degenerate that it massacres children and tortures the truth—such a dynasty’s days are numbered.

    This inhuman empire with bloody hands, at the root of so much suffering in the world, this infinitely large pile of rubbish must break apart. So that no more innocent children die, it must break apart. So that no new mother blamelessly loses her child, it must break apart. So that China’s helpless and homeless migrant workers no longer need to toil as the world’s slaves, it must break apart. So that we may finally return to the home of our ancestors and watch over their legacy and graves in the future, it must break apart. This empire must break apart, for the sake of peace and the peace of mind of all humanity—and for the mothers of Tiananmen Square.

31. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ২১ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (৬:১৩ অপরাহ্ণ)

    চীনের কমিউনিস্ট পার্টির পলিটব্যুরোর কেন্দ্রীয় স্ট্যান্ডিং কমিটির সদস্য এবং চীন সরকারের প্রপাগান্ডা প্রধান লি চ্যাংচুন বাংলাদেশ আওয়ামী লীগের আমন্ত্রণে বাংলাদেশে এসেছেন গতকাল, এনিয়ে চিনহুয়ার রিপোর্ট।

    
    লি চ্যাংচুনকে বিমানবন্দরে অভ্যর্থনা জানাচ্ছেন আওয়ামী লীগ নেতারা

    Senior Chinese leader arrives in Bangladesh for official visit

    At the invitation of the Bangladesh Awami League party, Li Changchun, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), arrived here on Saturday afternoon, kicking off his two-day official visit to the country.

    Li delivered a written speech at the airport, applauding the robust growth of the bilateral cooperation in political, economic, cultural and humanitarian fields since the two nations forged diplomatic relationship 37 years ago, and noting the bilateral cooperation and coordination on international issues delivered concrete benefits to the two peoples and help maintain the regional peace and prosperity.

    “China and Bangladesh, both as developing countries, share comprehensive common interests and potential for cooperation,” Li said in the statement, adding he was expecting to meet Bangladeshi leaders including President Zillur Rahman and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed.

    Bangladesh is the final leg of Li’s three-nation visit to South Asia. The trip already took him to Pakistan and the Maldives.

32. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ২২ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (১০:১৫ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    ১৯৬২ সালের চীন-ভারত যুদ্ধের ৫০ বছর নিয়ে দুই সরকারই চুপ, চীন সরকার চুপ হলে চীনের রাষ্ট্রীয় মিডিয়াও চুপ এটাই স্বাভাবিক কিন্তু ভারতে তো মিডিয়া রাষ্ট্রীয় নয় — সেখানে কথা হচ্ছে। ভারতের চন্ডিগড়ের ইংরেজি দৈনিক’দি ট্রিবিউন’এর ১৯৬২ সালের যুদ্ধ নিয়ে সম্পাদকীয় বিশেষ আয়োজনের জরাওয়ার দৌলত সিং-এর Why India and China went to war in 1962 লেখাটি পড়ে এবিষয়ে বিস্তৃতভাবে জানা গেল।

    Indian historian John Lall once observed, “Perhaps nowhere else in the world has such a long frontier been unmistakably delineated by nature itself”. How then, did India and China defy topographical odds to lock into an impasse that was ultimately tested on the battlefield?

    In retrospect, certain fundamental factors can be identified that framed the context of India-China interactions in the 1950s. Despite attaining a bloody independence in 1947, a truncated India viewed itself as the inheritor of the legacy of British India’s frontiers. While the Nehru regime was acutely aware of the changed geopolitical context, its perception of the northern frontiers was based on the institutional memory of a century of frontier making by British strategists.

    Let’s briefly deconstruct this legacy. It is now accepted that British India’s frontier policies had failed to produce a single integrated and well-defined northern boundary separating the Indian subcontinent from Xinjiang and Tibet. The legacy, however, was more nuanced. In the eastern sector, the British had largely attained an ethnically and strategically viable alignment via the 1914 Simla conference of India, China and Tibet, even though the Chinese repudiated the agreement itself.

    The underlying rationale for British policy was to carve a buffer around an autonomous ‘Outer Tibet’ not very dissimilar to the division of Mongolia in 1913 that Russia and China had agreed upon. While this policy of an attempted zonal division of Tibet never materialised, the fortuitous byproduct of this episode was the delimiting of a border alignment between India and Tibet that mirrors more or less the de facto position today. It is instructive to note that China’s principal concern back then was not the precise boundary between Tibet and India but the borders and the political relationship between Tibet and China.

    The bone of contention

    The border with China runs 3488 km. It can be divided into three sectors:

    Western Sector: This includes the border between Jammu and Kashmir and Xinjiang and Tibet. India claims that China is occupying 43,000 sq km in this sector, including 5180 sq km illegally ceded to it by Pakistan.

