বিভাগ/বিষয় নিরপেক্ষ

সুপারিশকৃত লিন্ক: ডিসেম্বর ২০১৩

আজকের লিন্ক

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

আজকের লিন্ক

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

১৬ comments

  1. মাসুদ করিম - ১ ডিসেম্বর ২০১৩ (৬:১৫ অপরাহ্ণ)

    দেশে এইচআইভি আক্রান্তের সংখ্যা বেড়েছে কিন্তু আক্রান্তের সংখ্যা নিয়ে সরকারি হিসাব ও জাতিসংঘের ধারণার মধ্যে আকাশ পাতাল পার্থক্য ২৪ বছরেও দূর হয়নি।

    দেশে এইচআইভি আক্রান্তের সংখ্যা বেড়েছে

    গত বছরের তুলনায় চলতি বছর দেশে এইআইভি আক্রান্তের হার বেড়েছে।

    বিশ্ব এইডস দিবস উপলক্ষে রোববার প্রকাশিত এক প্রতিবেদনে উঠে এসেছে এ তথ্য।
    স্বাস্থ্য সচিব এমএম নিয়াজ উদ্দিন জানান, ২০১৩ সালে নতুন করে ৩৭০ জনের মধ্যে এইচআইভি সংক্রমণের বিষয়টি ধরা পড়েছে। তাদের মধ্যে এইডস আক্রান্ত হয়েছেন ৯৫ জন। আর এ বছর এ রোগে মারা গেছেন ৮২ জন।

    ২০১২ সালে এইচআইভি সংক্রমিত নতুন ৩৩৮ জনকে চিহ্নিত করা হয়, যাদের মধ্যে এইডসের রোগী ছিলেন ১০৩ জন। ওই বছর এইডসে ৬৫ জনের মৃত্যু হয়।

    সরকারি তথ্য অনুযায়ী, ১৯৮৯ সালে দেশে প্রথমবারের মতো এইডস রোগী সনাক্তের পর এ পর্যন্ত ৩ হাজার ২৪১ জনের শরীরে এ ভাইরাস সনাক্ত করা হয়েছে। এদের মধ্যে এইডস আক্রান্তের সংখ্যা ১ হাজার ২৯৯ জন, যাদের মধ্যে ৪৭২ জনের মৃত্যু হয়েছে।

    সরকারি হিসাবে এই তথ্য দেয়া হলেও জাতিসংঘের ধারণা, বাংলাদেশে এইচআইভি আক্রান্তের সংখ্যা আট থেকে ১৬ হাজার। ‘বিভিন্ন কারণে’ বহু লোকের এইচআইভি সংক্রমণের বিষয়টি সনাক্ত করা যায়নি বলে মনে করে সংস্থাটি।

    এবার বিশ্ব এইডস দিবসের মূল পতিপাদ্য ‘থ্রি জিরো’। এইচআইভি আক্রান্তের হার, এইডসে মৃত্যুর হার এবং এইডস রোগীদের সামাজিক বৈষম্য শূন্যের কোটায় নামিয়ে আনাই এর লক্ষ্য।

    There were 35.3 million people living with HIV in 2012.
    2.1 million adolescents were living with HIV in 2012.
    At the end of 2012, 9.7 million people in low- and middle-income countries were receiving antiretroviral therapy.

  2. মাসুদ করিম - ২ ডিসেম্বর ২০১৩ (১০:৩১ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    আরবদের প্রতিদিন গুতানো ছাড়া দিনটাকে দিন বলেই মনে হয় না ইসরাইলি প্রশাসনের। ইসরাইলের নতুন দিনের নেতাদের নেতানিয়াহুকে ত্যাগ করা উচিত।

    Odor of injustice fills the Negev

    Is there a volunteer who will explain to Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman that the “tower and stockade” method of settlement was, in practice, a plan of the Jewish yishuv in the 1930s to put facts on the ground? In other words, to build as many Jewish communities as possible in improvised structures – which is to say, quasi-structures – in an attempt to deceive the British? So why did Lieberman mention this fraud and cast its shadow on the Arabs, writing off as he did the weekend protests against the Prawer-Begin plan: “Nothing has changed since the tower and stockade days. We are fighting for the lands of the Jewish people and there are those who intentionally try to rob and seize them”?

    Moreover, we need to explain to Mr. Lieberman that he is functioning in the role of foreign minister of Israel, and instead of dealing with the Negev, which is part of this country, maybe it would be preferable if he spoke with Catherine Ashton, the foreign minister of the European Union, with an eye toward settling the disagreement over the boycott of the settlements. It can be assumed that if Lieberman took the reins of the negotiations with the Palestinians, instead of Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, the boycott would have included all of Israel.

    Maybe that would have paid off for Lieberman – why, oh why should only Nokdim, Lieberman’s community in the occupied territories, suffer? The spoiled Tel Avivians should also suffer. If I were prime minister, one who was worried about Israel’s independence, I would try to find a job for Lieberman in which the damage he could cause would be minimized. What is wrong with the Tourism Ministry, for example?

    In any case, the heart yearns for the sound of Lieberman’s complaints about the crime the Arabs committed when they stole the lands that did not belong to them. In fact, I appealed to the Customs Authority, and after an intensive investigation, the authorities there flatly denied that Avigdor Lieberman, when he arrived as a new immigrant from Kishinev, Moldova, brought with him suitcases filled with land.

    But Lieberman’s distortion of history will not hide the force of the present government’s attack on the Arab population. This government is a sort of hive of extremists, who feel like Omar al-Khayyam felt when he wrote in his Rubaiyat al-Khayyam: “The day is lost if it passes and if I have not loved and I have not yearned.” For the society here, on the other hand, the day is lost if it passes without screwing the Arabs. For this government, screwing the Arabs is a mitzvah.

    When the injustice is outrageous, and there is no one for the Arabs to trust except out father in heaven; and when the main parties that put themselves forward as an alternative to the coalition are paralyzed; and when the leadership of the Arab population is conflicted from within and its members are suffering from inflated egos and are busy with the never-ending pursuit after a good place on this Knesset list or that; and when everyone tells you: “Go, you and your God, to fight,” as the Koran says, then the people arise. And the people here are the masses of democratic Arabs and Jews, for whom the smell of injustice has already filled their nostrils. When the Jewish Hiran arises on the ruins of the Arab Umm al-Hiran, when the transfer of over 40,000 Bedouins in the Negev awaits, and when the Settlement Division of the World Zionist Organization, which the government defines as one of its executive arms, declares another plan for the “Judaization” of the Galilee (as Zafrir Rinat reported yesterday in Haaretz), then the people rise.

    The new people that has arisen, armed with the miracle tool Facebook, is a people that does not cry, but fights. It is fighting for its home, for its livelihood and for its human dignity. And so, fortunately, the early spring has arrived this year, actually just at the beginning of the winter. What can you do, as David Grossman wrote in his poem, spring here is short and to manage to do a few things you need to wake up early.

    Benjamin Netanyahu, who has suffered defeat after defeat in his aggressive foreign policy, is leading the same policy of force and abuse domestically, over the Arabs and the weak. The correct step from the point of Hatnuah and Yesh Atid is to leave the ship that is sinking under the delusions of its coalition partners, and to hook up with the Arabs and Jews. Netanyahu is the sinking yesterday, the “new people” is the tomorrow. Welcome to the intoxicating spring.

    • মাসুদ করিম - ৪ ডিসেম্বর ২০১৩ (৬:২৫ অপরাহ্ণ)

      Israel’s plan to forcibly resettle Negev Bedouins prompts global protests

      Several thousand people worldwide have taken part in protests at the Israeli government’s plans to forcibly remove Bedouin Arabs from their villages in the Negev desert.

