Top mind 100

Who is Dr. Zakir A. Naik?

2019-04-06T23:38:00.000-07:00

Dr. Zakir Naik is the President of the Islamic Research Foundation in India. Dr. Zakir Abdul Karim Naik is a renowned non-Arabic Islamic scholar, public orator and an acclaimed authority on comparative religion. Born in Mumbai, Maharastra, India on October 18, 1965, Dr. Naik attended St. Peter’s High School in Mumbai and the Kishinchand Chellaram College before joining Topiwala National Medical College and Nair Hospital and the University of Mumbai, attaining his bachelor degree in Medicine and Surgery (MB, BS). Dr. Naik’s dedicated efforts in the field of Islamic Dawah (Call) date back to 1991, when he established and led the Islamic Research Foundation (IRF) of India. He then founded the Islamic International School in Mumbai and the United Islamic Aid, which provides scholarship to poor and destitute Muslim youth. He also established a series of schools in some Arabic and Islamic countries to train non-Arab Muslim students from an early age on Arabic language and Quranic studies. Another important6 achievement of Dr. Naik’s was founding Assalam television channel (Peace TV), the only channel in the world specialized in comparative religion. Its programs are broadcast in English, Urdu and Bangali languages and viewers of the English channel alone are estimated to exceed 100 million. Naik’s vast religious knowledge is not limited to one faith but to several other religions including Christianity, Hindu, Judaism, Buddhism and Sikhism. He has even established a specialized organization for comparative religious studies and organized several training courses for scholars of this field worldwide. Over the years, Dr. Zakir Naik presented hundreds of public lectures and debates around the world which explain the Islamic faith, defend its teachings and propagate its principles on the basis of the Holy Quran and authentic Sunna (sayings and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad). Many of his lectures and debates are recorded and widely distributed in video and DVD media, booklets and online. His talks are also broadcast on cable networks in Mumbai’s Muslim areas, and on the Peace TV channel. Topics he speaks on include: “Islam and Modern Science”, “Islam and Christianity”, and “Islam and secularism”. Many of his speeches and debates have also focused on correcting misconceptions about Islam in the minds of some Muslim youth. He exerted strenuous efforts to counter anti-Islamic sentiment in the Western media following the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. Not only did he emphasize that Islam is a religion of reason and logic but also that the Holy Quran contains hundreds of verses relating to science. His passionate defense of Islam has contributed to the conversion of about 34,000 Americans to Islam from September 2001 to July 2002″. Dr. Naik’s remarkable accomplishments have been recognized by prestigious awards and honors. In 2004, he was awarded An honorary doctorate degree (Doctor of Humane Letters) by the University of the Gambia. In 2013, the Malaysian Head of State presented him with the Distinguished International Personality Award. In the same year, he received the Sharjah Award for Voluntary Work from the Ruler of Sharjah and the 2013 Islamic Personality Award for World Peace from the Ruler of Dubai. In 2014, the President of the Gambia awarded him the Insignia of the Commander of the National Order of the Republic of the Gambia. He was awarded the King Faisal International Prize in recognition of his outstanding services to Islam, including the following: 1- As one of the most renowned non-Arabic speaking promulgators of Islam, Dr. Zakir Naik has presented hundreds of public lectures and debates which explain the Islamic creed, defend its teachings and propagate its principles on the basis of the Holy Quran and authentic Sunna (sayings and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad). 2- He has also paid considerable attention to comparative religion, and became a renowned authority on this subject throughout the Islamic nation. His vast religious knowledge is not limited to one faith but to several other religions including Christianity, Hindu, Judaism, Buddhism and Sikhism. He has even established a specialized organization for comparative religious studies and organized several training courses for scholars of this field worldwide. 3- He has founded a television channel, Assalam (Peace Channel), which remains the only television channel in the world specializing in comparative religion. Its programs are broadcast in English, Urdu and Bangali languages and viewers of the English channel are estimated to exceed 100 millions. 4- He has also established a series of schools, initially in India and subsequently in a number of Arabic and Islamic countries. These schools train non-Arab students from an early age on Arabic language and Quranic studies, in addition to regular classes of other curricula in English.

How to making democracy meaningful?

