বিভাগ/বিষয় নিরপেক্ষ

সুপারিশকৃত লিন্ক : মে ২০১৪

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।

৮ comments

  1. মাসুদ করিম - ১ মে ২০১৪ (৩:৪১ অপরাহ্ণ)

    বাংলাদেশে গৃহকর্মীরা গড়ে সপ্তাহে ৫৮.১ ঘণ্টা কাজ করেন যা দেশে কৃষি-অকৃষি শ্রমিকদের সাপ্তাহিক কাজের গড়ের চেয়ে ৪ ঘণ্টা বেশি। আর গৃহকর্মীদের বেতন কৃষি শ্রমিকদের চেয়ে ১.২৭ গুণ কম এবং গার্মেন্টস শ্রমিকদের চেয়ে ২.০৯ গুণ কম।

    A domestic help works 58.1 hrs per week: Study

    A domestic help works, on an average, for 58.1 hours per week. The period is four hours more than what the workers in agriculture and non-agriculture sector spend on their jobs a week.

    A survey also found that a domestic worker’s earning is 1.27 times less than the wage of an agricultural labourer and 2.09 times less than that of a garment worker.

    Unnayan Onneshan, an independent multidisciplinary think-tank, conducted the first-ever nationwide survey on the domestic workers titled “Domestic Workers: Devaluation and Discrimination, State of Labour in Bangladesh 2014” and the findings were released on the eve of the Labour Day.

    The survey said a woman domestic worker gives labour on an average for 63 hours in a week which is nine hours more than a woman farm labourer and 12 hours more than of a non-agricultural worker.

    In the case of children engaged in domestic work, 57.5 per cent work more than nine hours per day and 12.0 per cent have no fixed timeframe. A child domestic worker receives, on an average, Tk 1185.00 per month whereas 28.7 per cent of them do not receive any regular payment.

    The average income of a domestic worker in a month is Tk 2535.76 whereas the minimum wage of a garment worker is Tk 5300.00 for the same period.

    The daily average wages in seven divisions of Dhaka, Chittagong, Rajshahi, Khulna, Sylhet, Barisal and Rangpur are: Tk 114.44, Tk 74.86, Tk 37.32, Tk 47.75, Tk 55.64, Tk 64.76 and Tk 55.99 respectively.

    While publishing the study report on Wednesday, the Unnayan Onneshan called for listing domestic workers, who have remained voiceless, economically devalued, socially discriminated and led sub-human lives.

    The organisation has demanded formulation of laws for domestic workers of Bangladesh regarding working hours, wages and leave with other facilities along with inspection to monitor their working environment

    In the absence of law, the publication says, domestic workers get no scope to make complaints or seek protection from the court over denial of fair wage and abuse by their employers.

    The survey found that wages of domestic workers are determined normally in comparison with the standard of the neighbours’ payment. Until recognising the domestic workers as regular workers with a right to days off, limits to working hours, or the right to form unions, the implementation of rights of domestic workers remains lax.

  2. মাসুদ করিম - ১৯ মে ২০১৪ (৯:১৮ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    মুভি রিভিউ: ‘যুদ্ধশিশু’

    ১৯৭১ সালের ১৬ ডিসেম্বর পাকিস্তানি সেনারা যখন যৌথ বাহিনীর কাছে আত্মসমর্পণ করছিল, সেখানে থাকা ভারতীয় সাংবাদিক অমিতা মালিক লক্ষ করলেন বাঁকা হাসি হেসে এক পাকিস্তানি সেনা বলছে, ‘আমরা যাচ্ছি, কিন্তু বীজ রেখে যাচ্ছি’।

    ‘দ্য ইয়ার অফ দ্য ভালচার’ বইয়ে মালিক বলেন, “এই মন্তব্যের পেছনে লুকিয়ে আছে মানব ইতিহাসের সবচেয়ে নৃশংস, সংগঠিত এবং নির্বিচার ধর্ষণযজ্ঞ, স্থানীয় সশস্ত্র সহযোগীদের নিয়ে যা চালিয়েছে একটি পেশাদার পাকিস্তানি সেনাবাহিনী।”

    আইনের অধ্যাপক ক্যাথেরিন ম্যাককিননের ব্যাখ্যায় স্পষ্ট হয় এই ধর্ষণের চরিত্র।

    “এমন ধর্ষণ, যা ধর্ষিতার বেঁচে থাকার ইচ্ছা কেড়ে নেয়। বাধ্য করে ঘর ছাড়তে এবং কখনও আর ফিরে না যেতে। এই ধর্ষণ দেখার, দেখানোর এবং অন্যকে শোনানোর। এই ধর্ষণের উদ্দেশ্য একটি গোষ্ঠীকে ছিঁড়ে ফেলা, একটি সমাজকে বিধ্বস্ত করা এবং মানুষকে ধ্বংস করা।”