      In Israeli towns and cities, mounted police used teargas, stun grenades and water cannon against demonstrators, in what the Association for Civil Rights in Israel described as a “disproportionate” response to stone-throwing. More than 40 people were arrested at protests across the country, and 15 police officers were injured.

      In what was billed as an international “day of rage”, demonstrations were also held in London, Berlin, Rome, Istanbul, Cairo and in the US.

      Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, criticised the protests. “We will not tolerate such disturbances,” he said in a statement. “Attempts by a loud and violent minority to deny a better future to a large and broad population are grave. We will continue to advance the law for a better future for all residents of the Negev.”

      Under the Prawer Plan, which is expected to pass into Israeli law by the end of the year, 35 “unrecognised” Bedouin villages will be demolished and between 40,000 and 70,000 people removed to government-designated towns. Israel says the proposal will bring benefits such as permanent housing and public services, but the majority of Bedouin say they do not want to give up their ancestral lands and way of life.

      “We have been living here since before the creation of the state of Israel,” Maqbul Saraya, 70, told Al Jazeera. “We feel that democracy and justice in Israel do not apply to us.”

      More than 50 public figures in the UK criticised the plan in a letter published in the Guardian, saying it would “mean the forced displacement of Palestinians from their homes and land, and systematic discrimination and separation”.

      The “unrecognised” villages in the Negev lack running water, electricity, landline telephones, roads, high schools and health clinics. The Bedouin – who are Israeli citizens – comprise about 30% of the Negev’s population but their villages take up only 2.5% of the land. Before the state of Israel was created in 1948 they roamed widely across the desert; now, two-thirds of the region has been designated as military training grounds and firing ranges.

      Under the Prawer Plan, the residents of “unrecognised” villages will be moved into seven overcrowded and impoverished towns. Meanwhile, new Jewish settlements are planned for the region.

      In response to the demonstrations, Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman said: “We are fighting over the national land of the Jewish people and there are those that intentionally try to steal that land and control it by force. It is impossible to close our eyes and run from this reality.”

      In a statement emailed to the media on Saturday night, the body that co-ordinates Israeli government policy on the Bedouin criticised the protests on Saturday. “Extremists, many of whom are not Bedouin, chose to divert the open debate about a purely social and humanitarian cause into a confrontation, falsely linked to the Palestinian issue,” it said.

      The Prawer Plan was aimed at providing “adequate housing, public services and a better future for [the] children” of the Bedouin population in the Negev. It would allow them to “integrate into the fabric of a modern state while preserving their traditions,” said the statement.

  3. মাসুদ করিম - ২ ডিসেম্বর ২০১৩ (১২:৫৬ অপরাহ্ণ)

    চীনের চন্দ্রযান ‘চ্যাং’এ-৩’ আজ চাঁদ নিরীক্ষণ ও পর্যটনের উদ্দেশে উড্ডয়ন শুরু করল।

    (FOCUS)CHINA-SCIENCE-CHANG'E-3-LAUNCH (CN)

    Blast off: China launches its first moon rover mission

    China launched its first moon rover mission early Monday, state TV showed, the latest step in an ambitious space programme seen as a symbol of its rising global stature.

    The Chang’e-3 rocket carrying the Jade Rabbit rover blasted off around 1:30 am (Sunday 1730 GMT), the CCTV official broadcaster showed in live footage from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in the country’s southwest.

    As it shot into the dark sky, mission observers could be heard reporting at regular intervals that things were proceeding “normally”.

    Within an hour the director of the launch centre Zhang Zhenzhong appeared before staff and declared the mission a “success”, CCTV showed.

    The probe is due to land on the moon in mid-December to explore its surface and look for natural resources. It is the world’s third lunar rover mission following the United States and former Soviet Union decades earlier.

    Chief probe designer Sun Zezhou hailed the mission as having “great scientific and economic significance”, according to the Xinhua state news agency.

    “The mission has contributed to the development of a number of space technologies and some of them can be applied in civilian sector,” it paraphrased Sun as saying.

    China sees its space programme as a symbol of its growing international status and technological advancement, as well as of the Communist Party’s success in reversing the fortunes of the once impoverished nation.

    It aims to establish a permanent space station by 2020 and eventually send someone to the moon.

    Since 2003 it has sent 10 astronauts into space and launched an orbiting space module, Tiangong-1. It also sent probes to orbit the moon in 2007 and 2010.

    The first of those intentionally crashed into the moon’s surface at the end of its mission.

    Data it collected was used to create in 2008 what Xinhua called “the most complete lunar hologram to date”.

    The second probe was sent to “verify key technology”, orbit the moon and take pictures of the landing site in preparation for Chang’e-3, Xinhua said.

    After completing that task it was sent into deep space to monitor an astroid.

    The latest mission would bolster scientific knowledge as well as national pride, said Morris Jones, independent space analyst based in Australia.

    “The Chinese are making rapid advances in spaceflight,” he said. “They’re going to get a lot of prestige out of this mission.”

    The moon remains “largely unexplored”, Jones added, so “I expect that the Chinese rover will probably throw a few surprises our way scientifically”.

    The rover’s name Jade Rabbit, or “Yutu”, was chosen in an online poll of 3.4 million voters.

    It comes from an ancient Chinese myth about a rabbit living on the moon as the pet of Chang’e, a lunar goddess who swallowed an immortality pill.

    The vehicle can climb slopes of up to 30 degrees and travel at 200 metres (660 feet) per hour, according to its designer, the Shanghai Aerospace Systems Engineering Research Institute.

    Unlike earlier American and Soviet versions, the Chang’e-3 could ”accurately survey landforms at the landing site and identify the safest spots on which to land”, Xinhua has said.

    China was able to improve on earlier rovers by incorporating technology developed in recent decades, said Jones.

    These included optical navigation systems which could provide pictures to warn of unsafe landing spots, whereas American and Soviet rovers could only rely on radar to gauge their distance from the ground, he said.

    The mission had generated anticipation in recent days, with users of Sina Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, vowing to stay up to watch the live coverage.

    “The news on TV about Chang’e 3 has made me incredibly proud,” one commenter said ahead of the launch.

  4. মাসুদ করিম - ২ ডিসেম্বর ২০১৩ (২:৩৫ অপরাহ্ণ)

    মিনি-ড্রোন দিয়ে পার্সেল পৌঁছে দেবে অ্যামাজন.কম। এখনও পরীক্ষা নিরীক্ষা চলছে, চার পাঁচ বছরের মধ্যে এই সেবা চালু হবে এমনটিই আশা করছে প্রতিষ্ঠানটি।


    Amazon teste la livraison par mini-drone by LeNouvelObservateur

    Amazon Reveals It Wants To Deploy Delivery Drones. No Joke.

    Amazon offering delivery on Sunday was only the beginning.

    In an interview with Charlie Rose on Sunday’s episode of “60 Minutes,” Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos revealed the giant online store is developing a drone-based delivery service called Prime Air. According to Bezos, Prime Air would be able to get customers their products only a half-hour after they click the “buy” button. His “optimistic” estimate to “60 Minutes” was that Prime Air will be available to customers within 4 to 5 years.

    Prime Air was unveiled to Rose and “60 Minutes” as a surprise, the secret project being part of Amazon’s busy R&D department. The drones will be capable of delivering items up to 5 pounds in weight, which Bezos said account for 86 percent of the items that Amazon delivers. Individual items will be flown from one of the company’s 96 mind-bogglingly massive warehouses, also known as “fulfillment centers.”