    Central Sector: This includes borders shared by Himachal Pradesh and Uttrakhand with Tibet. Shipki La and Kaurik areas in HP and areas around Pulam, Thag La, Barahori, Kungri Bingri La, Lapthal and Sangha are disputed.

    Eastern Sector: China disputes India’s sovereignty over 90,000 sq km, mostly in Arunachal Pradesh. Tawang, Bum La, Asaphi La and Lo La are among the sensitive points in this sector. Strategically vital Tawang holds the key to the defence of the entire sub-Himalayan space in this sector.

    In contrast, the legacy of the western sector was more blurred. This sector, the crux of the dispute, was never formally delineated nor successfully resolved by British India. The fluid British approach in this sector was shaped by the geopolitical and geoeconomic goals of its empire, and was never designed to meet the basic requirements of a sovereign nation state.

    New power equilibrium

    There were almost a dozen attempts by the British to arrive at exactly where the boundaries should lie. Most, however, were exploratory surveys by frontier agents reflecting British expansion in the north-west frontiers rather than a concerted pursuit of an international border. And, they varied with the then geopolitical objectives of London, vis-à-vis the perceived Russian threat. For instance, when Russia threatened Xinjiang, some British strategists advocated an extreme northern Kashmiri border. At times, opinion favoured a relatively moderate border, with reliance even being placed on Chinese control of Xinjiang as a buffer against Russia.

    The only serious, albeit futile, attempts by the British to map the border east of the Karakoram pass with China were made in 1899 and 1905. The Chinese never responded to these proposals. Interestingly, Alastair Lamb’s 1973 study argues that the 1899 line when plotted on a modern map rather than on one relying on surveys done in the nineteenth century would place the eastern portion of Aksai Chin, including the area covering the Xinjiang-Tibet road, in China.

    In 1947, no definite boundary line to the east of the Karakoram Pass existed. On the official 1950 India Map, Kashmir’s boundary east of this pass was expressed as ‘Boundary Undefined’, while the 1914 McMahon Line was clearly shown as the boundary in the eastern sector. The only two points accepted by India and China was that the Karakoram Pass and Demchok, the western and eastern extremities of this sector, were in Indian territory. Opinion differed on how the line traversed between the two points. Thus, in effect, India and China were faced with a ‘no man’s land’ in eastern Ladakh, where the contentious Aksai Chin lay.

    This situation would have sufficed had Chinese power remained weak and relatively ambivalent to its southern periphery, as it had during most of the British colonial experience in India. But across the Himalayas, the restoration of Chinese power in 1949 and its thrust into Tibet in 1951, showed that Mao’s China had awoken after its ‘century of humiliation’.

    Adjustment to the new power equilibrium was unavoidable. Path dependence and institutional memory of previous British Indian frontier policies and its attendant impulse for a forward presence had to be reconciled with the reality of a rejuvenated China. The dilemma for India was to reconcile the colonial legacy that had produced the foundation for a strategically secure northern frontier and special relations with the smaller Himalayan states, with the post-colonial reality that obliged India to discard the symbols of the very policies that had bequeathed these privileges to India. A bit of hypocrisy was unavoidable if an independent but weaker India was to secure itself against a stronger China.

    The essence of the Indian response was an uneasy combination of realism and accommodation of Chinese interests. And in the absence of military modernisation constrained by economic and institutional resources, diplomacy and soft external balancing via an attempt to leverage the superpower rivalry assumed the major burden of advancing India’s diplomatic position and preventing conflict. Little effort was expended on internal balancing until after 1962.

    Further, the spillover of the Cold War into South Asia, largely via an American decision in the early 1950s to buttress Pakistan as a regional client, reduced India’s options of external balancing. It made an alignment with the West unappealing to the nationalist consensus among the Indian elites that had produced the philosophy of non-alignment.

    Chinese fait accompli

    Nehru’s response to the 1954 US-Pakistan alliance exemplified this: “The United States imagines that by this policy they have completely outflanked India’s so-called neutralism and will thus bring India to her knees. Whatever the future may hold, this is not going to happen”. This explains much of India’s early efforts to forge an accommodation with China, and the 1954 agreement over Tibet must be viewed in such a context rather than simply as an idealistic expression of Nehru’s pan-Asian vision.

    The 1954 agreement was essentially a Chinese fait accompli extracting a de jure Indian endorsement of China’s sovereignty over Tibet and India relinquishing its special British-era privileges. The agreement was valid for eight years, till June 1962, and as relations turned sour, China would have to wait another five decades for a reiteration of the 1954 Indian position. This came in 2003 in a joint declaration at Beijing. Curiously, this important shift in the Indian position was once again undertaken without a reciprocal Chinese concession other than a tacit acknowledgment of India’s sovereignty over Sikkim.

    Returning to the April 1954 agreement, where India erred was in extracting a quid quo pro. Some have interpreted 1954 as an implicit trade-off that resolved the border issue. Indeed, the Nehru government seemed to believe it had addressed all Sino-Indian questions.

