Bangladesh Election 2018 | Go Vote!

বাংলাদেশ জাতীয় নির্বাচন। ৩০শে ডিসেম্বর, ২০১৮ | Full

বাংলাদেশ জাতীয় নির্বাচন। ৩০শে ডিসেম্বর, ২০১৮ | Trailer

How would you know what the company CEO thinks?

You can guess reasonably the mindset of the  CEO of companies and their vision for the company as well as the internal work culture just by walking to the front desk or just talking to a customer support personal.

Occupation of Palestine is numbered

With President Trump, USA is now so opposing to the Palestinians’ right that it may seem to be the set back for Palestinians pursuit of independence. Though this would make the aspiration to free Palestine harder but it can not change the destiny of a free Palestine.

Let’s clarify a few things:

In the first place, the USA never supported Palestine in this struggle. The money pours in the US politics from the Israeli lobby and the politicians are bought by that big money. So, this would just make the US intention more overt than covert.

The demography of the Palestine and the surrounding neighbors is at so odd that there’s no way for Israel to suppress the free Palestine forever. Yes, it may be occupied for few decades or for a few centuries but ultimately Palestine would be free. Never in the history, a minority population could rule the majority forever. Examples are: South Africa and Zimbabwe were ruled by white Europeans but eventually they had to give up the power to the majority black; Muslims had to give up  power in Spain (Cordova/Granda); Muslims had to give up in India; and British had to give up in India. There are plenty of examples where minority rule were short lived. Whereas, the USA is a success story of the invaders who has eradicated the indigenous people to retain the change of power permanently. Australia has done similar thing where the demography change played the pivotal role. And fortunately, in Palestine, and in Arab world such demography change isn’t happening where Jewish population can ever become majority over Arab.

So, in that reason the occupation of Palestine has to be short lived. I hope I can witness that day but even if I do not witness that in my lifetime but it will be witnessed by my children or grandchildren inshallah. It’s only a matter of time.

Anyway, here’s a glitter of hope coming from Europe. Solidarity for a free Palestine is getting strong traction. Britain’s Labour Party leader has vowed to recognize the state of Palestine soon after the get into power. I hope that he would follow through his promise. When Trump declared the moving of the embassy to Jerusalem, I had expressed my worry that it may be a beginning of an end. Now this gives me the hope that it could trigger the beginning of the end of Palestinians oppression. It was Britain who had created this injustice some 60 odd years ago and now it’s time for Britain to do a redemption.

Bangladesh in August 2018 - a snapshot

I visited Bangladesh for a little more than 3 weeks. It was from mid August to early September of 2018. Met many relatives, friends and colleagues which gave me a window to look into the past to regain the joy of my old time. However, I would like take an observer’s perspective to asses the country during my short visit.

The country had just resumed its business from the wake up protest by the students that had sparked from the uproar of students killing by a bus that ran over a group of students standing roadside. Also the election was coming up soon. Though it was a pure vacation trip but I couldn’t but observing few things and would like to share with all. 

• The flyovers in Dhaka are beautiful and mostly effective. It’s a demonstrable progress in the transportation landscape of Dhaka.

• Roads are crowded and dirty just like they were a decade ago. Cleanliness is yet to get into the habit of the nation.

• Cost of living is extremely high. The rickshaw fare that was 10-15 taka on 2010 are now 40-50 taka. A green coconut costs 60 taka and no bargain would take the price down. 

• Lots of people have money and good enough money to spend generously. This has caused the price to go high without any correlation to the supply side.

• People are very busy of making more and more money. A race to become richer, and quickly, is very much the name of the game in town.

• General law and order (excluding the politically motivated stuffs) seems to have improved, at least from the perspective of common day to day living. People can make money by doing any kind of work. Sellers in the market are asking ridiculously high price for goods and the buyers are happily agreeing with that ask. Both seller and buyer seems to be happy ever after.

• People are in fear of government, law enforcement agencies and politics. There’s no effective opposition party in Bangladesh. People are in general fearful that the upcoming election would be unfair, bloody and rigged. Government would do anything to stay in power. There seems to be grave like peace in the political landscape.

• The democratic institutions are either destroyed or corrupted by the money and power. This is the long term risk the country would have to face and pay the cost in future due to the lost democratic institutions.

