৩৩ comments

1. 

   মাসুদ করিম - ১ জানুয়ারি ২০১৩ (২:২৭ অপরাহ্ণ)

   আফ্রিকার মালিতে আল-কায়েদার নতুন চরাচর গড়ে উঠেছে, উত্তর মালিতে আল-কায়েদা ও সমমনা সন্ত্রাসী গোষ্ঠীগুলো তাদের অস্ত্রশস্ত্রসহ ‘নতুন আফগানিস্তান’ কায়েম করেছে।

   Deep inside caves, in remote desert bases, in the escarpments and cliff faces of northern Mali, Islamic fighters are burrowing into the earth, erecting formidable defences to protect what has essentially become al-Qaida’s new country.

   They have used the bulldozers , earth movers and Caterpillar machines left behind by fleeing construction crews to dig what residents and local officials describe as an elaborate network of tunnels, trenches, shafts and ramparts.

   In just one case, inside a cave large enough to drive trucks into, they have stored up to 100 drums of gasoline, guaranteeing their fuel supply in the face of a foreign intervention, say experts.

   Northern Mali is now the biggest territory held by al-Qaida and its allies. And as the world hesitates, delaying a military intervention, the extremists who seized control of the area earlier this year are preparing for a war they boast will be worse than the decadeold struggle in Afghanistan.

   “Al-Qaida never owned Afghanistan,” said former UN diplomat Robert Fowler, who was held for 130 days by al-Qaida’s local chapter, whose fighters now control the main cities in the north. “They do own northern Mali.”

   The terror syndicate, whose African branch had only a shadowy presence in Mali, has in recent months taken advantage of political instability in the country to push out of their hiding place and into the towns, taking over an enormous territory. The catalyst was a military coup nine months ago that transformed Mali from a once-stable nation to the failed state it is today.

   On March 21, disgruntled soldiers invaded the presidential palace. The fall of the nation’s democratically elected government at the hands of junior officers destroyed the military’s command-and-control structure. The soldiers abandoned everything north of Mopti to the advancing rebels, handing them an area that stretches over more than 620,000 square kilometres, a territory larger than Texas or France — and almost exactly the size of Afghanistan.

   বিস্তারিত পড়ুন : Qaida carves out its own country in Mali।

2. 

   মাসুদ করিম - ২ জানুয়ারি ২০১৩ (২:৪৬ অপরাহ্ণ)

   হোয়াইট হাউজের আফগানিস্তান ছাড়ার অবস্থা মনে করিয়ে দিচ্ছে ক্রেমলিনের আফগানিস্তান ছাড়ার দিনগুলো। বিলিয়ন বিলিয়ন রুবল বা ডলার খরচ করে সমাজতন্ত্র বা গণতন্ত্র কী পেল? এধরণের যুদ্ধ আগ্রাসন ছাড়া কোনো রাজনৈতিক সাফল্য এনে দেয়নি কখনো দেবেও না।

   
   Soviet officers and soldiers near Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1988. Troops would leave the next year.

   What mostly is remembered about the withdrawal is the Soviet Union’s humiliation, and the ensuing factional bloodletting across Afghanistan that threw the country into a vicious civil war. It ended with Taliban control and the establishment of a safe haven for Al Qaeda before the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

   But scholars who have studied the Soviet archives point out another lesson for the Obama administration as it manages the pullout of American and allied combat forces from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

   “The main thing the Soviets did right was that they continued large-scale military assistance to the regime they left behind after the final withdrawal in ’89,” said Mark N. Katz, a professor at George Mason University and author of “Leaving Without Losing: The War on Terror After Iraq and Afghanistan” (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012).

   “As long as the Afghan regime received the money and the weapons, they did pretty well — and held on to power for three years,” Mr. Katz said. The combat effectiveness of Kabul’s security forces increased after the Soviet withdrawal, when the fight for survival become wholly their own.

   But then the Soviet Union dissolved in December 1991, and the new Russian leader, Boris N. Yeltsin, heeded urgings of the United States and other Western powers to halt aid to the Communist leadership in Afghanistan, not just arms and money, but also food and fuel. The Kremlin-backed government in Kabul fell three months later.

   To be sure, there are significant contrasts between the two interventions in Afghanistan. The Soviet invasion and occupation were condemned as illegal aggression, while the American one was embraced by the international community, including Russia, as a “just war,” one with limited goals of routing the Taliban and eliminating Al Qaeda. That war of necessity has since evolved into a war of choice, one the Obama administration is working to end as quickly as is feasible.

   Despite the differences going in, both the Soviet Union and the United States soon learned that Afghanistan is a land where foreigners aspiring to create nations in their image must combat not just the Taliban but tribalism, orthodoxy, corruption and a medieval view of women. As well, Pakistan has had interests at odds with those of the neighboring government in Afghanistan, whether Kabul was an ally of Moscow or of Washington.

   “The Soviet Union did not understand religious and ethnic factors sufficiently, and overestimated the capacity of Afghan society to move very fast toward a modern era, in this case socialism,” said Svetlana Savranskaya, director of Russian programs at the National Security Archive, an independent research center at George Washington University.

   “Here I see similarities with the approach of the United States, especially with all the discussion about trying to leave behind an Afghanistan that is democratic and respects the rights of women, ideas that simply are not accepted across the broad society there,” said Ms. Savranskaya, who has written extensively on the Soviet archives.

   If the Soviet experience offers any guidance to the current American withdrawal, she said, it would be to accelerate the departure of foreign combat forces — but to leave in their place a “sustained, multiyear international involvement in military training, education and civilian infrastructure projects, and maybe not focusing on building democracy as much as improving the lives of the common people.”

   And she noted that the United States should already be seeking partnership with Afghan leaders beyond Mr. Karzai, who is viewed across large parts of the population as tainted by his association with the Americans.

   Pentagon officials have signaled that they are hoping for an enduring military presence of 10,000 or more troops, but may have to accept fewer, to cement the progress of the years of fighting. Those troops would focus on training and supporting Afghan forces along with a counterterrorism contingent to hunt Qaeda and insurgent leaders.

   In a parallel, one of Mr. Gorbachev’s closest early confidants, Eduard A. Shevardnadze, the foreign minister, advocated a slow withdrawal pace — and pressed for 10,000 to 15,000 Soviet troops to remain to support the Communist government. The Soviets left only 300 advisers.

   But after losing more than 15,000 Soviet troops and billions of rubles, the Kremlin knew it had to somehow justify the invasion and occupation upon withdrawal.

   Mr. Gorbachev had “to face up to a difficult problem of domestic politics which has puzzled other nations finding themselves in similar circumstances,” Rodric Braithwaite, a former British ambassador to Moscow, wrote in “Afgantsy” (Oxford University Press, 2011), his book on the Soviet intervention based on Communist Party documents.

   “How could the Russians withdraw their army safely, with honor, without looking as if they were simply cutting and running, and without appearing to betray their Afghan allies or their own soldiers who had died?” Mr. Braithwaite wrote of the internal Kremlin debate, in terms resonant of the Americans’ conundrum today.

   Around the time of the Soviet withdrawal, an article by Pravda, the Communist Party mouthpiece, clutched for a positive view as the Soviet Army pulled out. Read today, it bears a resemblance to the news releases churned out by the Pentagon detailing statistics on reconstruction assistance.

   “Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan repaired, rebuilt and constructed hundreds of schools, technical colleges, over 30 hospitals and a similar number of nursery schools, some 400 apartment buildings and 35 mosques,” the article said. “They sank dozens of wells and dug nearly 150 kilometers of irrigation ditches and canals. They were also engaged in guarding military and civilian installations in trouble.”

   The Kremlin had learned that its armies could not capture political success, but Soviet commanders made the same claims upon withdrawal that are heard from NATO officers today: not a single battlefield engagement was lost to guerrillas, and no outpost ever fell to insurgents.

   বিস্তারিত পড়ুন : With U.S. Set to Leave Afghanistan, Echoes of 1989।

3. 

   মাসুদ করিম - ৩ জানুয়ারি ২০১৩ (৩:১০ অপরাহ্ণ)

   তুরস্কের আর্মেনিয়ান গণহত্যার তো কোনো বিচার আজো হয়নি, কিন্তু তুরস্ক প্রশাসন আরেকটি ভয়ঙ্কর কাজ সম্পন্ন করেছে — নীরবে নিভৃতে বিপন্ন করে তুলেছে আর্মেনিয়ান স্কুল ও আর্মেনিয়ানদের মাতৃভাষা।

   Turkey’s last Armenian schools
   Turkey has never banned the Armenian schools that teach the community’s language and culture. But its support is marginal and the schools, like the language, are losing their place

   by Aziz Oguz, is a journalism student at François-Rabelais University, Tours, France.

   “Don’t close the door,” Mari Nalcı, who has been head of the Tarmanças school for 25 years, told me as I went into her office; she seemed not to trust me. Armenians in Turkey are cautious, especially when you ask questions about education.

   “The problem of security for schools has become very important, especially since Hrant Dink was assassinated,” Garo Paylan, an Armenian schools representative, had told me. The murder of this well-known Armenian journalist by a Turkish nationalist in 2007 revived old fears (1) [(1) Dink’s murder provoked massive demonstrations by Turkish civil society in Istanbul, in protest and a taboo on discussing Armenian history was broken. See Wendy Kristianasen, “Crossing the line”, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, February 2010.]. Mari Nalcı’s school bristles with CCTV cameras; there are bars on the windows and a security man, Attila Sen, at the door. Sen is friendly, but as intransigent as a prison guard: nobody gets in without an appointment. “We’ve never had a problem,” he said, “but some local people are suspicious of the school. Fortunately, prejudices disappear when they get to know us.”

   The school is in Ortaköy, near the Bosphorus Bridge that links Istanbul’s two halves. Ortaköy used to be one of the most cosmopolitan districts of the Ottoman Empire’s capital, and was home to many Jews, Greeks and Armenians. There are two mosques, four Christian churches and two synagogues. Today Kurds have replaced the Armenians, and only a few Armenian families remain. The school’s 500 pupils are ferried here by minibus from all over the city.

   There are 16 Armenian schools in Turkey, five of them secondary schools, with around 3,000 pupils in all. They are all in Istanbul, where most of Turkey’s 60,000 Armenians live. The only admission requirement is that pupils must have at least one parent of Armenian origin.

   These schools date back to the Ottoman Empire, when every community was responsible for organising its own education system and there were thousands of Armenian schools. After the Armenian genocide of 1915-16, in which one to 1 to 1.5 million people perished (nearly two-thirds of the Ottoman Empire’s Armenian population), and later massacres and exoduses, there are relatively few Armenians in Turkey, and just these 16 schools.

   A hybrid system

   The Turkish republic created by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1923 did not challenge the existence of community schools but set up a hybrid system: the Armenian schools were placed under state control without being made public institutions. The ministry of education appointed a Turkish deputy principal for each school. Teachers employed by the state gave lessons in Turkish language, history and geography, while other subjects where taught in Armenian by teachers paid by the schools’ foundations.

   In 1974, when Turkey intervened militarily in Cyprus, the state took measures against its Christian communities. “Until then, the state funded schools, even if very modestly, under the terms of the Lausanne treaty [signed in 1923 with the European powers]. But after 1974 that aid ceased. The state doesn’t trust us,” said Paylan. All the schools are therefore linked to foundations. If they have endowments, the interest can be used to fund education; otherwise they rely on charity from their community. Parents don’t pay regular fees for education; if financial contributions are required, they vary according to family income.

   The mission of these schools is to keep language and culture alive. But there are two major obstacles: the Turkish state and time. Armenian is not taught anywhere else in Turkey. There are no university courses in Armenian language or culture. Turkey doesn’t train any teachers of Armenian. Teachers are chosen by the school foundation and must be approved by the ministry of education. They learn Armenian at home and perfect their knowledge of the language through personal study outside of any academic framework.

   Mari Kalayacı became a teacher by chance. She had a business management degree, but couldn’t find a job, and was advised to change careers. She has taught Armenian for seven years, two of them in Ortaköy, and admits that without this job she would not know her mother tongue so well: “I learned a huge amount when I began teaching. And I’m still learning.” Her pupils’ receptiveness varies. “Armenian is a difficult language. Some of them have no trouble with it, but others really struggle.” Pupils at the Ortaköy school speak Turkish among themselves most of the time. “They live in Turkey. It’s natural that they should speak Turkish,” said Nalcı. The Turkish education system does not make learning Armenian easy: “In high school, some of my friends didn’t go to Armenian classes. There was no penalty,” said Murat Gozoglu, who was educated in Armenian schools. The important entrance exams for high school and university are all taken in Turkish.

   Not all Armenian parents send their children to a community school. And those who do attend may not stay the course — most switch after primary school or junior high. “Armenian schools, especially the secondary schools, don’t have the highest reputation. Sometimes they are seen as a fallback. Parents would rather send their children to an English, French or German school,” said Nora Mildanoglu. She went to an Armenian primary school before the English-speaking Robert College, one of Istanbul’s most prestigious high schools.

   Attitudes have changed in Turkey, which has opened up to minorities, who now find it easier to assert their identities. “Now I’m not afraid to speak Armenian in public,” said Kalayacı. “When I was little I would never call my mother mama. I’d say anne [in Turkish] so that no one knew we were Christians.” Yet the Armenian language and culture are gradually disappearing in Turkey. “Armenian is spoken very little in family homes today. There is no longer a popular Armenian culture,” said Paylan. “Children are just taught the basics so that they can get by in everyday situations.”

   Sarkis Seropyan, cofounder of Agos, the Armenian community’s main newspaper, is not surprised. “Few Armenians in Turkey speak the language. The proof is that most articles in Agos are in Turkish.” Only four pages out of 24 are in Armenian. “Otherwise no one would buy the paper.”

   The Armenian community has realised that the schools alone cannot revive the language. But under the last major education reform, this spring, the teaching of Armenian was ruled out in state schools. The Armenians will have to make do with the current system.

4. 

   মাসুদ করিম - ৪ জানুয়ারি ২০১৩ (২:১৮ অপরাহ্ণ)

   ইমাম, পুরোহিত, পাদ্রি, রাব্বিদের মতো ভিক্ষুদের কেন জানি আমাদের এখানে কপট চরিত্র হিসাবে দেখা হয় না। হতে পারে, বৌদ্ধ অধ্যুষিত দেশগুলোর সাহিত্য আমাদের তেমন অধিগম্য নয়, অথবা তিব্বতের দালাইলামার স্বাধীনতার স্পৃহা আমাদের কাছে ভিক্ষুদের এক সাধু প্রতিরূপ তৈরি করেছে, অথবা বৌদ্ধ সমাজ হয় ওদের ভিক্ষুদের বিরূপ সমালোচনা করে না, অথবা তাদের জীবনের সাথে ভিক্ষুদের কোনোই সম্পর্ক নেই। কিন্তু এই ভিক্ষুরা ইমাম, পুরোহিত, পাদ্রি, রাব্বিদের মতোই সমান কপট। বার্মার দুয়ার খোলার পর এই সত্য আমরা দিনে দিনে আরো উপলব্ধি করব তাতে কোনো সন্দেহ নেই।

   আজ পড়ছিলাম এক চৈনিক পর্যটকের সাম্প্রতিক রেঙ্গুনের বিখ্যাত বৌদ্ধবিহার শেওয়েডাগন প্যাগোডা ভ্রমণের কথা। বিহার ঘুরিয়ে দেখানোর পর কিভাবে এক ভিক্ষু ৫০০০ কিয়াট দেয়ার পরও তার কাছ থেকে নিয়মের দাবি দেখিয়ে আরো ৫০০০ কিয়াট আদায় করে নেন, কিভাবে বার্মায় যখন ইচ্ছা তখন ভিক্ষু হওয়া যায় আবার সংসার করে আবার ভিক্ষু হওয়া যায় তার কথাও আমাদেরকে জানালেন এই পর্যটক।

   I have visited the Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon of Myanmar twice, and the two visits left me with quite different feelings.

   Located in the north of Yangon’s downtown area, the Shwedagon Pagoda is the symbol of Buddhism in Myanmar.

   My first visit took place on a rainy day. The chimes coming from the pagodas’ bells purified my soul, and the worshippers kneeling on the wet ground in front of the solemn Shwedagon Pagoda in the heavy rain calmed and moved me. However, this holy impression didn’t linger in my mind long.

   I paid my second visit with two friends a few months later. Tourists seemed to outnumber local worshippers. The country’s splendid Buddhist culture, architecture and natural landscape are attracting growing interest, especially from Westerners, thanks to the government’s desire to open up the country.

   Visitors, accompanied by guides or local monks in red robes, could be seen in every corner of the site.

   Although I was no longer a first-time visitor, I could hardly explain the complicated history of the pagoda, Buddhist tradition or culture the same way a professional guide could. While my friends were looking at a statue of Buddha in confusion and curiosity, a monk kindly offered to help.

   He started a conversation on how to pray to the Buddha based on local tradition. He showed us every Buddha statue in the site, prayed for blessings for us and explained Buddhist doctrines to us while we listened earnestly.

   We were so grateful to him that we offered 5,000 kyats ($5.83) before leaving. He shook his head, saying, “No, 10,000 kyats, this is the rule.” We paid him as he demanded but left a little sour, and the amiable, selfless, and sacred image of Buddhism collapsed.

   In fact, our case was not an isolated one. Similar experiences of some visitors to Buddhist countries such as Thailand and Singapore have been posted online on various travel forums.

   Many visitors are caught in a dilemma when monks or nuns persuade them to buy amulets or donate to burn candles and incense for blessings, since they are mere sightseers rather than religious followers. Perhaps showing visitors around and then asking for a payment is more annoying. The sense of being cheated is real.

   Outsiders often view religion from two extremes, either idealizing or demonizing it. My initial impression of the Shwedagon Pagoda sharply contrasts with my second visit. Outsiders often assume monks are benign sadhu. But taking a closer look at Myanmar’s Buddhism after this unpleasant encounter, I find a different picture.

   A Myanmese man becomes a monk at least once during his life, and there is no limit to the frequency or time he can do this. Even if he is married, he can choose to be a monk for a while to temporarily resume a single life.

   Some argue that religion should be pure and the spiritual home of people of faith. But the fact is that although doctrines of many religions teach people that wealth is not permanent and cannot guarantee happiness, the link between religion and money is subtle.

   Some of the wealthiest organizations in the world are connected to religion. China’s Shaolin Temple has seen a surge in development under a controversial commercialization drive.

   The relationship between religion and money is hotly debated by religious and cultural scholars. For non-religious visitors like me, perhaps the best way is to see it as a trivial thing and just be a simple sightseer.

   বিস্তারিত পড়ুন : Religion and money sit together uneasily as Myanmar opens up।

5. 