    Last minute shoppers or those with itchy mouse trigger fingers — especially with Cyber Monday tomorrow — may want to curb their enthusiasm for Prime Air. Amazon is still working on more safety testing and FAA approvals before the Prime Air fleet will be able take flight.

    “The hard part here is putting in all the redundancy,” Bezos said. “All the reliability to say this can’t land on somebody’s head.”

  5. মাসুদ করিম - ৪ ডিসেম্বর ২০১৩ (১:০৬ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    গবেষণায় বড় অগ্রগতি হয়েছে বলছেন বিজ্ঞানীরা, পুরুষদের জন্য মুখে সেবন করার জন্মনিরোধক বড়ি আসবে দশ বছরের মধ্যেই।

    article-0-0054A3E000000258-552_468x286

    Male contraceptive pill may be available in 10 years

    Scientists have taken a giant leap towards creating the world’s first oral contraceptive pill for men.

    Currently, men can only use condom or undergo a surgical vasectomy as the proven form of contraception.

    Scientists now say that a male contraceptive could be on the horizon – within 10 years after they identified a novel way to block the transport of sperm during ejaculation. Researchers from University of Melbourne and the University of Leicester, UK, collaborated on the study.

    Publishing their results on Tuesday, scientists have found that complete male infertility could be achieved by blocking two proteins found on the smooth muscle cells that trigger the transport of sperm.

    The researchers demonstrated that the absence of two proteins in mouse models, 1A-adrenoceptor and P2X1-purinoceptor, which mediate sperm transport, caused infertility, without effects on long-term sexual behaviour or function.

    Lead researchers Dr Sab Ventura and Dr Carl White of the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences believe the knowledge could be applied to the potential development of a contraceptive pill for men.

    “Previous strategies have focused on hormonal targets or mechanisms that produce dysfunctional sperm incapable of fertilization, but they often interfere with male sexual activity and cause long term irreversible effects on fertility,” Dr Ventura said.

    “We’ve shown that simultaneously disrupting the two proteins that control the transport of sperm during ejaculation causes complete male infertility, but without affecting the long-term viability of sperm or the sexual or general health of males. The sperm is effectively there but the muscle is just not receiving the chemical message to move it.

    Dr Ventura said there was already a drug that targets one of the two proteins, but they would have to find a chemical and develop a drug to block the second one.

    “This suggests a therapeutic target for male contraception. The next step is to look at developing an oral male contraceptive drug, which is effective, safe, and readily reversible.”

  6. মাসুদ করিম - ৪ ডিসেম্বর ২০১৩ (৬:৩৫ অপরাহ্ণ)

    India’s Mars mission travels beyond Earth’s zone on way to Red planet

    India’s maiden mission to Mars has traversed beyond the sphere of influence (SOI) of Earth extending about 9,25,000 km in its 10-month long voyage to the red planet. The spacecraft crossed the SOI of Earth at around 1:14 hrs (IST) on Wednesday, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said.

    The Mars orbiter spacecraft had slung out of its earth-bound orbit in the early hours of December 1 during the critical 22-minute Trans Mars Injection, a manoeuvre billed as the “mother of all slingshots.”

    The spacecraft which was in a hyperbolic orbit had escaped from the SOI, after the first step on Sunday in the Mars mission’s 680 million-km-long odyssey to its destination to put on course the country’s first ever inter-planetary space rendezvous.

    ISRO has planned four mid-course corrections – around December 11, in April, August and on September 14 – in case of any deviation along its path to the Martian orbit before its expected arrival in the orbit of the Red planet in September 2014.

    The spacecraft is being continuously monitored from the Spacecraft Control Centre at ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) in Bangalore with support from Indian Deep Space Network (IDSN) antennae at Byalalu here.

    The Mars mission’s success would catapult India into a small club, which included the US, Europe and Russia, whose probes have orbited or landed on Mars.

    ISRO’s workhorse ISRO’s PSLV C 25 had successfully injected the 1,350-kg ‘Mangalyaan’ Orbiter into the orbit around the earth in a textbook launch from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota on November 5.

  7. মাসুদ করিম - ৫ ডিসেম্বর ২০১৩ (৬:১৯ অপরাহ্ণ)

    বছরের শুরুতেই জামদানি নিয়ে লিন্ক ছিল ফ্যাশন ডিজাইনার বিবি রাসেলের জামদানির মেধাস্বত্ব অধিকার নিয়ে একটি লেখার সূত্রে — না, জামদানির মেধাস্বত্ব অধিকার আমাদের আয়ত্তে আসেনি এখনও, কিন্তু বছরের শেষে ইউনেস্কোর ‘অনধিগম্য সাংস্কৃতিক ঐতিহ্য'(Intangible Cultural Heritage) হিসাবে জামদানি অন্তর্ভুক্ত হয়েছে ০৪ ডিসেম্বর ২০১৩।

    Traditional art of Jamdani weaving

    Inscribed in 2013 (8.COM) on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity

    Country(ies): Bangladesh

    Jamdani is a vividly patterned, sheer cotton fabric, traditionally woven on a handloom by craftspeople and apprentices around Dhaka. Jamdani textiles combine intricacy of design with muted or vibrant colours, and the finished garments are highly breathable. Jamdani is a time-consuming and labour-intensive form of weaving because of the richness of its motifs, which are created directly on the loom using the discontinuous weft technique. Weaving is thriving today due to the fabric’s popularity for making saris, the principal dress of Bengali women at home and abroad. The Jamdani sari is a symbol of identity, dignity and self-recognition and provides wearers with a sense of cultural identity and social cohesion. The weavers develop an occupational identity and take great pride in their heritage; they enjoy social recognition and are highly respected for their skills. A few master weavers are recognized as bearers of the traditional Jamdani motifs and weaving techniques, and transmit the knowledge and skills to disciples. However, Jamdani weaving is principally transmitted by parents to children in home workshops. Weavers – together with spinners, dyers, loom-dressers and practitioners of a number of other supporting crafts – form a closely knit community with a strong sense of unity, identity and continuity.

  8. মাসুদ করিম - ৬ ডিসেম্বর ২০১৩ (১২:১৬ অপরাহ্ণ)

    আর সাড়া দেবেন না নেলসন ম্যান্ডেলা, আফ্রিকার শ্রেষ্ঠতম সন্তান ‘মাদিবা’, বর্ণবাদবিরোধী আন্দোলনের বিগ্রহ স্বাধীনতার প্রতীক কয়েদি ৪৬৬/৬৪ দক্ষিণ আফ্রিকার প্রথম কালো রাষ্ট্রপতি গত জুন থেকেই ফুসফুসের সংক্রমণে আক্রান্ত হয়ে ‘সংকটাপন্ন কিন্তু ন্থিতিশীল’ ‘চিকিৎসায় সাড়া দিচ্ছেন’ এরকম শিরোনামে খবর হচ্ছিলেন, ০৫ ডিসেম্বর ২০১৩ বৃহষ্পতিবার রাত আনুমানিক দক্ষিণ আফ্রিকার স্থানীয় সময় ০৮:৫০এ ৯৫ বছর বয়সে সাড়াশব্দের অতীত হয়ে গেলেন আমাদের সময়ের অবিসংবাদিত স্বাধীনতা সংগ্রামী রাজনৈতিক নেতা ও রাষ্ট্রনায়ক। আমার কাছে গান্ধী নেহেরু শেখ মুজিবের সম্মিলিত সংস্করণ।

    130611_FOR_MANDELAPHOTO_03.jpg.CROP.original-original

    Nelson Mandela dies at 95!

    Nelson Mandela, who died on Thursday, once the world’s most famous political prisoner, emerged from a 27-year jail term in 1990 to lead South Africa from apartheid to democracy.