• Infrastructure improvements varied across the country. For example: Chittagong- Cox’s bazar highway had given extremely hard time due to the bad condition whereas Dhaka - Chittagong highway was very good.

• People in public place seems to become nicer in conversation. Generally, there is less chaos in the road and public places. However that didn’t change the behavior that made the country so dirty to live in.

• The smoke and dirt in Dhaka gifted the city infamous haze like weather. It was humid, hot and unbearable for the first few days. It turned into little better later part of my trip. Probably I became more used to after a week or so.

• Uber and Patthao are two great addition to the transportation of Dhaka. Without Uber I wouldn’t have the pleasant transportation service that I enjoyed throughout my trip. People like me who are vacationing but don’t have personal car, would be in difficult situations without these services.

• Influenced of India is everywhere. In the job, market, even in the restaurants. People seems to like to eat Indian cuisine and visit India. A big but predictable shift has swept the country.

After all the good and bad side - this is the country of my birth, this is the country where I grew up and this is the country that gave me the education to stand high in this world with dignity. 

Syrian civil war- a tragedy continues to unfold

When the uprising started in Syria along with the Arab Spring, I had supported that. But soon that uprising turned into a sectarian fight between Shi’a and Sunni and Free Syrian Army was formed. There were full support, both morally and materially, by the USA government for the FSA. In the masjeed and other places the support for the rebel’s were pouring. Though I had supported the oppositions against the Asad regime but I increasingly felt discomfort as the protest turned violent and specially the Shi’a-Sunni division was at its forefront. Bashar Al-Asad is a blood thirsty brutal dictator, there is no doubt about it. He has killed hundreds of thousands of civilians indiscriminately, that is all in record. Now there’s no turn away from the rebel to fight against the Asad regime, as it is a full fledged civil war. I was always thinking- couldn’t the Syrian keep their uprising for democracy non-violent? Couldn’t they not turn their legitimate struggle into sectarian civil war? I am not very knowledgeable about Syrian society however I think that non-violent movement could’ve been a better option for them and for any country struggling for democratic rights. Civil rights struggles gain more legitimacy when done in a non-violent way.

The latest spin in the Syrian war: Turkey is invading deep into Syria to fight Kurds. Turkey may have legitimate reason to fight Kurds but this is no way should be labeled as Turkey is doing it for Muslims or Syrians. This is entirely done for the stability of the state of Turkey. I respect Turkey’s concern about its stability but what Turkey is doing in Syria is illegitimate and dangerous. We should all be mindful that in this invasion by Turkey whoever are dying, they are all Muslims: they may be Sunni, Shi’a or Kurds.

Florida school shootings in February 2018

Once again the mass murder hits the American school. This time it is 17 young lives are taken away by an evil. There are cellphone videos of kids at the school fearing their death while the shooting was going on. You can’t hold your tear watching that let alone the other horrific pictures.

A graphic representation of the heat map is published on the NewYork Times showing just the school shooting for the last several months in chronology. This is not just a number. This shows the failure of the American people who became numb in their partisan politics and allowing the politicians to get away with not doing anything to prevent it.

Amazed by the power of Quantum computing and Neurons-morphic computing

This weekend I thought to watch some new technology videos. Would like to share the outcome of that.

- Intel has released 49 Qubit processor and IBM has 50 Qubit computing infrastructure. The impact of commercial quantum computing is huge. It would not just bring super power to the computing  but it would disrupt all the current known paradigm of computing. The world is changing so rapidly that it’s getting very hard to even keep up with the changes, let alone mastering them.

- Neoromorphic computing is another fascinating world where the chips would create new connection and network inside the processor, just like the way our brain neurons create the connection to form a learning network. Just to feel wildly creative I had put a micro blog in September 2017, dreaming about if it would be possible to create real neural network, not the current Artificial Intelligence Neural Network, and someone has already built that. It seems that at this time of human civilization no dream is big enough or wild enough.