   মাসুদ করিম - ৫ জানুয়ারি ২০১৩ (১:৫৮ অপরাহ্ণ)

   এটা খুবই আনন্দের বাংলাদেশের প্রধান রাজনৈতিক ব্যক্তিত্ব শেখ হাসিনা জামদানি শাড়ির স্বতঃপ্রণোদিত মডেল, কিন্তু এটা সৌভাগ্যের হবে তখনই যদি এই জামদানির মেধাস্বত্ব দাবি করার প্রাথিমক আইন তৈরির উদ্যোগ এখনই তিনি গ্রহণ করেন। জামদানি আবহমান কাল ধরে শীতলক্ষ্যা নদীর অববাহিকার বস্ত্রশিল্পীদের অসাধারণ হস্তশিল্পের নিদর্শন। ভারত এর মেধাস্বত্ব দাবি করছে, কিন্তু জামদানির মেধাস্বত্ব ভারত দাবি করতে পারে না, ঐতিহাসিকভাবে জামদানি বাংলার সম্পদ, বাংলার একটি অংশ এখন ভারতে থাকলেও ‘শীতলক্ষ্যা নদীর অববাহিকা’ বাংলাদেশেই অবস্থিত, তাছাড়া ভারত জামদানির উৎসস্থল দেখাচ্ছে ‘অন্ধ্রপ্রদেশ’কে কিন্তু ওই অঞ্চলে জামদানির কারিগররা ‘শীতলক্ষ্যা নদীর অববাহিকা’র আদিভূমি থেকেই গিয়েছিল তার প্রমাণ আছে।

   

   

   বিবি রাসেল যথার্থই বলেছেন ‘ঢাকাই জামদানি’ বলে কিছু নেই, আছে জামদানি এবং সেজামদানি বাংলাদেশের মেধাস্বত্ব দাবি করার জামদানি। সময় শেষ হয়ে যাচ্ছে, আমাদের রাষ্ট্রীয় প্রশাসনের ‘দ্য জিওগ্রাফিক্যাল ইন্ডিকেশন অব গুডস (রেজিস্ট্রেশন অ্যান্ড প্রটেকশন)’ আইন প্রণয়নের সময় এখনই, আর তা করতে না পারলে আমরা জাতিসংঘেও যেতে পারব না, জামদানির মেধাস্বত্বও পাব না। জামদানির আদিমতম নিদর্শন থাকবে আমাদের কাছে আর মেধাস্বত্ব চলে যাবে ভারতে এত বড় অসহায়ত্বের প্রতিকার আমাদের রাষ্ট্র কেন করবে না?

   হেই সামালো জামদানি
   বিবি রাসেল

   

   নতুন বছরে সবার জন্য, দেশের জন্য, দেশের মানুষের জন্য শুভ কামনা করি। কামনা করি, এ দেশের বস্ত্র ও হস্তশিল্পীরা নতুন বছরে আগের চেয়ে ভালো থাকুক। কিন্তু তারপরও মন থেকে একটি আশঙ্কা দূর করতে পারছি না। আমাদের সাংস্কৃতিক ঐতিহ্য, বাংলাদেশের অন্যতম প্রধান গৌরব ‘জামদানি’ শিল্পের মালিকানা কি শেষ পর্যন্ত সুরক্ষিত রাখতে পারব? অনেকে জানেন, বিশ্ববাণিজ্য সংস্থার মেধাস্বত্ব অধিকার বিষয়ক চুক্তি এবং জাতিসংঘের অধীন মেধাস্বত্ব সংস্থার (ডবি্লউআইপিও) বিধিবিধানের সুযোগ নিয়ে আমাদের বৃহৎ প্রতিবেশী ভারত ২০০৭ সালে জামদানিকে নিজেদের পণ্য হিসেবে নিবন্ধনের আবেদন করে। শুধু জামদানি নয়; ২০০৪ থেকে ২০০৯ সাল পর্যন্ত আরও শতাধিক পণ্যকে নিজস্ব দাবি করে দরখাস্ত করেছে ভারত। তার মধ্যে আমাদের নকশিকাঁথা, ফজলি আম, নিম ও হলুদও রয়েছে।
   মেধাস্বত্ব সংস্থায় কোনো পণ্যকে নিজস্ব বলে নিবন্ধনের জন্য আবেদন করতে হলে এ সংক্রান্ত দেশীয় আইন থাকতে হয়। যেটাকে বলা হয় ‘ভৌগোলিক নির্দেশক’ আইন। সেই আইনে থাকতে হয় যে অমুক অমুক পণ্য বা মেধাগত সম্পদের উৎস কেবল আমাদের দেশই। যেমন ইতালিতে রয়েছে পারমিগিয়ানো-রিগানিও পনির, ভারতে রয়েছে বাসমতী চাল, শ্রীলংকায় রয়েছে সিলন টি, ফ্রান্সে রয়েছে শ্যাম্পেইন, কিউবায় হাভানা চুরুট, স্কটল্যান্ডের স্কচ হুইস্কি। ভারত ইতিমধ্যেই এ সংক্রান্ত একটি আইন ও প্রবিধান পাস করেছে। একটি হচ্ছে ১৯৯৯ সালে পাস হওয়া দ্য জিওগ্রাফিক্যাল ইন্ডিকেশন অব গুডস (রেজিস্ট্রেশন অ্যান্ড প্রটেকশন) অ্যাক্ট। সংক্ষেপে জিআই অ্যাক্ট, ১৯৯৯। অপরটি হচ্ছে জিওগ্রাফিক্যাল ইন্ডিকেশন অব গুডস (রেজিস্ট্রেশন অ্যান্ড প্রটেকশন) রুলস, ২০০২। সংক্ষেপে জিআই রুলস, ২০০২। এই দুই আইনের ভিত্তিতেই ভারত জামদানি ও অন্যান্য পণ্যকে নিজস্ব বলে দাবি করছে।
   বাস্তবে জামদানি বাংলাদেশের একান্ত সম্পদ। আমাদের সংস্কৃতির গভীর থেকে সৃষ্ট গর্বের ধন। জামদানির কেবল দীর্ঘ সাংস্কৃতিক ঐতিহ্য নয়, ইতিহাসও রয়েছে। যুগে যুগে যেমন বাংলার স্বাতন্ত্র্য ও সৌন্দর্যের দূত হয়ে থেকেছে এই জামদানি, তেমনই প্রাচীন বিভিন্ন দলিলপত্রেও উল্লেখ রয়েছে। কৌটিল্যের অর্থশাস্ত্রে জামদানিকে বাংলা ও পুণ্ড্র অঞ্চলের এক সূক্ষ্ম তাঁতবস্ত্র হিসেবে উলেল্গখ করা হয়েছে। পর্যটক ইবনে বতুতাও বাংলাদেশের সোনারগাঁ অঞ্চলে জামদানি দেখেছেন এবং প্রশংসা করেছেন। ইতিহাসবিদ আবুল ফজলের ‘আইন-ই-আকবরী’ গ্রন্থেও মসলিন তাঁতের উল্লেখ আছে। আর এটা জানা কথা যে, মসলিন তাঁতি ও তাদের উত্তরসূরিরাই হচ্ছে জামদানির কারিগর।
   বড় কথা, জামদানির সঙ্গে শীতলক্ষ্যা নদী ওতপ্রোতভাবে জড়িত। মসলিনের জন্য যেমন শীতলক্ষ্যা অববাহিকার বিশেষ আবহাওয়া ও জলবায়ু জরুরি ছিল, জামদানির ক্ষেত্রেও এটা সত্য। এটা ঠিক, কালের বিবর্তনে জামদানি শিল্পীরা দেশের ভেতরে ও বাইরে নানা জায়গায় ছড়িয়ে পড়েছেন। এর বাণিজ্যিক ও যন্ত্রচালিত উৎপাদনও বেড়েছে; কিন্তু এখনও উৎকৃষ্ট জামদানির উৎস শীতলক্ষ্যা অববাহিকা।
   অনেকে ‘ঢাকাই জামদানি’ কথাটা ব্যবহার করেন। আমি কিন্তু এর বিরোধী। কেউ যদি ঢাকাই জামদানি বলে তার মানে অন্য কোথাও জামদানি হতে পারে? জামদানি মানে ধরেই নিতে হবে যে, এই শিল্পের উৎস হচ্ছে শীতলক্ষ্যা অববাহিকা। যেমন ‘রুশ শ্যাম্পেইন’ বলে কিছু হতে পারে না, তেমনই জামদানির সঙ্গে অন্য কোনো অঞ্চলের নাম যোগ করে কিছু হয় না। শ্যাম্পেইন মানেই হচ্ছে, এর উৎস ফ্রান্স। জামদানি মানে হচ্ছে, এটি বাংলাদেশে অবস্থিত শীতলক্ষ্যা নদীর অববাহিকায় বিশেষভাবে হস্তশিল্পের মাধ্যমে তৈরি বিশেষ ধরনের বস্ত্র।
   ভারত যে উৎস ধরে জামদানিকে নিজেদের সম্পদ দাবি করছে, তার নিজস্ব ঐতিহ্য ও ভৌগোলিক নির্দেশনা বলে কিছু নেই। ওই শিল্পের শিকড়ও বাংলাদেশে। ইতিহাসের দিকে যদি দৃষ্টি দেই, মোগল আমলে প্রথম জামদানি তৎকালীন ভারতবর্ষের বিভিন্ন অংশে ছড়িয়ে পড়ে। কিন্তু মোগল অন্দরমহলে শীতলক্ষ্যা পাড়ের জামদানির কদর তাতে এতটুকু কমেনি। পরবর্তীকালে ইউরোপ, ইরান, আর্মেনিয়াতেও জামদানি বাণিজ্য সম্প্রসারিত হয়; ইংল্যান্ডেও যন্ত্রচালিত জামদানি তৈরি হতে থাকে। কিন্তু লাভ হয়নি। আসল জামদানির ধারেকাছে আসতে পারেনি সেগুলো। এ রকমই এক ঘটনায় শীতলক্ষ্যা অববাহিকা থেকে একঘর জামদানি তাঁতি অন্ধ্রপ্রদেশের উপ্পাধ্যা এলাকায় গিয়ে বসবাস শুরু করে। পরে সেখানে উৎপাদিত হতে থাকে উপ্পাধ্যা জামদানি। ভারত সেটাকেই উৎস ধরে জামদানি নিবন্ধনের আবেদন করেছে।
   আমাদের কথা পরিষ্কার_ জামদানির ভৌগোলিক নির্দেশক হচ্ছে শীতলক্ষ্যা অববাহিকা। পৃথিবীর আরও জায়গায় একই ধরনের প্রযুক্তি, নকশা তৈরি করে একই ধরনের বস্ত্র তৈরি হতে পারে। কিন্তু সেটা কোনোভাবেই জামদানি হতে পারে না। এ ব্যাপারে যথেষ্ট ঐতিহাসিক দলিল ও সাংস্কৃতিক প্রমাণ রয়েছে। মেধাস্বত্ব নিবন্ধন নিয়ে বিষয়টি বিচারিক পর্যায়ে গড়ালে ভারতের দাবি ধোপে টিকবে না।
   মুশকিল হচ্ছে, এ ব্যাপারে আমাদের অভ্যন্তরীণ আইন নেই! ওই আইন না থাকলে যত প্রমাণই থাকুক, আমরা নিবন্ধন করতে পারব না। কয়েক বছর আগে, ২০০৮ সালে বাংলাদেশ নিজস্ব ভৌগোলিক নির্দেশক পণ্যের সুরক্ষার জন্য ‘ভৌগোলিক নির্দেশক পণ্য (নিবন্ধন ও সংরক্ষণ) অধ্যাদেশ, ২০০৮’ নামে একটি খসড়া প্রণীত হয়েছিল। কিন্তু তারপর বিষয়টি আর খুব বেশিদূর অগ্রসর হতে পারেনি। কেন পারেনি, সেটা আমাদের কাছে বড় ধরনের বিস্ময়। কিন্তু বিস্মিত হয়ে তো বসে থাকার সুযোগ নেই। এভাবে আমাদের অবহেলায় যদি গর্বের ধন অন্যের ঘরে চলে যায়, তাহলে ভবিষ্যৎ প্রজন্মকে আমরা কী জবাব দেব?
   গত কিছু মাস ধরে আমি ব্যক্তিগতভাবে বিষয়টি নিয়ে শিল্প মন্ত্রণালয়, আইন মন্ত্রণালয়, পররাষ্ট্র মন্ত্রণালয়, সংস্কৃতি মন্ত্রণালয়ে দৌড়াদৌড়ি করেছি। তাতে খানিকটা আশার আলো দেখতে পেয়েছি। কিন্তু আরও গতি চাই। অবিলম্বে খসড়া আইনটি পাস করা দরকার। সম্ভব হলে শীতকালীন অধিবেশনেই। যত তাড়াতাড়ি সম্ভব আইনটি পাস করে ডবি্লউআইপিও এবং ডবি্লউটিওতে জামদানির ব্যাপারে ভারতের দাবির বিরুদ্ধে প্রতিবাদ নিবন্ধন করতে হবে। ইতিমধ্যে যথেষ্ট দেরি হয়ে গেছে, আর দেরি করা মানে নিজের পায়ে কুড়াল মারা। আশা করি, নীতিনির্ধারকরা এই কাজের গুরুত্ব বুঝবেন।

6. 

   মাসুদ করিম - ৫ জানুয়ারি ২০১৩ (২:৪২ অপরাহ্ণ)

   ভারতের সবচেয়ে বয়স্ক সক্রিয় অভিনেতা হিসাবে খ্যাত বাংলাদেশের দর্শনায় জন্ম নেয়া ‘ফেলুদা’ চলচ্চিত্রে অভিনয়ে দর্শকদের মন জয় করা হারাধন বন্দ্যোপাধ্যায় আর নেই। শনিবার দুপুর পৌনে বারোটায় কলকাতায় এক হাসপাতালে মৃত্যুবরণ করেন এই প্রথিতযশা অভিনেতা।

   

   প্রয়াত অভিনেতা হারাধন বন্দ্যোপাধ্যায়
   মারা গেলেন অভিনেতা হারাধন বন্দ্যোপাধ্যায়। বয়স হয়েছিল ৮৬ বছর। শনিবার দুপুর পৌনে বারোটা নাগাদ কলকাতার একটি বেসরকারি হাসপাতালে মারা যান এই প্রবীণ অভিনেতা। নিউমোনিয়ায় আক্রান্ত হওয়ায়, তাঁকে হাসপাতালে ভর্তি করা হয়েছিল। অবস্থার অবনতি হওয়ায়, রাখতে হয় ভেন্টিলেশনে।

   ১৯২৬ সালের ৬ নভেম্বর বাংলাদেশের দর্শনায় জন্ম হারাধন বন্দ্যোপাধ্যায়ের। ১৯৪৮ সাল থেকে অভিনয়ের সঙ্গে যুক্ত। বাংলা ও হিন্দি মিলিয়ে একাধিক ছবিতে অভিনয় করেছেন। সম্প্রতি সাড়া জাগানো ‘বরফি’ ছবিতেও তাঁর অভিনয় সকলের মন কেড়েছিল। এ ছাড়া ফেলুদা সিরিজের ‘সোনার কেল্লা’, ‘জয় বাবা ফেলুনাথ’ থেকে শুরু করে হালফিলের ‘গোরস্থানে সাবধান’, ‘কৈলাসে কেলেঙ্কারি’র মতো ছবিগুলিতে তিনি অভিনয় করেছেন। শেষ দু’টি ছবিতে তাঁকে দেখা গিয়েছে ‘সিধু জ্যাঠা’র ভূমিকায়। এ ছাড়াও সত্যজিত্‍ রায়ের পরিচালনায় একাধিক ছবিতে তাঁকে দেখা গিয়েছে।

7. 

   মাসুদ করিম - ৭ জানুয়ারি ২০১৩ (১০:৪৫ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

   ১৯৬৫ সালের ভারত-পাকিস্তান যুদ্ধে জাতিসংঘ প্রস্তাবিত অস্ত্রবিরতি মেনে নিতে আইয়ুব খানের কেন ১২ দিন লেগেছিল? ইন্দার মালহোত্রা লিখছেন

   Towards a ceasefire, slowly
   SINCE Pakistan President Ayub Khan knew that with the collapse of his counter-offensive on September 11, 1965, the war with India was over for his country (‘Rude awakening for Pakistan’, IE, December 24, 2012), why did he take 12 tense days to accept the UN-sponsored ceasefire for which the Security Council and the then UN secretary-general, U. Thant, were working overtime? From all accounts, there were three main reasons for his dithering.

   In the first place, he was deeply worried that his people, misled by his government’s false propaganda that Pakistan had won the war, might not accept a ceasefire on the terms set by the UNSC. Since Pakistan’s entire strategy was to use brief military action within Kashmir to force India to negotiate on this “core issue”, he insisted that the ceasefire be accompanied by an agreement to “settle the Kashmir issue through negotiations and, if necessary, arbitration”. Indeed, he seemed convinced that he could shame his American allies — who had “betrayed” him after the “Indian invasion” — into supporting Pakistan over the inclusion of Kashmir in the UN resolution.

   He was in for a shock, however, because the United States refused to do so, emphasising that an unconditional ceasefire was imperative. Worse, the US ambassador to the UN, when approached by the Pakistani envoy with the request that India should at least be named “aggressor”, was told that the UNSC “wasn’t a court of law”. The American side had then added that the armed forces of both sides would have to withdraw to the positions they had held on August 5, the day that Pakistan’s infiltrations into Kashmir had been detected.

   Second, on September 12, when Khan conferred with his military and civilian confidants as well as political leaders, he believed, to quote his biographer Altaf Gauhar, that if Pakistan couldn’t continue the war, neither could India. His judgement, therefore, was that “from now only ding-dong battles could take place here and there”, and consequently he would “prefer a prolonged struggle to a ceasefire that did not guarantee a settlement of the Kashmir dispute”.

   This comforting view was also punctured before long. Nazir Ahmed, his defence secretary, who was a member of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s hardline coterie that had thought up Operation Gibraltar, reported to Khan that the army and air force were “facing acute shortage of spare parts, ammunition and petroleum, and that neither Turkey nor Iran (the two great allies) was willing to provide armour-piercing ammunition”. Gauhar adds: “Ayub was mortified. He was stunned to find that the GHQ had been importing the wrong kind of ammunition”. He became worried that the Indian army “might occupy Lahore”. To add to his woes, the US started hinting at the “possibility of sanctions being applied against Pakistan”, and the British prime minister, Harold Wilson, having initially delighted the Pakistanis by condemning “Indian aggression”, started pressing them immediately to accept the UN resolution.

   (Incidentally, Wilson’s September 6 statement holding India responsible for starting the war so infuriated this country as to put paid to the cosy friendship he had developed with Lal Bahadur Shastri since December 1964, when the two had first discussed a “nuclear umbrella for India” in London. Shastri had great difficulty in restraining Parliament from passing a resolution demanding withdrawal from the Commonwealth.)

   Despite all the setbacks he had had, Khan persisted in his efforts to delay the ceasefire as long as possible because he had resolved to play the China card. Even on September 12 he was conscious that this was his ultimate weapon, but he must resort to it only at an “appropriate moment” and not too soon, for fear of reprisals by the US and the West. That moment arrived on September 18, when the UN gave both India and Pakistan its final resolution on ceasefire, together with the deadline of noontime on September 22 for its acceptance. Accompanied by Bhutto, Khan embarked on a secret flight to Beijing from Peshawar on the night of September 19-20 and returned the next night after most detailed talks with Zhou Enlai and Chen Yi, the Chinese foreign minister.

   China had, of course, been supporting Pakistan from the word go. Two days before the Indian army crossed the border, Chen Yi was in Karachi, where he offered his country’s support to the “just action taken by Pakistan to repel the Indian armed provocations in Kashmir”. On September 7, Beijing condemned “India’s criminal aggression”, adding that the Indian government was perhaps relying on the “backing of US imperialists and modern revisionists [read the Soviet Union]”. Moreover, in order to put pressure on India and to ensure that its troops on the China border could not be moved to Pakistan, China had started accusing India of “acts of frenzied provocative activities” on the Chinese side of the Sikkim-Tibet border. After many days of acrimonious exchanges between the two countries, on September 12, the Chinese gave India a three-day ultimatum to “dismantle all military works on the Chinese side” and to return “all stolen sheep and yak” or face the consequences. Needless to say, the “ultimatum” was extended more than once.

   During his long and candid talks with the Chinese premier, Khan asked how long China would maintain its pressure on India. Zhou smiled and replied: “For as long as necessary.” But there was a clear proviso to this commitment: Pakistan must be ready to fight a long war, regardless of India’s “numerical superiority” or America’s support to it. “You must go on fighting even if you have to withdraw to hills and cities like Lahore are lost.” Neither Khan nor Bhutto had ever thought of such a war. They knew now that there was no escape from the ceasefire.
   
   Back home, on September 21, Khan presided over a very high-level meeting. The army chief, General Musa Khan, and the air chief, Air Marshal Nur Khan, were in favour of the ceasefire. The most powerful support for it came from the Nawab of Kalabagh who, as governor, controlled the whole of west Pakistan on Ayub Khan’s behalf. Even so, Ayub made his broadcast accepting the UN resolution barely an hour before the deadline’s expiry.