    এমন ধর্ষণকেই সমস্ত ভয়াবহতা সমেত উপস্থাপন করেছেন ভারতীয় পরিচালক মৃত্যুঞ্জয় দেবব্রত তার ‘চিলড্রেন অফ ওয়ার’ সিনেমায়, যা বাংলাদেশে মুক্তি পেয়েছে ‘যুদ্ধশিশু’ নামে।

    মুক্তিযোদ্ধাদের গোপনে অস্ত্র সরবরাহকারী বীথিকা ধরা পড়ে পাকিস্তানি সেনাদের হাতে। একটি বাঁশের খুঁটিতে বীথিকাকে বেঁধে একের পর এক ধর্ষণ করতে থাকে পাকসেনারা। যন্ত্রণায় শুরুতে পশুর মতো গোঙাতে থাকা বীথিকাকে আস্তে আস্তে গ্রাস করে বোধহীন নিস্তব্ধতা। শেষদিকে পাকিস্তানি শিবিরে বন্দি আরেক নারী ফিদার দিকে সে তাকিয়ে থাকে শূন্য দৃষ্টি নিয়ে। মৃত্যুতে তার এই অবর্ণনীয় লাঞ্চনার অবসান হয় অবশেষে।

    এমন অনেক দৃশ্যেই গণহত্যার মতো সর্বোচ্চ অপরাধকে মূর্ত করে তুলতে পেরেছেন দেবব্রত।

    আর তাকে যথাযথ সহায়তা করেছেন রাইমা সেন, তিলোত্তমা সোম, পাভান মালহোত্রা, ইন্দ্রনীল সেনগুপ্ত, ফারুখ শেখ, ঋদ্ধি সেন এবং একটি ক্যামিও চরিত্রে ভিক্টর ব্যানার্জি। উপরের দৃশ্যে বীথিকা চরিত্রে তিলোত্তমা সোমের অভিনয় ভিত্তোরিও দি সিকার দ্বিতীয় বিশ্বযুদ্ধের সিনেমা ‘টু উইমেন’ এ ইলিনয়ের ব্রাউনের ধর্ষণদৃশ্যের সঙ্গে তুলনীয়।

    ‘যুদ্ধশিশু’ মূলত ফিদা ও তার সাংবাদিক স্বামী আমিরের গল্প। ২৬ মার্চ রাতেই তাদের বাড়িতে হানা দেয় পাকিস্তানি সেনারা। আমিরের চোখের সামনে ফিদাকে ধর্ষণের অসহ্য ও দীর্ঘ দৃশ্য শুরুতেই সতর্ক করে দেয় সিনেমাজুড়ে দর্শকদের ধৈর্য্যের পরীক্ষা নিতে যাচ্ছেন প্রথমবারের এই পরিচালক। কুইন্টিন টারান্টিনোর সিনেমা নাজিবিরোধী সিনেমা ‘ইনগ্লোরিয়াস বাস্টার্ডস’-এর মতোই নৃশংসতাকে চোখে আঙুল দিয়ে দেখিয়ে দেওয়ার একটা প্রয়াস লক্ষণীয়। তবে টারান্টিনো যেমন শক্ত বুনটে পাশাপাশি ছুটে চলা কয়েকটি গল্পকে এক সুতোয় বেঁধেছেন তেমনটা মুনশিয়ানা দেখাতে পারেননি দেবব্রত।

    সিনেমায় ফিদা-আমিরের গল্পের সমান্তরালে এগিয়েছে বাবা-মা হারানো ভাইবোন রফিক এবং কওসারের গল্প, আশ্রয়ের খোঁজে যারা ছুটছে ভারতের দিকে। অথচ দুই ঘণ্টা ৪৩ মিনিটের এই সিনেমায় এই দুই গল্পের সম্মিলন ঘটে না। যার ফলে সিনেমার শেষ অংশে নদীতে নৌকা দিয়ে পার হওয়ার দৃশ্যে যখন কওসারের কল্পনায় যুদ্ধবিধ্বস্থ বাংলাদেশের রূপক হিসেবে ফিদার অবতারণা করলেন পরিচালক, তখন পুরো দৃশ্যটিকে খাপছাড়া মনে হওয়াটাই দর্শকদের জন্য স্বাভাবিক। সেই সঙ্গে সিনেমার দৃশ্যগুলো স্বতন্ত্রভাবে ‘সিনেমাটিক বিউটি’র মুহূর্ত তৈরি করতে পারলেও গল্পের শক্তিশালী কাঠামোর অভাবে মাঝেমধ্যে ক্লান্তিকর হয়ে ওঠে।