    President Jacob Zuma announced his death on the public broadcaster just before midnight. “He passed on peacefully in the company of his family around 20.50pm on December 5. He is now resting, he is now at peace. Our nation has lost its greatest son.” “Fellow South Africans, Nelson Mandela brought us together and it is together that we bid him farewell.”

    His charisma, generosity of spirit, and an unwavering commitment to the well-being of his fellow humans, earned him love and acclaim across the globe.
    It also earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993. Even after he stepped down from the presidency in 1999, he continued as an elder statesman to champion the cause of reconciliation, peace and human rights, speaking out strongly on issues including Aids and armed conflict. Nelson Rolihlahla Dalibungha Mandela was born in the Transkei on July 18, 1918, and trained as a lawyer. He became a key figure in the African National Congress (ANC) and its decision in 1955 to embark on organised resistance to the newly-elected National Party in the form of the Defiance Campaign.

    Going underground after the ANC was banned in 1960, he was arrested and sentenced in 1964 to life imprisonment for plotting the overthrow of the government.
    He served the bulk of his time on Robben Island, where he became a symbol of apartheid injustice. Freed by the reformist head of state FW de Klerk in 1990, he was elected president of the ANC the following year. In May 1994 he was inaugurated president of South Africa by a new non-racial Parliament.
    He formally retired from public life in June 2004, just short of his 86th birthday, and only weeks after playing a major role in helping secure the 2010 soccer World Cup for South Africa.

    However he continued to lend support to causes such as the 46664 anti-Aids campaign, and to speak out against poverty.
    On his 80th birthday in 1998 he married Graca Machel, widow of former Mozambican president Samora Machel. In his later years Mandela was increasingly frail. He made his last public appearance at the closing ceremony of the World Cup.
    In early 2011, fears for his health grew when he battled a serious respiratory infection that would recur in coming years. When he turned 93 a few months later, he retired to his country home in the Eastern Cape.

    In December 2012 he was treated again for a lung infection in hospital then was admitted again on March 27, 2013 to be treated for pneumonia.
    After his discharge, the public broadcaster televised footage of him on April 27, looking remote, but comfortable in an easy chair at home.
    In the early hours of June 8, Mandela was again taken to hospital.
    A news report that his ambulance had broken down on the road there was confirmed by the presidency which hastened to add that there was no danger to his health at the time because he had seven doctors, nurses, and a fully equipped ICU in his convoy.

    On Sunday night, June 23, the presidency said his condition had changed to critical, and Zuma asked for prayers of support for him, his family, and his medical team.
    On Monday 24, family and key government ministers flew into Mthatha for a private meeting in Qunu. The presidency issued another statement, to say Mandela remained critical. On Wednesday, June 26, the nation held its breath after President Jacob Zuma cancelled a trip to neighbouring Maputo at short notice but the next day he reported that Mandela’s condition had stabilised overnight.
    Mandela had six children by two previous marriages, including two daughters with Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.

    • মাসুদ করিম - ১৫ ডিসেম্বর ২০১৩ (৫:৫৪ অপরাহ্ণ)

      স্লাইডশো : Nelson Mandela funeral in pictures।

      • মাসুদ করিম - ২৩ ডিসেম্বর ২০১৩ (১:৪০ অপরাহ্ণ)

        State Archive publishes Mandela-Mossad document, after Haaretz report
        Shows agency unwittingly trained ANC leader in 1962. Mandela Foundation says it’s found no evidence of such connection.

        The State Archive released a document Sunday showing that the Mossad unwittingly trained Nelson Mandela prior to his 1962 arrest in South Africa. The document, sent that same year by a Mossad official to Foreign Ministry higher-ups and titled “The Black Pimpernel,” was the subject of an article published by Haaretz last Friday, which first revealed the ties between Mandela and the Mossad.

        The document was sent by Mossad official Y. Ben Ari to a few high-ranking officials at the Foreign Ministry. It reveals that Israeli agents in Ethiopia gave weapons and explosives training to a man passing himself off as a Rhodesian named David Mobsari, who expressed interest in Haganah tactics and was considered by the Israelis to have communist leanings. Later, after Mandela’s arrest in South Africa and publication of his photo in newspapers, the Israeli agents identified him as the man they knew as David Mobsari, according to Ben Ari’s document.

        Following Haaretz’s story on Friday, the Nelson Mandela Foundation issued a statement saying it “can confirm that it has not located any evidence in Nelson Mandela’s private archive…that he interacted with an Israeli operative during his tour of African countries in that year.” The statement added that in 2009 a foundation researcher “travelled to Ethiopia and interviewed the surviving men who assisted in Mandela’s training and no evidence emerged of an Israeli connection.”

        The State Archive revealed the document’s existence on its website early this month, a few days after Mandela’s death, but stated in a press release that it could not be published. But now, after the document’s contents were revealed by Haaretz, the State Archive decided to publish the original document in its entirety, without any erasure or editing.

        What changed? How did a classified document that could not be published two weeks ago suddenly get published in its entirety, without censorship?

        The State Archive is subject to the “Archive Law,” which allows organizations like the Mossad and Shin Bet to prohibit publishing of documents related to their activities, even decades later. Apparently the archive did not receive permission to publish the document after Mandela’s death. Now, after Haaretz published the document’s contents, the State Archive allowed itself to bend the rules and publish the document itself.

        Last Yom Kippur, exactly 40 years after the war of 1973, Haaretz attempted to publish classified documents from that conflict. An article published in Haaretz at the time read: “For months, the archives staff has been busy locating, sorting and preparing to publish many of these documents, which contain details of the government’s conduct during the war, to mark 40 years since the war ended. Journalists who approached the archive over the last year were told that in accordance with regulations, the documents would be published only if the Prime Minister’s Office grants permission. This week, Haaretz was told that the State Archive would not publish any of the documents.”

        Those documents have yet to be published.

        Lost and found

        How did the Mandela document fall into the hands of Haaretz? It has been held by the archive for decades, and was never revealed to the public. If it was left up to state authorities, it most likely would never have seen the light of day. But even an organized entity like the State Archive has a few holes and leaks, just waiting to be exploited. Thus, a few years ago, 43-year-old David Fachler of Alon Shvut found the document while researching his thesis. Fachler wrote an article about Israel-South Africa relations, titled “A Look at the Jewish Factor,” at Hebrew University’s Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry.

        The Mandela document was in one of the storage containers at the State Archive, apparently unknown even to archive staff. Fachler took a photo of the document and kept it at home. After Mandela’s death on December 5, he approached Haaretz and offered to divulge the document’s contents for an article in Haaretz’s English edition.

        Thus, an academic’s alertness in finding a forgotten, classified document by chance brought about a change in the State Archive’s policy – even if it was just a one-off – and resulted in its publication of a document that the Mossad had marked top-secret.

  9. মাসুদ করিম - ১০ ডিসেম্বর ২০১৩ (৯:৩৭ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    রাশিয়ার খবরের জন্য আমি প্রতিনিয়ত ঘুরতাম ‘রিয়ানভস্তি’ ও ‘ভয়েস অফ রাশিয়া’য় — এখন পুতিন এদুটি সংস্থাকে ভেঙ্গে দিয়ে ‘রুশিয়া সেগদনিয়া’ নামে সমন্বিত করেছেন আরো বেশি ‘রাশিয়াত্ব’ প্রকাশের উদ্দেশে। বাস্তবে কী হবে দেখার অপেক্ষা এখন।

    RIA Novosti to Be Liquidated in State-Owned Media Overhaul

    The Kremlin announced Monday the dissolution of RIA Novosti, the country’s major state-run news agency, amid a significant reorganization of state-owned media assets.