8. 

   মাসুদ করিম - ৭ জানুয়ারি ২০১৩ (৬:৩২ অপরাহ্ণ)

   UNESCO-Madanjeet Singh Prize খ্যাত ভারতের স্বাধীনতা সংগ্রামী, প্রাক্তন কূটনীতিক, শিল্পী, লেখক, মানবকল্যাণকর্মী সাউথ এশিয়ান ফাউন্ডেশনের প্রতিষ্ঠাতা মদনজিৎ সিং গতকাল রোববার দক্ষিণ ফ্রান্সে ৮৮ বছর বয়সে লোকান্তরিত হয়েছেন।

   PM condoles the passing away of Shri Madanjit Singh, founder of the South Asia Foundation- pmindia.gov.in/press-details.…

   — Dr Manmohan Singh (@PMOIndia) January 7, 2013

   

   Former diplomat, writer, artist, philanthropist and UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador since 2000, Madanjeet Singh, 88, passed away in Beaulieu-sur-Mer in the south of France on Sunday after suffering a stroke.

   Passionate in his commitment to South Asian regional cooperation and solidarity, he founded the South Asian Foundation (SAF) by making a personal financial contribution in 2000. The SAF focuses on providing educational opportunities for the youth across the region.

   Born in Lahore on April 16, 1924, Singh graduated from the Lahore Government College and then pursued an M Sc in Technical Chemistry from the Italian Institute for Middle and Far East in Rome.

   Singh’s commitment to communal harmony, pluralistic and secular values was born out of his experience of witnessing the Partition at a tender age. In 1942 he was arrested during the Quit India Agitation. In 1972, he was awarded the Tamrapatra for freedom fights. In 2006, Singh refused a Padma award, saying that there was no higher award than the Tamrapatra for freedom fighters, which he had already received.

   In the time that he was with the Indian Foreign Service (1953 to 1982), he served in Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece, Laos, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, USSR and South Vietnam. He was also an Ambassador in Colombia, Rwanda, Burundi and Finland, and a High Commissioner in Uganda.

   Later, between 1982 and 1985, Singh went on to work with the UNESCO in Paris as Director in the Cultural Sector. The UNESCO-Madanjeet Singh Prize for the Promotion of Tolerance and Non-Violence, is supported by a donation by him and officially honours “his lifelong commitment to the cause of peace and tolerance”.

   Some of the books and monographs written by the illustrious diplomat include Painting from Ajanta Caves (1954), This My People (1989), The Sun in Myth and Art (1993), The Timeless Energy of the Sun (1998), The Sasia Story (2005), and The Oral and Intangible Heritage of South Asia (2007).

   বিস্তারিত পড়ুন : Diplomat, writer, philanthropist Madanjeet Singh passes away।

   আরো পড়ুন, সুপারিশকৃত লিন্ক: ডিসেম্বর ২০০৯এ

   ‘সার্ক’ যদি উন্নীত হতে পারে ‘সাউথএশিয়ান ইউনিয়ন’-এ, আমার মনে হয় এ অঞ্চলের সব ধরনের মৌলবাদকে মোকাবেলা করা যাবে। আবার এও হতে পারে সব ধরনের মৌলবাদ মোকাবেলা করতে করতে আমরা ‘সাউথএশিয়ান ইউনিয়ন’-এ রূপান্তরিত হতে পারব। কিন্তু এ অঞ্চলের সাংস্কৃতিক বৈচিত্রের মধ্যে যে এক অবিসংবাদিত মিল আছে, ইউরোপিয়ান ইউনিয়নের মতো, এখানেও ঠিক হয়ে উঠতে পারে একক ‘দক্ষিণএশিয়া’। পড়ুন এখানে ‘দ্য হিন্দু’র মতামত বিভাগের লেখা মদনজিৎ সিং-এর South Asian agenda for Jammu & Kashmir।

9. 

   মাসুদ করিম - ৮ জানুয়ারি ২০১৩ (১০:৪২ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

   প্রায় দুবছর চলে গেল আজো আরব রাজতন্ত্রগুলো আরব বসন্তের আওতার বাইরে রয়ে গেল, তাহলে কি আরব রাজতন্ত্র পদ্ধতিগতভাবে বিভিন্ন ছাড় দিতে দিতে গণতান্ত্রিক প্রতিষ্ঠান গড়তে গড়তে গণতন্ত্রের দিকে যাবে? নাকি সময় হয়েছে, আরব বসন্তের পরবর্তী প্রার্থিত ভূমি হতে চলেছে আরব রাজতন্ত্র সৌদিআরব, বাহরাইন, কুয়েত, কাতার, জর্ডান, মরক্কো?

   Are the Arab monarchies next?

   by Hicham Ben Abdallah El Alaou

   The Arab Spring is not an outcome, it is a process. For those countries at the forefront of regional transformation, the fundamental question is can democracy become institutionalised? Though progress has been uneven and the outcomes of many state-society struggles have yet to be resolved, the answer is a cautious yes. In at least a few countries, we are witnessing the onset of democratic institutionalisation: whether the process of reform and transformation spreads to other parts of the Middle East depends on many factors — religious tensions, political mobilisation, regime adaptations, geopolitics. Meanwhile North Africa provides the most promising preview of the future.

   Democratic institutionalisation means the healthy convergence of politics around three arenas of competition: elections, parliaments and constitutions. When these institutions are robust and durable, then the democratic governments they engender are relatively safe from radical groups, reactionary forces and authoritarian backsliding (due to alternation: democracies that uphold the rule of law and hold regular elections require that power alternates between competing parties).

   In Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, this process is unfolding, if at an unsteady pace (1). All three have had founding legislative elections that were far more competitive and pluralistic than those held in their authoritarian past. In Tunisia, the project to re-craft the national constitution nears completion by the Constituent Assembly, which itself was the product of electoral competition. The crisis there has two dimensions: the new government’s passivity in response to Salafist violence (which came to an end after the attack on the US embassy in Tunis) and the delay in getting economic reform under way, especially in the poorest regions. In spite of often acute tensions and conflicts between different political interest groups, all but the tiniest minority have accepted that democracy is now the name of the game.

   In Libya, the post-Gaddafi political order has been rockier, with armed militias initially fighting amongst themselves (2), while in Egypt, presidential elections resulted in the ascension of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi. Once in office, Morsi asserted civilian power over the military by dismissing Field Marshall Tantawi. This was a crucial step towards redefining civilian-military relations in a historically praetorian state.

   In these transitional states, most political actors recognise the new reality — except of course hardliners and extremists, such as some Salafists and defenders of the autocratic past. But the new reality does not mean that these institutionalising democracies will become liberal democracies. The democrats of the Arab Spring did not embrace revolution to advance liberalism — which many in the West may see in the Arab context as advancing the cause of gender equality, unshackling censorship of pornography and other “immoral” materials, and otherwise widening the boundaries of expression. Liberalism is in truth a body of political thought that may give preeminence to the individual and freedom, but can only emerge from a later stage of democratic consolidation. It will not result from an early showdown between secularists and Islamists, and compromise on such values at this nascent stage is unlikely.

   The priority for these transitioning states is not ideational, but rather the continued struggle towards institutionalisation. Democracy does not require that every citizen and every party embrace the same ideological framework, but rather that democratic rules and procedures become the definitive rules of the game. Even the Islamists are discovering that electoral triumphs require more than slogans: like democratic governments elsewhere, they need to deliver the goods through governance and policy, not empty promises of bliss and orthodoxy.

   The Islamist apparition

   From America to Europe, policymakers and publics alike were shocked to see Islamist parties like the Nahdha movement in Tunisia and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt emerge as winners of revolutions they did not trigger. However, fears of Islamisation must be tempered by several realities.

   Western observers often forget that Islamists have no symbolic monopoly over the interpretation of Islam in the public sphere. In Egypt, classical educational institutions like Al-Azhar University and doctrinal sects like the Sufis frame faith and politics in ways distinct from Islamists. Within the broad Islamist category, the Brotherhood and more hardline Salafists clash over major issues and disagree about numerous religious tenets. The decentralised and horizontal freedom given by Islam to the individual believer ironically sabotages those who seek to dominate religion for their own political gain.

   And though the Islamist trend encompasses groups ranging from social service providers to extreme Salafist voices, its mainstream face that will shape politics in most transitional countries — the Muslim Brotherhood — is no revolutionary vanguard. The Brotherhood did not support Iran’s call for Islamic revolution against the region’s secular dictatorships after 1979. Nor did they embrace Osama bin Laden’s call to replace politics with jihad in the late 1990s.

   Third, Islamist victories have hardly been sweeping, so Islamism cannot be taken as the unambiguous voice of the Arab masses. The Muslim Brotherhood, and to a lesser degree the Salafists, dominated the first post-Mubarak elections by winning over 300 out of 500 parliamentary seats. Yet their popularity has faded since 2011, and the result of the June 2012 presidential contest was stunning: Morsi barely achieved victory over Ahmad Shafik, a symbol of the old autocracy who secured nearly half the popular vote.

   Similarly, the Nahdha Party controls 40% of the Tunisian Constituent Assembly — not enough to survive without a coalition with powerful secular and leftist forces. In Libya, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Justice and Construction Party barely won 10% of seats in the June 2012 elections for the General National Congress.

   Many Islamists are being transformed by the democratic process of inclusive contestation, however reluctantly they entered this new arena. In Egypt, how to integrate the well-organised Muslim Brotherhood and its more hardline Salafist cousins into the long-term democratic game takes precedence. The reality is that Islamists cannot take power by force; the Brotherhood is a well-mobilised social movement but it lacks coercive muscle.

   The September 2012 uproar over the anti-Islam film The Innocence of Muslims provides yet another way to poke holes in the Islamist apparition. The episode forced wider Islamist forces to put a clear distance between themselves and the more radical groups. And many leaders protested against the film by invoking such legal concepts as defamation rather than resorting to the canon of sharia law’s proscription of blasphemy.

   The secular pretext

   Still, it would be remiss to ignore that the central message of many Islamists is to implement the pillars of Islam more strongly in Arab-Muslim societies in accordance with sharia. The Brotherhood is no liberal organisation and for that reason, many secularists have become fearful of theocracy should they attain complete power. The key is to remember that the Islamist majority, represented by the Brotherhood and other mainstream groups, can “internalise” democratic norms in a way that preserves the importance of religious identity while still preserving the institutional rules of electoral competition and consolidating the gains made through regime transition. One does not need a cadre of western-educated liberal ideologues to create democracy: democracies emerged without democrats in Portugal and Spain in the 1970s, and then much of Latin America throughout the 1980s as what Samuel Huntington called the Third Wave of Democratisation unfolded (3). The logic of democracy is agreeing to disagree within an institutional ecology bounded by accountability and pluralism — because the alternative is perpetual instability, conflict and stalemate.

   Once democracy institutionalises, so that most political groups can accept the inviolability of elections and participation, citizens and politicians can engage in civic debates about transforming state and society into more (or less) liberal forms. This means that countries like Libya, Tunisia and Egypt need not be thoroughly “secularised” to quicken their transitions to democracy. Secularism almost never preceded democracy in the western experience.

   Youth protesters — mostly urban, largely middle-class, and decidedly secular in the sense of not being members of any Islamist group — led the regional wave of revolutions. Today though, these youth movements have been marginalised in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, and with it their particular vision of a more secular democratic future, because they failed to organise a cohesive political front once authoritarianism collapsed. Whereas Islamists took advantage of the resulting vacuum to mobilise (with varying electoral results), the youth movements refused to enter formal institutional politics.

   This has had destructive consequences. By emphasising “the street” (the idea that grievances should be expressed by loud contentious protests rather than the quieter, more structured rules of electoral politics), these secular youths have gained little formal power and virtually no representation in new democratic institutions such as parliaments and popular councils.

   Street politics have a dual function. They allow ordinary people to serve as civic watchdogs of the state (the January 25 Revolution in Egypt happened only because students, workers and other middle-class citizens could crowd into urban centres in defiance of central authority and demand more rights). However, constant protesting cannot replace the institutional rhythms of democratic elections and political campaigns, because the very act of protest implicitly rejects the legitimacy of the system — and democracy consolidates only when most accept its legitimacy.

   What these youths must do to prolong their contribution to the Arab Spring is to align their interests with nascent institutions. The time has come to invest their energies, and the spirit of their activism, into formal politics such as parliaments and consultations. They can also act as surrogates for a new political scene that encourages the expression of religious opposition, nationalist tendencies, secular trends and centrist or centre-left values that span the entire spectrum of society. Uncontrolled, street protests can even undermine the best of policies. Unless these popular interests can be institutionalised into the system, there is a danger that a well-organised minority could rise to power, silence the moderate majority and slide the state back into authoritarian practices. This is a recurrent theme in the aftermath of the Third Wave of Democratisation: autocrats often find ways to subvert new democratic institutions. The greatest danger in the Arab world is not a return to the old model of personalistic dictatorships, whose time has passed; rather, it is the rise of new authoritarian systems based upon oligarchic coalitions that manipulate democratic institutions.
   Those left behind
   
   Like all moments of historical change, the Arab Spring has created as many losers as winners. The secular youth movements discussed earlier are a prominent example. Yet another losing faction is the intellectual elite class, who have repeated the mistakes of their predecessors in failing to link the concrete concerns of localities and communities with their academic ideologies and grand visions.

   Since the advent of Arab nationalism in the 1920s and 1930s, generations of educated elites have spoken in favour of progressive issues that have electrified the press and wooed the middle classes. Early on, many of these themes were oppositionist (against Zionism, imperialism, Orientalism, capitalism and other perceived threats). There were also positive demands, for pan-Arabism, regional justice and equality with the West. Arab intellectuals are far more progressive than their societies but remain crippled by their inability to organise at the grass-roots level and translate their social influence into concrete political parties.

   Another reason for the intellectual elite’s marginalisation is that their discourse of opposition could not fathom the possibility of an indigenous revolution. Their longstanding accusations that Zionism and western imperialism were the dual threats oppressing the Middle East were disproved when it became clear that the real problem was not the outside world, but the durability of authoritarianism and the lack of good governance. Some intellectuals today have reacted so extremely to the dashing of their expectations that they now believe the Arab Spring to be a western or Israeli conspiracy: with the defeat of the Ba’ath regimes of Iraq and perhaps of Syria next, the last vestiges of pan-Arab nationalism will have disappeared.

   Another reason why youth movements and the intellectual elite have failed to capture mass support is that some of them have become extremely hardline in their opposition to any form of Islamism; they have become secular fundamentalists who cannot fathom the possibility of allowing even the most moderate Islamists to play a marginal role in governance.

   A third set of losers is the Arab monarchies. This may seem contradictory. After all, no kingdom fell during the Arab Spring, and indeed a common refrain in the western press has been that, compared to their republican counterparts, the autocratic monarchies of the region have proven exceptionally resilient in the face of social unrest. The reasoning encompasses two arguments: these royal regimes enjoy a deeply rooted sense of cultural legitimacy that resonates throughout their societies. Unlike other authoritarian leaderships, they retain traditional acceptance with the public given their presence before or during anti-colonial struggles. Also, they are more adaptable, having a very flexible set of institutional tools with which to manipulate politics that go beyond mere repression.

   However, the monarchies are running on borrowed time, and most are in worst straits than a decade ago. In Bahrain, for example, a mass uprising was stopped only through the combined efforts of the national security forces and the Gulf Cooperation Council’s military intervention. Morocco faced serious protests as well. There, the promise of constitutional revisions temporarily quieted public anger, but by accepting integration without meaningful political reform, the Islamist Justice and Development Party — the face of parliamentary opposition — now risk losing credibility like the rest of the political class. Moreover, the urban-rural divide is no longer salient; dissent is now everywhere, and demands for change have cut across old class and provincial lines.

   Like Morocco, the Saudi monarchy is thickly embedded in society. Blessed by geology, it has used its enormous oil revenues to offset overt opposition with new welfare and development programmes, which has allowed the regime to defer more fundamental structural reforms. The opposite is true in oil-rich Kuwait. There, constant street protests against corruption and royal meddling have undermined the Al-Sabah family and the December 2012 elections were boycotted by the opposition. This tug-of-war between the monarchy and parliament has culminated in a critical juncture: either the regime accepts a prime minister who is a commoner, and thus beyond the emir’s control, or it must shut down parliament and backslide to authoritarianism at a very high cost.

   In Jordan, the monarchy has become suffocated by two complementary forces. The Islamists want to preserve the monarchy, because the collapse of monarchical rule would allow Israel to portray the East Bank as the new alternative homeland for all Palestinians and thus justify the annexation of the whole of the West Bank. Yet they also desire constitutional monarchy, with greater political freedoms. The monarchy’s Bedouin tribal bedrock has become restless due to rising unemployment and corruption, which allows them to accuse the regime of favouring the wealthier Palestinian majority.

   Vested interests run deep in monarchies, because dynastic families develop resilient connections to influential social and political groups that provide support in exchange for patronage, such as merchants, businessmen, farmers, tribes, and the ulama. Drastic reforms that replace absolute monarchy with real parliamentary governance would undercut not just royals but their commoner clients too. Second, the post-colonial and post-cold war history of the region shows that monarchs have an aversion to transforming their executive power into moral authority; they will only consider constitutional monarchism after exhausting all other options and strategies. So without a concerted popular challenge, kingships have no incentive to bring anything more than cosmetic reforms to the bargaining table.

   Once championed as moderate and adaptable regimes, the Arab monarchies now risk squandering a golden opportunity. Though they would have to surrender much power in a democratic transition, their institutions also have much to contribute in helping unify their societies during times of crisis and spare future conflict and instability.

   The paradox

   The geopolitical dimension of the Arab Spring has created a stunning paradox. Consider how it began: as a primarily local and then national-level phenomenon, it made itself heard as a call for justice and dignity by encouraging citizens to resist authoritarian brutality. Within months, it had morphed into a second stage of regionalisation. No longer a purely domestic act, it spread a common set of principles and values across borders. This diffusion transcended the well-known “Al-Jazeera effect” because it encompassed not simply new forms of communication but an entirely new framework of contentious activism. This new regional discourse, shared through social technologies and strengthened with every media broadcast, drew upon classic concepts of pan-Arab unity but rejected any firm ideology in favour of a more simple and shared frustration for authoritarian governance, and a powerful yearning for citizenship.

   We are now, however, at a third stage in which this regional wave has become internationalised along sectarian and geopolitical cleavages; the Arab Spring now represents not just domestic and regional politics but also an international arena of confrontation. The Bahraini uprising began this process in spring 2011, when the sectarian nature of its Shia-dominated opposition put the ruling Sunni monarchy in the camp of larger fellow Sunni countries and its western allies, a strategic front led by Saudi Arabia, the US and Turkey, not to mention less overt intervention from Israel. Inversely, the popular opposition was associated with the “radical” transnational Shia bloc of Iran, Syria and Hizbullah. The Syrian civil war accelerated this process but through an inverse dynamic. There, it was social opposition that became associated with the “moderate” camp of Sunni powers and their western allies, while the embattled autocratic regime of Bashar al-Assad entrenched its position with the transnational Shia alliance.

   In 2012 these sectarian and geopolitical dimensions reinforced each other in an iterative way, giving the Arab Spring truly global implications. Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the US and Israel do not want Iran, Syria and Hizbullah to gain strategic predominance in the region. This rivalry has nearly transformed the sectarian division from simmering tensions to imaginary warfare with potentially dangerous consequences. Extremely polarising characterisations prevail, as many in the West now describe the Sunni states — especially the monarchies — as bulwarks of stability and moderation, whereas the Shia are extremists, destabilising and militant. Needless to say, this conflict also serves the domestic interests of its proponents.
   