2019-04-06T13:14:00.001-07:00

WITHIN Indian common sense periodic elections, party-based competitive candidates, and universal adult franchise have turned out to be the primary ingredients of democracy. This common sense has come to cloud everything centrally associated with the idea of democracy in general and constitutional democracy in particular. Reading elections as democracy has also led to the equating of means with ends, celebrating the former, and abdicating it from all responsibility the latter demands. Denoting elections as ‘the festival of the masses’, a phrase that tweaks Mao’s dictum ‘revolution is the festival of the masses’, or terming India as the ‘largest democracy in the world’ tends to suggest a view of democracy in which the role of the masses decidedly ends at the hustings. This reduction of democracy to elections, today, threatens to undermine the core aspirations associated with it. For appreciating such aspirations we do not necessarily have to revert to the classics on this term elsewhere, such as Rousseau’s Du Contrat Social, Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, Marx’s writings on the revolutions of 1848 in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung and Dewey’s Democracy and Education, but India’s own reflections on it in such works as BR Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste, KM Panikkar’s Caste and Democracy, Ram Manohar Lohia’s Marx, Gandhi and Socialism, Jayaprakash Narayan’s A Plea for Reconstruction of Indian Polity, and above all the Constituent Assembly Debates (1946-1949). These later writings do have a place for elections and representation that they engender, but also call for pre-requisites for a fair election that claims to represent the will of the people, and stipulate conditions for its continued salience. Elections as tools ELECTIONS can hardly be termed as the sole and effective conveyor belts of popular will in India any longer. Probably, they were never so. But there were reasons to hope, as the poor and the marginalised, cutting across diversity and the social and gender divide, rallied behind it in strength. But the hype that has come to surround elections, the resources that it calls for, the close monitoring of the voters by boxing them in social straitjackets, and the media’s obsessive focus on elections as a gladiators’ den have deeply compromised elections as the preeminent device of representation of popular will. In the process the electoral space of the poor and the marginalised has shrunk, as other devices have been put in place to elicit their assent. The rectitude of the election machinery alone cannot ensure that the voter is enabled to make a deliberated choice of momentous significance to his everyday life, opportunities and access to resources. Political parties with their stakes, almost without exception, have increasingly tended to fix the voters in social silos, rather than help them redefine their affiliations and connect to the wider social ensemble, if they choose to do so. Redistribution of resources and opportunities has been lost in the endless litany of promises of goods and bounties. A promise, here and there, in the manifestoes of political parties that allude to redistribution sounds theatrical before their socially conservative stance. Sections of the media have come to play second fiddle in amplifying the sound-bites of political leaders, deploying them to construct and reconstruct opponents, with specified social constituencies in view. They have found jingoism and archaic frames easy to stoke rather than nudge public sensitivity to reinforcing the democratic temper. Highlighting fragments from popular memory-lane, spreading isolated events wide across the political space, and nurturing the effect of simultaneity, particularly with certain audiences in view, have been the take of much reporting these days. Negatively, the advances people had made in shaping their self-rule, in a context of bewildering diversity and complexity and widening inequalities, are given short shrift. While elections have been successful in reproducing the order of things, they can hardly be considered as the tool of deepening democracy and the nursery of imagining alternative human possibilities. Imaginary of democracy THERE has been an ambivalence regarding elections as the route to democracy in India from early on, even before Independence. It is important to recall that the Indian National Congress rejected the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms (1919) that expanded the then electoral base, and entertained grave doubts with regard to the provisions of the Government of India Act 1935 till it accorded a qualified endorsement to it. There have always been political tendencies in India after Independence, particularly on the Left, that have sought boycott of elections by appealing to a richer and thicker version of democracy. But there is little to suggest that those who sought to reject or do away with elections have had much success in putting together an alternative, or enjoyed significant and consistent mass support for any appreciable time across the complex and deeply plural social ensemble in India. If the great scholarly account of WH Morris-Jones, Parliament in India, is to be believed, the 1951-52 general elections demonstrated to an incredulous world, entertaining deep doubts about the prospects of parliamentary democracy in India, the faith that people had come to repose in elections as a mode of choosing their rulers. Subsequent developments, particularly the option of Left parties to take the parliamentary path, demonstrate that elections as a device of choosing representatives find deep echo in the public culture in India. The challenge that the democratic project confronts in India can scarcely be imagined by setting aside elections. In the reflections on democracy in India, a distinct imaginary of the same stands out, ie a political community of free and equal citizens who wish to define their collective life in the indefinite future, irrespective of, and taking along, the differences among them. There is a disconnect between this imaginary and the turn elections have taken in India today. Looking ahead AS A political community, the bonds that unite Indians are not given but have to be forged, and have to be forged consciously and deliberately. Certain inheritances, beliefs, memories and shared practices can be a great help in this direction, but it is also important to realise that they can be equally divisive. India’s constitutional layout and public institutions can extend much support in streamlining and directing this political project, but cannot be its replacement. In a complex society such as India, such a political project needs all layers of the political community. The deliberation and participation such a project calls for will remain merely a slogan unless we foreground freedom, and enable everyone to contribute one’s best to it. There is no reason for anyone to participate in such a project unless it welcomes them as equals and enables them to pursue what they regard as the best for them. This calls for auditing the election promises of political parties, extending support to some measures and rejecting others. Measures such as access to quality education in the mother tongue, neighbourhood schools, strengthening public health systems, public transport, entrepreneurship and skill development, universal social insurance, and reaching out to those who suffer disadvantages in accessing these measures are definitely in synchrony with the democratic project. At the same time for a large number of Indians the beliefs they uphold, and the practices that ensue therefrom are central to their idea of themselves. There is no reason why India’s democratic project cannot encompass such embeddedness and aspirations. There is a dire need to create a helm to focus on India’s democratic project.