    News agency RIA Novosti and the state-owned Voice of Russia radio will be scrapped and absorbed into a new media conglomerate called Rossiya Segodnya, according to a decree signed by President Vladimir Putin.

    The move is the latest in a series of shifts in Russia’s news landscape, which appear to point toward a tightening of state control in the already heavily regulated media sector.

    In a separate decree published Monday, the Kremlin appointed Dmitry Kiselyov, a prominent Russian television presenter and media manager recently embroiled in a scandal over anti-gay remarks, to head Rossiya Segodnya.

    Head of the presidential administration Sergei Ivanov said the changes were about saving money and making state media more effective.

    “Russia has its own independent politics and strongly defends its national interests: it’s difficult to explain this to the world but we can do this, and we must do this,” Ivanov told reporters.

    The direct translation of Rossiya Segodnya is Russia Today, but the new body will apparently be separate from RT, the Kremlin-funded English-language television channel originally known as Russia Today.

    RT head Margarita Simonyan told Russian news website Lenta.ru on Monday that she only found out about the decree from news reports.

    The changes, including legislative amendments, must be carried out by the government within three months, according to the Kremlin. Rossiya Segodnya will be located in the current RIA Novosti building in downtown Moscow, the decree said.

    RIA Novosti was set up in 1941, two days after Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, as the Soviet Information Bureau, and now has reporters in over 45 countries providing news in 14 languages.

    Last month Gazprom-Media, which is closely linked to state-run gas giant Gazprom, bought control of Russian media company Profmedia from Russian billionaire Vladimir Potanin. In October, Mikhail Lesin, a former Kremlin advisor, was appointed to head Gazprom-Media.

    আর যাকে এসংস্থার প্রধান করা হয়েছে তার উগ্র সমকাম বিরোধী বক্তব্যের জন্যও অনেকে চিন্তিত।

    Without Notice, Putin Dissolves a News Agency

    President Vladimir V. Putin exerted new control over Russia’s state news media on Monday, dissolving by decree one of Russia’s official news agencies, RIA Novosti, along with its international radio broadcaster as he continues a drive to strengthen the Kremlin’s influence at home and abroad.

    The decision shutters a decades-old state-run news agency widely viewed as offering professional and semi-independent coverage, while putting a reconstituted news service in the hands of a Kremlin loyalist. Since returning for a third time as president last year, Mr. Putin has taken several steps that critics have denounced as a strangulation of political rights and open debate, concentrating power in an ever tighter circle of allies.

    The decree comes at a time when Russia has become increasingly assertive on the world stage, most recently in the tug of war with the European Union over political and economic relations with Ukraine, a country with deep historical and cultural links that Mr. Putin and others here believe bind it to Russia, not the West.

    The Kremlin’s intense lobbying and strong-arming of Ukraine’s embattled president, Viktor F. Yanukovich, have been a principal grievance of the hundreds of thousands who have poured into the streets in the last two weeks. The reorganization of Russia’s state news media occurred only days after a meeting between the two leaders — and unconfirmed rumors that they had reached a secret deal to forge a strategic partnership — served to intensify the protests.

    Mr. Putin’s presidential chief of staff, Sergei B. Ivanov, said the decision to close the news service was part of an effort to reduce costs and make the state news media more efficient. But RIA Novosti’s report on its own demise said the changes “appear to point toward a tightening of state control in the already heavily regulated media sector.” Its executive editor, Svetlana Mironyuk, the first woman to lead the agency, appeared before her stunned colleagues and apologized for failing to preserve what she called the best news organization ever built by state money, according to a video recording of the meeting.

    The two agencies will be absorbed into a new state media organization known as Rossiya Sevodnya, or Russia Today. In a separate decree, Mr. Putin appointed Dmitry K. Kiselyov as executive director of the organization. Mr. Kiselyov, a television executive and host, is an avowed pro-Kremlin figure who has provoked controversy with starkly homophobic remarks and virulent commentary suggesting foreign conspiracies are threatening Russia.

    The decrees caught the agencies’ employees, its executives and even some government officials by surprise. Mr. Putin made the changes without prior notice or public debate, as is often the case here. His decree said that the new agency would focus on providing news about Russia to an international audience; the agency’s directors will be directly appointed by the president’s office.

    The reasons behind the timing were unclear and, to many, puzzling. RIA Novosti is one of the official sponsors of the Winter Olympics to be held in the Russian resort of Sochi in February, and its employees have been deeply involved in organizing preparations for news coverage there. There have been some calls for boycotting the Games, citing Russian policies, including a new law prohibiting advocacy of nontraditional sexual relationships, that have prompted harsh criticism from rights organizations.

    “Russia has its own independent politics and strongly defends its national interests,” Mr. Ivanov, a close ally of Mr. Putin’s, said in remarks to reporters, according to RIA Novosti. “It’s difficult to explain this to the world, but we can do this and we must do this.”

    He suggested that Russia had had some difficulties in successfully explaining its views abroad. “We must tell the truth, make it accessible to the most people possible, and use modern language and the best available technologies in doing so,” he added.

    RIA Novosti’s roots extend to World War II, when it was founded as the Soviet Information Bureau two days after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. According to the agency, it has correspondents in 45 countries and provides reports in Russian and 13 other languages.

    It was renamed after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and while it continued to serve as an official news agency, its reporting earned greater respect for its balance and diversity of viewpoints.

    That troubled at least some here. Maxim L. Shevchenko, a prominent television personality, called the reorganization “a sensible step” in a post on Twitter. “The nest of anti-Russian media forces has been destroyed,” he wrote.

    That an official news agency could be considered hostile to its own government reflected some deep divisions within Russia’s political elite. The new agency’s name, Rossiya Sevodnya, is the original name of the Kremlin’s international television network, now re-branded simply as RT and known for its jaundiced view of the United States and other Western countries. The decree, which takes effect immediately, did not link the two organizations.

    Aleksei A. Navalny, the anticorruption blogger and opposition leader, lamented the demise of a “strong Soviet brand” in his own posting on Twitter and said Russia Today, as a brand, was “something repulsive.”

    Andrei Miroshnichenko, an independent media critic here, said RIA Novosti and the other state news agency, Itar-Tass, had in effect competed for resources and influence.

    He said RIA Novosti had become the most respected news agency in the former Soviet Union, one he associated closely with the presidency of Dmitri A. Medvedev, who has served as prime minister since Mr. Putin returned to the presidency last year. In that way, dismantling the news service is another step by Mr. Putin to erase any legacy of Mr. Medvedev’s presidency, and his “modernization initiative.”

    The new agency, Mr. Miroshnichenko said, would now revert to its mission before the dawn of “the post-Soviet era” as an arm of “foreign propaganda,” while Itar-Tass would focus on domestic news.

    The most pointed criticism of Mr. Putin’s decrees focused on the choice of Mr. Kiselyov as the new agency’s director. He is known for sharp commentaries in defense of Mr. Putin’s Russia that often reflect his belief that there are foreign conspiracies aimed at weakening the nation. He has described the current protests in Ukraine as a provocation by a coalition of Sweden, Poland and Lithuania like the one that Peter the Great defeated in 1709 in the Battle of Poltava in what is modern Ukraine.

    “This week the coalition has shown its full strength,” Mr. Kiselyov said on his weekly talk show, “Vesti Nedeli,” or “News of the Week,” on the state television network, Rossiya. “It looked like a thirst for revenge for Poltava.”

    Remarks he made last year resurfaced during the recent debate over the new prohibitions on “propaganda” of nontraditional sexual relationships. “I think it is too little to fine gays for homosexual propaganda,” he said. “They should be forbidden from donating blood, sperm. And in the case of an automobile accident, their hearts should be buried in the ground or burned.”