    On 1 July 1954, shortly after the agreement, Nehru, through a note to the Secretary-General and Foreign Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs, stated that, “All our old maps dealing with the frontier should be carefully examined, and where necessary, withdrawn. New maps should be printed showing our northern and northeastern frontier without any reference to any ‘line’. These new maps should also not state there is any undemarcated territory…Both as flowing from our policy and as a consequence of our Agreement with China, this frontier should be considered a firm and definite one which is not open to discussion with anybody”. As it turned out, this was a significant decision because the new maps of 1954 publicly committed India to a cartographic position over territory in the western sector that was known to have been of ambiguous provenance.

    Military confrontation

    The central puzzle, of course, is why did India not bring up the border issue during the 1954 negotiations with the Chinese? Archival evidence reveals that Nehru’s unwillingness to unilaterally raise the boundary issue at the time was based on an assumption that Beijing might respond by offering to negotiate a fresh boundary, which could have been disadvantageous to India. Nehru instructed his negotiators that if the Chinese raised the boundary issue “we should express our surprise and point out that this is a settled issue”. By not explicitly linking China’s ownership over Tibet with a reciprocal and wider agreement on the frontiers was an extraordinary error of judgment.

    Further, India gave no expression to its revised 1954 maps showing a settled northern border. Unlike in the east, where India proactively extended its sovereignty over Tawang in 1951, which was not contested by China at the time, and reaffirmed close relations with Bhutan, Nepal, and Sikkim, India did little to alter the ground reality in the west. Though historical record did not support Chinese claims in Aksai Chin, the Chinese by virtue of their expanded presence in Tibet would henceforth view Aksai Chin as a strategically located area to maintain their supply lines to Tibet. That Delhi knew little of these remote eastern parts of Ladakh was evident in the subsequent course of events such as the discovery of the Xinjiang-Tibet road after it was written about in a Chinese magazine in 1957!

    India officially claimed Aksai Chin in a note to the Chinese Ambassador in Delhi in October 1958. A few months later, a rebellion in Tibet led to the exodus of the Dalai Lama to India. The first armed clash with China occurred at Longju in the east on 25 August 1959. On 21 October 1959, at the Kongka Pass in the west, Chinese guards killed nine members of an Indian patrol team and took ten prisoners. The wheels of dispute were set in motion though it would still take an unfortunate international conjuncture to transform a political disagreement into a military confrontation.

    
    Areas (in red) claimed by China in Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh.

    From genesis to nemesis

    October 1950: Chinese troops cross the Sino-Tibetan boundary and move towards Lhasa.

    April 1954: Sino-Indian Agreement on Trade and Intercourse between India and Tibet region of China signed by Jawaharlal Nehru and Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai in Beijing.

    May 1954: China and India sign the Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence or Panchsheel.

    June 1954: Zhou Enlai visits India for the first time, stresses on the adherence to the five principles

    March 1955: India objects to the inclusion of a portion of India’s northern frontier on the official map of China, calling it a clear infringement of Panchsheel

    November 1956: Zhou Enlai visits India for the second time on a goodwill mission.

    September 1958: India officially objects to the inclusion of a big chunk of Northern Assam and NEFA (now Arunachal Pradesh) in China Pictorial.

    January 1959: Zhou Enlai spells out for the first time China’s claims to over 40,000 square miles of Indian territory both in Ladakh and NEFA.

    April 1959: Dalai Lama escapes from Lhasa and crosses into Indian territory.

    August 1959: Chinese troops open fire on an Indian picket near Migyitun in eastern Ladakh, killing an Indian soldier. They also overrun the Indian outpost at Longju in north-eastern Ladakh.

    September 1959: China refuses to accept the McMahon Line. Beijing lays claims to 50,000 square miles of territory in Sikkim and Bhutan.

    October 1959: Chinese troops fire on an Indian patrol in the Aksai Chin area killing nine soldiers and capturing ten.

    April 1960: A meeting in New Delhi between Zhou Enlai and Nehru to address the boundary question ends in deadlock.

    June 1960: Chinese troops violate the Indian border near Shipki village in the northeast

    February 1961: China further occupies 12,000 sq miles in the western sector.

    October 1961: Chinese start aggressive border patrolling and establishes new military formations which start moving into Indian territory.

    December 1961: India adopts the Forward Policy to stem the advancing Chinese frontier line by establishing a few border outposts.

    April 1962: China issues ultimatum demanding the withdrawal of the Indian frontier personnel from the border posts.

    September 1962: Chinese forces cross the McMahon Line in the Thag La region in the east and open fire on an Indian post. Launch another intensified attack.

    20 October 1962: China launches a massive multi-pronged attack all along the border from Ladakh in the west to Arunachal Pradesh in the east.