Who is the battle for leadership of the Muslim world?

2019-04-06T12:45:00.002-07:00

When Turkish vice-president Fuat Oktay and foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu became the first high-level foreign government delegation to travel to Christchurch after the attacks on two mosques, they were doing more than expressing solidarity with New Zealand's grieving Muslim community.

Messrs. Oktay and Cavusoglu were planting Turkey's flag far and wide in a global effort to expand, beyond the Turkic and former Ottoman world, support for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's style of religiously-packaged authoritarian rule, a marriage of Islam and Turkish nationalism.

Showing footage of the rampage in Christchurch at a rally in advance of March 31 local elections, Mr Erdogan declared that “there is a benefit in watching this on the screen. Remnants of the Crusaders cannot prevent Turkey's rise.”

Mr Erdogan went on to say that “we have been here for 1,000 years and God willing we will be until doomsday. You will not be able to make Istanbul Constantinople. Your ancestors came and saw that we were here. Some of them returned on foot and some returned in coffins. If you come with the same intent, we will be waiting for you too.”

Mr Erdogan was responding to an assertion by Brenton Tarrant, the white supremacist perpetrator of the Christchurch attacks in which 50 people were killed in two mosques, that Turks were “ethnic soldiers currently occupying Europe.”

Messrs. Oktay and Cavusoglu's visit, two days after the attacks, was one more facet of a Turkish campaign that employs religious as well as traditional diplomatic tools. The campaign aims to establish Turkey as a leader of the Muslim world in competition with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and to a lesser degree, Morocco.

As part of the campaign, Turkey has positioned itself as a cheerleader for Muslim causes such as Jerusalem and the Rohingya at a moment when Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other Muslim nations are taking a step back.

Although cautious not to rupture relations with Beijing, Turkey has also breached the wall of silence maintained by the vast majority of Muslim countries by speaking out against China's brutal crackdown on Turkic Muslims in the troubled north-western province of Xinjiang.

Mr Erdogan's religious and traditional diplomatic effort has seen Turkey build grand mosques and/or cultural centres across the globe in the United States, the Caribbean, Europe, Africa and Asia, finance religious education and restore Ottoman heritage sites.

It has pressured governments in Africa and Asia to hand over schools operated by the Hizmet movement led by exiled preacher Fethullah Gulen. Mr Erdogan holds Mr Gulen responsible for the failed military coup in Turkey in 2016.

On the diplomatic front, Turkey has in recent years opened at least 26 embassies in Africa, expanded the Turkish Airlines network to 55 destinations in Africa, established military bases in Somalia and Qatar, and negotiated a long-term lease for Sudan's Suakin Island in the Red Sea.

