Tag: bangladesh (last 300)
The Pied Piper of Chittagong
(ToL) A Bangla farmer killed 83,000 rats with poison, electric barriers and flooding, winning a color TV. Rats led to famine in remote Chittagong villages last year. (ht: dimmsummer)
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(NYT) Bangla ‘Sesame Street,’ ‘Sisimpur,’ uses some traditional Bangladeshi puppets. A competitor in Palestine teaches kids Danes are infidels who should be killed. Occasionally an animal character will die as a martyr.
Bangla media as excellent as ToI
(BBC) Two Bangla papers ran Onion story as fact, claiming Neil Armstrong admitted moon landing was fake.
Craigslist’s haikus
(Wired) A 13-person Dhaka team spams Craiglist filling in codes, creating fake accounts and posting ads all day long using text from a spam king’s database. If the site rejects your post, it sometimes gives you haiku.
Climate change as security threat
(NYT) Climate change as security threat: Bangladesh flood could create refugees in India. Diego Garcia could go underwater.
What sparked Bangladesh liberation
(Wiki) Bangladesh’s secession was partly fueled by resentment over a gerrymander to keep W. Pakistan in power and sparked by the refusal to seat a legitimately-elected Bengali as PM. [Some surface parallels to Iran.]
Aggression and humiliation
(WSJ) Pakistan once threatened to level Tel Aviv if Israel attacked its nuke program. Its nukes, developed after the humiliation of losing Bangladesh, have enabled it to be highly provocative vs. India.
Art photos of grimy work
(Zoriah Photos) More than 6M children under 14 are working in Bangladesh, often doing hazardous jobs and paid a tenth of what adults make.
Bangladesh blocks YouTube
(AFP) Bangladesh has blocked YouTube over an audiotape of angry army officers shouting at Sheikh Hasina over her handling of the BDR mutiny.
Border guard hid officer
(AP) ‘When the firing began he said, ‘Sir, they will kill you, please come with me.’ It was like doomsday for me. I then went with him to his residence amid shooting all around. He gave me his clothes to hide my identity.’
Bangla mutineers stashed corpses in manholes
(Aljazeera) Firefighters used crowbars to pry off manhole covers and recover the bodies of BDR mutiny victims stuffed into sewers. [Photo of man in wetsuit — but the poor sewer snake doesn’t get one.]
Bangladesh shut mobile networks during mutiny
(Telegraph) The BDR said they resented being used by their officers in cross-border smuggling. It’s seen within the army as a ‘degradation posting’ to punish errant officers.
Why border guards mutinied
(ToL) One source close to the army said the uprising started after a BDR guard tried to question General Ahmed, but was ordered to sit down and be quiet. When he refused to comply three times, an officer shot him dead.
BDR threw officers’ bodies in mass graves
(Telegraph) The bodies of 58 officers massacred in a mutiny by the Bangladesh Rifles border security force have been discovered in a mass grave at the regiment’s Dhaka headquarters.
Bangladesh revolt partly about promotion
(WaPo) Members of the BDR have been unable to rise beyond the rank of captain because higher echelons are reserved for army officers.
Bangla mutineers murdered army officers
(Guardian) At least 50 people were killed in the paramilitary vs. army mutiny, including an army major general and his wife murdered in cold blood.
Bangla rifles surrender
(WaPo) Disgruntled border guards who went on a shooting spree against their superiors in Dhaka agreed to surrender, give up hostages and a seized mall after the government promised amnesty.
Bangladesh Mutiny
(FT) Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is negotiating with mutineers from the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR). The mutiny was over pay. (Apparently, the pay is bad not just in the Indian Army.)
The Pakistani line on 11/26
(WSJ) Pakistan plans to pin the blame for 11/26 on LeT, but also a Bangla group and Al Qaeda, and will claim the attack was planned outside Pakistan.
A hit of 50 Mbps
The Uncultured Project
(Sea)Surfing Catching on in Bangladesh
(BBC) Before Zafar, the only people who surfed were foreign tourists. Zafar used his new surfing skills to save 70 drowning people. “Most Bangladeshis don’t know how to swim." (Astonishing; about 10% of Banglasurface is water; plus a v.long coastline).
Bangladesh votes under heavy security
(AFP) The Bangladesh election comes after 2 years of army rule. A UN-funded digital electoral roll eliminated 12.7M fake names.
The Bangla diaspora
(Sullivan·C) My father fled ethnic cleansing camps in Pakistan while bombs fell on my mother’s village in Bangladesh. He was forced to re-do his engineering degree in the U.S. while working as a janitor at K-Mart, facing much racism.
Singing contest transforms rickshawalla’s life
(BBC) Omar Ali won a Bangla singing contest TV show for rick drivers called ‘Magic Tin Chakar Taroka’ (Three Wheel Star).
Crocodile eats man
(News) A crocodile killed and ate a 25-year-old in Bangladesh after he waded into a pond by a Muslim shrine hoping to be blessed by the animal. People regularly offer fowl to the crocodiles.
Bangla revolutionary
Biharis stateless in Bangladesh
(Dailytimes ‘04) Nearly 250K Bihari Pakistanis still live in Bangladesh camps. They backed the Urdu-speaking Pakistani gov’t during the Bangla war, were massacred by the Mukti Bahini resistance, were displaced and their properties taken over by Bengalis. More: [via]
‘Bangladesh is over’ due to rising seas
(Merc) Futurist Peter Schwartz: ‘we’ve done essentially nothing’ to fight climate change. Overpopulation will result in rising seas. ‘Bangladesh is over.’ [Dikes?]
Bangla ingenuity in cyclone response
(IHT) Bangladesh, which gets more frequent cyclones than burma, reduced its death toll by building raised storm shelters and instructing its people what to do in case of a cyclone.
Bending metal with bare hands
Freedom at midnight
(AP) Bangladeshis celebrated independence Wednesday and called for prosecution of wartime collaborators. Some switched off lights for a minute of remembrance after midnight. [Those who didn’t remember thought it was a power cut :) ]
U.K. Asked to Ease Rules to Prevent ‘Curry Crisis’
(NPR) A nonprofit for immigrants is urging U.K. officials to ease up on new rules that restrict lower-skilled migrants from outside the European Union, particularly Bangladesh. The group predicts the rules will leave many curry restaurants short-staffed.
Fair trade college gear
(NYT) Joe Falcone and his wife Shaireen Islam founded Counter Sourcing to license college logo wear and grant higher bonuses to sweatshop workers in Bangladesh.