    15 November 1962: A massive Chinese attack on the eastern front. Tawang and Walong in the eastern sector over run, Rezang La and the Chushul airport in the west shelled.

    18 November 1962: Chinese troops capture Bomdi La in the NEFA region

    21 November 1962: China declares a unilateral ceasefire along the entire border and announces withdrawal of its troops to 20 km behind the LAC.
    Compiled by Vijay Mohan

33. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ২৩ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (৯:৩২ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    ইতিহাস উপন্যাস ভ্রমণ বিনোদনের শ্রেষ্ট কথাকার ও এক প্রজন্মের ভালবাসার কবি সুনীল গঙ্গোপাধ্যায় চলে গেলেন যখন তার কর্মক্ষেত্র কলকাতায় সংবাদমাধ্যমও পূজোয় মগ্ন। আগামীকাল শুধু বাংলাদেশের পত্রিকার লিড নিউজ হবেন সুনীল এটা ইতিহাসের উপাদান হয়ে থাকবে মুত্যুপরবর্তী সুনীলের জন্য।

    
    সুনীলের ব্লগ : বিজনে নিজের সঙ্গে দেখা

    বাংলা সাহিত্যের বিশিষ্ট কবি ও কথা সাহিত্যিক সুনীল গঙ্গোপাধ্যায় আর নেই।

    ভারতীয় টেলিভিশনের খবরে জানানো হয়, জনপ্রিয় এই ভারতীয় সাহিত্যিক মঙ্গলবার রাত ২টায় কলকাতায় নিজের বাড়িতে মারা যান। তার বয়স হয়েছিল ৭৮ বছর। দীর্ঘদিন ধরেই তিনি বিভিন্ন রোগে ভুগছিলেন।

    একাধারে কবি, ঔপন্যাসিক, ছোটগল্পকার, সাংবাদিক ও কলাম লেখক সুনীলের জন্ম ১৯৩৪ সালের ৭ সেপ্টেম্বর, বাংলাদেশের ফরিদপুরে। পরিবারের সঙ্গে কলকাতা চলে যান মাত্র চার বছর বয়সেই। কলকাতা বিশ্ববিদ্যালয় থেকে স্নাতোকোত্তর ডিগ্রি নেন ১৯৫৪ সালে।

    এর ঠিক আগের বছর কবিতার পত্রিকা কৃত্তিবাসের সম্পাদনা শুরু করেন সুনীল। ১৯৫৮ সালে তার প্রথম কাব্যগ্রন্থ ‘একা ও কয়েকজন’ এবং ১৯৬৬ সালে ‘আত্মপ্রকাশ’ নামে প্রথম উপন্যাস প্রকাশিত হয়।

    নীললোহিত, সনাতন পাঠক, নীল উপাধ্যায় ছদ্মনামেও সুনীল গঙ্গোপাধ্যায় লেখালেখি করেছেন। তিনি ভারতের জাতীয় সাহিত্যপ্রতিষ্ঠান সাহিত্য আকাদেমি ও পশ্চিমবঙ্গ শিশুকিশোর আকাদেমির সভাপতি হিসেবে দায়িত্ব পালন করেছেন।

    Sunil Gangopadhyay and his legacy. ‘He was a great writer – I can scarcely believe that he is gone.’ New post: amitavghosh.com/blog

    — Amitav Ghosh (@GhoshAmitav) October 23, 2012

    

    দুই বাংলার সেতুপুরুষ | সুনীল স্মরণে অলোকরঞ্জন | প্রাত্যহিক খবর | পড়ুন এখানে।

    খবরের লিন্ক : সুনীল গঙ্গোপাধ্যায়ের চিরপ্রস্থান।

34. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ২৩ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (১০:৪১ অপরাহ্ণ)

    রাশিয়ায় ‘লাল’ ভোর ফুটবে আবার, স্বাধীনতা ও মানবাধিকারের জন্য সোভিয়েত শাসনকে বিতাড়িত করে আখেরে গোষ্ঠীর ধান্দাবাজি শাসনে আজো বিপর্যস্ত রাশিয়া, সেই অসাম্যের বিরুদ্ধে তারুণ্যের মধ্যে শোনা যাচ্ছে আবার ‘লাল’এর প্রতিধ্বনি — হ্যাঁ, তারাও বলছে ওই একই সোভিয়েত ‘লাল’ ফিরে আসুক তারাও চায় না তারা আনতে চায় নতুন ‘লাল’। আমরাও আশা করি রাশিয়া তেমন কোনো নতুন ‘লাল’কেই আনুক যা তারুণ্যের আকাঙ্ক্ষার সাথে হবে সঙ্গতিপূর্ণ কিন্তু একই সাথে তা যেন ‘বিশ্বায়ন’ভাবুক (যাতে বিশ্বায়নকে নতুন তাৎপর্য দেয়া যায় সত্যিকার অর্থেই তাকে মাল্টিপোলার করা যায়) হয় ‘বিশ্বায়ন’বিমুখ না হয়।

    The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 appeared to have sounded the death knell for the ideas of Marx and Lenin in Russia, but just over two decades on, a new wave of young and increasingly visible socialist activists are eager to hoist the red flag over the Kremlin once more.