    There were calls for a criminal inquiry for his remarks, but none were undertaken. Mr. Kiselyov denied that he or the remarks he made were homophobic.

    His views on journalism, he acknowledged in a recent interview with the online news organization Lenta.ru, had evolved significantly, particularly after he worked in Ukraine during the previous political protests there that became known as the Orange Revolution.

    “I understood that objective journalism, distilled, is absolutely not in demand,” he said in the interview. “The basic difference between post-Soviet and Western journalism is that for us it is necessary to create values and not to renew them, to produce values and not to reproduce them, as is basically done in the West.”

    Head of New Kremlin Media Agency Bids to Boost Russia’s Image

    A prominent and outspoken Russian television presenter appointed by the Kremlin to head up a new media conglomerate that will replace RIA Novosti news agency said Monday he would try to improve the world’s attitude toward Russia.

    “Restoration of a just attitude toward Russia as an important world country with good intentions – that’s the mission of the new structure I am about to head,” Dimtry Kiselyov told state-owned Rossiya-24 TV channel.

    The Kremlin announced the dissolution of RIA Novosti, the country’s leading state-run news agency, in a decree issued Monday that outlined plans to reorganize government media assets.

    News agency RIA Novosti and the state-owned Voice of Russia radio are to be scrapped and absorbed into Rossiya Segodnya.

    Kiselyov has come to prominence in recent weeks after a clip of inflammatory remarks he made about homosexuals in a program that aired last year was uploaded to the Internet and became a viral hit.

    In the clip, Kiselyov is shown saying that he believed homosexuals should be banned from donating blood and sperm. He said in the same program that the heart of any homosexual that died in a car accident should be burned or buried alive rather than be offered up for transplant.

    The move to dissolve RIA Novosti and Voice of Russia is the latest in a series of shifts in the country’s news landscape, which appear to point toward a tightening of state control in the already heavily regulated media sector.

    Presidential administration head Sergei Ivanov said the changes were about saving money and making state media more effective.

    “Russia has its own independent politics and strongly defends its national interests: it’s difficult to explain this to the world but we can do this, and we must do this,” Ivanov said.

  10. মাসুদ করিম - ১০ ডিসেম্বর ২০১৩ (১১:২৮ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    মঙ্গল গ্রহে নাসা-র রভার কিউরিসিটি প্রায় সুপেয় পানির হ্রদের অস্তিত্বর সন্ধান পেয়েছে।

    NASA Curiosity rover discovers evidence of freshwater Mars lake

    NASA’s steady reconnaissance of Mars with the Curiosity rover has produced another major discovery: evidence of an ancient lake — with water that could plausibly be described as drinkable — that was part of a long-standing, wet environment that could have supported simple forms of life.

    Scientists have known that the young Mars was more Earthlike than the desert planet we see today, but this is the best evidence yet that Mars had swimming holes that stuck around for thousands or perhaps millions of years. (It would have been very chilly — bring a wet suit.)

    The findings were being published Monday online by the journal Science and were discussed in San Francisco at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

    Scientists had announced this year that they’d found signs of an ancient, fresh-water lake within Gale Crater, but the new reports provide a much more detailed analysis, including the first scientific measurements of the age of rocks on another planet. The research suggests that Martian winds are sand-blasting rock outcroppings and creating inviting places to dig into rocks that may retain the kind of organic molecules associated with ancient microbes.

    Gale Crater is in an area with rocks about 4.2 billion years old. The lake, which scientists think existed a little more than 3.5 billion years ago, was roughly the size and shape of one of New York’s Finger Lakes. The freshwater lake may have come and gone, and sometimes been iced over, but the new research shows that the lake was not some momentary feature, but rather was part of a long-lasting habitable environment that included rivers and groundwater.

    Previous discoveries by Mars rovers had suggested that the Red Planet once had surface and groundwater with the quality of battery acid, but the water in this lake looks much more benign.

    “If we put microbes from Earth and put them in this lake on Mars, would they survive? Would they survive and thrive? And the answer is yes,” said John Grotzinger, a Caltech planetary geologist who is the chief scientist of the Curiosity rover mission. He is the lead author of a paper titled “A Habitable Fluvio-Lacustrine Environment at Yellowknife Bay, Gale Crater, Mars.”

    “In March, we did know that we had a lake, but what we weren’t sure of was how big it was and how long it lasted, and also we were not sure about the broader geological context that supports the presence of lakes coming and going for a very long time,” Grotzinger said in an interview.

    “This is really similar to an Earth environment,” he said at the AGU news conference.

    The duration of this environment matters when it comes to habitability, said Jennifer Eigenbrode, a geochemist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and a co-author of three of the new papers.

    “If you have it sustained for a while, life can be there and do something and persist,” she said.

    The chemistry of the lake would have been congenial to organisms known as chemolithoautotrophs — mineral-eaters. Whether such organisms, which thrive on Earth in exotic environments such as caves and deep-sea hydrothermal vents, actually existed on the young Mars is a question Curiosity lacks the tools to answer.

    “I’m most excited about the nature of the water,” said Jim Bell, an Arizona State University scientist who has worked with the cameras on Curiosity as well as two precursor rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, and is a co-author of four of the new papers. “Previous results from Spirit and Opportunity pointed to very acidic water, but what we’re seeing in Gale Crater is evidence of fresh water. Very neutral. Drinkable.”

    A fleet of NASA spaceships has flown to Mars in the past decade. The exploration program has used orbiters to study the landscape from on high to search for the most intriguing places to send landers and rovers. Three rovers — Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity — have rolled their way across that parched landscape in that decade, their movements painstakingly choreographed by technicians at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

    Curiosity landed in the summer of 2012 in the 95-mile-wide Gale Crater. The rover carries a suite of instruments for scraping samples and drilling into rock. Scientists have conducted what amounted to a full set of tabletop laboratory experiments on the soils, with Curiosity following commands sent across millions of miles of interplanetary space.

    The soils were scooped, photographed, baked and sniffed, and when heated produced a number of gases, including water, sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide and oxygen. Curiosity also detected molecules of organic carbon, but that’s an ambiguous finding. The organics could have been produced by Curiosity’s instruments, or they could have come to Mars via meteorites. They could also be indigenous, and figuring that out will be part of Curiosity’s mission in months and years to come. But even if the organics are Martian in nature, that doesn’t mean they’re produced biologically.

    Mars has as much land surface as Earth, and only a tiny fraction of the planet has now been explored by the rovers. The fact that Curiosity found signs of an ancient lake with benign chemistry suggests that Mars was broadly “habitable” — potentially an abode of life — billions of years ago.

    Mars has lost much of its atmosphere since, and dried out, and become a cold, hostile environment with no obvious signs of extant life, though there could be “cryptic” life below the surface.

    “Curiosity’s measurements demonstrate clearly that Mars was a habitable world. We still don’t know whether it was or is inhabited, but we know life could have flourished early in Martian history in the aqueous environment we found,” said Laurie Leshin, dean of the School of Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York and a scientist who has worked on the Curiosity mission.

    Scientists do not know how life originated on Earth. They don’t know if it fizzes into existence wherever there is the right combination of elements, or if it’s a rare, or even unique phenomenon. The general consensus is that whatever happened on Earth could happen elsewhere, but the discussion is hampered by the fact that the data set of planets with life contains only the one example — the datum that is Earth-life.

    There could be 4-billion-year-old microfossils in the Mars rocks, but finding them would probably require a sample-return mission, something NASA would like to pull off with international partners in the next decade.