The Turkish religious campaign takes a leaf out of Saudi Arabia's four-decade-long, USD-100-billion effort to globally propagate ultra-conservative Sunni Islam.

Like the Saudis, Turkey's Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) provides services to Muslim communities, organises pilgrimages to Mecca, trains religious personnel, publishes religious literature, translates the Qur'an into local languages and funds students from across the world to study Islam at Turkish institutions.

Turkish Muslim NGOs provide humanitarian assistance in former parts of the Ottoman empire, the Middle East and Africa much like the Saudi-led World Muslim League and other Saudi governmental and non-governmental organisations, many of which have been shut down since the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.

Saudi Arabia, since the rise of crown prince Mohammed bin Salman in 2015, has significantly reduced global funding for ultra-conservatism.

Nonetheless, Turkey is at loggerheads with Saudi Arabia as well as the UAE over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi; Turkish support for Qatar in its dispute with the Saudis and Emiratis; differences over Libya, Syria and the Kurds; and Ankara's activist foreign policy.

Decades of Saudi funding has left the kingdom's imprint on the global Muslim community. Yet, Turkey's current struggles with Saudi Arabia are more geopolitical than ideological.

While Turkey competes geopolitically with the UAE in the Horn of Africa, Libya and Syria, ideologically the two countries' rivalry is between the UAE's effort to establish itself as a centre of a quietist, apolitical Islam as opposed to Turkey's activist approach and its support for the Muslim Brotherhood.

In contrast to Saudi Arabia that adheres to Wahhabism, an austere ultra-conservative interpretation of the faith, the UAE projects itself and its religiosity as far more modern, tolerant and forward-looking. The UAE's projection goes beyond Prince Mohammed's attempt to shave off the raw edges of Wahhabism in an attempt to present himself as a proponent of what he has termed moderate Islam.

The UAE scored a significant success with the first-ever papal visit in February by Pope Francis I during which he signed a Document on Human Fraternity with Sheikh Ahmad al-Tayeb, the grand imam of Egypt's Al-Azhar, the revered 1,000-year-old seat of Sunni Muslim learning.

The signing was the result of UAE-funded efforts of Egyptian general-turned-president Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi to depoliticise Islam and gain control of Al-Azhar that Sheikh Al-Tayeb resisted despite supporting Mr Al-Sisi's 2013 military coup.

To enhance its influence within Al-Azhar and counter that of Saudi Araba, the UAE has funded Egyptian universities and hospitals and has encouraged Al-Azhar to open a branch in the UAE.

The UAE effort paid off when the pope, in a public address, thanked Egyptian judge Mohamed Abdel Salam, an advisor to Sheikh Al-Tayeb who is believed to be close to both the Emiratis and Mr Al-Sisi, for drafting the declaration. “Abdel Salam enabled Al-Sisi to outmanoeuvre Al-Azhar in the struggle for reform,” said an influential activist.

The Turkey-UAE rivalry has spilt from the geopolitical and ideological into competing versions of Islamic history.

Turkey last year renamed the street on which the UAE embassy in Ankara is located after an Ottoman general that was at the centre of a Twitter spat between Mr Erdogan and UAE foreign minister Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan.

Mr Erdogan responded angrily to the tweet that accused Fahreddin Pasha, who defended the holy city of Medina against the British in the early 20th century, of abusing the local Arab population and stealing their property as well as sacred relics from the Prophet Muhammad's tomb. The tweet described the general as one of Mr Erdogan's ancestors.

"When my ancestors were defending Medina, you impudent (man), where were yours? Some impertinent man sinks low and goes as far as accusing our ancestors of thievery. What spoiled this man? He was spoiled by oil, by the money he has," Mr Erdogan retorted, referring to Mr Al-Nahyan.

How to enable the Search Description field on Blogger to increase page views

2019-04-05T14:49:00.001-07:00

Search engines typically take the first couple of sentences of a blog post as use that as the site description on their results page. However, there is a feature on Blogger allowing you to write individual summary for each post. This allows you to choose the description which can help improve the number of visits your posts receive from search engines. This post will show you how to enable and use this feature.