Syria conflict in retrospective and Turkey

When the uprising started in Syria along with the Arab Spring, I had supported that. But soon that uprising turned into a sectarian fight between Shi’a and Sunni and Free Syrian Army was formed. There were full support, both morally and materially, by the USA government for the FSA. In the masjeed and other places the support for the rebel’s were pouring. Though I had supported the oppositions against the Asad regime but I increasingly felt discomfort as the protest turned violent and specially the Shi’a-Sunni division was at its forefront. Bashar Al-Asad is a blood thirsty brutal dictator, there is no doubt about it. He has killed hundreds of thousands of civilians indiscriminately, that is all in record. Now there’s no turn away from the rebel to fight against the Asad regime, as it is a full fledged civil war. I was always thinking- couldn’t the Syrian keep their uprising for democracy non-violent? Couldn’t they not turn their legitimate struggle into sectarian civil war? I am not very knowledgeable about Syrian society however I think that non-violent movement could’ve been a better option for them and for any country struggling for democratic rights. Civil rights struggles gain more legitimacy when done in a non-violent way.

The latest spin in the Syrian war: Turkey is invading deep into Syria to fight Kurds. Turkey may have legitimate reason to fight Kurds but this is no way should be labeled as Turkey is doing it for Muslims or Syrians. This is entirely done for the stability of the state of Turkey. I respect Turkey’s concern about its stability but what Turkey is doing in Syria is illegitimate and dangerous. We should all be mindful that in this invasion by Turkey whoever are dying, they are all Muslims: they may be Sunni, Shi’a or Kurds.

Micro blog: Refute popular ignorance: If everything Allah determines then how does it make sense for us to do differently because even that different ways are determined by God?

Let us use Euclid's method to refute it. The above subject line question comes due to the popular knowledge of common sense. If we can't decide our own choice or destiny then how can we say it was my action that determined the outcome? The below question is then also true based on our popular knowledge and commonsensical observation. Is it possible that two objects can stay at two places at the same time? They would reasonably say, "No". If you can’t observe it or experiment it then it can’t be taken as truth otherwise that become a believe not science. If we can prove it logically that the answer is "Yes", then the first question would then also be true that it's possible to have Allah decides on everything even when the action can be taken differently by a person to reach to that destined outcome. 

The observable world would agree with the answer that it's not possible to have two objects to stay at the same time at two different places. But in the quantum world, it's certainly possible that two objects are staying at the same time. This is approved by the famous tests where observation changes the photons to take two paths through the slit and hits two places at the same time. How is it possible? In theory, it's simple. If the object can travel at light speed for then for that object it's possible to stay even in multiple places at the same time. It's only our limitation where we humans are bound by our time dimension in our observation. Even some particles can travel faster than light speed that we can't fathom how to even test it. Currently, it's not known how an object that is heavier then a photon can travel with light speed. This constrain is set by Einstein’s famous equation e = mc2 but hey, who said that this is the last equation we got in science that would remain as final equation. If in some way the equation can have another factor added to it which would not make the mass infinitely heavy or can achieve the speed with less than infinite energy then it would be certainly possible that we, the human, would be able to observe the light speed and we may be able to prove that but we won’t know that for sure until then. 

Instant micro blog: Loosing T

The Word pronunciation is right now changing a lot. I was listening to NPR an interview where the interviewee was using all the words that are having T in the middle and just removing them like it was never there. The word sentence becomes “sennence”,  Center becomes “Center”, quintessential becomes “quinnessential” and then intimacy becomes “innemessy”. That is truly “inneressing”....I meant interesting😀

Instant Micro blog: Health is a blessing or can it be a curse at times

The gang members on the street are always look healthy. I didn’t see any gang types of people are suffering from day to day cold, fever, back pain, etc. is that their health that keeps them away from thinking seriously for alternative career? If you are sick on the street, you can’t be a gang crating terror on the street.

Instant Micro blog: Inequality

In the history of mankind, if it's divided into two parts: political and spiritual, we see that there were repeated and relentless effort to bring equality in the life of humankind in the form of social, political and economic justice. 

In the political sense, there were revolutions after revolutions to bring justice. French Revolution, American independence, American civil war, mao se ting in china, Marxism in Russia, etc. and the list can go on.

In the spiritual front, there were prophets after prophets: Daud, Moses, Jesus peace be upon them and Muhammad peace be upon him, all came with same agenda to establish equality as all human are equal. 

How many years of human history had seen equality and how many years had seen inequality? If not greater number for equality, at the very least they were equally divided. What does it tell us?