    “I became interested in socialism when I was in my late teens,” said Isabel Magkoeva, 21, a rising star of Russia’s left and an activist with the Revolutionary Socialist Movement.

    “I was always concerned by economic inequality and started to ask questions about why this should be. Then I got interested in left-wing literature,” added Magkoeva, a former teenage model who bears a striking resemblance to high-profile Chilean student protest leader Camila Vallejo. “That was when I realized I wanted to get involved.”

    But although Magkoeva praises Lenin as a “great revolutionary,” she has few illusions about the Soviet Union, which ceased to exist the same year she was born.

    “There was no genuine socialism in the Soviet Union,” she said. “And it is inaccurate to portray us all as seeking a return to the past. That simply isn’t true. We are for a new modernized form of socialism.”

    This increase in the popularity of socialist ideas has been bolstered, in part, by Russia’s appalling record on wealth inequality, highlighted earlier this month by a report by the Swiss financial services company Credit Suisse.

    “Excluding small Caribbean nations with resident billionaires, wealth inequality in Russia is the highest in the world,” the report said. “Worldwide, billionaires collectively account for less than 2% of total household wealth; in Russia today, around 100 billionaires own 30% of all personal assets.”

    It is figures like this that, activists say, have attracted young Russians to socialist groups. Young left-wingers have been among the main movers in the unprecedented protests against the almost 13-year-rule of President Vladimir Putin, bucking an over-two-decade long trend that had seen unreformed, elderly Soviet-era communists as almost the sole champions of socialist causes.

    “Young people have almost no chance to buy affordable housing and bring up a family normally. There is almost no opportunity for people to climb the social ladder, especially for those who are not from Moscow,” said activist Sergei Fomchenkov, 38, a leading member of the Other Russia movement.

    “And so when people see all this, and then see a small group of incredibly wealthy billionaires building themselves luxury villas and so on, of course they start to see leftist ideas as a real alternative,” he added.

    But, like Magkoeva, Fomchenkov has no desire to see Russia return to its Soviet past.

    “We want a modernized form of socialism in which the state controls national industry, but not small businesses,” he stressed. “It would be lunacy to attempt to control the activities of every small café, for example.”

    Analysts tie this rise in socialist ideas in Russia into a similar trend in a crisis-hit Europe, where leftist parties have made dramatic gains in an increasingly polarized political atmosphere.

    “Like everywhere in Europe, vulnerable young people hit by the global economic crisis are rediscovering the ideas of socialism,” said Lilia Shevtsova, an analyst at the Moscow-based Carnegie Center think tank. “These ideas were discredited in Russia in the period after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but young people are today moving toward the new left.”

    The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 appeared to have sounded the death knell for the ideas of Marx and Lenin in Russia, but just over two decades on, a new wave of young and increasingly visible socialist activists are eager to hoist the red flag over the Kremlin once more.

    “I became interested in socialism when I was in my late teens,” said Isabel Magkoeva, 21, a rising star of Russia’s left and an activist with the Revolutionary Socialist Movement.

    “I was always concerned by economic inequality and started to ask questions about why this should be. Then I got interested in left-wing literature,” added Magkoeva, a former teenage model who bears a striking resemblance to high-profile Chilean student protest leader Camila Vallejo. “That was when I realized I wanted to get involved.”

    But although Magkoeva praises Lenin as a “great revolutionary,” she has few illusions about the Soviet Union, which ceased to exist the same year she was born.

    “There was no genuine socialism in the Soviet Union,” she said. “And it is inaccurate to portray us all as seeking a return to the past. That simply isn’t true. We are for a new modernized form of socialism.”

    This increase in the popularity of socialist ideas has been bolstered, in part, by Russia’s appalling record on wealth inequality, highlighted earlier this month by a report by the Swiss financial services company Credit Suisse.

    “Excluding small Caribbean nations with resident billionaires, wealth inequality in Russia is the highest in the world,” the report said. “Worldwide, billionaires collectively account for less than 2% of total household wealth; in Russia today, around 100 billionaires own 30% of all personal assets.”

    It is figures like this that, activists say, have attracted young Russians to socialist groups. Young left-wingers have been among the main movers in the unprecedented protests against the almost 13-year-rule of President Vladimir Putin, bucking an over-two-decade long trend that had seen unreformed, elderly Soviet-era communists as almost the sole champions of socialist causes.

    “Young people have almost no chance to buy affordable housing and bring up a family normally. There is almost no opportunity for people to climb the social ladder, especially for those who are not from Moscow,” said activist Sergei Fomchenkov, 38, a leading member of the Other Russia movement.

