Drive Safe for Yourself

'Road safety' I feel has become an issue to take up on education. Most of us are driven around by drivers who are either not told to refrain from it, or are encouraged to drive with risks, going at high speeds and dangerously overtaking others oftentimes quite indecently. Kids and grown ups alike enjoy that (grown ups - sometimes, or some of the grown ups) thrill and for kids it must be akin the Need for Speed games they play at home. The cost of an accident are the last things on our minds, and its usual to face situations where the offender will blame you for the accident to get out of it.

I think the TV channels and sponsors could create public service announcements around this issue to raise awareness. If we can't control our drivers, be it for how they are parking or the way they are driving, we are constantly creating risk and nuisance, both of which should be things avoided in a 'civil society'.

The bus drivers are harder to get to, who probably get away with the most serious offenses. Apart from ensuring great penalties on the owners of bus services for these offenses - from damaging public property (road dividers, pavements, etc.), to minor assaults (bumping into other cars, buses and people), to killing; we should take steps to have them view some sort of mandatory educational material as part of their license test. Those should clearly outline the damage they can cause when someone dies or loses a limb due to their callous driving.

I have found a few public announcement videos that have been created in New Zealand to caution drivers. The first uses animation to show the effect of selfish driving and how being social can help you have a better day. The second and third are graver, and shows how split second decisions can lead to an unwanted situation.

Drive Social


Mistakes


Flying Objects


Related:
No More Road Accidents
www.wedemandsaferoadbd.org

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O Sorkar Where Art Thou? (The Followup)

Finally, we see the government. Not in any way close to the way we want to see them. On the other hand, the points I fret upon last time, came out in an article today (more than a week later) in the Daily Star, titled Silver Linings Generation. The tone is a bit different, praising the youth for its contributions to the rescue effort. Some young groups are still active and taken on ways to contribute to the rehabilitation of the survivors and the families who has lost their sole bread winners. Some of these are

• 1Degree Initiative
• Call for Duty
• Community Action

As for how we recently saw the government, it was in a shady tone of suspicious. They allowed a group to declare and carry on with a blockade of Dhaka city, and to hold a meeting and rally in the same day in the center of the old commercial area of Motijheel. They spent the whole day there doing their thing, one guy carrying a board with a message "Want an Atheist Free Bangladesh", and carried on till night time. Just after darkness fell, something somewhere went wrong, no one seems to know what exactly. Our media reported that apparently someone was trying to burn a car, when police tried to stop them, and then clashes broke out. Any party who is in opposition will tell you burning cars is a democratic right, so is the occasional death or deaths of random people on the street, but anyhow, hell did break loose. We saw on TV lots of fires, lots of stones being thrown, lots of gunshots. Now if you think we all know how it started and ended - there are two versions to that story. Its anyone's guess what those versions may sound like. But if you consider that Diganta TV was unplugged  (TV sympathetic to the Islamic cause) in the middle of the night, you were bound to see some channels interviewing Police personality with questions like - "Everyones in awe of how you guys handled this situation, how did you do it?" Meanwhile, Facebook and other social channels are flooding with pictures of dead protestors from the Hefazot-e Islam (Protectors of Islam, remember He-Man?) which definitely points towards more deaths than the uncensored papers and TV channels would admit to.

Now, with the way things are, the definition of "death from natural causes" have expanded almost, to include:
Road Accidents/Treatment Errors/Political Assassinations/Death at the hands of Extortionists with Political Clout/Others ... as you can see, we're pretty open about how we die, no hullabaloo required in the form of protests or actions. This was almost the case, but its noticeable that some are outraged by this recent thing, even though the real version of the story is still not verified. Either way, I hope we can agree one day on one point - our government is (governments are) shady.

I feel that most of our youth activism is holding parallel actions to the government, like the rescue of trapped workers, followed by rehabilitation. I can sense their lack of faith in the government, but I am still convinced that sooner than later, we should come together to point our fingers at Them, and demand they do their jobs properly.