Micro blog: power of naming an object

Power of naming objects

Rumplestilskin’s principle is something like: “If you can name it you get power over it”

Noam Chomsky, the Palio anthropologist, suggests that almost around 200 thousand years ago human acquires the ability to synthesize two ideas to create the third one without changing the first two. Along with that humans recently gained ability to name objects gave this human species an unprecedented power over other species. 

God created Adam and teaches his the names. Prophet Adam is then pronounced superior in intellect. What’s the relationship among those two apparently disjoined ideas?

How to pave the path for a more just and more prosperous society: five objectives and measuring the outcome

Continuation of the last post, I would like to add the fifth objective to the initiative to pave the path for a more just and more prosperous society:

1. We start with our family. We declare each of our families as free from corruption: we don’t do corruption, we don’t participate in corrupt acts, we say it loud when we see corruption. We disavow all forms of corruption in the society. Be it small like giving less in weight when we sell and buy goods or be it big like to paying bribery to officials and political leaders.

2. We educate our family members about the power of participation in a democratic society: make our voice heard at the grass root level starting at masjeed committee, school committee, Village committee, city and town counselors, members, commissioners, chairmans, mayors, etc.

3. We train our family members to love others as well as forgive others in the society. A small act of good deed will create a snowball effect and cause the avalanche of good deed to flow in the society. And forgiving others will  make us better human and reduce tension in our every day life.

4. We stand for justice, be it at individual level or at family level. Even if it may go against me, my family or my community.

5. Finally, we all strive to be better human with high morality and high ethics. No one is perfect. We all make mistakes but we all can strive to be better.

So, how would we know that we are making progress and realizing the benefits of it. For that, each of these objectives would have to be detailed out and the outcome would need to be shown in a quantifiable and in a measurable way. I would lay that out for each of the objectives soon, however, until that detail is laid out, here’s my brief thought on measuring the outcome of the initiative both at individual and family levels:

People would not approach me or my family members with illegal or corrupt proposals. Even if they may approach with such proposals, we would not only turn that down but would also convey this message to that person why we are not taking part in that corruption or injustice. When people see me or my family members around, they would not just expect no corruption or injustice from us but also they would feel safe from all kind of corruption, injustice and humiliation from others as we would be the persons who would stand against any form of injustice- be it protecting them through force or through explicit verbal support and standing for the juatice.

আমেরিকার ইমারজেন্সি রুম

এই সপ্তাহটা খুবই অদ্ভুত ভাবে শুরু হয়েছিল।

শরীরটা খারাপ লাগতেছিল গত সপ্তাহ থেকেই। যাবো যাবো করে ডাক্তারের কাছে যাওয়া হচ্ছিল না। মঙ্গল বার অফিস থেকে আমার প্রাথমিক চিকিৎসক এর অফিসে ফোন করার পর ওরা আমাকে একটু ভয়ই পাইয়ে দিল। এখনই আসতে হবে। অনেক বুঝিয়ে দুপুরের পর আসার ব্যবস্থা করলাম।

এর আগের শুক্রবার, রাদিয়াহর, আমার ভাগ্নী, শরীর এতটাই খারাপ হয়ে গেছিল যে ওকে ইন্টেনসিভ কেয়ার ইউনিটে নিতে হয়েছিল। তাই ওকে দেখতে শনিবার সকালে ৫ ঘন্টা গাড়ি চালিয়ে নিউইয়র্কে যেয়ে আবার রাতেই ফিরে এসেছিলাম। ফিরতে অবশ্য ৭ ঘন্টার বেশি লেগে গিয়েছিল। প্রচন্ড তুষার এর মধ্যে পরে গেছিলাম। এক শরীর এ একদিনে ১২ ঘন্টার উপর গাড়ি চালানোটা মনে হয় ভুলই হয়েছিল।