   Once internationalised, the geopolitical echo of the Arab Spring has however returned to the domestic level of democratising states like a boomerang, and in a manner few could have predicted. Iran, Syria and Hizbullah have attempted to force the transitional regimes of Tunisia, Libya and Egypt to make the hard choice of joining their camp, while the pro-western Sunni alliance has also exerted pressure to win over these new regimes and their foreign policy alignments. Paradoxically, such exogenous strains have only strengthened these new regimes by convincing them to adopt a neutral foreign policy stance and take more seriously the process of institutionalisation. The threat of regional instability has rejoined their internal efforts to bolster domestic stability. For instance, Morsi’s much-publicised presentation at the Non-Aligned Movement meeting in Iran last August showed that Egypt was taking a modest stance in the region.

   In comparative terms, the new regimes in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt are creating a restrained position that rejects sectarian incitement, extreme religious interpretations and geopolitical entanglements in favour of flexibility and pragmatism. Above all, they desire domestic stability, and they see these two competing sides as obstacles in the course of building new democratic political orders.

   This paradox (that international conflict can bolster the stabilisation of democratic politics at the domestic level) is quite novel in modern Middle East history. In the past, systemic battles pitted the West and its Arab allies against ideological coalitions framed as destructive and subversive to the region (the communist threat posed by Nasser and Brezhnev, Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic revolutionary creed, Bin Laden’s jihadist campaign). The current regional alignment is far more nuanced. Even at its peak, no outside actor could frame the Arab Spring as a coherent ideological flood associated with any evil empire, opposing superpower or radical organisation. It grew as an indigenous force before becoming entangled in geopolitics.

   The confrontation between Sunni and Shia will be crucial to the future. However much it may be manipulated from outside, it is a clash which is likely to multiply the fault lines and cloud the horizon of the Arab Spring.

   (1) See Alain Gresh, “Gulf Cools Towards Muslim Brothers”, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition,November 2012.

   (2) See Patrick Haimzadeh, “Libyan democracy hijacked”, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, October 2012.

   (3) Samuel P Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1991.

10. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ৮ জানুয়ারি ২০১৩ (৭:৩৯ অপরাহ্ণ)

    বেশ কিছুদিন ধরে ল্যাব এইডে লাইফ সাপোর্টে ছিলেন, আজ সাংবাদিক-রাজনীতিবিদ নির্মল সেন লোকান্তরিত হলেন।
    

    চলে গেলেন নির্মল সেন
    নির্মল সেনের ভাস্তে কংকন সেন বিডিনিউজ টোয়েন্টিফোর ডটকমকে জানান, সন্ধ্যা সাড়ে ৬টায় চিকিৎসকরা তাকে মৃত ঘোষণা করেছেন।

    গুরুতর অসুস্থ অবস্থায় রাজধানীর ল্যাবএইড হাসপাতালের বেশ কিছুদিন ধরে লাইফ সাপোটর্ে ছিলেন নির্মল সেন। তার বয়স হয়েছিল ৮২ বছর।

    গোপালগঞ্জের কোটালীপাড়ার দিঘীরপাড় গ্রামে নিজের বাড়িতে অসুস্থ হয়ে পড়লে গত মাসে তাকে ঢাকায় আনা হয়।

    নির্মল সেনের ফুসফুসে যে সংক্রমণ ছিল, তা রক্তের ভেতর দিয়ে সারা শরীরে ছড়িয়ে পড়ে, যাকে সেপটিসেমিয়া বলা হয়।

    দেশে বাম আন্দোলনের অন্যতম পুরোধাব্যক্তিত্ব ও গণতান্ত্রিক বিপ্লবী পার্টির সভাপতি নির্মল সেন ২০০৩ সালে ব্রেইনস্ট্রোকে আক্রান্ত হলে দেশ ও বিদেশের বিভিন্ন জায়গায় চিকিৎসা নেন।

    এরপর থেকে তিনি কোটালীপাড়ায় তার গ্রামের বাড়িতেই অবস্থান করছিলেন।

    নির্মল সেনের জন্ম ১৯৩০ সালের ৩ অগাস্ট। শিক্ষক সুরেন্দ্রনাথ সেনগুপ্ত ও লাবণ্য প্রভা সেনগুপ্তের আট সন্তানের মধ্যে তিনি পঞ্চম।

    ভারত ভাগের আগে ১৯৪৬ সালে পুরো পরিবার বাংলাদেশ ছেড়ে কলকাতায় চলে গেলেও থেকে যান নির্মল সেন। বরিশাল বিএম কলেজ থেকে আইএ এবং ঢাকা বিশ্ববিদ্যালয় থেকে বিএ ও এমএ পাস করেন তিনি।

    চিরকুমার নির্মল সেনের রাজনৈতিক জীবন শুরু হয় স্কুলজীবনে ‘ভারত ছাড়ো’ আন্দোলনের মাধ্যমে। কলেজ জীবনে তিনি ব্রিটিশবিরোধী সশস্ত্র বিপ্লবী সংগঠন অনুশীলন সমিতির সক্রিয় সদস্য ছিলেন। পরবর্তীতে তিনি রেভ্যুলিউশনারি সোশ্যালিস্ট পার্টিতে (আরএসপি) যোগ দেন।

    তিনি দীর্ঘদিন শ্রমিক-কৃষক সমাজবাদী দলের নেতৃত্ব দেন, পরে দলটি গণতান্ত্রিক বিপ্লবী পার্টিতে একীভূত হয় এবং নতুন দলের সভাপতি হন তিনি।

    ১৯৫৯ সালে দৈনিক ইত্তেফাক পত্রিকায় কাজের মধ্য দিয়ে নির্মল সেনের সাংবাদিকতা জীবন শুরু। এর পর দৈনিক আজাদ, দৈনিক পাকিস্তান ও দৈনিক বাংলায় কাজ করেন তিনি। দৈনিক বাংলা বিলুপ্তির পর পাওনা আদায়ে অনশনে বসেছিলেন তিনি।

    বাংলাদেশ ফেডারেল সাংবাদিক ইউনিয়ন ও ঢাকা সাংবাদিক ইউনিয়নের প্রতিষ্ঠাতা সভাপতি ছিলেন তিনি। এছাড়া ঢাকা বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়ের সাংবাদিকতা বিভাগে অতিথি শিক্ষকও ছিলেন।

    অসুস্থ অবস্থার মধ্যেও কয়েক মাস আগে ঢাকায় সাংবাদিকদের এক কর্মসূচিতে এসেসংগঠনগুলোকে ঐক্যবদ্ধ হওয়ার তাগিদ দিয়ে গিয়েছিলেন তিনি।

    সুপারিশকৃত লিন্ক এপ্রিল ২০১০এ
    অসুস্থ নির্মল সেনকে দুরাবস্থার শিকার হয়ে ঢাকা ছাড়তে হয়েছে — জানাচ্ছেন তারই বন্ধু অজয় রায়। বাংলাদেশের কলাম লেখকদের মধ্যে স্বনামধন্য নির্মল সেনের বয়স হবে এখন আশি। এই বয়সে বঞ্চনার শিকার হওয়াই কি আমাদের দেশে লেখক-সাংবাদিকদের নিয়তি? এমন প্রথিতযশা সাংবাদিক-লেখক যদি আমাদের অবহেলার শিকার হন, তাহলে জাতি হিসেবে আমাদের দৈন্যই শুধু প্রকাশিত হবে। অজয় রায়ের মানবিক আবেদনে আমরাও কি পারি না নির্মল সেনের সাহায্যে তহবিল সংগ্রহ করতে? অবশ্য অজয় রায় কোনো সুনির্দিষ্ট ঠিকানা আমাদের জানাতে পারেননি যেখানে আমরা আমাদের ক্ষুদ্র সংগ্রহ পৌঁছাতে পারি। কেউ যদি সে ঠিকানা জানেন, আমাদের জানাতে অনুরোধ করছি।

11. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ১৩ জানুয়ারি ২০১৩ (৭:০৬ অপরাহ্ণ)

    রাজনীতির যত বাধাবিপত্তি থাকুক, নৃত্যের জন্য তা নেই, আরবদের প্রিয় বেলি ড্যান্সের উৎসব বসছে ইসরাইলের দক্ষিণ প্রান্তের লোহিত সাগর পাড়ের শহর আইল্যাটে (Eilat)। চারদিন ধরে চলবে এই উৎসব আরব অনারব মিলে মোট ৯৫০ জন বেলি ড্যান্সার যোগ দেবেন এই উৎসবে। তুরস্ক, মিশর, মরক্কো, জর্ডানের নৃত্যশিল্পী ও শিক্ষকরাও রাজনীতির হিংসা-দ্বেষ ভুলে নৃত্যের উৎসবে যাচ্ছেন ইসরাইলে।

    

    While Arab politicians might avoid visiting Israel at any cost given its hostile status and disputes over the still unresolved occupation of Palestinian land; Arab belly-dancer are reportedly having a much leaner approach.

    Arab belly dancers and oriental dance teachers from Egypt, Jordan and Morocco will head to Israel to participate in the world’s biggest belly dancing festival, local media reported.

    Around 950 dancers will partake in the four-day event starting January 16 in the southernmost city in Israel, Eilat, Ynet News reported Friday. The paper, however, didn’t detail the exact number of Arab belly dancers and teachers participating.

    Despite the Israeli operation that began with a missile strike targeting the military wing of Islamist group Hamas in mid-November in Gaza Strip, there were no cancelations by the Arab participants, Orit Maftsir, one of the festival’s organizers and a world-renowned belly dancer, said.

    Turkish belly dancers and teachers will also join the event. In 2010, Turkish-Israeli relations turned sour when Israeli troops attacked a Turkish flotilla loaded with aids to the sanctions-hit Gaza Strip. Nineteen activists were killed including nine Turks during the attack.

    “Beyond the cultural relations the festival creates between the region’s countries, it also helps strengthen relations between the people,” the Jewish daily reported Roni Pivko, the managing director of the Club Hotel chain, as saying.

    The paper said “the highlight of the event” is Arab belly dancers and teachers showing that they are “not afraid to come to Israel and vibrate their hips for peace.”

    বিস্তারিত পড়ুন : Lean and mean? Arab belly dancers ignore politics at Israeli festival।

12. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ১৪ জানুয়ারি ২০১৩ (২:২৭ অপরাহ্ণ)

    এখনো অনেক নিষেধাজ্ঞা জারি থাকলেও নাগরিকদের ভ্রমণের আগের কঠিন নিয়ম কানুন সহজ করেছে কিউবা।

    Cuba Eases Travel Rules

    Cuban authorities have lifted decades-old travel restrictions allowing citizens to go abroad without exits visas and spend more time overseas starting Monday.

    The new measures scrap regulations imposed back in 1961 that obliged Cubans to obtain the exit visa and a letter of invitation from someone in their country of destination.

    The exit visa fees could total around $300, what is 15 times higher than an average salary in the Communist-run island. Now, the Cubans need a one-time application for a passport worth $100, and renewable for $20 every two years.

    Under the new rules, the Cubans are allowed to stay abroad up to 24 months without losing their residency rights. The limit was 12 months before the rules were enacted on Monday.

    The eased rules also repealed travel restrictions for Cuban healthcare professionals, who were not eligible to leave the island without a special permit issued by top officials.

    The Cuban officials have kept their right to deny trips abroad for those citizens involved in defense, national security and “public interest” as well as famous sportsmen. The new rules also forbid people whose work is related to economic development, scientists and people facing criminal charges to leave.

13. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ১৫ জানুয়ারি ২০১৩ (৬:৪০ অপরাহ্ণ)

    কবির জীবন কতটুকু কবির, কতটুকু কবির পরিসরের, কতটুকু কবির ব্যক্তিগত জীবনের আকাঙ্ক্ষার অভ্যাসের? এগুলো এমন কতগুলো প্রশ্ন যা নিয়ে কবির জীবনীর কাজ চলে, এবং প্রশ্নের উত্তর মিলুক বা না মিলুক, যেসব উত্তর মিলেছে তা সত্য হোক বা না হোক, কারো পছন্দ হোক বা না হোক, এই প্রশ্ন এই উত্তরের চলমানতাই কবির নতুন নতুন জীবনী সম্ভব করে তোলে, এতে আর কিছু আমাদের অধিগত হোক বা না হোক, কবির সম্বন্ধে আমাদের উৎসাহ আবার চাড়া দিয়ে ওঠে, এটা সত্য, এটাই লভ্য।

    ইংরেজ কবি জন কিটস-এর একটি নতুন জীবনী সম্প্রতি প্রকাশিত হয়েছে, এই প্রকাশিত বইটির রিভিউ পড়ুন।

    

    John Keats: A New Life | Nicholas Roe

    Irritable Reachings: On John Keats

    James Longenbach|January 8, 2013

    John Keats was born in 1795. Orphaned at the age of 14, he was apprenticed by a manipulative guardian to an apothecary, a kind of general medical practitioner. “Always writing poetry,” recalled a fellow apprentice. Though formal training as a surgeon’s assistant followed at Guy’s Hospital—this in the harrowing days before anesthesia—Keats was immersed in London’s literary society by the time he received his medical license. In 1817, at the age of 21, he published his first book, called simply Poems; a second book, Endymion, appeared the following year. Reviews were savage, but Keats dismissed them in a letter to his brother George as “a mere matter of the moment,” adding that “I think I shall be among the English Poets after my death.”

    Death would come three years later. Having nursed his brother Tom through tuberculosis, the same disease that had killed his mother, Keats diagnosed his own symptoms, and by the end of 1819 he had produced in quick succession some of the greatest poems in the English language: “The Eve of St. Agnes,” “Ode to a Nightingale,” “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” He had fallen in love with Fanny Brawne, the girl who lived next door. Before Keats died in a room overlooking the Spanish Steps in Rome, where his doctor had sent him for the climate, he requested that his gravestone bear only the phrase “here lies one whose name was writ in water.”

    Keats’s enduring place among the English poets is due to his poems, but the story of his life is uncommonly compelling, begging to be told. To become acquainted with Keats is to discover an impossible person—someone who is undeniably young, but who seems at the same time preternaturally wise, capable of a timeless eloquence that feels paradoxically of his years, not beyond them. Keats makes the discoveries of youth feel worthy of the most dignified attention—not steppingstones to something more refined but, as they had to be for Keats, ends in themselves. “Do you not see,” he asked his brother George, “how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a soul?” Had Chaucer died not long after his twenty-fifth birthday, he would have been the author of nothing; Shakespeare might be remembered for a couple of charming plays.

    About Shakespeare’s life we know almost nothing, and what little we do know comes from anywhere but Shakespeare, who left behind no letters or manuscripts. In contrast, the story of Keats’s life begins with Keats himself. The unself-conscious immediacy of his letters is unmatched even by writers who might seem, at first glance, more confessional, less poised. Written on his deathbed in Rome, his last letter asks his friend Charles Brown to contact his remaining brother and sister, and it manages in the process to feel heartbroken, efficient, winsome—as if the whole person, in all his complexity, were speaking from the page:

    ‘Tis the most difficult thing in the world [for] me to write a letter. My stomach continues so bad, that I feel it worse on opening any book…. Write to George as soon as you receive this, and tell him how I am, as far as you can guess;—and also a note to my sister—who walks about my imagination like a ghost—she is so like Tom. I can scarcely bid you good bye even in a letter. I always made an awkward bow.

    Three months later, Keats was dead, and Joseph Severn, the friend who had accompanied him to Rome, described the final moments:

    The poor fellow bade me lift him up in bed—he breathed with great difficulty—and seemed to lose the power of coughing up the phlegm—and immense sweat came over him so that my breath felt cold to him—“dont breath on me—it comes like Ice”—he clasped my hand very fast as I held him in my arms—the mucus was boiling within him—it gurgled in his throat—this increased—but yet he seem’d without pain—his eyes look’d upon me with extrem[e] sensibility but without pain—at 11 he died in my arms.

    The memories of Keats’s friends are often as moving, as three-dimensional, as Keats’s own letters. He provoked in other people a generous sensitivity similar to his own, and it’s difficult not to feel that there’s something fundamentally Keatsian about the now almost 200-year-old effort to write Keats’s life. The story of that life is uncommonly compelling, to be sure, but Keats’s sensibility is even more uncommonly alluring. “Of course/ you’ll die in a week, suppurating on a camphor-/ soaked sheet,” writes the contemporary poet Dean Young of a young man about to have his arm amputated in a nineteenth-century surgical theater,

    but above you, the assistant holding you down,
    trying to fix you with sad, electric eyes
    is John Keats.

    A lot of great books have been written about Keats: critical books by some of the sharpest readers of our time (Christopher Ricks, Helen Vendler), and also biographies sustaining the highest levels of stylishness and insight. There’s no English-language poet whose life has provoked more distinguished attention, not even Shakespeare; and while several large-scale biographies of Keats have appeared in recent years, the twin achievements of Aileen Ward (whose John Keats: The Making of a Poet won the National Book Award in 1964) and Walter Jackson Bate (whose John Keats won the Pulitzer Prize the same year) still tower over the field: Ward’s for her psychological acuity, Bate’s for his nuanced account of the way poems get made, and both for the quietly seductive grace of their sentences. New information will come to light, new interpretations of old information will become necessary, but these books are permanent achievements: they gather up all prior thinking about Keats’s life and work, and all subsequent thinking has depended on them.

    ***

    The word “new” is prominent in the title of Nicholas Roe’s John Keats: A New Life, but the arguments that determine its shape and demeanor are very old—older than the two biographies that split the book prizes between them half a century ago. “Who was John Keats?” asks Roe. “The sturdy twenty-two-year-old, who strode six hundred miles around Scotland? Or ‘a sickly boy of pretty abilities’ who had missed his path in the world?” Roe hammers the answer home: Keats was a poet of “remorseless intelligence” and “radiant masculinity.” The first characterization is accurate, but with the weirdly tone-deaf language of the second, Roe wants to focus our attention on the Keats who undertook an arduous walking tour, dosed himself with opium and (as most biographers of Keats have speculated, beginning with W.M. Rossetti in 1887) may have suffered from venereal disease. This biographer needs to assure us that the poet was no pansy.

    Few readers today could take the phrase “radiant masculinity” seriously, but there was a time when some readers of Keats did—readers who remained immune to the allure of Keats’s remorseless intelligence. In the mid-nineteenth century, when Keats’s love letters to Fanny Brawne were first published, the Victorian poets Matthew Arnold and Algernon Charles Swinburne were repulsed by what seemed to them his unmanly vulnerability. This response to Keats was strong enough to infect even the thinking of people who otherwise admired Keats’s intelligence deeply, as these lines from W.B. Yeats’s early twentieth-century poem “Ego Dominus Tuus” suggest:

    I see a schoolboy when I think of him,
    With face and nose pressed to a sweet-shopt window,
    For certainly he sank into his grave
    His senses and his heart unsatisfied.

    This is the conception of Keats against which Roe has aimed his new biography—and while it is stuffed with detail about Keats’s life and times, some of it new indeed, the book feels dusty, indentured to sweetly romantic assumptions about poetry. Would anyone be surprised that, say, a gifted cabinetmaker—proud of the fineness of his miters—was also a man who liked a stiff drink and a roll in the hay? Would his biographer feel compelled to prove him a regular guy, in the process derailing and often occluding any discussion of the art of cabinetry?

    Keats was one of the greatest craftsmen ever to take the English language for his medium. But while Roe is an energetic researcher, eager to describe the political journalism of Keats’s friends or the daily routines at Guy’s Hospital, he is uncomfortable with poetic craft. His attempts to link Keats’s language with the material culture of Regency England are strained (and, perhaps more tellingly, given his lengthy accounts of that culture, few and far between). Are the lines “This living hand, now warm and capable/ Of earnest grasping” really conceivable only by a poet experienced “in the throbbing life of muscles, nerves, arteries, bone and blood”? Even more unsteady is Roe’s sense of how poems are bound up with other poems: he suggests that Keats’s use of the word “never” in the line “The poetry of earth is ceasing never” recalls King Lear’s “Never, never, never, never, never”—which is a bit like saying that Keats’s use of the word “is” recalls Hamlet’s “To be or not to be, that is the question.” Does Keats’s remark that “now I shall relish Hamlet more than I ever have done” support the proposition that Keats’s mother, like Hamlet’s, had “been keeping two men…on the go at the same time”?