How to enable Search Description on Blogger

On the Blogger dashboard, go to Settings > Search Preferences. Under Meta Tags, click edit next to Description. Click Yes to enable the Search Description field and create a Meta Description for your blog in the space provided.

This should be a short and concise description of your blog overall. Although using a couple of keywords is important here, try to write it for people first. This will typically appear as the description on search result pages so writing an interesting description will help encourage people to visit your blog over any other sites that are shown.

Press Save Changes once complete.

Now when you write a new post, you’ll see a new Search Description field in Post Settings on the right hand side.

Here you can write a short summary about your blog post, again be detailed with the description and use a couple of keywords from your blog post.

The final step is to make sure you have the necessary HTML in your template. Go to Template > Edit HTML and search for the following within your head tags (between <head> and </head>), it will typically be above your title tag.

<b:include data='blog' name='all-head-content'/>

The Meta Description tag does appear elsewhere in your template, and there are other methods for adding it to your template but the above it the easiest and best way to do so. As long as the above is within your head tags and implemented correctly, it should be enough to gather the necessary information.

How to SEO your Blogger Blog

Visit the full blog post below for a step-by-step video walk-through of how to optimize your blog post for search engines on Blogger with a free downloadable check

Creating Valued Brand Experiences and Deep Brand Community

2019-04-05T11:32:00.000-07:00

The Nike swoosh—it’s everywhere! Just for fun, try counting

the number of swooshes whenever you pick up the

sports pages, watch a pickup basketball game, or tune

into a televised golf match. Through innovative marketing,

Nike has built the ever-present swoosh into one of the bestknown

brand symbols on the planet.

Some 47 years ago, when young CPA Phil Knight and college

track coach Bill Bowerman cofounded the company, Nike

was a brash, young upstart in the athletic footwear industry. In

1964, the pair chipped in $500 apiece to start Blue Ribbon Sports.

In 1970, Bowerman cooked up a new sneaker tread by stuffing a

piece of rubber into his wife’s waffle iron. The Waffle Trainer

quickly became the nation’s best-selling training shoe. In 1972,

the company introduced its first Nike brand shoe, named after

the Greek goddess of victory. And, in 1978, the company

changed its name to Nike. By 1979, Nike had sprinted ahead of

the competition, owning 50 percent of the U.S. running shoe

market.

In the 1980s, Nike revolutionized sports marketing. To build

its brand image and market share, Nike lavishly outspent its competitors

on big-name endorsements, splashy promotional events,

and big-budget, in-your-face “Just Do It” ads. Nike gave customers

much more than just good athletic gear. Whereas competitors

stressed technical performance, Nike built customer

relationships. Beyond shoes, apparel, and equipment, Nike marketed

a way of life, a genuine passion for sports, a just-do-it attitude.

Customers didn’t just wear their Nikes, they experienced them.

As the company stated on its Web page, “Nike has always known

the truth—it’s not so much the shoes but where they take you.”

Nike powered its way through the early 1990s, moving aggressively

into a dozen new sports, including baseball, golf,

skateboarding, wall climbing, bicycling, and hiking. The stillbrash

young company slapped its familiar swoosh logo on

everything from sunglasses and soccer balls to batting gloves

and golf clubs. It seemed that things couldn’t be going any better.

In the late 1990s, however, Nike stumbled, and its sales

slipped. As the company grew larger, its creative juices seemed to

run a bit dry. Its ads began to look like just more of the same, and

its ho-hum new sneaker designs collected dust on retailer shelves’

as buyers seeking a new look switched to competing brands.

Looking back, Nike’s biggest obstacle may have been its own incredible

success. As sales approached the $10 billion mark, the

swoosh may have become too common to be cool. Instead of being

antiestablishment, Nike was the establishment, and its hip,

once-hot relationship with customers cooled. Nike needed to

rekindle its meaning to its customers.

To turn things around, Nike returned to its roots: new-product

innovation and a focus on customer relationships. Its newly

minted mission: Nike wants “to bring inspiration and innovation

to every athlete* in the world (*if you have a body, you are

an athlete.)” With its deep pockets, as in the past, Nike can outspend

most competitors on marketing by a wide margin. But

this time around, the sports marketer set out to create a new kind

of customer relationship—a deeper, more involving one. Now,

Nike no longer just talks at its customers through media ads and

celebrity endorsers. Instead, it uses cutting-edge marketing tools

to interact with customers to build brand experiences and deep

brand community

Nike still invests hundreds of millions

of dollars each year on creative

advertising. However, it now spends

less than one-third of its $593 million

annual promotion budget on television

and other traditional media, down

from 55 percent 10 years ago. These

days, behind the bright lights, Nike

has developed a host of innovative

new relationship-building approaches.