যাই হোক, অফিস থেকে তাড়াতাড়ি বের হয়ে আড়াইটার দিকে ডাক্তারের ওখানে পৌঁছালাম। আমার প্রাথমিক চিকিৎসক সেদিন ছুটিতে ছিল। অন্য একজন আমাকে দেখতে এল। আমার কথা শুনে বল্ল, তোমাকে এখনি হসপিটালের ইমার্জেন্সি রুম (ই. আর.) এ যেতে হবে। তাও আবার এম্বুলেন্সে করে! ই. আর. এ যেতে আমার সমস্যা নাই কিন্তু এই ডাক্তারের কথা বার্তা আমার কোনো এক কারনে পছন্দ হচ্ছিল না। লং স্টোরি শর্ট, আমি সরাসরিই বল্লাম যে, ওনার কথায় আমি সাচ্ছ্বন্দ বোধ করছিনা এবং অন্য একজন ডাক্তারের সাথে কথা বলতে চাই। আরেকজন ডাক্তার এলেন। এইজন বেশ সুন্দর করে কথা বল্লেন। সিম্পটম দেখে উনিও আমাকে এম্বুলেন্স ছাড়া যেতে দিবেন না। অনেক বোঝানোর পর আমাকে ড্রাইভ করতে দিতে রাজী হলেন। এর আগে অবশ্য ৪ টা এসপিরিন খেতে দিলেন। তারপর আমি বাসায় এসে সালমাকে নিয়ে সোজা বেথ ইসরাইল হসপিটালের ই. আর. এ চলে এলাম। এতো গুলো কথা যে জন্য বলা এখন সেই কথায় আসি।

এই দেশের ইমারজেন্সি ৯১১ সেবার কথা কয়েক বছর আগের একটা পোস্ট এ লিখেছিলাম। আজকে লিখবো এদেশের হসপিটালের ইমার্জেন্সি রুম বা ই. আর. সেবার কথা। ছোট ছোট কয়েকটা এনেকডোটাল কাহিনীর মধ্যে দিয়ে বলার চেষ্টা করব।

- ই. আর এ পৌঁছাতেই আমাকে সাথে সাথে নিয়ে গেল
ট্রিয়ায রুমে। কয়েক মিনিটের মধ্য ই. কে. জি. করে ৫ কি ৬ সিরিঞ্জ রক্ত নিলো বিভিন্ন টেস্ট এর জন্য।

- যেহেতু এটা লাইফ থ্রেটেনিং না তাই আমাকে অপেক্ষার রুমে বসে থাকতে হলো যতক্ষণনা আমার সিরিয়াল আসে। ওখানে বসেছিলাম প্রায় ২ ঘন্টার মতো।

- একটা সাইনবোর্ড পোস্টারে বড় বড় করে লিখা: এই হাসপাতাল প্রত্যেক রোগীকে চিকিৎসা দিতে আইনগত ভাবে বাধ্য থাকবে এবং হাসপাতালের সবরকম সুযোগসুবিধার সর্বোচ্চ ব্যবহার করে চিকিৎসার ব্যবস্হা করবে। রোগীদের সাস্হ্য ইনশিওরেন্স অথবা নগদ টাকা থাকুক বা নাই থাকুক।

- রোগীদের মধ্যে সবধরনের মানুষই দেখলাম। ধণী দরিদ্র, কালো সাদা, অল্প অসুস্হ থেকে বেশী অসুস্হ, বাচ্চা থেকে বুড়ো। সবাই চুপচাপ অপেক্ষা করছিলো তাদের সিরিয়াল আসার জন্য।

- একজন খুবি বৃদ্ধ এক মহিলা ব্যথায় কষ্ট পাচ্ছিলো। তার সাথে ছিলো তার মেয়ে আর মেয়ের জামাই। বৃদ্ধ মহিলা বারবার তার মেয়েকে বলছিলো যাতে সে অফিসে তাড়া দেয়। মেয়ে মাকে বোঝাচ্ছিলো যে তাঁর সিরিয়াল আসলে তারপরই তারা ডাকবে, আগে যেয়ে কোনো লাভ হবে না।

- যখন আমার ডাক আসলো, ততক্ষণে প্রায় রাত ৯ টা। নার্স প্রেকটিশনার আমার ভাইটাল চেক করলো। অসুস্হতার বৃত্তান্ত নিলো। শরীরে হার্ট আর অক্সিজেন মনিটর লাগিয়ে দিলো।যাওয়ার সময় বলে গেল ডাক্তার যেকোনো সময় চলে আসবে।

- ডাক্তার এসে আমার রক্ত পরীক্ষার ফলাফল জানালো আর বল্লো এরপর তারা কি করবে। আমাকে আরো এক দুই ঘন্টা থাকতে হবে, আরো কয়েকটা টেস্ট করতে হবে।