    Roe doesn’t devote many sentences to Keats’s major poems, but in his effort to say something new about the great odes of 1819, he pushes this combination of dogged literalism and unhinged speculation to new heights: “Ode to a Nightingale,” he says, is “one of the greatest re-creations of a drug-induced dream-vision in English literature. More than a figure of speech, Keats’s ‘dull opiate emptied to the drains’ frankly admits his own laudanum habit.” Because Roe hasn’t shown conclusively that Keats had a “habit,” the poem becomes proof of the speculation that it also provokes. How can we know that the lines “a drowsy numbness pains/ My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,/ Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains” are more than figurative? As the poem continues, Keats in any case rejects both opiates and alcohol, declaring that he will leave the world where “youth grows pale, and spectre-thin” on the “viewless wings of Poesy.” And ultimately, “Ode to a Nightingale” is no more a paean to the visionary power of poetry than it is a drug-induced dream vision, for the poet’s vision, however it may be induced, is revealed to be a cheat: in the unattainable realm invoked by the song of the nightingale, “the Queen-Moon is on her throne,/ Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays;/ But here there is no light.”

    The but at the beginning of that line is perhaps the most poignant use of a conjunction in all of English poetry. “But here” where we live, where we die, says Keats, there is no light, no vision, and what little we can imagine of the world reminds us by its fragile beauty of our limitations and our ultimate demise: “Fast fading violets cover’d up in leaves;/ And mid-May’s eldest child,/ The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,/ The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.”

    “Ode to a Nightingale” does not end there; as Keats once said of Shakespeare’s poems, it goes on to feel “full of fine things said unintentionally—in the intensity of working out conceits.” The poem’s language is constantly shifting, turning against itself, generating new ambiguities so quickly that its author seems barely able to keep up with his own invention. It would be good to know more about the actual circumstances of one of the half-dozen most beautifully made poems in the English language, but anyone who wants to read Keats’s life into the poem, or the poem into Keats’s life, is going to need a good dose of what Keats himself called, in a famous letter, “negative capability,” the ability to exist “in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.”

    ***

    What is a biography of a poet for? Whom is it for? In the time it takes to read John Keats: A New Life, you could read all of Keats’s poems. If you stick to the major poems, you could read them several times. But unlike a biography, great poems can be hard to read; they demand that you read very slowly, not dispensing with the language in favor of its extractible information, as one might when reading a biography, but rather lingering over the language in spite of a dearth of information. How the poem says what it says, even more than what the poem says, needs to grip you deeply—just as in moments of great emotional intensity, you might be thrilled or enraged by how a person speaks to you, even if what the person said is insignificant. Even the most seasoned reader has more experience with the intricacies of people than the intricacies of poems, so a good book about a poet can focus our experience of reading, returning us to the language of the poems with a renewed vigor, with an appetite for varieties of difficulty that may have eluded or even repulsed us in the past. This good book might be as revelatory to the accomplished literary critic as to the reader who comes to Keats cold.

    John Keats: A New Life does not return its reader to Keats’s poems; instead, it feels proud of its own putative discoveries, as if they were ends in themselves. At the same time, the book feels driven less by evidence than by polemic, a palpable design. It is the only biography of Keats I’ve read that is not moving, and perhaps the most encouraging thing I can say about it is that its author seems to recognize this. In the penultimate chapter, Roe ceases to narrate Keats’s life and instead turns the stage over to the poet and his friends, quoting their letters in an annotated chronology. Piazza di Spagna, February 8, 1821, Severn to Brown:

    The thought of recovery is beyond every thing dreadful to him. We now dare not perceive any improvement; for the hope of death seems his only comfort. He talks of the quiet grave as the first rest he can ever have.

    Piazza di Spagna, eleven days later, Severn to his wife:

    I make bread and milk three times a day for Keats—for myself—sometimes tea—sometimes Chocolate—or Coffe[e]—my dinner now I go out for—I have 1st dish macarona—it is like a dish of large white earth worms—made of Flour with butter &c—very good—my 2nd dish is fish—and then comes Roast Beef or Mutton—a cutlet of Pork or wild boar—their vegetables here are beautiful—cabbage—cauliflower—brocola spinach—every good thing—and very well cooked—and then I have pudding every day.

    Such juxtapositions of the dire and the everyday are unexpectedly thrilling, but the thrill itself is familiar because it feels like the experience of a great poem: richly sensuous language leading us to a recognition of loss that feels consoling, because it refreshes our wonder at the simplest pleasures, every good thing. “Then I have pudding every day”: the phrase is extruded from the experience of irremediable suffering, but it sounds like a child’s wish come true. Keats enabled his friend, as he enables his readers, to feel it.

14. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ১৫ জানুয়ারি ২০১৩ (৭:০৭ অপরাহ্ণ)

    সাহিত্যিক আবদুশ শাকুর প্রয়াত। আজ বিকেলে নিজ বাসভবনে বার্ধক্যজনিত কারণে তার মৃত্যু হয়।

    বিশিষ্ট লেখক, সাহিত্যিক ও সঙ্গীতবিশারদ আবদুস শাকুর মারা গেছেন। তার বয়স হয়েছিল ৭২ বছর।

    মঙ্গলবার বিকেলে রাজধানীর ধানমণ্ডির নিজ বাড়িতে তিনি শেষ নিঃশ্বাস ত্যাগ করেন।

    আবদুস শাকুরের বড় ছেলে ড. ইশতিয়াক আহমেদ বাংলানিউজকে মৃত্যুর বিষয়টি নিশ্চিত করেছেন। বার্ধক্যজনিত কারণেই বিশিষ্ট সাহিত্যিকের মৃত্যু হয়েছে বলে তার বড় ছেলে জানিয়েছেন।

    খবরের লিন্ক এখানে।

15. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ১৬ জানুয়ারি ২০১৩ (৬:৩৬ অপরাহ্ণ)

    Hexie Farm (蟹农场): The Sit-in

    For his latest contribution to the Hexie Farm CDT series, cartoonist Crazy Crab comments on the recent protests against censorship centered around the Southern Weekly newspaper. Xi Jinping is pictured walking a tightrope across the gulf between the “harmonious society” espoused by Hu Jintao, and the “rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” that Xi has made a predominant theme of his administration so far. As he maneuvers the dangerous journey, he is almost thrown off balance by the protesting netizens, depicted as angry birds.

    

16. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ২৩ জানুয়ারি ২০১৩ (১২:১০ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    না, নেলসন ম্যান্ডেলার আইনজীবি সিডনি ক্যান্ট্রিজকে (Sydney Kentridge) নিয়ে আমার তেমন কিছুই জানা নেই। কিন্তু ফিনান্সিয়াল টাইমসের লাইফ এন্ড আর্টস বিভাগের ‘লাঞ্চ উইথ দ্য এফটি’ আয়োজনে হালকা চালের লেখাটি পড়ে খুব ভাল লাগল।

    Lunch with the FT: Sydney Kentridge
    By John Gapper

    The 90-year-old barrister has represented three Nobel Prize winners, including Nelson Mandela. He talks about apartheid, ‘judge-itis’ and not going on for ever

    To call Sydney Kentridge the outstanding barrister of his generation is not a huge claim, since few are still working at 90 years old. Sir Sydney, who started his career as a lawyer in South Africa in 1949, marked his 90th birthday in November by representing the Law Society in a constitutional case in front of the UK Supreme Court.

    The fact that he is still on his feet after six decades is, however, only one reason for his eminence. He has represented three Nobel Prize winners in court – Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu and Chief Albert Luthuli. At the inquest in 1977 for Steve Biko, the South African anti-apartheid activist who was beaten to death by police, he appeared for Biko’s family.

    He has also had an amazingly diverse career. Unlike other lawyers, who specialise in aspects of commercial or criminal law, he has done nearly everything, taking cases of murder, libel, corporate takeovers, patent protection, constitutional law and much else on two continents.

    He has done it all in a quiet, determined way, the opposite of the flamboyant courtroom attorney. “His manner was always understated, controlled and relentlessly rational. His cross-examination was devastating. Of the private person, there were few glimpses,” Mandela once said of Kentridge, who represented him in the Treason Trial in the late 1950s.

    I have known Kentridge slightly for some years, as a friend of his children, but was astonished to review his career in preparation for our lunch. When he arrives at Bentley’s Oyster Bar & Grill in Piccadilly, a restaurant where he first ate in the late 1960s, he is attired as you might expect a distinguished lawyer to be: three-piece pinstriped suit, a shirt with a white collar and cufflinks from his Oxford college. He looks a decade or two younger than his age.

    

    Kentridge has wiry white eyebrows and a gentle, penetrating expression. He has a self-contained, sturdy quality – like the South African rhinoceros that recurs in the work of his son William, a renowned artist and opera director. The restaurant he has chosen, taken over by the chef Richard Corrigan eight years ago, is a far cry from his first experience of British food, when he arrived in England to study at Oxford in 1946.

    “There was still rationing and the food was very poor,” he says. “There used to be something called British Restaurants and you could get a three-course lunch there for one and threepence. If you had bread, that was one course, then there was usually some watery soup and then a bit of meat, not very much, with some potatoes and sprouts or broccoli.”

    Even bombed-out London was exciting for a 24-year-old, demobbed from the South African army, who’d been born into a liberal Jewish family in Johannesburg. “We very much thought of ourselves as part of the British empire … All the books we read were English – Billy Bunter, the public school stories. We had a Monopoly board with the streets of London so we knew that Old Kent Road was downmarket and Mayfair was expensive.”

    The Oyster Bar is subtly restored from its 1916 origins, with scalloped wall-lamps and red banquettes. Diners line the bar and the small tables are squeezed close together: it is amiably noisy. Kentridge orders herrings with beetroot and mustard to start and then sole goujons with duck egg mayonnaise. I choose tuna with soy and mirin, followed by fish pie. He selects a glass of Riesling for each of us.

    . . .

    As we meet, Mandela has just been taken to hospital with a lung infection and gall bladder problems, causing concern that the father of the modern South Africa is about to die. It sounds serious, I remark. “At that age, I think anything is serious,” he replies soberly, somehow making it sound as if he is of a different generation to his 94-year-former client.

    I ask if they first met at the Treason Trial, a three-year mass examination of the African National Congress leaders in Pretoria. “I might have met him before the trial. He and Oliver Tambo had a firm of attorneys called Mandela and Tambo. I got two or three briefs from them to defend in small criminal cases in the magistrates’ court.” Given the course of history, it sounds curiously mundane.

    At Mandela’s trial, he says, “You could see his quality of leadership from the beginning … He was very thoughtful. I spent quite a lot of time talking to him and, unlike some of the others, he never went in for slogans. If you asked him a question about policy or their activities, he’d always think about it, he wouldn’t give a flip answer … He was calm about it. He never took things personally.” It strikes me that Kentridge’s description of Mandela matches Mandela’s of Kentridge. They must have made a formidable combination in court, and Mandela was acquitted, along with the other main defendants. Mandela was later jailed, in 1962, having founded the ANC’s armed wing, and only freed in 1990.

    Our food comes promptly and Kentridge munches his way through his herring – age has clearly not withered his appetite. We discuss how he chose his career. He’d been tempted by journalism – “I think I could have become a good leader writer and also a good investigative journalist” – but his mind was changed by participating in some army courts-martial. “I thought it was the most interesting thing I’d ever done.”

    The postwar South African bar was modelled on the London law courts but it could be a struggle to win cases in front of politically appointed judges in a country with few liberties for non-whites. Kentridge recalls the warning he received from a fellow defence lawyer.

    “He said, ‘When you’re doing one of these [ANC] terrorism cases, you can be certain of three things. First, the witnesses have all been assaulted, or threatened with assault, by the police. Secondly, any statement made to the police by the accused has been obtained by torture. And thirdly, your client is guilty.’ ” Kentridge leans back to chuckle at the anecdote.

    At the Biko inquest, after Kentridge had destroyed the police evidence on the stand, and described the activist’s “lonely and miserable death”, the magistrate found that no individual was to blame. Wasn’t it demoralising to work in a country where the odds were so stacked against you?

    He ponders it. “The answer was, you had to do what you could.”

    “You never considered it pointless?

    “It might have been true, but it was irrelevant. The black activist’s view was that he wanted a lawyer.”

    He recalls how one armed group of ANC members, caught trying to blow up a police station, refused to recognise the court or be represented by lawyers. They disrupted the trial by singing songs. Most were given 10-year sentences but one, who had been particularly troublesome in court, got a death sentence. Kentridge was summoned to save him.

    “So I was the advocate, and what happened was, I read the whole proceedings of the court,” he says, eyes gleaming at the memory. “I saw that this chap wasn’t the ringleader of the plot, he was just the ringleader of the contempt of court. We went to appeal and the judges saw it the same way I did. They set aside the death sentence and I think he got 10 years.”

    We move to our main courses – mine a thick, creamy fish pie with huge prawns and chunks of salmon. Kentridge proceeds staunchly with a platter of golden fish and a mound of mayonnaise. Sometimes, after starting a reply, he pauses for so long to eat that I wonder whether he has ceased talking but his answers eventually resume where he left off.

    I ask his view of today’s ANC government under Jacob Zuma. “I think they’re very disappointing,” he says firmly. “There are still hundreds of thousands of people, millions perhaps, who are homeless or living in slums, and the government doesn’t have a sense of urgency. There’s widespread corruption but it does not seem to be able to do anything.”

    It was his wife who encouraged him to move professionally to London in the late 1970s. “Felicia had a theory that everyone should change his occupation at least every 25 years. I’d got quite tired of doing the same cases at the bar in South Africa over and over and over. In another dispensation, I’d have become a judge but that obviously wasn’t going to happen.”

    Even at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, he resisted the pressure to specialise? “Well, first of all, I don’t know that I knew enough about any subject to be a specialist. And, secondly, I knew some very good ones and I thought it would be terribly dull to do one thing. I met a man who did patents. But he didn’t do all patents. He only did pharmaceutical patents. He knew more about those than anyone. I thought to myself, ‘What a life!’ ”

    . . .

    Despite this determination not to be pinned down, Kentridge not only became a Queen’s Counsel and was knighted, but turned into one of the UK’s most valued constitutional lawyers. Why, though, does he still practise?

    “There is no retiring age at the bar and I’ve been in the fortunate position of being able to take cases of interest to me,” he says. “If I’d been a judge, I’d have had to retire 20 years ago.”

    Nobody knocks on your door and says, “That’s it”?

    “They can give you a hint, which I’ve now taken. I think I’ll retire some time [this] year. You can’t go on for ever.”

    As I digest this announcement, the waiter comes to remove our empty plates. Kentridge gives his order with James Bond-like precision. “I’d like an ordinary filter coffee, please – an Americano, I think you call it – with milk on the side. Not boiled, warm.” He makes it sound so appealing that I order the same before asking him about his son William. It is highly unusual for two family members to achieve such eminence in such widely varying fields, I remark.

    “I suppose so,” he says doubtfully. “Did you ever come across Ben Hytner? He’s a very distinguished barrister and his son is Nicholas Hytner [director of the National Theatre]. I’ll tell you a story. You know a writer and critic called Adam Mars-Jones? His father was a high court judge who suffered from what the bar calls ‘judge-itis’ – he was very conscious of his position. The time came when he retired and Ben Hytner gave the tribute on behalf of the bar. He said, ‘There is one distinction that your Lordship and I share. We both have sons who are more distinguished than we are.’ He infuriated the judge and delighted the bar. I told William that story.” He beams.

    We sip our coffee and I press him to explain why he values the rule of law so highly. The question seems to take him aback, as if it is either too obvious or too tricky to answer. “I gave an address on the subject at the Commonwealth Law conference in Hyderabad [in 2011]. If you like, I could send you a copy,” he offers.

    How about a précis? I retort. Kentridge regards me wearily, as if I am demanding too much for a lunch. Then he starts a lengthy, intricate disquisition on the roots of constitutional law. He concludes with a story about the arrest of a Russian ambassador in the reign of Queen Anne, which so upset the Tsar of Russia that he wrote, demanding that those responsible be executed.

    “Queen Anne sent a wonderful reply, saying the Tsar must understand that she has no power to put even the lowliest citizen to death, save by the operation of the law, and she trusts that the Tsar will not compel her to impossibilities.” He places an elbow on the table and slowly wags a long forefinger at me in epiphany. “That’s the rule of law.”
    
    So, after all these years, with such respect for the UK’s unwritten constitution, does Sir Sydney feel British?

    “Well, it’s very hard to say,” he muses. “At cricket, I want South Africa to win. In other sports, I support England. When England plays rugby against South Africa, I back England. It used to be very much the nationalist game and they have the odd black player but it’s the same old people who run it. So, as far as they go, no.”

    John Gapper is the FT’s chief business commentator

    ——————————————-

    Bentley’s Oyster Bar & Grill

    1115 Swallow Street, London

    Tuna sashimi £15.00

    Herring £9.00

    Fish pie £18.50

    Sole goujons £16.00

    Spinach £4.50

    Sparkling water x 2 £8.50

    Glass of Riesling x 2 £19.90

    Americano x 2 £6.50

    Total (incl service) £110.14

17. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ২৩ জানুয়ারি ২০১৩ (১:৩৫ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    স্বল্প আয়ের অধিবাসী ও ভ্রমণকারীদের জন্য জাপানই সবার আগে ‘ক্যাপসুল হোটেল’ নির্মাণ করেছিল, ১২ বর্গফুটের একটি কক্ষে বিছানা, টিভি, টুল,ওয়াইফাই ইন্টারনেট এবং কমন লকারে কাপড়চোপড় ব্যাগ রাখার ব্যবস্থা এনিয়েই ফাইবার গ্লাস দিয়ে তৈরি ‘ক্যাপসুল হোটেল’ বর্তমানে অত্যন্ত জনপ্রিয় হয়ে উঠেছে চীনে। সম্প্রতি চীনের সবচেয়ে বড় ক্যাপসুল হোটেলের উদ্বোধন হয়েছে চিংদাও (Qingdao) শহরে।

    

    বিস্তারিত : China’s largest ‘capsule hotel’ opens in Qingdao।

18. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ২৩ জানুয়ারি ২০১৩ (১০:১৯ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    ইসরাইলের এবারের সাধারণ নির্বাচনের ফলাফলে নেতানিয়াহুর জোট এগিয়ে থাকলেও গত সাধারণ নির্বাচনের চেয়ে তাদের ২৫% আসন কমে গেছে। বাম দল লেবার পার্টি ভাল না করলেও প্রত্যাশার অতীত ফলাফল করেছ রাজনীতিতে নবাগত ইয়াইর লাপিদের নেতৃত্বে মধ্যপন্থী দল ইয়েশ আতিদ পার্টি। ৯৫ ভাগ ভোট গনণার পর লিকুদ জোট পেয়েছে ৩১টি আসন, ইয়েশ আতিদ ১৯টি আসন, লেবার ১৫টি আসন। আগামী বুধবার প্রেসিডেন্ট শিমন পেরেস নেতানিহায়ুকে সরকার গঠন করতে আহ্বান জানাবেন, তিনি সরকার গঠনে ব্যর্থ হলে (যা হবার সম্ভাবনা নেই বললেই চলে) তিনি লাপিদকে আহ্বান জানাবেন।

    
    Knesset ইসরাইলি সংসদ ভবন

    Israel’s right, left blocs in virtual dead heat as majority of votes tallied

    With some 95 percent of votes counted, Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu claimed 31 seats, Yesh Atid 19, Labor 15, Shas 11, Habayit Hayehudi 11, United Torah Judaism 7, Hatnuah 6, Meretz 6, United Arab List-Ta’al 5, Balad 3, and Kadima teetering on the verge of the electoral threshold with 2 seats.