    NASA has approved a plan for a new rover in 2020, but a sample-return project would be an elaborate production involving three separate spacecraft, launching from Earth at two-year intervals. That more ambitious program hasn’t been approved and remains aspirational in a time when NASA’s planetary exploration budget has been squeezed, in part due to cost overruns.

    The Curiosity rover was delayed two years, and its $2.5 billion cost is about $900 million over budget, according to G. Scott Hubbard, former head of NASA’s Mars exploration program and now a professor at Stanford. But he applauded the new science results and said it validated the agency’s Mars strategy.

    “This is wonderful. It’s a capstone of the decade’s worth of systematic exploration,” Hubbard said.

  11. মাসুদ করিম - ১৪ ডিসেম্বর ২০১৩ (১১:২২ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    পানিবন্টনে ভারত তার প্রতিবেশীদের সাথে কাঙ্ক্ষিত প্রতিটি চুক্তি সম্পন্ন না করতে পারলেও কিছু চুক্তি করেছে কিন্তু চীন তার প্রতিবেশীদের সাথে এরকম কোনো চুক্তি আজো করেনি এবং আজ পর্যন্ত কোনো সদিচ্ছাও দেখায়নি। এশিয়ায় পানি নিয়ে টানাটানির সুরাহা চাইলে চীনকে তার প্রতিবেশীদের সাথে বন্টন/বাঁধ চুক্তিতে আসতেই হবে এবং ভারতকেও তার প্রতিবেশীদের সাথে অভিন্ন নদীর বন্টন/বাঁধ চুক্তিতে আরো বাস্তবায়নমূলক সদিচ্ছা নিয়ে অগ্রসর হতে হবে।

    Asian water woes

    MAP: AMU DARYA & SYR DARYA, BRAHMAPUTRA, MEKONG

    Asia faces a dilemma. The continent has the lowest global per capita freshwater resources, less than half the global annual average of 222,480 cubic feet per head. At the same time, Asia has the fastest growing demand for water in the world. Asia can in no sense remain the engine of global economic growth without addressing its water crisis.

    In an increasingly water-stressed Asia, the struggle for water is escalating political tensions and intensifying the impact on eco-systems. The water situation will worsen in the fastest growing Asian economies as well as in less developed countries where fertility rates remain high. In many Asian countries, decisions about where to place new manufacturing or energy plants are increasingly constrained by inadequate local water availability. The World Bank has estimated the economic cost of China’s water shortages at 2.3 percent of its GDP. China, however, is not yet under “water stress”—a term defined as the availability of less than 60,000 cubic feet of water per person per year. But already water-stressed economies, from South Korea to India, are paying a higher price.

    It is against this background that water wars are being waged between competing states in several regions. Tactics include building dams on international rivers or, if the country is located downstream, resorting to coercive diplomacy to prevent such construction. In the case of Sino-Indian relations, water is becoming a key security issue and a potential source of serious discord. China, having established hydro-supremacy by annexing the starting places of multiple major international rivers, is now pursuing an increasingly ambitious dam-building program on the Tibetan plateau, which threatens to diminish international river flows into India and other states that share these same upland water sources.

    Averting water wars demands rules-based cooperation, water sharing, and dispute settlement mechanisms. China, however, is working to get its hand on Asia’s water tap by constructing an extensive upstream hydro-infrastructure. China does not have a single water-sharing treaty with any of its neighbors.

    India, by contrast, has water-sharing treaties with its two downstream neighbors—Pakistan and Bangladesh, covering the Indus and Ganges Rivers and setting new precedents in international water law. In the 1996 Ganges Pact, India guaranteed Bangladesh an equal share of the downstream flows during the difficult dry season. The 1960 Indus Treaty remains the world’s most generous water-sharing arrangement. India agreed to set aside 80 percent of the waters of the six-river Indus system for Pakistan indefinitely, in the hope that it could trade water for peace.

    A central issue facing Asia is the need to persuade China’s leaders to institutionalize cooperation with neighboring states on shared resources. Given China’s centrality in Asia’s water map, its rush to build more giant dams, promises to upset relations across Asia, emperiling prospects for any rules-based Asian water regime.

  12. মাসুদ করিম - ১৮ ডিসেম্বর ২০১৩ (১১:০০ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    Why the Art World Is So Loathsome

    Freud said the goals of the artist are fame, money, and beautiful lovers. Based on my artist acquaintances, I would say this holds true today. What have changed, however, are the goals of the art itself. Do any exist?

    How did the art world become such a vapid hell-hole of investment-crazed pretentiousness? How did it become, as Camille Paglia has recently described it, a place where “too many artists have lost touch with the general audience and have retreated to an airless echo chamber”? (More from her in a moment.)

    There are sundry problems bedeviling the contemporary art scene. Here are eight that spring readily to mind:

    1. Art Basel Miami.

    It’s baaa-ack, and I, for one, will not be attending. The overblown art fair in Miami—an offshoot of the original, held in Basel, Switzerland—has become a promo-party cheese-fest. All that craven socializing and trendy posing epitomize the worst aspects of today’s scene, provoking in me a strong desire to start a Thomas Kinkade collection. Whenever some hapless individual innocently asks me if I will be attending Art Basel—even though the shenanigans don’t start for another two weeks, I am already getting e-vites for pre-Basel parties—I invariably respond in Tourette’s mode:

    “No. In fact, I would rather jump in a river of boiling snot, which is ironic since that could very well be the title of a faux-conceptual installation one might expect to see at Art Basel. Have you seen Svetlana’s new piece? It’s a river of boiling snot. No, I’m not kidding. And, guess what, Charles Saatchi wants to buy it and is duking it out with some Russian One Percent-er.”

    2. Blood, poo, sacrilege, and porn.

    Old-school ’70s punk shock tactics are so widespread in today’s art world that they have lost any resonance. As a result, twee paintings like Gainsborough’s Blue Boy and Constable’s Hay Wain now appear mesmerizing, mysterious, and wildly transgressive. And, as Camille Paglia brilliantly argues in her must-read new book, Glittering Images, this torrent of penises, elephant dung, and smut has not served the broader interests of art. By providing fuel for the Rush Limbaugh-ish prejudice that the art world is full of people who are shoving yams up their bums and doing horrid things to the Virgin Mary, art has, quoting Camille again, “allowed itself to be defined in the public eye as an arrogant, insular fraternity with frivolous tastes and debased standards.” As a result, the funding of school and civic arts programs has screeched to a halt and “American schoolchildren are paying the price for the art world’s delusional sense of entitlement.” Thanks a bunch, Karen Finley, Chris Ofili, Andres Serrano, Damien Hirst, and the rest of you naughty pranksters!

    Any taxpayers not yet fully aware of the level of frivolity and debasement to which art has plummeted need look no further than the Museum of Modern Art, which recently hosted a jumbo garage-sale-cum-performance piece created by one Martha Rosler titled “Meta-Monumental Garage Sale.” Maybe this has some reverse-chic novelty for chi-chi arty insiders, but for the rest of us out here in the real world, a garage sale is just a garage sale.

    3. Art a la mode.

    The growing mania for melanging fashion with art is great for the former, but it has been a gravitas-eroding catastrophe for the latter. The world of style is ephemeral and superficial by nature. Art, real art, fabulous art, high art, must soar and endure and remain unencumbered by the need to sell handbags and blouses. Example: Selfridges recently strapped a massive effigy of dot-queen Yayoi Kusama to the front of the store in celebration of her new collaboration with Louis Vuitton. Similar installations took place at Vuitton stores worldwide. There was no downside for the historic department store or for Maison Vuitton. From a fashion point of view the entire project was memorable and rather marvelous. But what about Art? Did the excitable hordes of tourists who were sticker-shocking their way through the spotty merchandise have any notion that they were scrutinizing the oeuvre of a so-called great artist? Did they, as a result, schlep to the Whitney to see the Kusama exhibit? And what of Ms. Kusama herself? How is the poor luv fairing after being dragged up Rodeo Drive and down 57th Street? Just as well she is already in a nut house. (She voluntarily committed herself to a psychiatric hospital in 1977 and has lived and made art there ever since.)