    “And so when people see all this, and then see a small group of incredibly wealthy billionaires building themselves luxury villas and so on, of course they start to see leftist ideas as a real alternative,” he added.

    But, like Magkoeva, Fomchenkov has no desire to see Russia return to its Soviet past.

    “We want a modernized form of socialism in which the state controls national industry, but not small businesses,” he stressed. “It would be lunacy to attempt to control the activities of every small café, for example.”

    Analysts tie this rise in socialist ideas in Russia into a similar trend in a crisis-hit Europe, where leftist parties have made dramatic gains in an increasingly polarized political atmosphere.

    “Like everywhere in Europe, vulnerable young people hit by the global economic crisis are rediscovering the ideas of socialism,” said Lilia Shevtsova, an analyst at the Moscow-based Carnegie Center think tank. “These ideas were discredited in Russia in the period after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but young people are today moving toward the new left.”

    বিস্তারিত পড়ুন : Russia’s Rising Red Dawn।

35. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ২৮ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (১২:৩৭ অপরাহ্ণ)

    চীনের প্রধানমন্ত্রী ওয়েন জিয়াবাও একজন সহজ সরল মানুষের প্রতিমূর্তি নিয়ে চলেন, চীনের মিডিয়া উচ্চকিত করে তার সুবিধাবঞ্চিতদের প্রতি একাত্ম ‘গ্র্যান্ডপা’ ইমেজ, চীনের কমিউনিস্ট পার্টির প্রচারযন্ত্র বলে নেতাদের অসৎ অর্থ উপার্জনের বিরুদ্ধে তিনি উচ্চকণ্ঠ, কিন্তু তার প্রধানমন্ত্রীত্বের তলে পারিবারিক সদস্যদের মাধ্যমে অসততার নিরন্তর চর্চায় পারিবারিক সাম্রাজ্যের যে রিপোর্ট সম্প্রতি প্রকাশিত হল নিউইয়র্ক টাইমসে, তাতে চীনের এলিট রাজনীতিবিদদের গোপন অসৎ কার্যক্রমই শুধু উন্মোচিত হয়নি ধান্দার রাষ্ট্রনিয়ন্ত্রিত সমাজতান্ত্রিক অর্থনীতি কিভাবে চলে তারও স্বরূপ উন্মোচিত হয়েছে। প্রায় তিন বিলিয়ন ডলারের সাম্রাজ্য গড়েছেন ওয়েন জিয়াবাও-এর পরিবার, যার মধ্যে ওয়েন জিয়াবাও-এর দরিদ্র স্কুলশিক্ষিকা মায়ের দখলেই আছে ১১০ মিলিয়ন ডলারের সম্পত্তি।

    Many relatives of Wen Jiabao, including his son, daughter, younger brother and brother-in-law, have become extraordinarily wealthy during his leadership, an investigation by The New York Times shows. A review of corporate and regulatory records indicates that the prime minister’s relatives — some of whom, including his wife, have a knack for aggressive deal making — have controlled assets worth at least $2.7 billion.

    In many cases, the names of the relatives have been hidden behind layers of partnerships and investment vehicles involving friends, work colleagues and business partners. Untangling their financial holdings provides an unusually detailed look at how politically connected people have profited from being at the intersection of government and business as state influence and private wealth converge in China’s fast-growing economy.

    Unlike most new businesses in China, the family’s ventures sometimes received financial backing from state-owned companies, including China Mobile, one of the country’s biggest phone operators, the documents show. At other times, the ventures won support from some of Asia’s richest tycoons. The Times found that Mr. Wen’s relatives accumulated shares in banks, jewelers, tourist resorts, telecommunications companies and infrastructure projects, sometimes by using offshore entities.

    The holdings include a villa development project in Beijing; a tire factory in northern China; a company that helped build some of Beijing’s Olympic stadiums, including the well-known “Bird’s Nest”; and Ping An Insurance, one of the world’s biggest financial services companies.

    As prime minister in an economy that remains heavily state-driven, Mr. Wen, who is best known for his simple ways and common touch, more importantly has broad authority over the major industries where his relatives have made their fortunes. Chinese companies cannot list their shares on a stock exchange without approval from agencies overseen by Mr. Wen, for example. He also has the power to influence investments in strategic sectors like energy and telecommunications.

    Because the Chinese government rarely makes its deliberations public, it is not known what role — if any — Mr. Wen, who is 70, has played in most policy or regulatory decisions. But in some cases, his relatives have sought to profit from opportunities made possible by those decisions.

    China’s ‘Diamond Queen’

    It is no secret in China’s elite circles that the prime minister’s wife, Zhang Beili, is rich, and that she has helped control the nation’s jewelry and gem trade. But her lucrative diamond businesses became an off-the-charts success only as her husband moved into the country’s top leadership ranks, the review of corporate and regulatory records by The Times found.