    বাংলাদেশের বাইরে চিত্রায়িত হওয়ায় বাংলাদেশি দর্শকদের চোখে পড়বে বেশ কিছু ভৌগলিক অসামঞ্জস্য। সিনেমার কিছু দৃশ্যে বলা হয়েছে পাকিস্তানি ক্যাম্পটি গোপালপুরে, আবার কয়েকটি দৃশ্যে বলা হয়েছে ক্যাম্পটি ঢাকায়। ক্যাম্পের পেছনে আবার দেখা গেছে পাহাড়ি ল্যান্ডস্কেপ। ক্যাম্পে বন্দি বীরাঙ্গনাদের পোশাকও সে সময়ের সঙ্গে সংগতিপূর্ণ কি না তা নিয়ে প্রশ্ন উঠতে পারে। এসব ক্ষেত্রে পরিচালক হয়ত আরও একটু ইতিহাসচর্চার পরিচয় দিতে পারতেন।

    তবে সিনেমার চিত্রগ্রহণ ও সংগীতের ব্যবহার প্রশংসার দাবি রাখে। ‘রক্তই তো’ শিরোনামের গানটির কথা বলতে হচ্ছে আলাদা করেই। গানটিতে চলচ্চিত্রের জন্য ধারণকৃত দৃশ্যের পাশাপাশি মুক্তিযুদ্ধের আলোকচিত্র, নিউজ রিল এবং তথ্যচিত্রের ফুটেজের ব্যবহার করা হয়েছে।

    হিন্দিতে নির্মিত ‘চিলড্রেন অফ ওয়ার’-এর বাংলা সংস্করণ ‘যুদ্ধশিশু’তে ডাবিংয়ের প্রক্রিয়ায় গলদ থেকে গেছে অনেক বেশি। সিনেমার চরিত্ররা কথা বলেন কলকাতার ‘বাঙাল’দের ঢংয়ে। বাংলাদেশেও মুক্তি পাওয়ার কথা মাথায় রেখে এ দেশীয় চলতি বাংলা ব্যবহার করলেই হয়ত বেশি ভালো হত।

    ছবিতে প্রচুর উর্দু সংলাপ থাকায় ব্যবহার করা হয়েছে সাবটাইটেল। এবং সেই সাবটাইটেলও বাংলাদেশের বাংলার সঙ্গে সংগতিহীন। ভুল ব্যাকরণ (“তারা ‘ইয়া’ এইটা করবে, ‘ইয়া’ ওইটা!”) এবং ভুল শব্দের ব্যবহার (তারা যেন এই ঘটনা থেইকা আখেরি ‘চেতবানি’ পায়!) অনেকক্ষেত্রেই বিরক্তিকর।

    আর তাই অনেকগুলো ভালো দিক থাকা সত্ত্বেও ‘যুদ্ধশিশু’কে স্বার্থক সিনেমা বলা যাচ্ছে না। পরিচালক মৃতুঞ্জয় দেবব্রতের এটিই যে প্রথম পূর্ণদৈর্ঘ্য চলচ্চিত্র- সেটা বোঝা গেছে ভালোভাবেই। সিনেমার প্রথমদিনের আইএমডিবি রেটিং ৮.৫ হলেও সমালোচকদের গ্রহণযোগ্যতা অর্জন করতে এখনো অনেকটা পথই পাড়ি দিতে হবে এই নবীন নির্মাতাকে।

    তারপরও এই সিনেমার মাধ্যমে বাংলাদেশি না হয়েও ১৯৭১ কে তুলে ধরার যে মহৎ প্রয়াস দেখিয়েছেন পরিচালক- তা অস্বীকার করা যাবে না কিছুতেই। বীরাঙ্গনাদের নিয়ে এই মানের কাজ এটাই প্রথম। সেই সঙ্গে মুক্তিযুদ্ধে পাকিস্তানি গণহত্যার দালিলিক বিবরণ হিসেবেও এই সিনেমাটির গ্রহণযোগ্যতা থেকে যাবে।

  3. মাসুদ করিম - ১৯ মে ২০১৪ (১০:২৪ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    WHY THE MONA LISA STANDS OUT

    When a work of art is considered great, we may stop thinking about it for ourselves. Ian Leslie weighs the evidence

    From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, May/June 2014

    In 1993 a psychologist, James Cutting, visited the Musée d’Orsay in Paris to see Renoir’s picture of Parisians at play, “Bal du Moulin de la Galette”, considered one of the greatest works of impressionism. Instead, he found himself magnetically drawn to a painting in the next room: an enchanting, mysterious view of snow on Parisian rooftops. He had never seen it before, nor heard of its creator, Gustave Caillebotte.

    That was what got him thinking.

    Have you ever fallen for a novel and been amazed not to find it on lists of great books? Or walked around a sculpture renowned as a classic, struggling to see what the fuss is about? If so, you’ve probably pondered the question Cutting asked himself that day: how does a work of art come to be considered great?

    The intuitive answer is that some works of art are just great: of intrinsically superior quality. The paintings that win prime spots in galleries, get taught in classes and reproduced in books are the ones that have proved their artistic value over time. If you can’t see they’re superior, that’s your problem. It’s an intimidatingly neat explanation. But some social scientists have been asking awkward questions of it, raising the possibility that artistic canons are little more than fossilised historical accidents.