    4. The post-skill movement.

    “No major figure of profound influence has emerged in painting or sculpture since the waning of Pop Art and the birth of Minimalism in the early 1970s,” writes Camille P. But what about those annoying YBAs, the young British artists, the folks that noted U.K.-based art critic Brian Sewell has wickedly and accurately dubbed “The Post-Skill Movement”? Are they profound or influential?

    As a window dresser (recently retired) who pursued his craft for more than 40 years, I have always taken a keen interest in art. I have occasionally collaborated with artists—Warhol, Rauschenberg, Mapplethorpe, Candyass—all the while enjoying the freedom of not being an artist myself. I always saw my work as a combo of street theater and Coney Island sideshow. This allowed me to switch styles and try anything without ever feeling the need to create profundity or permanence. Example: I am probably the only person on Earth to have incorporated—back in the ’70s—colostomy bags into a designer clothing display. Did it mean anything? Was it ART? No, emphatically, no! A nurse friend gave me large stash of dead-stock unused bags, and I felt compelled to rescue them, which is another way of saying that I had not prepared anything for my window installation on that particular week and was glad to take receipt of a ready-made prop.

    For years I happily free-associated with my papier-mâché, my props, and my found objects … and then something weird happened. Artists put down their brushes and stole my objets trouves, my staple guns and glue guns. I first noticed the trend at the 1997 Sensation show at the Royal Academy in London. Enter the Post-Skill Movement.

    With its Damien Hirst vitrines, Tracey Emin camping vignettes, and Sarah Lucas found-object tableaux, this landmark show was like one giant Barneys window. This realization brought me no satisfaction: “If art is morphing into display, then what the hell are we window dressers supposed to plonk into our constantly changing vignettes?” I asked myself as I gazed at Jake and Dinos Chapman’s defiled window mannequins. I felt like a professional hooker who is no longer sure what to wear because all the regular respectable ladies are now dressing like sluts. (Which, by the way, they are.)

    In a desperate search of some gravitas and some skill, I fled the Sensation tableaux and ran next door to the adjacent, and infinitely more artful, Victorian Fairy Painting exhibit. FYI, the catalog for this strange and significant show is still available and makes a lovely holiday gift.

    5. The flight of craft.

    As stated above, a lack of skill and craft among artists is sucking the life and the gravitas out of the art world. There are, thank God, still some artists and designers who are bucking this trend and making gorgeous stuff. You won’t find it at trendy galleries or at Art Basel. You are more likely to find it among the potters and craftsmen on Etsy. My favorite artists at the moment work in the field of illustration and applied art: Examples include Ruben Toledo, John-Paul Philippe, and Malcolm Hill.

    6. Adderall a go-go.

    Short attention spans have made art into one quickie sight gag after another. Is that an oversized Tiffany bag? No, it’s a metal sculpture by Jonathan Seliger. Gotcha! Clearly, in our frenetic, technology-obsessed age we have lost the ability to contemplate and are interested only in visual puns. Camille to the rescue: Glittering Images—I keep banging on about her book, but only because it’s so fantastic—is an invitation to think, to scrutinize, to gaze, to stare, to shut the fuck up, to learn, and to self-cultivate. La Paglia dares to take us beyond the high jinks of contemporary art and refocuses our Internet-scrambled brains on the pure uncynical contemplation of high art. Surrender to her!

    7. Dollars and shekels and rubles.

    My father-in-law, Harry Adler, was a committed, ferocious, lifelong passionate artist who produced a massive body of work in all mediums. However, I never once remember him holding up a painting or a drawing and asking, “How much d’ya think I could get for this?” Unfettered by the impulse to grease his creative journey with financial validation, he pursued his art with freedom and authenticity.

    Today’s successful artists, on the other hand, seem obsessed with money. How, you may ask, does this jive with the artist’s bohemian esprit? In the age of Occupy, when the 1 percent are so reviled, how do groovy, liberal, and, one assumes, democratic dealers and artists rationalize their politician-like reliance upon, and coziness with, the super-wealthy?

    “Aha!” I hear you artists say. “But what about fashion? Aren’t fancy designers and retailers reliant on exactly the same group?” To which I reply, “Exactly my point. Fashion has no lofty goals. It’s about buying a dollop of transformative glamour and a jolt of prestige. Should art not aspire to more than that?”

    8. Cool is corrosive.

    The dorky uncool ’80s was a great time for art. The Harings, Cutrones, Scharfs, and Basquiats—life-enhancing, graffiti-inspired painters—communicated a simple, relevant, populist message of hope and flava during the darkest years of the AIDS crisis. Then, in the early ‘90s, grunge arrived, and displaced the unpretentious communicative culture of the ‘80s with the dour obscurantism of COOL. Simple fun and emotional sincerity were now seen as embarrassing and deeply uncool. Enter artists like Rachel barrel-of-laughs Whiteread, who makes casts of the insides of cardboard boxes. (Nice work if you can get it!)

    A couple of decades on, art has become completely pickled in the vinegar of COOL, and that is why it is so irrelevant to the general population.

    Enough kvetching. Let’s end on a positive note. Not every blue-chip artist today is shoving his poo into tins and calling it art. I love me a little Nick Cave and an occasional Jeff Koons. And here’s the great news: While we wait for the art world to change direction and seek out a more meaningful place in our lives, there are no shortage of chuckles to be had. The landscape of art has never been more vast or intriguingly bonkers. The pretentions and foibles, to mention nothing of the gobbledygook theoretical justifications that accompany all the neo-Duchamp-ian bollocks, provide many occasions for amusement, mockery, and parody. If Jacques Tati were alive today he would have unwittingly blundered round that “Meta-Monumental Garage Sale” looking for a new raincoat. On his way home, he would have popped into a travel agent and booked his flight to Miami.

  13. মাসুদ করিম - ২৪ ডিসেম্বর ২০১৩ (১০:২৬ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    কালাশনিকভ ও একে-৪৭ নিয়ে বিভিন্ন সময়ে সুপারিশকৃত লিন্কে

    কয়েকমাস আগে একে-৪৭ রাইফেলের ৬০ বছর পূর্তি হল।

    গানপাউডার, ডিনামাইট, গ্রেনেড, কালাশনিকভ, ইন্টারনেট — নৈরাজ্যের জনপ্রিয় অস্ত্র?

    কিংবদন্তী রাইফেল একে-৪৭এর রাশিয়ান নির্মাতা প্রতিষ্ঠান দেউলিয়া হতে চলেছে।

    ৯৩ বছর বয়সী কিংবদন্তী বন্দুক নির্মাতা ‘একে-৪৭’এর ডিজাইনার মিখাইল কালাশনিকভের ( Mikhail Kalashnikov) অবস্থা সংকটাপন্ন।

    [রিয়ানভস্তি-র সাইটে খুব সম্ভবত ‘রুশিয়া সেগদনিয়া’-য় রূপান্তরের কাজ চলছে তাই বিস্তারিত কিছু আপাতত দিচ্ছি না, অন্য কোনো সাইট থেকে খবরটি আমি শেয়ার করতে চাইছি না]

  • Sign up
Password Strength Very Weak
Lost your password? Please enter your username or email address. You will receive a link to create a new password via email.
We do not share your personal details with anyone.