    Hours after polls closed on Tuesday, and after some 95 percent of the votes were tallied, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed a mandate to third term as premier, but the battle between the country’s right- and left-wing blocs remained virtually in a dead heat.

    As voting ended Tuesday night, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu party garnered only 31 seats − compared to the 42 the two parties won in the last election in 2009 − prompting him to announce that he was already working toward forming “as broad a government as possible.”

    “I am proud to be your prime minister and I thank you for giving me the opportunity, for the third time, to lead the State of Israel,” Netanyahu said after midnight. “It is a great honor, but it is also a great responsibility. It is an opportunity to make changes that the citizens of Israel wish upon themselves and that will serve all the citizens of Israel. I intend on making those changes by forming the broadest coalition possible, and I have begun working toward that tonight.”

    Leading up to the election, polls had predicted a tight race between the left and right blocs, but by early Wednesday the former had 59 seats, and the latter 61.

    As of 4 A.M. Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu claimed 31 seats in the next Knesset. The count for the rest of the parties was as follows: Yesh Atid 19, Labor 15, Shas 11, Habayit Hayehudi 11, United Torah Judaism 7, Hatnuah 6, Meretz 6, United Arab List-Ta’al 5, Balad 3, and Kadima teetering on the verge of the electoral threshold with 2 seats.

    The final election results will only be submitted next Wednesday, which places some restraints on President Shimon Peres consulting party leaders about whom he should ask to form the next coalition. However, sources in the President’s Residence say he prefers not to wait that long and is likely to ask Netanyahu to form the next government by the end of this week.

    However, Labor Party leader Shelly Yacimovich said she had already initiated contacts aimed at forming a center-left bloc to prevent Netanyahu remaining prime minister.

    “I will do everything in my power − in fact, I have already got the wheels in motion − to create a coalition of parties with a shared social and economic agenda, which will also kick-start the peace process,” Yacimovich said. “We have an opportunity here that we cannot miss to liberate the citizens of Israel from the abuse of the Netanyahu government. Since the fate of Israeli society is hanging in the balance, we must act quickly, discretely and seriously.”

    In the biggest surprise of this election, the centrist Yesh Atid party, headed by political newcomer Yair Lapid, captured 19 seats, well above the forecasts. That positions Lapid to become either opposition leader or to seek a major cabinet post if he decides to join Netanyahu’s probable governing coalition.
    
    Meanwhile, the national religious Habayit Hayehudi party, headed by Naftali Bennett, the rising star of Israeli politics before Lapid stole his thunder, garnered 11 seats − on the low side compared with public opinion surveys.

    • 

      মাসুদ করিম - ২৪ জানুয়ারি ২০১৩ (১১:০২ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

      নির্বাচনী ফলাফলে চমক সৃষ্টি করা ইয়াইর লাপিদ একজন প্রাক্তন টিভি সাংবাদিক কাজেই মিডিয়ার সাথে তার একটা ঘনিষ্ঠতা আছেই, কিন্তু তার সাথে ঘনিষ্ঠতা আছে ইসরাইলের কিছু শীর্ষ ব্যবসায়ীরও। লাপিদের বন্ধুদের সম্বন্ধে জানা যাবে নিচের লেখায়।

      
      ইয়াইর লাপিদ

      Lapid’s friends in high places

      By Shuki Sadeh | Jan.24, 2013 | 3:45 AM

      Yair Lapid, the big surprise of election night, has friends in the media thanks to his long years in the field. But the chairman of the Yesh Atid party also has quite a few buddies at the top of the business world.

      One of those chums is Dani Tokatly, a multi-millionaire who tends to shun the spotlight. Tokatly’s family once owner the Israeli insurance company Arieh, which eventually merged with Klak Insurance. Tokatly himself got rich after making a particularly successful investment in the DSP Group, which creates chipsets for communications devices. Tokatly and Lapid have known each other for more than 30 years.

      Michal, Lapid’s late sister, was the best friend of Tokatly’s sister. Tokatly is one of the major investors in the international investment company Brack Capital, and Lapid is a good friend of one of its founders, Shimon Weintraub. Through Tokatly, Lapid is also friends with Zvi Limon, one of Tokatly’s associates in the investment fund Magnum and the only one of its founders to remain at the new fund, Magma.

      Another friend from the top of the business world is billionaire Arnon Milchan, one of the owners of Channel 10. In recent years Milchan returned to Israel after a long stint in Hollywood. The two met when Lapid interviewed Milchan in the 1990s, and Lapid even worked for a short time at Milchan’s television company in Los Angeles.

      Since then the two have kept up a close friendship, which includes sing-along nights at the Genki Club in Tel Aviv. From the long years spent working at the Channel 2 concessionaire Reshet, Lapid has retained his ties with Udi Angel, one of Reshet’s shareholders and the chairman of Ofer Shipping, and with Yohanan Tsangan, formerly Reshet’s CEO.

      Another friend is the veteran industrialist Dov Lautman, the former owner of Delta. Lautman, who is active alongside Lapid in Hakol Hinuch (The Movement for the Advancement of Education in Israel), acquainted Lapid with Rabbi Shai Piron three years ago. Piron is now No. 2 in Yesh Atid.

      Naturally, when preparations began for the election campaign, other friends of Lapid came to light. One is the high-tech entrepreneur and CEO of AT&T Israel, Hillel Kovrinski, who met Lapid about five years ago through mutual friends. He has been close to him since. Kovrinski recruited two professionals to work for Lapid: the party’s CEO Kobi Moisa, former CEO of the ACE and Mega Sport chains, and Yoram Baumann, one of the owners of the advertisement firm Baumann Ber Rivnay, who provides the party with strategic counseling.

      Lapid’s political consultant is Uri Shani, formerly the bureau chief of Ariel Sharon, CEO of real estate and infrastructures group Shikun & Binui, and manager of the business ventures of Arcadi Gaydamak. Unofficially, Lapid has a much more senior political consultant – former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who was a close friend of his late father Tommy Lapid, and maintains warm ties with the family to this day.

      Lapid is also close to the publisher of Yedioth Ahronoth Noni Mozes, in whose paper he worked as a columnist in the Shiva Yamim supplement before entering politics. Two-and-a-half weeks ago Mozes held a sumptuous farewell party for Lapid at the Crown Plaza hotel, although Lapid had already ceased writing in the paper three months earlier. The event was criticized for its proximity to Election Day.

      • 

        মাসুদ করিম - ২৬ জানুয়ারি ২০১৩ (২:৩৪ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

        Yair Lapid, Israeli political sensation

        By John Reed

        Long before becoming the matinee idol of Israeli politics, Yair Lapid used to end his television chat show with a quiz, always concluding with the same question: “What symbolises Israel for you?”

        Most guests responded with a cliché: Mediterranean beaches, say, or the peace of a Friday afternoon.

        But a few years ago, when Mr Lapid interviewed his late father, Tommy Lapid – another former journalist who headed a political party – he turned the question back on his son, replying: “You.”

        Liberal Israelis recalled this mawkish moment after Tuesday’s surprise election result, which confirmed the 49-year-old Mr Lapid as a secular, moderate, salon-worthy face for a country that many feared was heading inexorably towards becoming an ultranationalist, theocratic pariah state.

        Overseas, the emergence of his Yesh Atid (“There is a future”) party as the Knesset’s largest after Benjamin Netanyahu’s rightwing Likud Beitenu rekindled hopes that Israel will restart its shelved peace talks with the Palestinians.

        At home, Mr Lapid is a man many moderate voters see themselves in: the articulate, hard-working son of a Holocaust survivor. Before moving into television, he wrote newspaper columns, books and scripts, composed songs and acted in films. He has served as a commentator on boxing matches, and boxes himself.

        “Yair is a very ambitious, well-read, worldly and charming man, and my impression is that he fits in exactly to the desire of many Israelis to see in the centre stage of politics younger guys who look, talk and behave in a different way from the present typical representatives they watch every day on TV,” says Ehud Olmert, the former prime minister.

        Yesh Atid’s rise still leaves Mr Netanyahu as the head of the next coalition, but it means he must now accommodate the neglected political centre embodied by Mr Lapid – and offer him a senior role.

        Bigger jobs may lie ahead: 40 per cent of Israelis said in one survey this week they wanted him to become prime minister in four years. If Mr Netanyahu struggles to form a majority or pass a budget, the opportunity could come even sooner.

        Mr Lapid’s rise represents an electoral rebuke by the voters of Israel’s coastal, cosmopolitan, secular-minded cities to the rightists in Jerusalem and in the ultra-Orthodox Haredim communities and Jewish settlements of the West Bank.

        “The citizens of Israel today said no to the politics of fear and hatred,” Mr Lapid said in his speech after the vote confirmed Yesh Atid would hold 19 of the Knesset’s 120 seats. “They said no to extremists and they said no to anti-democratic behaviour.”

        But others in Israel view Mr Lapid as a political lightweight who will struggle to perform in the brawling world of Israeli politics. “He did well because he didn’t say much,” says Shlomo Avineri, professor of politics at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University.

        Israel has seen many centrist politicians rise and fall, including Mr Lapid’s father, whose militantly pro-secularist Shinui party vanished from the scene after serving in Ariel Sharon’s coalition government in the 2000s.

        Some view Mr Lapid’s rise coolly, seeing it as part of the global trend that gives celebrities the belief they can take leading roles in public affairs. “The whole election was like a reality show,” says Lior Averbach, media correspondent for Globes, the Israeli financial newspaper. “I’m not sure everybody who voted for Yair Lapid knew exactly what he stands for, but they liked the personality.”

        Yair Lapid was born in Tel Aviv in 1963 to Yosef (known as Tommy), whose family arrived from Hungary in 1948, and Shulamit Lapid, a well-known Israeli writer. Following in his parents’ footsteps, he took to print while in the army during national service, where he wrote colour pieces for BaMahane (“In the camp”), the Israel Defence Forces’ magazine. From there he parachuted into the paper where his father was a senior editor, Maariv. Colleagues remember him as a Hemingwayesque figure clad in black: boots, jeans, T-shirt. “He wasn’t a heavyweight,” recalls one. “He didn’t have any major contribution, but as the son of his father he was important.”

        His looks made him a natural for broadcasting, where he went from cable to Channel Two, Israel’s most-watched station, from 2008 reading the Friday evening news. He also became the face of Bank Hapoalim, Israel’s largest, raising eyebrows over potential conflicts of interest among (possibly jealous) colleagues who assumed he would enter politics. He told one he needed the money to care for his autistic daughter. Mr Lapid, who is on his second marriage, also has two sons.

        When Mr Netanyahu called early elections last year, Mr Lapid was ready. While the prime minister warned voters about security threats, Mr Lapid focused on issues closer to home: high housing costs, Israel’s outsized government, and a resentment against the Haredim, who are exempt from military service and often do not work.

        After Yesh Atid’s victory this week, Mr Netanyahu’s first call was to Mr Lapid, now a kingmaker. Analysts say he has strong cards to play but will need fortitude to defend “red lines” on issues dear to his constituency: a law requiring military service for the Haredim and, possibly, the revival of talks with the Palestinians.

        While the second issue receives more attention overseas, the first is much more sensitive in Israel. Mr Lapid has insisted he will not serve as a fig leaf for a rightwing government beholden to orthodox religious parties. At the same time, he is taking a more conciliatory role on the issue than his father.

        Supporters are cheering him on, and betting he will succeed where the elder Mr Lapid failed.

        “Yair sees himself as the guy who will do what his father wanted to, but the next generation,” says Ben Caspit, a columnist and broadcaster and former colleague of Mr Lapid. “He’s like the iPhone 5 – he’s a lot more sophisticated.”

    • 

      মাসুদ করিম - ৩১ জানুয়ারি ২০১৩ (১১:৪৩ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

      ইয়াইর লাপিদের ইয়েশ আতিদ পার্টি আনুষ্ঠানিকভাবে বেনইয়ামিন নেতানিয়াহুর লিকুদ-ইসরায়েল বাইতাইনু জোটের সরকার গঠনের প্রতি সমর্থন জানিয়েছে, অবশ্য ইয়াইর লাপিদের দল এই সরকারের মন্ত্রীত্ব গ্রহণ করবে না এবং এই সরকারকে ইসরাইল-ফিলিস্তিন শান্তি আলোচনা অবিলম্বে শুরু করতে হবে — এটাই নেতানিয়াহুর প্রধানমন্ত্রীত্ব সমর্থনে ইয়াইর লাপিদের শর্ত। কাজেই এখন শুধু অপেক্ষা এই শর্ত মেনে লিকুদ-ইসরায়েল বাইতাইনু জোটের সাথে ইয়েশ আতিদের সমর্থনে সরকার গঠন হয় কি না।

      Coalition talks begin, with Peres expected to choose Netanyahu to form government

      Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party on Wednesday formally announced its support of Benjamin Netanyahu as the next prime minister, but warned that it wouldn’t sit in a government that includes ministers without portfolio.

      Combined with Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu’s 31 MKs, this means 50 MKs have so far told President Shimon Peres that they want Netanyahu to form the next government. Peres began formally consulting with all the parties after the election results were officially certified on Wednesday, starting from the largest and proceeding to the smallest. He plans to finish his consultations on Thursday.

      The party leader with the most support will be tasked with forming a government, most likely on Friday. But the outcome isn’t seriously in doubt: Netanyahu is expected to receive support from 83 MKs, while his opponents have said they don’t plan to recommend an alternative candidate.

      As the largest ticket in the election, Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu was the first to meet with Peres. “The election results are clear. We are striving for a broad and stable government,” said Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar of Likud.

      The delegation from the two parties, which ran a joint slate, also included Environmental Protection Minister Gilad Erdan and MK Zeev Elkin for Likud and MKs David Rotem and Robert Ilatov of Yisrael Beiteinu. In a departure from the usual protocol, whereby the head of the party meets with the president for this consultation, neither Netanyahu, the Likud chairman, nor Yisrael Beiteinu chairman Avigdor Lieberman attended Wednesday’s meeting.

      The Yesh Atid delegation was next, led by Lapid. It recommended Netanyahu for prime minister  and despite all the pre-election talk from other center-left parties about forming a united bloc, it now seems, based on the explanation he gave, that Lapid never seriously considered any other option.

      “Yesh Atid’s platform states that the head of the largest party should be prime minister,” he told Peres. “Netanyahu is the head of the largest party and we are recommending him for prime minister.

      “We meant this when we wrote it; it’s the right thing [to do],” he added later. “In my view, this is the new politics, which doesn’t deal with what’s good for the party, but with what’s good for the state.”

      Nevertheless, Lapid stressed that he’s still far from joining Netanyahu’s government.

      “What Israel needs is a government that doesn’t include ministers without portfolio, that will bring about equality in bearing the burden [of military service] and will return to the table of diplomatic negotiations,” he said.

      This is the first time he has publicly mentioned renewed Israeli-Palestinian talks as one of his conditions for joining the coalition.

19. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ২৩ জানুয়ারি ২০১৩ (১০:৩২ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    ভারতের সাথে বাংলাদেশের সমুদ্রসীমা নিয়ে দাবির জবাব চূড়ান্ত করেছে বাংলাদেশ এবং হল্যান্ডের হেগের সালিশ সংক্রান্ত স্থায়ী আদালতে ৩১ জানুয়ারি ২০১৩তে তা পেশ করা হবে। এর আগে ভারত বাংলাদেশের দাবিনামার পরিপ্রেক্ষিতে গত জুলাইয়ে তাদের প্রতিদাবিনামা পেশ করেছিল। ভারতের সেই প্রতিদাবিনামার পাল্টা জবাব হচ্ছে এবারের চূড়ান্ত দাবিনামা। ভারত ও বাংলাদেশের মধ্যে সমুদ্রসীমা নিয়ে মামলার রায় হবে ২০১৪ সালের জুনে।

    সমুদ্রসীমা নিয়ে ভারতের দাবির জবাব চূড়ান্ত করেছে বাংলাদেশ

    সমুদ্রসীমা নিয়ে ভারতের দাবির জবাব প্রায় চূড়ান্ত করেছে বাংলাদেশ। আগামী ৩১ জানুয়ারি নেদারল্যান্ডসের হেগে সালিশ সংক্রান্ত স্থায়ী আদালতে বাংলাদেশ জবাব জমা দেবে। জবাবে বাংলাদেশ ভারতের দাবি করা সমদূরত্ব পদ্ধতির বিরুদ্ধে লিখিত যুক্তি তুলে ধরবে। বাংলাদেশ মনে করে, বাংলাদেশের উপকূলীয় রেখা অবতল আকৃতির হওয়ায় ন্যায্যতার ভিত্তিতে সমুদ্রসীমা নির্ধারণ করা প্রয়োজন।
    বিষয়টি সম্পর্কে পররাষ্ট্র মন্ত্রণালয়ের সমুদ্রসীমা সংক্রান্ত অনুবিভাগের প্রধান অতিরিক্ত পররাষ্ট্র সচিব রিয়ার অ্যাডমিরাল (অব.) খুরশেদ আলম সমকালকে বলেন, ‘সালিশ আদালতে লিখিত জবাব দেওয়ার জন্য আমাদের প্রস্তুতি রয়েছে। নির্ধারিত সময়সীমার মধ্যেই জবাব দেওয়া হবে’। তিনি আশা প্রকাশ করেন, ২০১৪ সালের জুনের মধ্যে ভারতের সঙ্গে বাংলাদেশের সমুদ্রসীমার রায় পাওয়া যাবে।
    ভারতের সঙ্গে সমুদ্রসীমা ইস্যুতে বাংলাদেশ ২০১১ সালের ৩১ মে দাবিনামা (মেমোরিয়াল) জমা দেয়। এর পরিপ্রেক্ষিতে গত বছরের জুলাইয়ে লিখিত জবাব (কাউন্টার মেমোরিয়াল) দিয়েছে ভারত। এখন ভারতের ওই দাবির পাল্টা জবাব জমা দিতে যাচ্ছে বাংলাদেশ।
    মিয়ানমারের সঙ্গে সমুদ্রসীমা নির্ধারণের সময় ‘ন্যায্যতা’ ভিত্তি ধরে সীমানা নির্ধারণের বাংলাদেশের দাবির যৌক্তিকতা মেনে নিয়েছিল ‘ইন্টারন্যাশনাল ট্রাইব্যুনাল ফর দ্য ল অব দ্য সি’ (ইটলস)। ফলে একই নীতি মেনে ভারতের সঙ্গে সমুদ্রসীমা নির্ধারণের ক্ষেত্রেও বাংলাদেশের পক্ষে রায় আসবে বলে আশা প্রকাশ করা হচ্ছে। যদিও ভারতের সঙ্গে সমুদ্রসীমা নির্ধারণের মামলা ইটলসে নিষ্পত্তি হচ্ছে না।
    কূটনৈতিক সূত্রে জানা গেছে, সালিশ সংক্রান্ত স্থায়ী আদালতে এবারের মামলা পরিচালিত হলেও এখানেও পাঁচ সদস্য বিশিষ্ট বিচারক প্যানেলে ইটলসের তিনজন বিচারক অন্তর্ভুক্ত রয়েছেন। এই তিন বিচারক ইতিপূর্বে মিয়ানমারের সঙ্গে বাংলাদেশের সমুদ্রসীমা নির্ধারণী রায় দিয়েছিলেন। ফলে তাদের এই রায়ে নতুন কোনো নীতি অনুসরণের সুযোগ নেই। বাংলাদেশ ও ভারত উভয় দেশ মিলিতভাবে পাঁচ সদস্যবিশিষ্ট বিচারক প্যানেল নির্বাচন করেছে। সালিশ সংক্রান্ত স্থায়ী আদালতে অপর দু’জন বিচারক অবশ্য
    ইটলসে বাংলাদেশের মামলা পরিচালনার দায়িত্বে ছিলেন না।
    কর্মকর্তারা বলছেন, বাংলাদেশের উপকূল অবতল হওয়ায় বঙ্গোপসাগরের অনেক অঞ্চল দেশের ভূখণ্ডের অভ্যন্তরে প্রবেশ করেছে। এই ভূখণ্ড থেকে বিপুল পরিমাণ পলিমাটি সাগরে পড়ছে। এ ধরনের উপকূলের ক্ষেত্রে সমদূরত্ব পদ্ধতি যৌক্তিক নয়। এ ধরনের উপকূলের ক্ষেত্রে জার্মানির সমুদ্রসীমা নির্ধারণের একটি মামলায় ন্যায্যতার নীতি অনুসরণ করা হয়েছে। মিয়ানমারের সঙ্গে বাংলাদেশের সমুদ্র অঞ্চল নির্ধারণে এই নীতি আরেকবার গৃহীত হলো। ন্যায্যতার নীতি অনুসরণ করা হলে উপকূলের মৎস্যজীবীসহ ঘনবসতিপূর্ণ জনবসতির আনুপাতিক সীমানা নির্ধারণ সম্ভব হবে।

20. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ২৩ জানুয়ারি ২০১৩ (১০:৩৯ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    ফিলিপাইন বাংলাদেশের পথে, তার সমুদ্রসীমা নিয়ে চীনের সাথে বিরোধ নিষ্পত্তিতে জাতিসংঘের ট্রাইবুনালে যাচ্ছে।

    The Philippines plans to challenge China’s maritime claims before a United Nations-endorsed tribunal, a move that may raise tensions as the two nations vie for oil, gas and fish resources in contested waters.