    Cutting, a professor at Cornell University, wondered if a psychological mechanism known as the “mere-exposure effect” played a role in deciding which paintings rise to the top of the cultural league. In a seminal 1968 experiment, people were shown a series of abstract shapes in rapid succession. Some shapes were repeated, but because they came and went so fast, the subjects didn’t notice. When asked which of these random shapes they found most pleasing, they chose ones that, unbeknown to them, had come around more than once. Even unconscious familiarity bred affection.

    Back at Cornell, Cutting designed an experiment to test his hunch. Over a lecture course he regularly showed undergraduates works of impressionism for two seconds at a time. Some of the paintings were canonical, included in art-history books. Others were lesser known but of comparable quality. These were exposed four times as often. Afterwards, the students preferred them to the canonical works, while a control group of students liked the canonical ones best. Cutting’s students had grown to like those paintings more simply because they had seen them more.

    Cutting believes his experiment offers a clue as to how canons are formed. He points out that the most reproduced works of impressionism today tend to have been bought by five or six wealthy and influential collectors in the late 19th century. The preferences of these men bestowed prestige on certain works, which made the works more likely to be hung in galleries and printed in anthologies. The kudos cascaded down the years, gaining momentum from mere exposure as it did so. The more people were exposed to, say, “Bal du Moulin de la Galette”, the more they liked it, and the more they liked it, the more it appeared in books, on posters and in big exhibitions. Meanwhile, academics and critics created sophisticated justifications for its pre-eminence. After all, it’s not just the masses who tend to rate what they see more often more highly. As contemporary artists like Warhol and Damien Hirst have grasped, critical acclaim is deeply entwined with publicity. “Scholars”, Cutting argues, “are no different from the public in the effects of mere exposure.”

    The process described by Cutting evokes a principle that the sociologist Duncan Watts calls “cumulative advantage”: once a thing becomes popular, it will tend to become more popular still. A few years ago, Watts, who is employed by Microsoft to study the dynamics of social networks, had a similar experience to Cutting in another Paris museum. After queuing to see the “Mona Lisa” in its climate-controlled bulletproof box at the Louvre, he came away puzzled: why was it considered so superior to the three other Leonardos in the previous chamber, to which nobody seemed to be paying the slightest attention?

    When Watts looked into the history of “the greatest painting of all time”, he discovered that, for most of its life, the “Mona Lisa” languished in relative obscurity. In the 1850s, Leonardo da Vinci was considered no match for giants of Renaissance art like Titian and Raphael, whose works were worth almost ten times as much as the “Mona Lisa”. It was only in the 20th century that Leonardo’s portrait of his patron’s wife rocketed to the number-one spot. What propelled it there wasn’t a scholarly re-evaluation, but a burglary.

    In 1911 a maintenance worker at the Louvre walked out of the museum with the “Mona Lisa” hidden under his smock. Parisians were aghast at the theft of a painting to which, until then, they had paid little attention. When the museum reopened, people queued to see the gap where the “Mona Lisa” had once hung in a way they had never done for the painting itself. The police were stumped. At one point, a terrified Pablo Picasso was called in for questioning. But the “Mona Lisa” wasn’t recovered until two years later when the thief, an Italian carpenter called Vincenzo Peruggia, was caught trying to sell it to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

    The French public was electrified. The Italians hailed Peruggia as a patriot who wanted to return the painting home. Newspapers around the world repro­duced it, making it the first work of art to achieve global fame. From then on, the “Mona Lisa” came to represent Western culture itself. In 1919, when Marcel Duchamp wanted to perform a symbolic defacing of high art, he put a goatee on the “Mona Lisa”, which only reinforced its status in the popular mind as the epitome of great art (or as the critic Kenneth Clark later put it, “the supreme example of perfection”). Throughout the 20th century, musicians, advertisers and film-makers used the painting’s fame for their own purposes, while the painting, in Watts’s words, “used them back”. Peruggia failed to repatriate the “Mona Lisa”, but he succeeded in making it an icon.

    Although many have tried, it does seem improbable that the painting’s unique status can be attributed entirely to the quality of its brushstrokes. It has been said that the subject’s eyes follow the viewer around the room. But as the painting’s biographer, Donald Sassoon, drily notes, “In reality the effect can be obtained from any portrait.” Duncan Watts proposes that the “Mona Lisa” is merely an extreme example of a general rule. Paintings, poems and pop songs are buoyed or sunk by random events or preferences that turn into waves of influence, rippling down the generations.

    “Saying that cultural objects have value,” Brian Eno once wrote, “is like saying that telephones have conversations.” Nearly all the cultural objects we consume arrive wrapped in inherited opinion; our preferences are always, to some extent, someone else’s. Visitors to the “Mona Lisa” know they are about to visit the greatest work of art ever and come away appropriately awed—or let down. An audience at a performance of “Hamlet” know it is regarded as a work of genius, so that is what they mostly see. Watts even calls the pre-eminence of Shakespeare a “historical fluke”.