    A geologist with an expertise in gemstones, Ms. Zhang is largely unknown among ordinary Chinese. She rarely travels with the prime minister or appears with him, and there are few official photographs of the couple together. And while people who have worked with her say she has a taste for jade and fine diamonds, they say she usually dresses modestly, does not exude glamour and prefers to wield influence behind the scenes, much like the relatives of other senior leaders.

    The State Department documents released by WikiLeaks included a suggestion that Mr. Wen had once considered divorcing Ms. Zhang because she had exploited their relationship in her diamond trades. Taiwanese television reported in 2007 that Ms. Zhang had bought a pair of jade earrings worth about $275,000 at a Beijing trade show, though the source — a Taiwanese trader — later backed off the claim and Chinese government censors moved swiftly to block coverage of the subject in China, according to news reports at the time.

    The Only Son

    Late one evening early this year, the prime minister’s only son, Wen Yunsong, was in the cigar lounge at Xiu, an upscale bar and lounge at the Park Hyatt in Beijing. He was having cocktails as Beijing’s nouveau riche gathered around, clutching designer bags and wearing expensive business suits, according to two guests who were present.

    In China, the children of senior leaders are widely believed to be in a class of their own. Known as “princelings,” they often hold Ivy League degrees, get V.I.P. treatment, and are even offered preferred pricing on shares in hot stock offerings.

    They are also known as people who can get things done in China’s heavily regulated marketplace, where the state controls access. And in recent years, few princelings have been as bold as the younger Mr. Wen, who goes by the English name Winston and is about 40 years old.

    A Times review of Winston Wen’s investments, and interviews with people who have known him for years, show that his deal-making has been extensive and lucrative, even by the standards of his princeling peers.

    State-run giants like China Mobile have formed start-ups with him. In recent years, Winston Wen has been in talks with Hollywood studios about a financing deal.

    Concerned that China does not have an elite boarding school for Chinese students, he recently hired the headmasters of Choate and Hotchkiss in Connecticut to oversee the creation of a $150 million private school now being built in the Beijing suburbs.

    Winston Wen and his wife, moreover, have stakes in the technology industry and an electric company, as well as an indirect stake in Union Mobile Pay, the government-backed online payment platform — all while living in the prime minister’s residence, in central Beijing, according to corporate records and people familiar with the family’s investments.

    একনজরে গ্রাফিক্সে দেখুন ওয়েন জিয়াবাওর পারিবারিক সাম্রাজ্য।

    বিস্তারিত সম্পূর্ণ রিপোর্টটি পড়ুন : Billions in Hidden Riches for Family of Chinese Leader।

36. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ৩০ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (২:৪৫ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    
    Brueghel

    ফ্লেমিশ স্বর্ণযুগের অসাধারণ দশটি পেইান্টং দেখুন এখানে।

37. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ৩১ অক্টোবর ২০১২ (৩:০৬ অপরাহ্ণ)

    অন্য ধর্মের ঐতিহাসিক স্থানের প্রতি সৌদি প্রশাসকদের শ্রদ্ধার তো কোনো প্রশ্নই আসে না ইসলামের ইতিহাস ও মুহম্মদের সমাধি এবং তার জীবনের সাথে জড়িত গুরুত্বপূর্ণ স্থানসমূহের এবং খলিফাদের সমাধি ও স্মৃতিজড়িত বিভিন্ন জায়গাও এখন আর ওয়াহাবি সৌদিদের হাতে নিরাপদ নয়। মদিনার মসজিদ-ই-নববীর মানুষ ধারনক্ষমতা ৬০০০০ থেকে বাড়িয়ে ১০৬০০০০ করতে গিয়ে ওয়াহাবি বুলডজারের আঘাতে কী কী ধ্বসে পড়বে, পড়ুন।

    Medina: Saudis take a bulldozer to Islam’s history

    Three of the world’s oldest mosques are about to be destroyed as Saudi Arabia embarks on a multi-billion-pound expansion of Islam’s second holiest site. Work on the Masjid an-Nabawi in Medina, where the Prophet Mohamed is buried, will start once the annual Hajj pilgrimage ends next month. When complete, the development will turn the mosque into the world’s largest building, with the capacity for 1.6 million worshippers.

    But concerns have been raised that the development will see key historic sites bulldozed. Anger is already growing at the kingdom’s apparent disdain for preserving the historical and archaeological heritage of the country’s holiest city, Mecca. Most of the expansion of Masjid an-Nabawi will take place to the west of the existing mosque, which holds the tombs of Islam’s founder and two of his closest companions, Abu Bakr and Umar.