    “The Philippines has exhausted almost all political and diplomatic avenues for a peaceful negotiated settlement of its maritime dispute with China,” Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario told reporters in Manila yesterday. “To this day, a solution is elusive. We hope the arbitral proceedings shall bring this dispute to a durable solution.”

    The Philippines is challenging China’s “nine-dash” map of the sea, first published in 1947, that extends hundreds of miles south from China’s Hainan Island to the equatorial waters off the coast of Borneo. China claims “indisputable sovereignty” over more than 100 small islands, atolls and reefs that form the Paracel and Spratly Islands.

    China’s assertiveness in disputed waters has raised tensions throughout Asia and generated concern among U.S. officials over access to the South China Sea, where its navy has patrolled since World War II. Vietnam and the Philippines reject China’s map of the waters as a basis for joint development of oil and gas.

    বিস্তারিত পড়ুন : Philippines Challenges China Maritime Claims at UN Tribunal।

21. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ২৫ জানুয়ারি ২০১৩ (৪:১৫ অপরাহ্ণ)

    বার্মায় বেকারত্বের হার ৪০%, এতটুকু পর্যন্ত খবরটা বার্মার জন্য উদ্বেগের, কিন্তু এর মধ্যে সবচেয়ে বেশি বেকারত্ব বিরাজ করছে বার্মার চিন (৭৩%) ও রাখাইন (৪৪%) প্রদেশে — এখবরটা বাংলাদেশের জন্যও উদ্বেগের কারণ বার্মার এদুটি প্রদেশের সাথেই বাংলাদেশের সীমান্ত আছে। কাজেই বার্মার অর্থনৈতিক উন্মুক্ততায় ও রাজনৈতিক আশা-আকাঙ্ক্ষায় বাংলাদেশেরও জোরালো ভূমিকা রাখা উচিত।

    
    ভাড়ার অপেক্ষা, রেঙ্গুনে

    Nearly 40% unemployment in Myanmar
    

    Myanmar’s first ever nationwide survey of income and employment has revealed that unemployment in the country is as high as 37% – with more than a quarter of its 60 million people living in poverty.

    A Myanmar parliamentary planning and finance development committee has made sections of the survey available to the public, following a discussion of its findings at the Lower House last week, according to Eleven Media.

    The highest rates of poverty were found in Chin State (73%), Rakhine State (44%) and Shan State (33%).

    Sixteen percent of Yangon households were reported to be living in poverty.

    The committee’s chairman, MP Soe Tha, did not say what criteria were used to define poverty, but said the survey provided impetus for the government to reduce it.

    Mr Soe added that the poverty rates corresponded to unemployment rates, and that the survey reinforced the need to create more jobs.

    Thailand is home to around a million migrant workers from Myanmar, according to Labour Ministrty figures. Activists say the figure is probably closer to two million, due to high numbers of undocumented workers, mainly in low-paying jobs in the construction, fishing and service industries.

22. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ২৬ জানুয়ারি ২০১৩ (২:৩৬ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    ব্রাজিলের রাষ্ট্রদূত হিসেবে যোগ দিলেন শামীম

    শুক্রবার পররাষ্ট্র মন্ত্রণালয়ের এক সংবাদ বিজ্ঞপ্তিতে বলা হয়, শামীম আহসান গত ২৩ জানুয়ারি রাজধানী ব্রাসিলিয়ায় প্রেসিডেন্টের দপ্তরে আনুষ্ঠানিকভাবে পরিচয়পত্র তুলে ধরেন।

    এ সময় তিনি প্রেসিডেন্ট রৌসেফের কাছে বাংলাদেশের রাষ্ট্রপতি ও প্রধানমন্ত্রীর শুভেচ্ছা বার্তা পৌঁছে দেন।

    ব্রাজিলের প্রেসিডেন্ট দারিদ্র্য নিরসনে বাংলাদেশ সরকারের পদক্ষেপের প্রশংসা করেন এবং দুই দেশের মধ্যকার সুসম্পর্কে সন্তোষ প্রকাশ করেন।

    সংবাদ বিজ্ঞপ্তিতে বলা হয়, প্রেসিডেন্টের দপ্তরে পৌঁছানোর পর রাষ্ট্রদূত শামীম আহসানকে গার্ড অফ অনার দেয়া হয়।

    প্রেসিডেন্টের কার্যালয়ে ওই অনুষ্ঠানে অন্যদের মধ্যে ব্রাজিলের পররাষ্ট্রমন্ত্রী অ্যান্তোনিও ডি আগুয়ার পাত্রিয়োতা এবং প্রেসিডেন্টের পররাষ্ট্র বিষয়ক উপদেষ্টা মারকো অরেলিয়ো গার্সিয়া উপস্থিত ছিলেন।

    প্রায় এক দশক পর ২০১০ সালে ঢাকায় ব্রাজিলের দূতাবাস পুনরায় চালু হওয়ার পর সম্প্রতি দেশটিতে কূটনৈতিক মিশন চালু করে বাংলাদেশ।

    সাম্প্রতিক বছরগুলোতে ব্রাজিল ও বাংলাদেশের বার্ষিক দ্বিপক্ষীয় বাণিজ্যের পরিমাণ ৭০ কোটি ডলার ছাড়িয়েছে।

    সহযোগিতার নতুন ক্ষেত্র উন্মোচন এবং বাণিজ্য ও অর্থনৈতিক সম্পর্ক বৃদ্ধির লক্ষ্যে ব্রাজিলে দূতাবাসা চালু করা হয় বলে সরকারের পক্ষ থেকে বলা হয়েছে।

    স্বল্পন্নোত দেশ হিসেবে কম শুল্কে তৈরি পোশাক রপ্তানির পাশাপাশি ব্রাজিলের কফি শিল্পের জন্য সেখানে পাটজাত পণ্য রপ্তানিরও আশা করা হচ্ছে। এছাড়া কৃষি গবেষণা, বীজ উৎপাদন ও খাদ্য প্রক্রিয়াজাতকরণের মতো ক্ষেত্রগুলোতে সহযোগিতামূলক সম্পর্কও চালু করতে চায় বাংলাদেশ।

    বাংলাদেশ সিভিল সার্ভিসের ১৯৮৪ ব্যাচের কর্মকর্তা শামীম আহসান এর আগে ব্রুনেই দারুসসালামে বাংলাদেশের হাই কমিশনার হিসেবে দায়িত্ব পালন করেন।

    তার আগে ইরানে বাংলাদেশের রাষ্ট্রদূত হিসেবেও দায়িত্ব পালন করেন তিনি।

    এছাড়া নয়া দিল্লিতে বাংলাদেশ হাই কমিশন এবং জাতিসংঘে বাংলাদেশের স্থায়ী মিশনে বিভিন্ন পদে দায়িত্ব পালন করেছেন শামীম আহসান।

23. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ২৬ জানুয়ারি ২০১৩ (৩:০৫ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    

    World’s oldest portrait reveals the ice-age mind

    Twenty-six thousand years ago in the Czech Republic, one of our ice-age ancestors selected a hunk of mammoth ivory and carved this enigmatic portrait of a woman – the oldest ever found. By looking at artefacts like this as works of art, rather than archaeological finds, a new exhibition at the British Museum in London hopes to help us see them and their creators with new eyes.

    Human ancestors date back millions of years, but the earliest evidence of the human mind producing symbolic imagery as a form of creative expression cannot be much older than 100,000 years. That evidence comes from Africa: this exhibition explores the later dawning of representative art in Europe and shows that even before the remarkable paintings of the Lascaux cave, France, humans were able to make work as subtle as the expressive face above.

    “By looking at the oldest European sculptures and drawings we are looking at the deep history of how our brains began to store, transform and communicate ideas as visual images,” says Jill Cook, the show’s curator. “The exhibition will show that we can recognise and appreciate these images. Even if their messages and intentions are lost to us, the skill and artistry will still astonish the viewer.”

    Cook points to a figurative 23,000-year-old mammoth ivory sculpture from Lespugue, France, which is also in the exhibition. It so fascinated Pablo Picasso with its cubist qualities that he kept two copies of it. “This figure demonstrates a visual brain capable of abstraction, the essential quality needed to acquire and manipulate knowledge which underpins our ability to analyse what we see,” says Cook.

    Ice Age Art: Arrival of the modern mind runs at the British Museum, London, from 7 February to 26 May

24. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ২৭ জানুয়ারি ২০১৩ (১২:৩৩ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    ক্যান্সার আক্রান্ত হুগো শাভেজের গত বছরের ডিসেম্বরের ১১ তারিখের অপারেশনের পর শ্বাস-প্রশ্বাসের সমস্যার সমাধানের জন্য এখন একটা ভিন্ন কোর্সের সম্পূরক চিকিৎসা শুরু করেছে ডাক্তাররা। কী হবে সেটা পরে দেখা যাবে, আপাতত ভেনেজুয়েলার ভাইস প্রেসিডেন্ট আমাদের এই খবরটাই জানিয়ে আশ্বস্ত করতে চাচ্ছেন।

    

    Chavez Begins New Treatment Course – Vice President

    Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez, recuperating in Cuba after surgery for cancer, has started an additional course of treatment, Vice President Nicolas Maduro said on Friday.

    “The Comandante [Chavez] is now undergoing a supplementary course of treatment to help him fight this illness,” Maduro was quoted by local media as saying.

    On his return from Cuba, Maduro told journalists that Chavez says that he is feeling much better than he has done since undergoing surgery; he is smiling, optimistic, and believes the treatment will work.

    Chavez also gave Maduro several addresses to deliver, including one to the Venezuelan people, which the Vice President read out.

    “Do not drop your guard in the face of the continuing conspiracy of imperialist and rightist forces,” Maduro quoted Chavez as saying. The Venezuelan leader also called on the people to fight the lies allegedly spread by the opposition.

    Local media also reported that Maduro would read Chavez’s address to the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) summit, which opens on Sunday in the Chilean capital Santiago.

    Chavez, 58, who has ruled Venezuela for 13 years, has had four operations for cancer and four courses of chemotherapy in Cuba and Venezuela within a year. His fourth operation, to remove cancerous tissue, took place in Cuba on December 11.

    His inauguration was slated for January 11, but he was unable to attend due to health reasons. On January 9, Venezuela’s Supreme Court ruled to postpone Chavez’s inauguration until he has completed his latest round of treatment.

    According to the latest official reports, Chavez has been having treatment for ”respiratory deficiency” after complications from a severe lung infection.

25. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ২৮ জানুয়ারি ২০১৩ (১০:২২ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    অ্যামোস ওজ ও অ্যামোস ওজের মেয়ে ফানিয়া ওজ-সালজবার্জার ইহুদি জাতিসত্তা নিয়ে একটি নতুন বই লিখেছেন, Jews and Words, এই বইয়ের রিভিউ পড়ুন।

    
    অ্যামোস ওজ

    Reading between the lines: How Amos Oz views Jewish identity

    By Gerald Sorin

    Jews and Words, by Amos Oz and Fania Oz-Salzberger
    Yale University Press, 232 pages, $25

    A lively, often charming combination of history, mythical narrative, illuminating literary analyses, and jokes, this book of “conversational essays” between father and daughter gives us a particular overview of how two self-described Jewish atheists’ approach and interpret what it means to call oneself a Jew. Although “Jews and Words” is described as a dialogue, sometimes “argumentative,” between Amos Oz, the internationally renowned Israeli novelist and his daughter Fania Oz-Salzberger, an accomplished professor of history and philosophy at the University of Haifa, I never discerned any distinct difference in their views, only one between the authors and Orthodox Jews in Israel, whom the Ozes imply want to read both of them out of the Jewish community by reducing Judaism to religion only.

    Paraphrasing the medieval rabbi and philosopher Saadia Gaon, who said that Jews were a nation by virtue of the Torah, the authors claim that a nation is a nation only by virtue of its texts. The Jews were a people not because we thought or believed “so and so.” Instead, “we were a people because we read so and so.” Or as they put it repeatedly, ancient Israel was a fully developed, literate, political and legal civilization, not a mere grouping of “co-religionists.” In this elaborate culture, words counted most, and “God” was only one of them.

    That Jews and words are inextricably intertwined is well known. Jews talk a lot and they are disputatious. From the time of Abraham they not only argued among themselves, but as the Torah, Talmud and oral tradition suggest, they had scholarly debates even with the Almighty. I don’t know who did the counting, but the authors note tellingly that verbs signifying “speak,” “say” or “talk” appear more than 6,000 times in the Hebrew Bible, whereas the verbs “make” or “do” show up fewer than 2,000 times.

    “Ours is not a bloodline,” father and daughter write, and while both in passing demonstrate respect for faith, they insist that the “line” is not religious either. It is, instead, a “text line” beginning with the Torah and running through the Mishnah, Talmud and “innumerable other books” (rarely named) that were the Torah’s progeny. Though the Ozes describe ancient Jewish literature, with its “sophisticated sense of parable and symbol,” as “breathtaking” and “splendid,” they declare much in that literature irrelevant or downright harmful to life in the modern world. They therefore reserve the right to pick and choose from it – to sweep those things they judge regressive and worse into the dustbin of history, while saving what they see as supportive of the quest for freedom, social justice and individual importance, even self-importance, although individualism, they say, should always be strongly connected to community and communal obligation. They like John Donne’s line that no man is an island unto himself, but go further, saying Jews are better represented as a peninsula, a distinct particularity attached to a larger reality.

    Amos Oz told National Public Radio host Scott Simon during a recent interview about “Jews and Words” that he and his daughter Fania regard Judaism not as a religion only or even primarily, but as a civilization, as a heritage much more than a faith-based belief system. “The heritage,” Oz said, “contains first and foremost books [and] texts, and religion is only one of the components.” For thousands of years we Jews, he said, had nothing but books, and these were always discussed, surely more often than God, around the family table.

    Mel Brooks and Michael Chabon

    Throughout “Jews and Words,” it is argued, often lyrically and always with great erudition and scriptural literacy, that Jewish people form a unique continuum based on words. “We are not about stones, clans, or chromosomes,” the Ozes say. We don’t know about God, they tell us, but Jewish continuity was always paved with words and texts. Sometimes it seems that the authors mean texts that are at least indirectly linked to ancient Jewish literature; but often they talk about all and any “Jewish” texts, including secular speeches, plays, poems and even verbal jokes (unfortunately often stale ones). Though they never say so explicitly, surely they must mean that both “sacred” and secular texts are on the Jewish continuum. S.Y. Agnon and Woody Allen, for example, are alluded to, by virtue of their devotion to words, as are Mel Brooks and Michael Chabon. Moreover, Oz, in his interview on NPR, agreed with his host’s reflection that “there is a direct line between Moses and Alan Dershowitz.”

    But then what does it mean when father and daughter say that many Jewish writers of traditional upbringing, including Freud, Kafka, Saul Bellow and Bernard Malamud, upon confronting the temptations of modern existence, tried unsuccessfully to live in two worlds at once, but instead suffered an “irreplaceable amputation” and fell off the Jewish continuum? Do they mean to say that Mel Brooks and Michael Chabon are part of the all-important “text line” that illuminates so much of Jewish history, but that Kafka and Malamud, et al, all masters of text who struggled with the question of Jewish identity, are not? This is never made fully clear.

    Nor were things made any less ambiguous during the interview on NPR. Fania Oz-Salzberger told her host and the radio audience that the Jewish continuum is based on what she calls a “Jewish intertextuality” generated from the early religious books, and that she and her father and other “atheists of the book” feel entitled to be “lovingly selective” from within that intertextuality. But to be selective, lovingly or otherwise, presupposes scriptural literacy. Odds are, however, that typical non-observant Jews (outside the world of scholars and the literati) rarely read or think about the Bible or the Talmud or anything else in the “text line” of which the Ozes are so fond. Yet, as Fania put it, the Ozes “strongly believe that our children and their children after them, in their own universe, be it Facebook or Twitter,” will continue talking about books. Let’s hope so.

    I, like Amos Oz and Fania Oz-Salzberger, while not an antitheist a la Richard Dawkins, am no believer in an anthropomorphic, transcendental, interventionist God who inspired the writing of sacred texts, parts of which cannot be ignored for fear of some form of divine retribution. But I have been director of a university Jewish studies program, president of my Reconstructionist synagogue, and an adult student in classes on Hebrew scripture. And so I, too, like the Ozes, want to reclaim the legacy of Jewish culture, and refuse to have my form of Judaism dismissed by Orthodox Jews. Again, like the authors of “Jews and Words,” I am a political liberal, a believer in community, the social contract (covenant, if you will), and elementary fairness and justice. And I, like them, think I came by these values in part by saturation in Jewish tradition.

    Moral and ethical values and obligations of Jews, including the liberal values held by the Ozes, do not necessarily wither when detached from the Jewish religious roots that nurtured them, but the authors of “Jews and Words” do not really tell us whether these values retain a unique, or at the very least distinct, Jewish flavor without some substantial knowledge, not just of any books, even those defined as “Jewish,” but of Jewish religious texts and history. They certainly don’t make things any clearer when they write, “Try to replace the word Jew in this book with reader. In many places you’d be surprised how well it works.”

    Things get even murkier when they say that to trace and substantiate the Jewish continuum, “you don’t have to be an observant Jew. You don’t even have to be a Jew. Or for that matter, an anti-Semite. All you have to be is a reader.” Now, by the logic of Maimonides, who learned much from Aristotle, could it not be said that if to be a Jew all you have to be is a reader, that an anti-Semitic reader (especially one who reads to trace the Jewish continuum) is a Jew, or at least could be? Well, perhaps. Because late in their book the authors say that a Jew is anyone who wrestles with the question, “Who is a Jew?” Jean Paul Sartre, not in any way a Jew, involved himself in that age-old chestnut in the 1940s, and many anti-Semites have as well.

    But sprinkled throughout the book are hints that not any reader is (or can be) a Jew. Even if most societies have “cherished the imperative of intergenerational storytelling,” there is, the Ozes claim, a unique Jewish dimension to the universal passing of the torch from old to young with words and texts. They affirmatively quote Mordecai Kaplan, who wrote, “No ancient civilization can offer a parallel comparable in intensity with Judaism’s insistence upon teaching the young and inculcating in them the traditions and customs of their people.” Is such a generalization fair to other cultures? The Ozes admit they don’t know. But they do know that Jewish boys “were put in touch with the written word at a staggeringly young age.”

    More important in regard to Jewish uniqueness, the authors claim in this book that some things are “untranslatable.” The “granite splendor of Hebrew and the coarse spice of Yiddish can never become universal flavors.” Maybe not. But where does that leave those millions of Jews who neither read nor write Hebrew or Yiddish, or even those many thousands who will have read “Jews and Words” in the original English. Struggling still, I suspect, with questions about their Jewish identity.

