Of Lines and Borders, and Laws, and Politicians

Ok, the title is awkward, as are all my innards and all that makes up my cognitive system. Recent events had included a young boy from Bangladesh being beaten up at the hands of some young BSF guards (Indian Border Guards). A video was circulating around, thanks to NDTV, and is also available on YouTube. Now, I knew it was going to be something really bad, and just avoided it, not in the sense that I had a happier reality to live with, I could tell the reality is as ugly as it gets.

The outrage that it has created in me, my friends, my countrymen is due to the fact that no matter what the fault on the young kid's part, BSF's was an unlawful act. He was held up, legs tied, totally undressed, and beaten, and the video apparently has voices of the BSF guards contemplating on other methods of torture (on the version that runs for about 11 minutes). Sadly, for me, my friends and my countrymen, and most sadly, for the poor people like Habibur Rahman (the young guy violated in this case), our government thinks this is an "it happens" kind of normal thing that has happened, and WILL CONTINUE TO HAPPEN. !

We know from The Daily Star that even an editorial in an Indian paper called The Hindu called out to the Indian government for an apology. You can hear the grief and guilt in the voices of the reporters of NDTV. But neither governments, nor our opposition BMP who readily speaks ill of BAL, has failed to do or say anything regarding this! Shame, its a bloody shame to know your representatives are missing spines! Raise my tax if you will, if there is a surgery that can give you one, you imbeciles!

Related:
NHRC (India) notice to Union Home Secretary

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Oh how they potest the SOPA!

It was an interesting phenomenon, to see how major websites came up with different ideas to protest the passing of the SOPA and PIPA bill to curb on how materials like photos, videos and music are posted online, a bill that was backed by the movie and music industry. Wikipedia posed a blackout for 24 hours to demonstrate a world without user content and others found their own way of getting the word out, e.g. - Google started a petition. This morning we are met with the news of senators backing out of the bill. I really wonder why we couldn't come up with these kind of ideas to protest the changes made to our constitution which are highly undemocratic to the point of being tyrannic or oppressive. Many intellectuals wrote about it in the papers' editorials, but was that enough? Why couldn't the newspapers, TV channels and news websites come together to raise their voice, or to at least let everyone know what the implications are for such a bill. The Googles and Wikipedias did marvelously to spread awareness of the issue on the whole as much as they did on the actual protest. Is that too much to ask for here?

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Dhaka International Film Festival

I am thrilled that we are having an international film festival! I am sad that its so far away from me! I wish the festival was spread across town rather than centered around Dhaka University. I can see the advantages of having it in that area - the Public Library auditorium is there, there are some in the National Museum, and there are some showings in Alliance Francais in Dhanmondi.

I did manage to go up there, and one movie I enjoyed a lot was "Nobel Thief", which came from Kolkata starring Satyajit Ray's favorite Soumitro Chatterjee and the Disco Dance famed Mithun Chakrabartee. Its a fictitious account of a poor fellow from a village finding the Rabindranath Tagore's nobel medal which the thieves have dropped on their escape route. The poor man and the poor village he hails from find themselves in a dilemma to whether to return it, or whether they can sell the medal to bring some much needed money into their village. The setup, the dialogues and the execution of the film was exquisite, and it kept the audience laughing and jeering throughout. I recommend this film to everyone. The Dhaka Film Festival is going on till the 20th, so go!

Meanwhile, the lil promo that was made for the festival is also quite enjoyable:



Not so enjoyable, is the fact that someone is spending a lot of money to produce some mediocre cinema as well:

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Maid of Honors

If you told me the maid who does your house chores had a bachelors degree, second division or not, I could get the impression that the state of your country is such that no jobs are available even for people who graduate from college. I remember reading that once in Korea, even PhD holders were taking up low end jobs due the a bad job market.

However, I would be wrong of course, if:

1. The BA course was actually teaching how to do house chores - dishes, cleaning floors etc., or
2. The maid is doing your homework, like reading and extracting information from reports and writing articles

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