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Interesting Times - Crimes and War Crimes (Continues)

Our interesting times continue. What started small, has now taken a form as large as could've been seen in the past decade in Bangladesh. No people were brought over there by political cadres on trucks with promises of  cash and free meals. The call went out over the social channels - Facebook and blogs, and what happened is largely documented there and also on video sharing sites like YouTube and Vimeo. Photos are flooding the internet and the print media is also enjoying covering this.

Shahbagh Square, it is being called (and in some places "Projonmo Chottor" or "Generation Square"), deriving from Tehrir Square and how a massive amount of people gathered there in protest. But unlike the latter, this was not opposing the government. Not once in the 3 days.

Not once? Even though the tribunal was thought by many to be greatly politicized by the government? That could've been changed if just one of the slogans asking for the hanging of Kader Mollah would be replaced by the question - Why wasn't he given the death sentence? Why, when Abul Kalam Azad was!? (esp. since he went missing before he could be arrested) (Can also read: সময়ের প্রতিবিম্ব: ফাঁসি কেন হলো না, জানতে চাই)

The square is illustrated with colors and paintings and long signature sheets and they are all calling for one thing only - the death sentence for all of the traitors of the independence movement of 1971. It is worthy cause, since their actions of that time led to genocide and those tales make you shudder in horror. But even then, I was waiting slowly again to see one banner or read about one shout that acknowledged that current times are not rosy, or that this movement doesn't stop with the war crime trials and banning of Jamaat-e-Islami. Surely we need to rid of this stigma of having among us those who do not believe in the sovereignty and the future of Bangladesh. At many times during the day, I felt strong urges to rush out and join the crowd, and the next questioning, why would I just ask for this? Just this? Are they all happy with how things have been running then? Who am I asking justice from? This movement is placed in a manner where its easily hijacked by the government.  Even though major members of the government were not allowed, and no political banners were allowed in the gathering, the last day did see a big presence of the pro-BAL intellectuals. The government is  showering praises on this generation in parliament and discussing submitting an appeal to get the death sentence to replace life-long imprisonment. As one editorial opines, this event seems a definite win-win. Are we just after mob justice then? Since we aren't questioning the mild sentence, just asking for the killing of the criminal over what the courts passed as judgement?

The positive thing of this gathering is that its big, its spirit has spread beyond Dhaka. I suppose an anti-corruption, safe roads, or good roads (we really don't have good roads anywhere and thats why the newly built Hatirjheel was our recent love affair), or  or pro-democracy* gathering might not have seen such unity. And they seem to be taboo now that we have a mass gathering, which is kind of sad. On the other hand, if anyone thought this would go over as a mild political drama, they were wrong! I believe it shakes things up a bit, a little bit, while being safe and pro-government. I would still want to see people rise from the core to get above ALL things that are adverse in our public life and for being a civilized and progressive society.

As it says in the song:
আমাদের যেন সব ছুয়ে যায়


Meanwhile:
Padma Bridge levy on cards 
(Mobile phones, air tickets, land sales among a dozen items on provisional NBR list)
জাহাঙ্গীরনগর বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়ের ছাত্রলীগ: লজ্জা!

সময়চিত্র: রায়ে কি বিস্মিত আমি! 

BAU closed after boy killed in BCL infighting

(Villagers set fire to halls, univ unit Chhatra League dissolved)

* You're kidding if you think we already have a democracy!

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Thank You Ahmed Zidan!

Ahmed Zidan and his posse are my heroes! We have many migrant workers in the middle east, where they have suffered while trying to earn a better living. Employers who knew their money was giving them a better life probably used that excuse to not grant them rights in other areas. Work, take the money and go, don't complain about anything.

What these guys did was create a website and highlight human rights violations against migrant workers in the middle-east. Bravo!

What really shows their commitment in this area is the release of their website in Bangla, the language that these workers can access information in. Awesome X 3000. I thank these guys for their efforts and enlightened focus!