    Shamus Khan, a sociologist at Columbia University, thinks the way we define “great” has as much to do with status anxiety as artistic worth. He points out that in 19th-century America, the line between “high” and “low” culture was lightly drawn. A steel magnate’s idea of an entertaining evening might include an opera singer and a juggler. But by the turn of the 20th century, the rich were engaged in a struggle to assert their superiority over a rising middle class. They did so by aligning themselves with a more narrowly defined stratum of “high art”. Buying a box at the opera or collecting impressionist art was a way of securing membership of a tribe.

    Although the rigid high-low distinction crumbled in the 1960s, we still use culture as a badge of identity, albeit in subtler ways. Today’s fashion for eclecticism—“I love Bach, Abba and Jay Z”—is, Khan argues, a new way for the bohemian middle class to demarcate themselves from what they perceive to be the narrow tastes of those beneath them in the social hierarchy.

    The innate quality of a work of art is starting to seem like its least important attribute. But perhaps it’s more significant than our social scientists allow. First of all, a work needs a certain quality to be eligible to be swept to the top of the pile. The “Mona Lisa” may not be a worthy world champion, but it was in the Louvre in the first place, and not by accident.

    Secondly, some stuff is simply better than other stuff. Read “Hamlet” after reading even the greatest of Shakespeare’s contemporaries, and the difference may strike you as unarguable. Compare “To be or not to be”, with its uncanny evocation of conscious thought, complete with hesitations, digressions and stumbles into insight, to any soliloquy by Marlowe or Webster, and Shakespeare stands in a league of his own. Watts might say I’m deluding myself, and so are the countless readers and scholars who have reached the same conclusion. But which is the more parsimonious explanation for Shakespeare’s ascendancy?

    A study in the British Journal of Aesthetics suggests that the exposure effect doesn’t work the same way on everything, and points to a different conclusion about how canons are formed. Building on Cutting’s experiment, the researchers repeatedly exposed two groups of students to works by two painters, the British pre-Raphaelite John Everett Millais and the American populist Thomas Kinkade. Kinkade’s garish country scenes are the epitome of kitsch—the gold standard for bad art. The researchers found that their subjects grew to like Millais more, as you might expect, given the mere-exposure effect. But they liked Kinkade less. Over time, exposure favours the greater artist.

    The social scientists are right to say that we should be a little sceptical of greatness, and that we should always look in the next room. Great art and mediocrity can get confused, even by experts. But that’s why we need to see, and read, as much as we can. The more we’re exposed to the good and the bad, the better we are at telling the difference. The eclecticists have it.

  4. মাসুদ করিম - ১৯ মে ২০১৪ (১০:৪১ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    Tiananmen Massacre 25th anniversary: how Chinese triads enabled the Great Escape

    Ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre, a Hong Kong triad speaks fully for the first time about how he smuggled 133 students and intellectuals out of the clutches of the Communist party

    Brother Six had the fastest speedboats in Hong Kong, rigged with four outboard engines to outrun the police on both sides of the border.

    He knew the best smuggling routes around the islands and waterways of the Pearl River Delta and had a team of sworn “brothers” ready to die for him.

    So in the bloody aftermath of the Tiananmen massacre, as the Communist party hunted down the leaders of the student protests, activists in Hong Kong gingerly brokered a meeting with the underworld boss.

    “We met in a hotel in Kowloon, around a week after the massacre,” said Brother Six at his tiny office in central Hong Kong in his first interview with a member of the Western media in two decades.

    In the room at that meeting were two film stars who had become wrapped up in the cause of the Tiananmen students, Alan Tang and John Shum. “They asked me if I was willing to join the operation to get the students out,” said Brother Six, whose real name is Chan Tat-ching. “I just said yes. I knew the risks, and I knew if I thought too much about it, I would not be able to make a decision.”

    “That night I came back to my office and wrote an 18-page plan, outlining how we would run the operation, what we would need, even what signals and codes to use,” he said. “I picked Li Chenggong as the code name for the escapees because in Chinese ‘chenggong’ means success.”

    What followed was a series of incredible escapes engineered by political activists, triads like Brother Six and Western diplomats that spirited at least 150 people out of China under the noses of the authorities, first to Hong Kong, then a British territory, and then onwards to France and the United States.

    “It was a strange alliance, between the political activists and the underworld, but it worked,” said Lee Cheuk-yan, the chairman of the Hong Kong Alliance, which supported the Tiananmen protesters, and now the leader of Hong Kong’s Labour party.

    “The only people who could pull off such an operation were not us. We raised the money and then it was people like Brother Six. They had the system already in place for smuggling. We did not have that.

    “There was no other way to do it. Of course we paid for each of the escapes. Those who were more famous were more expensive. Like everything in Hong Kong, there was a market price.”