    Just outside the western walls of the current compound are mosques dedicated to Abu Bakr and Umar, as well as the Masjid Ghamama, built to mark the spot where the Prophet is thought to have given his first prayers for the Eid festival. The Saudis have announced no plans to preserve or move the three mosques, which have existed since the seventh century and are covered by Ottoman-era structures, or to commission archaeological digs before they are pulled down, something that has caused considerable concern among the few academics who are willing to speak out in the deeply authoritarian kingdom.

    “No one denies that Medina is in need of expansion, but it’s the way the authorities are going about it which is so worrying,” says Dr Irfan al-Alawi of the Islamic Heritage Research Foundation. “There are ways they could expand which would either avoid or preserve the ancient Islamic sites but instead they want to knock it all down.” Dr Alawi has spent much of the past 10 years trying to highlight the destruction of early Islamic sites.

    With cheap air travel and booming middle classes in populous Muslim countries within the developing world, both Mecca and Medina are struggling to cope with the 12 million pilgrims who visit each year – a number expected to grow to 17 million by 2025. The Saudi monarchy views itself as the sole authority to decide what should happen to the cradle of Islam. Although it has earmarked billions for an enormous expansion of both Mecca and Medina, it also sees the holy cities as lucrative for a country almost entirely reliant on its finite oil wealth.

    Heritage campaigners and many locals have looked on aghast as the historic sections of Mecca and Medina have been bulldozed to make way for gleaming shopping malls, luxury hotels and enormous skyscrapers. The Washington-based Gulf Institute estimates that 95 per cent of the 1,000-year-old buildings in the two cities have been destroyed in the past 20 years.

    In Mecca, the Masjid al-Haram, the holiest site in Islam and a place where all Muslims are supposed to be equal, is now overshadowed by the Jabal Omar complex, a development of skyscraper apartments, hotels and an enormous clock tower. To build it, the Saudi authorities destroyed the Ottoman era Ajyad Fortress and the hill it stood on. Other historic sites lost include the Prophet’s birthplace – now a library – and the house of his first wife, Khadijah, which was replaced with a public toilet block.

    Neither the Saudi Embassy in London nor the Ministry for Foreign Affairs responded to requests for comment when The Independent contacted them this week. But the government has previously defended its expansion plans for the two holy cities as necessary. It insists it has also built large numbers of budget hotels for poorer pilgrims, though critics point out these are routinely placed many miles away from the holy sites.

    Until recently, redevelopment in Medina has pressed ahead at a slightly less frenetic pace than in Mecca, although a number of early Islamic sites have still been lost. Of the seven ancient mosques built to commemorate the Battle of the Trench – a key moment in the development of Islam – only two remain. Ten years ago, a mosque which belonged to the Prophet’s grandson was dynamited. Pictures of the demolition that were secretly taken and smuggled out of the kingdom showed the religious police celebrating as the building collapsed.

    The disregard for Islam’s early history is partly explained by the regime’s adoption of Wahabism, an austere and uncompromising interpretation of Islam that is vehemently opposed to anything which might encourage Muslims towards idol worship.

    In most of the Muslim world, shrines have been built. Visits to graves are also commonplace. But Wahabism views such practices with disdain. The religious police go to enormous lengths to discourage people from praying at or visiting places closely connected to the time of the Prophet while powerful clerics work behind the scenes to promote the destruction of historic sites.

    Dr Alawi fears that the redevelopment of the Masjid an-Nabawi is part of a wider drive to shift focus away from the place where Mohamed is buried. The spot that marks the Prophet’s tomb is covered by a famous green dome and forms the centrepiece of the current mosque. But under the new plans, it will become the east wing of a building eight times its current size with a new pulpit. There are also plans to demolish the prayer niche at the centre of mosque. The area forms part of the Riyadh al-Jannah (Garden of Paradise), a section of the mosque that the Prophet decreed especially holy..

    “Their excuse is they want to make more room and create 20 spaces in a mosque that will eventually hold 1.6 million,” says Dr Alawi. “It makes no sense. What they really want is to move the focus away from where the Prophet is buried.”

    A pamphlet published in 2007 by the Ministry of Islamic Affairs – and endorsed by the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, Abdulaziz al Sheikh – called for the dome to be demolished and the graves of Mohamed, Abu Bakr and Umar to be flattened. Sheikh Ibn al-Uthaymeen, one of the 20th century’s most prolific Wahabi scholars, made similar demands.

    “Muslim silence over the destruction of Mecca and Medina is both disastrous and hypocritical,” says Dr Alawi. “The recent movie about the Prophet Mohamed caused worldwide protests… and yet the destruction of the Prophet’s birthplace, where he prayed and founded Islam has been allowed to continue without any criticism.”

    Mecca and Medina in numbers

    12m The number of people who visit Mecca and Medina every year

    3.4m The number of Muslims expected to perform Hajj (pilgrimage) this year

    60,000 The current capacity of the Masjid an-Nabawi mosque

    1.6m The projected capacity of the mosque after expansion