- অপেক্ষা করতে করতে একসময় ঘুমিয়ে পড়েছিলাম। সেই নার্স একসময় এসে বল্লো যে পরীক্ষার ফলাফল আসতে আরো খানিকটা সময় লাগবে, ফ্রীজে খাবার আছে,  আমি যদি খেতে চাই।

- অবশেষে রাত ১১ টার দিকে ডাক্তার ফাইনাল রেজাল্ট নিয়ে আসল। আলহামদুলিল্লাহ। খারাপ কিছু না। আমাকে একটা ঔষধ প্রেসক্রাইব করলো আর বল্লো একদিন বাসায় রেস্ট নিতে।

বাসায় আসতে আসতে ভাবছিলাম - এই যে এতোগুলো সেবা এরা আমাকে দিলো - এর সবটাই এই হসপিটাল আমাকে দিতে বাধ্য থাকতো আমার যদি ইনশিওরেন্স নাও থাকতো অথবা আমার কাছে নগদ এক ডলারও না থাকতো। এরা একজন নাগরিক কে বাঁচিয়ে রাখতে সর্বোচ্চ চেস্টা চালাতো। এই চাওয়াটা কি একটা সভ্য দেশের নাগরিকের জন্য খুব বেশী একটা চাওয়া!

Create a more just family to create a more just society and country

Last Friday night, in a get together at a friend’s house, some of us were discussing about the situation in Bangladesh, which we do almost every time we meet, and were brainstorming some ideas on how do we instigate our countryman to change the core of the society to achieve stable democracy and eradicate corruption. There were suggestions on changing the current constitution of Bangladesh to create a strong foundation for a just society and to achieve political stability. The constitution of the ISA is one such example where the core of the constitution makes the government structure such that no one branch of the government can overpower others. This is known as “The balance of power” and done through balancing the three branches of the government: Legislative branch, Executive branch, and Judicial branch. It also encoded “The bill of rights” that ensures the unalienable rights of the citizens. Such rights include: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of movement, right to receive justice, freedom to bare arms, etc. Those gave the American society a foundational base towards a just society and a stable political structure. Bangladesh needs such bill of rights for sure. However, I argue that those political structures and bill of rights, though are absolutely needed for a just society, can not guarantee a just society without having a society of educated, ethical and moral human being. The prove lies in the USA itself. This constitution is here since 1779 and we had slavery, segregation, and ethnic cleansing of the indigenous native population all through 1962. I strongly believe that we need a over the top principles and a pragmatic constitution but that can’t be dropped off to a nation. The nation has to pave the path to get that constitution and then make it sustainable. I believe we can start at the micro level to pave that path for a more just and more prosperous society:

We start with our family. We declare each of our families as free from corruption: we don’t do corruption, we don’t participate in corrupt acts, we say it loud when we see corruption. We disavow all forms of corruption in the society. Be it small like giving less in weight when we sell and buy goods or be it big like to paying bribery to officials and political leaders.

We educate our family members about the power of participation in a democratic society: make our voice heard at the grass root level staring at masjeed committee, school committee, Village committee, city and town counselors, members, commissioners, chairmans, mayors, etc.

We train our family to love others as well as forgive others in the society. A small act of good deed will create a snowball effect and cause the avalanche of good deed to flow in the society. And forgiving others will  make us better human and reduce tension in our every day life.

Finally, we all strive to be better human with high morality and high ethics. No one is perfect. We all make mistakes but we all can strive to be better.

Once we have strong family of individuals with a high morality, we would be able to use that as a launch pad to reach for the top level change. It then just won’t stimulate the change in the top but also would create such enormous pressure to the political structure, like the water pressure in a dam when it reaches to threshold, that it will break us free from the dismal corrupt societal and political structure that we currently have. This wouldn’t happen overnight. This may take years to achieve but this would be sustainable and long term. In the meantime we prepare ourself with policy changes through a better constitution. We had seen the exuberance of democratic victory in 1990 which essentially gave us just few “democratic elections”. We don’t need to die for another quick victory. We can shoot for better.

1. Disclaimer: I believe the current form of Democracy is not fully capable to solve the problem of Bangladesh or country like that but at this moment, the democratic political structure is much better suited than any other available options that we see around us, until a better structure is formed.