    The full details of the rescue mission, which much later came to be known as Operation Yellowbird, have never been told.

    Even now, Brother Six said he was afraid of implicating some of the organisers. “No one is hunting me any more, but I cannot be sure about others,” he said. “I seldom speak about it, so most people have forgotten I was involved, and I do not want to claim any credit, there were lots of others who took part.”

    The memory of the Tiananmen massacre, which claimed hundreds of lives, has been erased from modern China’s consciousness, so deep were the scars that the months of protests, and their bloody suppression in the early hours of June 4, 1989, left on the Communist party.

    The arrival of the People’s Liberation Army in central Beijing, and the moment that the soldiers opened fire on unarmed civilians, hit Brother Six hard. “I nearly passed out when I saw it on television,” he said. “My relatives had to take me to the hospital”.

    That moment, and his own history of persecution, galvanised him to take part in the risky rescue mission.

    In 1971, he had swum the nine-mile crossing between Guangdong and Hong Kong to escape Mao Tse-tung’s Cultural Revolution. “I was the division chief of a printing factory that made Mao’s Little Red Book but they labelled me a counter-revolutionary and I had to smuggle myself out,” he explained.

    Today, nothing on his business card suggests Brother Six is a triad. He lists himself as the managing director of several companies, including Only Win Enterprises, Yide Foreign Banks Ltd, and Deluxe Door Ltd. “I have been retired for a long time,” he said. “I just live off the rents on my properties”.

    Now 70 years old, his left arm hangs awkwardly. In 1996, he was hacked with cleavers by four attackers as he ate at a food stand. He lost four litres of blood and doctors in intensive care feared he might end up paralysed.

    But in 1989, he was a notorious smuggler. “I was only a small boss,” he said. “But I was quite famous because I invented some of the most effective smuggling techniques.”

    Before the Tiananmen protests, he smuggled cars, car parts and “anything which had a high import duty” from Hong Kong to the mainland. “We bought the cars second-hand in the US and we could turn HKD200,000 [£15,000] to HKD300,000 on each one. We would boat them out to international waters then hoist them onto a speedboat with a crane,” he said.

    For the rescue mission, he put together a team of ten. “One was Brother Seven, my brother, and the others were all people I knew would risk their lives for me,” he said.

    Once the activists of the Hong Kong Alliance had confirmed the identities of the targets, Brother Six’s team would arrange a fast boat. “They just gave me the names, the rendezvous point and the code to use and I took care of it,” he said.

    “Altogether it cost around HKD10 million [£750,000] and the Hong Kong Alliance raised most of it, but I put some in, as did other leaders. Most of the money went to the men running the speedboats, and some to bribe government officials on the mainland. In China, you cannot do anything without money, but if you have money, you can do anything.”

    Among those he saved were Li Lu, a multi-millionaire investment banker, Wan Runnan, the founder of the Chinese technology company Stone Corp, and Wu’er Kaixi, number two on the 21 most-wanted list.

    “This is how I feel about you – admiration, gratitude and love,” wrote Li Lu in a letter in 2007. “People around the world will remember you for a long time. It is a great honour to know you.”

    He also received a note of appreciation for his work from Li Lin, a Chinese businessman in New York. “Except for respect, if you have any requests in the future, please let me know.”

    The students and intellectuals they smuggled to safety remember travelling to one of the safe houses on the mainland and then boarding the boats under the cover of darkness, sometimes stopping at islands on the way to wait for a clear run into Hong Kong. “We lay under the deck and other boats secured the perimeter for us as we sped to Hong Kong,” said Yan Jiaqi, 72, now a writer in Maryland in the United States.

    “We were told that the next time someone showed us an HSBC key ring with a bull’s head on it, we should follow them,” said Xiang Xiaoji, 57, now a lawyer in Boston.

    In Hong Kong, they were taken to a safe house in Sai Kung, said Mr Lee. “We helped them go through the embassy and be assessed for political asylum,” he said. “We got them plane tickets out and gave them money,” he added. “One of them even stayed in my house for a few weeks.”

    “The French did most of it. The British had a role to play as the Hong Kong government, to screen the people coming in and decide whether they qualified for political asylum. But the French helped around 100 of them leave.

    “Some of them were here for a short while, some of them were here for a long time. The famous ones, the ones on the wanted list, could be got out in a few days, but the less famous ones, well some of them had to wait a year,” he added.

    The French consulate began issuing visas for the exiles without waiting for approval from Paris.

    “Sometimes when a decision is taken it does not need a very official process, it can be a local decision,” said a source with knowledge of the episode.

    “That year was the bicentenary of the French Revolution, it was quite symbolic in terms of human rights. No one at that time really cared about whether it might upset the Chinese,” he added.

    “I personally had the feeling that China would appreciate it, either sooner or later, because they were just students and intellectuals and to slaughter them would have added to the shame.”