    Gerald Sorin, a professor of American and Jewish studies at the State University of New York, New Paltz, is author of the newly published “Howard Fast: Life and Literature in the Left Lane” (Indiana University Press), winner of the National Jewish Book Award.

26. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ২৮ জানুয়ারি ২০১৩ (১১:০৩ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    ভারতের কাশ্মিরের বিচ্ছিন্নতাবাদী সংগটন হুরিয়াতের শীর্ষনেতারা সম্প্রতি পাকিস্তান সফর করে পাকিস্তানের সেনাবাহিনী প্রধান, আইএসআই প্রধান, দুটি ইসলামি জঙ্গিদলের প্রধান ও মুসলিম লিগের নেওয়াজ শরীফ ও তেহেরিক-ই-ইনসাফের ইমরান খানের সাথে আলোচনা সেরে এসেছেন। বার্তা মূলত পেয়েছেন, ভারত সরকারের সাথে বিচ্ছিন্নতাবাদীরা যেন এখন কোনো আলোচনা না করেন, এবছরটা পাকিস্তানের আভ্যন্তরীন রাজনীতির খুব গুরুত্বপূর্ণ সময় — সেনাবাহিনী প্রধান কায়ানির মেয়াদ শেষ হচ্ছে সেপ্টেম্বরে, সংসদ নির্বাচনও হওয়ার কথা রয়েছে এবছর, আর সবচেয়ে বড় কথা আমেরিকান সৈন্যের এক বিশাল বহর আফগানিস্তান ত্যাগ করবে এবছর, তাই এবছর আলাপ আলোচনার ধারে কাছে না গিয়ে ভারতের কেন্দ্রীয় সরকারের সাথে নানান তালবাহানা করে ২০১৩ পার করে দেয়ার লক্ষ্য একরকম নির্ধারিত হয়ে গেছে হুরিয়োতের। খুবই আগ্রহোদ্দীপক কিন্তু হুরিয়াতের সফরে এদলের নেতারা পাকিস্তানে যাদের সাথে আলাপ আলোচনা করেছেন তাদের তালিকাটা।

    Signals from Pak to Hurriyat: Avoid talks

    The Hurriyat leaders have come back from Pakistan with “advice” from the Pak Army to not start any direct negotiations with the Indian government for at least another year, signalling the onset of a season of mixed signals from across the border.

    The seven-member delegation of Kashmiri separatist leaders led by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, chairman of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, had detailed discussions on this with both Pakistani Army Chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani as well as ISI DG Lt Gen Zahir-ul-Islam during their visit last month.

    It’s learnt that the Kashmiri separatists pushed for a role in the ongoing talks between the two countries, urging the Pakistan Army to go back to former Pakistan president Gen Pervez Musharraf’s four-point formula. However, sources said, neither Kayani nor his ISI chief were enthused by the suggestion and while they were supportive of the current dialogue process, there was no indication of how they intended to proceed on the Kashmir issue.

    At one point, the separatist leaders brought up the feelers coming from New Delhi to start talks with these Kashmiri groups within a domestic framework. The advice on this was in the negative.

    The message was clear that Rawalpindi did not see this as an opportune time for investing energy on Kashmir, especially because a lot is expected this year in both domestic politics and on the Af-Pak front as US troops plan their withdrawal from the region.

    The delegation also met LeT’s Hafiz Muhammad Saeed and Hizbul Mujahideen’s Syed Salahuddin, both wanted for terror attacks in India. Saeed is said to have made it clear that use of violence was the only way to resolve the Kashmir issue. However, sources said, they too gave the impression of “lying low” this year.

    In contrast, the meetings with Pakistan’s political parties were far more positive. Parties across the board impressed on the separatists that dialogue was the only way forward, indicating that Hurriyat too should invest in the effort. PML(N) leader and former Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif told them that he had laid an excellent foundation for this through the Lahore Declaration in February 1999, but the Army under Gen Musharraf had sabotaged it by staging Kargil.

    The most accommodating was cricketer-turned politician Imran Khan. He is believed to have told the delegation that they could frame their demands and give it to him, which he promised to reflect verbatim in his manifesto. In other words, he told the separatist leaders that their formulation would be his party’s position.

    But the larger message was not lost on the Hurriyat leaders: no direct channel with the Indian government for, at least, a year. This, insiders said, has also got New Delhi thinking that there is more than what meets the eye in this election year for Pakistan. Kayani, it may be noted, also finishes his term in September this year.

27. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ২৮ জানুয়ারি ২০১৩ (৬:১১ অপরাহ্ণ)

    ২০১৬ সালে আমেরিকার রাষ্ট্রপতি নির্বাচনে ডেমোক্রেট প্রার্থী হতে পারেন হিলারি ক্লিনটন, এটা আজ আরো জোরালো হল, সিবিএস-এর সাখে ওবামা-ক্লিনটনের জোড়া সাক্ষাৎকারের মতো বিরল ঘটনায়। সাধারণত আমেরিকার নিয়ম অনুযায়ী ভাইস-প্রেসিডেন্টই পরবর্তী নির্বাচনে দলের মূল প্রার্থী বিবেচিত হন, কিন্তু তখন জো বিডেনের বয়স হবে ৭৩ বছর, ওই বয়সে প্রতিদ্বন্দ্বিতায় যাবেন বিডেন? অবশ্য তখন হিলারির বয়সও কম হবে না, ৬৯, ততদিন থাকবেন আজকের মতো ‘রকস্টার’? এসব সময়ের উত্তর সময়ই দেবে, আমরা শুধু বুঝতে পারছি এই সাক্ষাৎকার অনেকটা পূর্বাভাস, সবকিছু ঠিক থাকলে ওবামা তার মেয়াদ শেষে হিলারির রাষ্ট্রপতি পদপ্রার্থীতার সমর্থন করবেন।

    

    WITH only days left until she steps down as America’s top diplomat, Hillary Clinton has left the door open to a possible future run in the 2016 presidential elections.

    And, in a rare joint interview with CBS, she appeared to win the endorsement of none other than President Barack Obama, the man who beat her in the 2008 race to be the Democratic Party’s nominee.

    For months, 65-year-old Ms Clinton has insisted that after more than two decades in the political spotlight she intends to step back into the shadows, catch up on some rest and enjoy some downtime for a change.

    But with her popularity riding high – at around 65 per cent according to a Washington Post-ABC poll last week – many believe she will bounce back to take another shot at being the nation’s first woman president in 2016.

    “I am still secretary of state. So I’m out of politics,” Ms Clinton told CBS television’s 60 Minutes carefully, leaving herself the option of reviving her career once she leaves government.

    A woman who has devoted much of her life to public service, as first lady and as a New York senator, she stressed she still cared “deeply about what’s going to happen for our country in the future.”

    Ms Clinton said neither Mr Obama nor “I can make predictions about what’s going to happen tomorrow or the next year,” in comments bound to rekindle speculation that she could be preparing a 2016 run.

    “What we’ve tried to do over the last four years is get up every day, have a clear eyed view of what’s going on in the world. And I’m really proud of where we are,” she added.

    Mr Obama did nothing to dampen speculation, heaping praise on Clinton and saying he believed she “will go down as one of the finest secretaries of state we’ve had.”

    “It has been a great collaboration over the last four years. I’m going to miss her,” he added, saying he wished she was staying on.

    “I want the country to appreciate just what an extraordinary role she’s played during the course of my administration and a lot of the successes we’ve had internationally because of her hard work,” Mr Obama added.

    The joint sit-down interview, which was filmed at the White House, was apparently Mr Obama’s idea, and some observers saw it as an early endorsement should she choose to run for president in 2016.

    Mr Obama will have to stand down after serving the statutory maximum of two terms, but his endorsement is likely to give any candidate a big boost.

    Often the vice president becomes the natural choice as the incumbent party’s presidential nominee. It is not clear yet if Vice President Joe Biden will make a tilt for the White House, but he will be 73 years old come 2016.

    Mr Obama hailed Ms Clinton for having been one of his “most important advisers,” saying she had established “a standard in terms of professionalism and teamwork in our cabinet, in our foreign policy making.”

    বিস্তারিত পড়ুন : Hillary Clinton fuels White House speculation।

    • 

      মাসুদ করিম - ৩০ জানুয়ারি ২০১৩ (১:২৭ অপরাহ্ণ)

      উত্তর আগেভাগেই চলে এসেছে হিলারি ক্লিনটনের কাছ থেকে, না, ২০১৬ সালের রাষ্ট্রপতি নির্বাচনের প্রার্থী হওয়ার পরিকল্পনা তার নেই।

      Virtually putting to rest all speculations about her contesting the next US presidential elections, outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said she has “absolutely” no such plans and is just focusing to finish her current term in office.

      “Well, I have absolutely no plans to run (for presidency). Right now, I am trying to finish my term as Secretary of State,” she told a news channel in an interview, when asked about reports of her contesting the elections in 2016.

      “I don’t know everything I’ll be doing. I’ll be working on behalf of women and girls, and hopefully be writing and speaking. Those are the things that I am planning to do right now,” she added.

      Clinton said she does not know what the new life entails for her Monday onwards, when there are no appointments for her.

      “I don’t know. It’s been my whole life. I mean, I’ve had a job ever since I was 13 years old. When I wasn’t in school, I was working,” she said.

      Clinton said she had been talking to her colleagues who had earlier in the government to know from them the necessary adjustments that are required in life after leaving a job.

      “So when I wake up to have the luxury of nowhere to go, nothing to do, no frantic call about calling some leader about some impending crisis, I’m actually interested to see how that goes. It’s going to be fun to talk it through and figure out what our next adventures might be,” Clinton said.

      বিস্তারিত পড়ুন : No plans to run for presidency in 2016: Hillary Clinton।

28. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ২৯ জানুয়ারি ২০১৩ (৬:৪২ অপরাহ্ণ)

    ভারত গরু রপ্তানি তো করেই না, গরুর মাংসও রপ্তানি করে না। ভারত যা রপ্তানি করে তা আসলে ‘কারাবিফ’ সাদাবাংলায় যার মানে মহিষের মাংস।

    Holy cow! India to be largest beef exporter

    India is set to emerge as the world’s leading beef exporter this year, the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Foreign Agricultural Service has forecast. India will ship roughly 1.5 million tonnes of beef in 2012, surpassing current top exporter Australia, according to the USDA report. That is more than double the exports India logged three years ago.

    According to the report, global beef production in 2012 will be virtually unchanged from the last forecast of 57 million tonnes.

    Global exports, however, are expected to increase by 497,000 tonnes to a record 8.7 million tonnes. India is seen accounting for 250,000 tonnes of the incremental exports, with additional export-oriented slaughterhouses expected to come on line this year.

    Exports account for 44% of beef production in the country. The growth in exports thus underpins production increases.

    For all that, Indian beef is not really beef as say the Americans know it — not a patch on Angus. It is water buffalo — and males and unproductive females at that — which exporters sell at lower cost to the meat-hungry, but price-sensitive consumers in the Middle East, North Africa and Southeast Asia.

    Slaughter of cows and milk-producing buffaloes is banned under Indian laws. But the USDA still counts it all as beef, and economically, it competes in the same markets, the report said. To its credit, deboned frozen buffalo meat, also called carabeef, from India is lean and has positive blending characteristics important to processors. As per the most recent livestock census, conducted in 2007, buffaloes comprise a third of the bovine herd in India.

    Exports of Buffalo Meat Soar From India

    India’s economy and exports may be waning compared with a year ago, but there is one sector still experiencing big growth – exports of beef in the form of water buffalo meat.

    Indian beef exports are set to rise to 1.525 million metric tons this year, up from 609 million metric tons in 2009, outstripping Australia, which is expected to ship 1.425 million metric tons in 2012 and Brazil, with 1.35 million, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture figures.

    The huge rise in volume of water buffalo beef exports has led to concerns in India that some cow meat is also being exported. Cows are considered holy by India’s Hindu majority and their slaughter is punishable by jail in some states.

    “India is forecast to become the world’s leading beef exporter in 2012 due to an expanding dairy herd, efficiency improvements, increased slaughter and price-competitiveness in the international market particularly vis a vis Brazil,” the USDA said in a report.

    While consumption of beef is static or declining in many developed economies in line with shrinking herds, demand for bovine meat – including cattle and buffalo – is increasing in Asia, the Middle East and South America.

    Global demand is forecast to rise 24 percent by 2020 from 64.5 million metric tons in 2011, according to Meat & Livestock Australia, an industry lobby group.

    “India is really filling an important void in the market,” says David Nelson, global strategist at Rabobank, a leading agribusiness lender. “The big picture is that beef production is under pressure virtually everywhere [else] in the world as land that has been in beef pasture is finding a higher and better use.”

    India has nearly tripled its shipments overseas of buffalo meat in recent years. There are more than 4,000 municipal slaughter houses and 30 state-of-the-art abattoirs.

    Rashid Kadimi, chief executive of Allana and Sons, India’s largest meat exporter by revenues, says the country’s main food processing groups have been expanding at Brazil’s cost in the Middle East, where they export mainly halal beef, a cut of meat consumed by devout Muslims.

    The other key market for Indian beef is Southeast Asia, particularly Vietnam.

    The rise of Indian producers comes as premium meatpackers, such as Brazil’s JBS, which has extensive operations in the U.S., and Tyson Foods , are facing tighter margins in the North American market. JBS is also fighting allegations from environmental group Greenpeace that it sources meat from illegal ranchers in the Amazon. It threatened legal action against Greenpeace last week after UK-based supermarket chain Tesco said it would not source any more meat from JBS.

    The Indian export boom is hitting supply for the domestic market, where a sizeable Muslim and Christian minority as well as some lower caste Hindus, consume about 2 million metric tons of bovine meat a year.

    “I’m finding it hard to stay in the business – everything goes for export,” said Islam Qureshi, a wholesale buffalo meat vendor at Crawford Market, a bazaar designed by the father of novelist Rudyard Kipling.

    “These days everything is going to Russia, China, Muscat and Malaysia…?we get whatever is left over,” he said as his colleagues were butchering the last carcass of the day.

    আবার বাংলাদেশ কিন্তু এসব ‘কারাবিফ’ কেনে না, বাংলাদেশে জ্যান্ত গরুই পায় চোরাকারবারির মাধ্যমে। ভারতে গরু দেবতা হিসাবে বিবেচিত, তাই ভারতের অনেক প্রদেশেই গরু জবাই করা শাস্তিযোগ্য অপরাধ, এবং একই কারণে ভারতের কেন্দ্রীয় সরকার গরুর রপ্তানি বাণিজ্যও অনুমোদন করে না। কিন্তু গরুর চোরাকারবারি আবার দেদারসে চলে, এবং এই চোরাকারবারির জন্য ভারত-বাংলাদেশ সীমান্তও খুব উত্তপ্ত থাকে সবসময়। আমি ঠিক বুঝতে পারি না, যে গরু জবাই করার উদ্দেশ্যে চোরাকারবারির হাত ধরে বাংলাদেশে আসতে পারে সে গরু জবাইয়ের জন্য বৈধ বাণিজ্যে বাংলাদেশে কেন আসতে পারে না। আর এই বাণিজ্যের বহরও অনেক বড়, এক হিসাবে বছরে ৯২০ মিলিয়ন ডলার।

    Cow Smuggling … It’s How Bangladesh Gets Its Beef

    n Muslim majority Bangladesh beef is in high demand. More than 90 percent of the 160 million people who live there are Muslims and for them beef is a delicacy.

    The country’s meat producers estimate that slaughterhouses need up to 3 million cows every year to feed Bangladeshi appetites, and to help meet demand, Bangladesh is eyeing neighboring India. Cows are everywhere in India, but the cow is considered holy in the Hindu-majority country. In fact, slaughtering cows is banned in many Indian states, and New Delhi refuses to export them.

    That refusal hasn’t done much to deter the demand for beef in Bangladesh, however. In fact, say officials inDhaka, beef has become so valuable it’s spurred a dangerous cow smuggling trade across the India-Bangladesh border.

    More than 2 million cows are smuggled from India to Bangladesh every year and most of the illegal trade takes place through the Indian border state of West Bengal, says Bimal Pramanik, an independent researcher in Calcutta, India.

    “Bangladeshi slaughterhouses cannot source even 1 million cows from within the country. If Indian cows do not reach the Bangladeshi slaughterhouses, there will be a big crisis there,” says Mr. Pramanik, adding that 3 out of every 4 cows slaughtered in the country are from India.

    “In this thriving trade, [herds of] cows worth 50 billion rupees [$920 million] are sent across to Bangladesh every year. It’s the sheer economics of the trade that drives the smuggling,” says Pramanik.

29. 

    মাসুদ করিম - ৩০ জানুয়ারি ২০১৩ (৬:২৮ অপরাহ্ণ)

    পারস্য সভ্যতা জুরুআস্ট্রিয়ানদের সৃষ্টি, আজ ইরানে শুধু ২০০০০ জুরুআস্ট্রিয়ান বসবাস করে, বাকিরা আমেরিকাসহ বিভিন্ন দেশে চলে গেছে ১৯৭৯ সালের ইরানের ইসলামি বিপ্লবের পরে। গতকাল মঙ্গলবার ছিল তাদের সবচেয়ে বড় ধর্মীয় উৎসব ‘সাদেহ’। সৃষ্টির আগুনকে স্মরণ করে এই উৎসব, অগ্নিউপাসক এই ধর্মের মানুষেরা পবিত্রতার প্রতীক সাদা পোষাক পরে আগুন জ্বেলে ধর্মীয়গ্রন্থ ‘আভেস্তা’ থেকে পড়তে থাকে এই উৎসবে।

    
    

    Iran Zoroastrians celebrate ancient feast of fire

    Followers of Iran’s minority Zoroastrian religion gathered after sunset to mark Sadeh – an ancient mid-winter feast dating to Iran’s pre-Islamic past that is also drawing new interest from Muslims.

    Zoroastrian priests, dressed in white to symbolize purity, recited verses from Avesta, the holy Zoroastrian book, before more than 2,000 people on Tuesday.
    Men and women in traditional dress carried torches and lit a huge bonfire on the outskirts of Tehran Tuesday, as young people danced.
    Sadeh, the feast of creation of fire, has been observed since ancient days, when Zoroastrianism was the dominant religion in the powerful Persian Empire.
    Zoroastrianism lost dominance after Muslim Arabs invaded and conquered Persia in the seventh century. Today, most of Iran’s 75 million people are Shiite Muslims, and the ruling establishment is led by clerics who preach a strict version of Islam.
    After the 1979 revolution brought in the hardline Islamic religious government, many Zoroastrians emigrated to the U.S., and their festivals were strongly discouraged.
    About 20,000 Zoroastrians remain today – down from 300,000 in the 1970s, when many emigrated to the United States. They make up part of Iran’s small non-Muslim population, including 150,000 Christians and 15,000 Jews.
    Although the feast of fire has traditionally been marked by Zoroastrians, many Muslim Iranians joined the festival Tuesday.
    “This festival promotes friendship and happiness. The feast is an opportunity to thank God for the creation of fire. The light and warmth of fire brings affection among communities. That’s the reason we are here,” Zoroastrian priest Sohrab Hengami said.
    Ali Doosti, an Iranian Muslim who attended Tuesday’s celebration, said Sadeh should not been seen from a purely religious perspective.
    “Sadeh is an ancient celebration that symbolizes Iran’s rich cultural heritage. There is no reason why Iranian Muslims shouldn’t observe the event,” he said.
    To Zoroastrians, fire represents life and the inherent nature of Ahura Mazda – total goodness.
    “Sadeh is a celebration of fire, but we are not fire worshippers. We worship one God,” said Ardeshir Khorshidian, another priest.
    Fire plays a central role in worship as a symbol of truth and the spirit of God. Prayer is often performed in front of a fire, and consecrated fires are kept perpetually burning in major temples.