Source: http://www.dw.de/dw/article/0,,16150774,00.html#
The Website: http://bn.migrant-rights.org/
The Organization: http://www.mideastyouth.com/

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Recycle. Politics. The "Lorem Ipsum" of a Parliament

In publishing and designing websites, there is a paragraph of Latin that designers use to demonstrate a space where text should go, and how much. That paragraph could be:

Lorem Ipsum dolor sit amet mi id ligula amet morbi tellus sollicitudin dolor pellentesque. Morbi accumsan lacinia velit metus morbi ipsum sit sollicitudin consectetur. Ullamcorper viverra sollicitudin sit mauris posuere auctor praesent id lorem. Tortor elit facilisis sit ligula tellus ac sollicitudin facilisis sollicitudin.

There are supportive sites on the Internet where you could generate this amount of text depending on the space on your website or page you want to fill.

While watching our parliament session last night (and of course watching them in general), I wonder if they get trained in their own little academies on how to fill the time given to them to answer questions, with meaningless Latin. Of course Latin is not meaningless to those who understand, and I am not sure who is meant to be the audience for these politicians when they start with their filler speeches!

Last night, a question was put for the home ministry, an apt question considering the recent display of the audacity and the ineffectiveness of the police force. The question was not so well stated, due to what I think is the attempt (of all in parliament) to be theatrical. Since the home minister was not present (?), the second-in-command was asked to answer. That is what inspired this post.

The filler speech could be broken down to two things, and they have 2 or 3 minutes usually to fill:

1. - Draw attention to the failures of the past regime with lots of emotional appeals, hand gestures, pauses - things that will put many stage actors to shame. This works too, since our two major parties almost without fail have cyclically come to power and have found it enough time to take whatever it is they need to survive the years they are to be out of power
2. - Speak highly of the dreams, goals and steps taken by the founding father of the party.

I was happy when the law & order question was asked, since, I and many citizens believe that the home minister should have stepped down or been fired for her inadequacies. Even on the evening this question was posed, there was a report in all the morning papers of a policeman beating a judge outside a courthouse somewhere.

While the fillers were being delivered, I felt like laughing out loud (LOL) like the lunatic I am, and I did to some extent. I could not believe the answer I was getting! Then he also pointed out that they increased their salaries and so and so forth.

We have managed to really turn our heads from what is the root of a problem and just throw money around as if the problem was that they didn't have enough toys or enough to eat. He mentioned they bought pick up trucks too. An editorial was also published which asked if we need to spend even more money on them to get them to do their jobs! A lot of people say they have a tough job. I don't disagree, but I think, so does a farmer, a rickshawala, a thela-gariwala (men who transport heavy goods on pull carts) and so many other people who live on less than them. Who will rise up and put us in perspective? Thanks for asking the question at least MP Fazlul Azim. Don't know what kind of a person you really are, but thanks for the question last night indeed.

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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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Need to Know? Or Not?

On and off I read newspapers. Blah blah blah...., I tend to find my looney head oppose the habit after some time.

But what of the times, when something you know happened doesn't reach the news? What exactly is happening there? Who decides people should know about it, or not know about it?

Human rights, was that part of achieving MDGs? I hear we have jumped leaps and bounds in getting to our MDGs - statistics are being built right now to make sure we do. But anway, yes, who decides? I know rock music, especially those who growl and screech are not very mainstream - meaning not liked by a majority. So, minorities of youth, are the ones listening there, and when DJuice a brand thing of Grameen Phone, arranged a series of contests to find rock bands and award them a recording contract, it provided a much needed platform for the musicians living underground. The winner of the last contest, was a band called Powersurge, where Nahiyan was a guitar player. They didn't sing songs I usually listen to, but I could appreciate the energy and the power of their genre and their performance. So, anyway, one fine day Nahiyan gets arrested for stealing gold from a neighbor. Now I've seen news of young guys getting picked up and tortured before, and I've read news of stolen gold also. But in this case, neither seemed to make a stir! Two of the english papers put something out, other than that, zilch.