    If the Chinese spies in Hong Kong were aware of the mission, they did not seem to report it to Beijing. “There were some disagreements at that time between Hong Kong and Beijing,” the source suggested. “There was no leak. Sometimes the best way to do something secret is to do it in the daylight”.

    Although Brother Six, and others involved in the mission, believe Chinese officials in the south turned a blind eye to the rescues either because they had been bought or because they sympathised with the students, the operation was not without danger.

    Two of his men died after they collided with another boat. Another two were imprisoned after a sting operation by the Chinese police.

    “There was a man, who has now passed away, called Lo Hoi-sing who was in charge of collecting intelligence,” said Brother Six. “When we went to get Chen Ziming, Chen had actually already been arrested. But the police fed Lo some fake intelligence so when my two men showed up, there were policemen waiting for them.”

    The men, Li Longqing and Li Peicheng, confessed and told police about the operation, after which they were sentenced to six years in prison. Their imprisonment spelled the end of the mission for Brother Six, although others continued the operation for several years.

    “Afterwards, I gave the Hong Kong Alliance half a year to get them out of jail, and when they failed, I decided to negotiate directly,” he said.

    “In 1990 I went to Beijing to negotiate their release. I told the authorities they ought to thank me for getting rid of their headache. They said it was all behind us, and we should not discuss it further. They said if I quit the operation, they would release my men and my record would be cleared so I could go back and forth as I pleased. So I agreed and six months later they let the two out.”

  5. মাসুদ করিম - ২০ মে ২০১৪ (৮:২৯ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    থাইল্যান্ডে আজ থেকে মার্শাল ল।

    What does martial law entail?

    Thailand’s army imposed martial law nationwide on Tuesday after months of political turmoil. Here’s a look at what martial law entails:

    Martial law gives military officers the power to:

    – Take action against war or riots;

    – Use arms to suppress unrest;

    – Search, confiscate or occupy any premises or vehicles;

    – Censor information;

    – Block, search and control postal services;

    – Activate the military court to judge on crimes within the area under martial law;

    – Mobilise civilians to help the military;

    – Procure resources such as vehicles or logistical materials to support military operations;

    – Prohibit public gatherings, publications, broadcasting, transport, communication, travel, the movement of people or any action that the Defence Ministry deems necessary;

    – Enforce curfews;

    – Destroy, remove or adjust any premise or location for the purpose of military operations;

    – Arrest and detain suspects for a maximum of seven days.

    – People are not entitled to any compensation for damage incurred during such military operations;

    – Martial law can only be ended with a Royal Decree.

    • মাসুদ করিম - ২৩ মে ২০১৪ (৫:৫২ অপরাহ্ণ)

      নানা ক্যু-এর একখানি মালা : থাইল্যান্ড

      Social Scientists Discover New Species Of Coup In Thailand

      Researchers today announced the discovery of a previously unknown strain of coup d’état, which appears to be indigenous to Thailand.

      The so-called subrutum militaris dimidium, or Semi-Coup, was found earlier this week in Bangkok, the capital of the coup-rich ecosystem of Thailand, by social scientists who were researching a separate project on known coup varieties.

      “We started seeing all kinds of signs of a coup, including the suspension of media freedoms, the removal of an elected government by extra-legal means, and the violent suppression of pluralist representative government,” explained Dr Felicia Hadermort, the lead scientist on the project. “Yet state life was functioning as normal, with an intact constitution and social services, which traditionally precluded the presence of any known coup species.”

      According to Dr Hadermort, the breakthrough arrived when one of the field assistants came upon a newspaper declaring martial law on May 20, including pictures of army tanks in the streets and a general speaking on TV channels.

      “The signs were all there. We knew we were in the presence of a coup habitat for sure,” she said. “We just had no idea what kind. It was all very exciting.”

      The research team then began gathering all the data they could find on the yet-unnamed coup, and attempting to match them against their database of known coup characteristics and behavior. “We were sure it was probably an existing species of coup,” said Dr Randal Chambers, the team biologist.

      “After all, we are in Thailand, where at least 15 species of coup are native.”

      Among the many known types of coup to have flourished here since 1932 are subrutu fama institutio (Conventional Coup), subrutum placidas (Silent Coup), subrutum ipsum (Self Coup), subrutum lex legis (Coup By Court Verdict), subrutum per casus (Accidental Coup), subrutum haud causa (Coup Without Reason), and subrutum contra subrutum (Coup Against Previous Coup).

      Yet despite exhaustive comparisons, the team were unable to match the new coup to anything that had been recorded in Thailand, or even in other coup environments around the world.

      “Many of the coup’s behaviors, including its denials by the military that a coup even existed, seemed to match a Bolivian species, subrutum dimidium tergum, or Half-Assed Coup,” explained Dr Chambers. “We saw several shared characteristics, such as random banning of TV stations. But this subrutum dimidium tergum includes suspension of the constitution, which wasn’t happening here.”

      The team eventually realized that this coup was uniquely unable to suspend the constitution because it had been written by the same people now threatening it. According to Hadermort, this distinction was unprecedented in over 300 years of coup taxonomy. “It was as if we’d discovered an animal whose only food source is its own feces,” she said. “It made no sense, and yet there was the evidence right in front of our own eyes. A true half-coup, neither successful or unsuccessful, undeniable yet non-existent. A miracle species, really.”

      But the biggest surprise came two days later, when subrutum militaris dimidium suddenly blossomed into a full-blown coup, thus establishing itself as a species with distinct life stages. The team will publish its findings in the journal “Political Nature,” where they outlined the known facts about subrutum militaris dimidium, its habitat, and its place in the Thai political ecosystem.

      “As far as we can tell, subrutum militaris dimidium can only exist in very specific environments,” said Dr Randal. “It requires not only the corrupt judicial systems and anti-egalitarian cultural foundations that other coups thrive in, but also a very rare climate of confusion and fatigue with existing political institutions.”

      Based on the Bangkok data, Dr Randal hypothesizes that the Semi-Coup is actually a fertile species with a high birth rate, but also a high mortality rate in infancy. “For a Semi-Coup larva to live long enough to pupate into an adult coup, it has to establish itself into an accommodating niche in the social structure. It has to avoid infections from political parties, fight off predators such as internal factionalism, and successfully leech credibility from other institutions like the monarchy or nationalist mythology. And even then, it rarely survives more than six weeks, we think. It either seizes full power or dies.”

      Dr Randal was quick to note that despite its mortality rate and low numbers, subrutum militaris dimidium was, like all coups, a remarkable and successful species. In particular, he cited its superior camouflage abilities. “This coup doesn’t just mimic the colors of the national flag, but actually can disguise itself as a civilian police force,” he said. “And it can simultaneously imitate the sounds of nationalist rhetoric while parroting phrases of fake religiosity to confuse its enemies. Absolutely incredible.”

      The announcement of the Semi-Coup is already making waves in the field of coup zoology, where it is being hailed as a gateway species to possibly entirely new genera of coups d’état previously inconceivable. “This potentially changes everything we thought we knew about coups,” said Dr Morris Chiu, a research fellow at the School of Coup Studies at the University of Toronto. “In fact, it may represent a mutation within the subrutum family, a genetic adaptation of coups to survive in a new and more hostile world of instant information.”

      Randal noted that while many older species of coup had been hampered, or even exterminated, by social media and the global accessibility of information, subrutum militaris dimidium appeared capable of thriving in social media-saturated environments.

      “The Semi-Coup’s greatest asset might be its patience, and its ability to time its infestation in media environments. It destroys certain media channels but uses others, new media mostly, to propagate itself.” Hadermort agreed. “All coups are parasites, opportunistically stealing nourishment from other, more successful and complex forms of human governance,” she noted.

      “This kind of coup, one that actually pretends it doesn’t exist, even as it steals both liberty and economic resources, could be the start of a new age of more invisible, more insidious coup infestation.” “The world needs to keep an eye on Thailand,” she concluded. “There are some very fascinating, but possibly appalling things happening there.”

  6. মাসুদ করিম - ২৬ মে ২০১৪ (৯:২৯ অপরাহ্ণ)

    সংস্কৃতবিদ ভারতবিদ সুকুমারী ভট্টাচার্য প্রয়াত

  7. মাসুদ করিম - ৩০ মে ২০১৪ (১:৩৪ অপরাহ্ণ)

    Tagore’s speech ‘rediscovered’ after 93 years in German varsity

    Nearly a century after Rabindranath Tagore mesmerized his audience at the Assembly Hall of Berlin’s Friedrich Wilhelm University, (today’s Humboldt University), his speech has been rediscovered in the University archive.

    This speech was given on June 2, 1921. Tagore visited Germany twice more — in 1926 and 1930 when he also met Albert Einstein.

    Tagore’s concept of ‘one world’ held his audience spell-bound.

    Although India was under a colonial power at the time of the delivery of the speech, the great philosopher that Tagore was, he spoke in a different tenor saying that the idea of freedom to which India aspired, was based upon realisation of spiritual unity. “It is India’s duty to be loyal to this great truth,” he said adding that the country should never allow it to be extinguished by the storm of passion sweeping over the present-day world.

    “That is why we must be careful today to try to find out the principle, by means of which India will be able for certain to realise herself. That principle is neither commercialism, nor nationalism. It is not merely self-determination but self-conquest and self-dedication.

    “India’s grand achievement which is still stored deep within her heart is waiting, to unite within itself Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist and Christian, not by force, not by the apathy of resignation but in the harmony of active co-operation,” the Nobel Laureate said.

    Incidentally, the German consulate here, which has circulated the sound clip, has described Tagore in glowing terms as a great Indian poet, a novelist, philosopher and ecologist.

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