While trying to see whats there online throught Google, I find other instances where the news seems to have been selectively spread.

Labor rights activist Moshrefa Mishu

If our news dealers don't realize the power they hold, in keeping this country honest,  then there is not much left to write here. Its all quite useless.

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Buy Nothing Day!

Just found out another 'day' is out there. It was started in Canada as a day to raise awareness about over consumption, or over-consumerism~

The Horse's Mouth

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Of Protests

March in protest
A keen view of protest marches, if it is a useful tool today, and if not, how could it be?

Article by Matt Taibbi

That of course is talking about the situation in USA. Bangladesh has a totally different culture of protest marches. Its mostly the political parties, their followers and their hired followers who march around (and break things). The citizen will usually stay away from it all, the issues, and the politics. Unless its talking about it over a cup of tea.

Sing in protestFrom the Guerilla News Network, via Save the Internet, it is known that a webcast of Pearl Jam's concert underwent some censorship in the hands of AT&T. It was however, not any profane slang as such, but the words: ‘George Bush, leave this world alone’ and ‘George Bush find yourself another home’

Link to Save the Internet article

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The Hurricane

While shuffling through the channels I suddenly thought of the movie The Hurricane. I remember watching it years ago, it had a good soundtrack and style. Strangely, it was on in one of the channels. And hence stopped by browsing. I watched it again. I think I have to move this movie to my favorites list. Or one of those movies I can watch over and over again. Among those ranks are also High Fidelity, School of Rock and Fight Club.

Featured in The Hurricane soundtrack is this song by Gil Scott-Heron:



The Revolution Will Not Be Televized
1972

You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,
Skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox

In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.

The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon
blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John
Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat
hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.

The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be brought to you by the
Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie
Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia.

The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.

The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.
The revolution will not make you look five pounds
thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother.

There will be no pictures of you and Willie May
pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run,
or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance.

NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32
or report from 29 districts.

The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.

There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being
run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process.

There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy
Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and
Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving
For just the proper occasion.

Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville
Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and
women will not care if Dick finally gets down with
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day.

The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.

The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be right back after a message
about a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.

You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.

The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.

The revolution will put you in the driver's seat.

The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;

The revolution will be live.

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Banksy - a link.

I have been thinking about the walls of Dhaka and how they were spread with posters (which i dont mind) and also messages praising some political leader or some bullshit religious message (one once saying something about 'beporda' imams on tv channels being hellbound or something). While that was inspiring me to some acts I wont detail here, I came across this artist during some class discussion that i can't remember. Later on I saw some further presentation of his works during the ARS Electronica festival in Austria last summer. Well, instead of talking further, i'd like to present the url to his website, so the interested can take a look.
Website

Related

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Made In Bangladesh

This is not from a tag of a t-shirt at some market in USA or UK, or anywhere else in the market. Its the name of a movie recently released in Bangladesh. The protagonitst of the story played by Zahidur Rahman repeatedly uses the phrase when introducing himself to others in the movie. The first quarter of the film holds not indication of what the story will to turn out to be.

The movie seemed to me to be a tribute to all things bangali when it comes to nationalism and politics. Zahidur Rahman's character reveals a long list of demands he would like the government to fulfill for the betterment of everyone's lives, and that leads to the other characters, who happens to be all people of position that deal with policies and issues, to stand up and praise him and make suggestions, even though they are his captives.

A lot of the wrongs of our politics is displayed in this satire, though i cannot yet envision any politician seeing the movie and making any amendments to his ways. The movie hopefully will make more people aware of the wrongs that we all have in our own ways. Especially the ability to not only say, but to listen as well, and to say not just for the sake of saying something, but to think before saying it. The two arguing politicians from two parties (ruling and opposition) in the movie display this point very well. What appears comical and produces a smile in this movie is to me ironically also a point to be embarrassed about.

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News

(From New Age's Music Supplement)

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