Using community-oriented, digitally

led, social-networking tools, Nike

is now building communities of customers

who talk not just with the company

about the brand but with each

other. “Nike’s latest masterstroke is social

networking, online and off,” says

one Nike watcher. Whether customers

come to know Nike through ads, inperson

events at a Niketown store, a

local Nike running club, or at a one of

the company’s many community Web

sites, more and more people are

bonding closely with the Nike brand

experience. Consider this example:

Twice a week, 30 or more people gather at a Nike store in

Portland, Oregon, and go for an evening run. Afterward,

the members of the Niketown running club chat in the store

over refreshments. Nike’s staff keeps track of their performances

and hails members who have logged more than

100 miles. The event is a classic example of up-close-andpersonal

relationship building with core customers.

Nike augments such events with an online social network

aimed at striking up meaningful and long-term interactions

with even more runners. The Nike running Web site

lets customers with iPod-linked Nike shoes monitor their

performances—the distance, pace, time, and calories burned

during their runs. Runners can upload and track their own performances

over time, compare them with those of other runners,

and even participate in local or worldwide challenges.

Talk about brand involvement. Nike can be the next

best thing to your own personal trainer or jogging buddy. The

Nike Web site offers a “Nike Coach” that provides advice

and training routines to help you prepare for competitive

races. When running, if you have earphones, at the end of

every mile a friendly voice tells you how far you’ve gone and

then counts down the final meters. If you hit the wall while

running, the push of a button brings up a personally selected

“power song” that gives you an extra boost and gets you going

again. Back home again, after a quick upload of your running

data, Nike charts and helps you analyze your run.

In four years, two million Nike members have logged

more than 233 million miles

on the site. Collectively,

the Nike community has

run the equivalent of 9,400

trips around the world or

490 journeys to the moon

and back. Last October, a

million runners competed

virtually in the second annual global

“Human Race” 10K, posting their

times on Nike , comparing themselves

with runners worldwide, and

seeing how their cities or countries

performed. The long-term goal is to

have 15 percent of the world’s 100 million

runners using the system.

Thanks to efforts like Nike , Nike has

built a new kinship and sense of community

with and between its customers. More than just something

to buy, Nike products have once again become a part of customers’

lives and times. As a result, the world’s largest sportswear

company is once again achieving outstanding results. Over

the past five years, Nike’s global sales and profits have surged

nearly 40 percent. In the past three years, Nike’s share of the U.S.

running shoe market has grown from 48 percent to 61 percent. In

2008 and 2009, as the faltering economy had most sports apparel

and footwear competitors gasping for breath, Nike raced ahead.

It’s global sales grew 14 and 3 percent, respectively. In troubled

2010, despite flat sales, Nike’s profits shot ahead 28 percent. By

contrast, at largest rival Adidas, sales fell 7 percent, and profits

dropped by 68 percent.

In fact, Nike views uncertain economic times as “an incredible

opportunity” to take advantage of its strong brand. As in sports

competition, the strongest and best-prepared athlete has the best

chance of winning. With deep

customer relationships comes

a powerful competitive advantage.

And Nike is once again

very close to its customers. As

one writer notes, “Nike is blurring

the line between brand

and experience.”1

Nike’s customer-focused mission and strategy have

helped Nike to build strong customer relationships and

a deep sense of brand community. As a result, while

other sports gear companies are gasping for breath,

Nike is sprinting ahead

How To Read People’s Minds: Everyday Mind Reading

2019-04-05T06:03:00.004-07:00

Although there is no research evidence to support mind reading via extra sensory perception (ESP), there are individuals who are extremely skilled at reading others’ body language and making educated guesses about what they are thinking or feeling. Psychologist William Ickes calls it “everyday mind reading,” and there is evidence that we can develop our perceptual skills and become better at reading other people’s feelings and thoughts. Here’s how:

Nonverbal Decoding Skill. Much of our ability to tap into others’ feelings and emotions is through individual differences in “reading” others’ nonverbal emotional expressions, particularly through facial expressions and tone of voice. To give you a sense of what a skilled nonverbal decoder can do, watch a professional “mindreader” or “mentalist” at work on stage. The “mentalist’ seems to have some sort of ESP, but is actually reading the nonverbal cues of audience members. The mindreader says, “Someone here has recently experienced a loss of a family member,” and then looks for subtle reactions. Zeroing in on the person who reacts, the mentalist probes around and watches for reactions. It’s not ESP, it’s highly-developed nonverbal decoding skill.

The way to improve ability to decode nonverbal cues is through systematic practice. Here is a guide for improving nonverbal decoding skill.

Consider the Context. It isn’t enough to be a good decoder of nonverbal cues, but to really be an everyday mindreader you need to consider the context. The same nonverbal behaviors in different contexts mean different things. Imagine a wife and husband in a group discussion. You notice the wife gently squeezes her husband’s hand. If it occurs during a lull in a conversation, it likely is a sign of affection. If it occurs after someone else has said something provocative, it might mean “pay attention” or “remember what I told you?” If it occurs after the husband has said something, it might mean “keep quiet!” Context matters.

Deception Detection Strategies. One might be motivated to become an everyday mindreader in order to tell if others are lying or telling the truth. I’m sorry to tell you that research shows that we are simply not very good at detecting deception. There are some rare individuals, however, who have exceptional ability to detect lies. Psychologists Paul Ekman and Maureen O’Sullivan labeled these people “wizards” of lie detection. How do they do it? The wizards look for inconsistencies in nonverbal behavior, or between what a person is saying and how they are saying it. They also analyze the context. Importantly, they don’t fall prey to mental shortcuts when it comes to lie detection, such as believing that a liar won’t make eye contact, or will look in a certain direction when lying. (Research actually shows that liars engage in more eye contact than truth-tellers. Good liars know all about the mental shortcuts people are prone to).

Here is an earlier post that might help you in improving at lie detection.

So, how do you become a better everyday mindreader?

First. Get Motivated. It’s not easy to be a good nonverbal decoder, so you have to have the dedication to do it.

Second, Practice. Reading body language and contextual cues requires a great deal of practice. Importantly, you need to practice in a way that allows you to assess your accuracy. In other words, if you don’t know the “truth,” you can’t learn to become more accurate

How To Install Adobe Premiere Pro CS6-For Free With Life Time Active !! ...

2019-04-05T02:18:00.001-07:00

hasan sarker

How To Improve English Speaking Skills

2019-04-04T23:54:00.000-07:00

How To Improve English Speaking Skills

Many students master the fine points of English grammar but find themselves at a loss when it comes to actually having a conversation with native speakers. In reality, the only way to develop fluency in speaking is by huge amounts of listening, and then practicing. The following are a few tips for improving English speaking skills. Don’t forget that listening is the foundation for speaking! When you also want to practice speaking, here are some suggestions for how to improve English speaking skills.

Find An English-Speaking Conversation Partner

First of all, it’s important to find native speakers to practice with. Students who are living around many English speakers may be able to find informal opportunities to chat with neighbors and local business people. Joining a club or a volunteer organization can be a great way to get to know people informally. If that isn’t an option, consider hiring a private tutor. A lot of students find and meet with tutors online via tools like Skype or Google Hangouts.

Make Sure To Listen As Well As Speak

When practicing with a native speaker, try to balance your listening and speaking. It’s a good idea to prepare questions in advance so that the conversation will flow back and forth. If your conversation partner asks you a question and you answer at length, you can always turn the question back to your partner by asking, “What do you think?” or “What about you?”

Record Your Conversation Practice

Recording is a great way to get the maximum benefit from a conversation with a native speaker. When you listen again, you can evaluate your own pronunciation and notice areas where you need to improve. You can also review the content of the conversation, take notes on new vocabulary or misunderstandings, and prepare questions for the next meeting.

Surround Yourself With The English Language

Another way to improve your English speaking skills is to immerse yourself in English as much as possible. Watch movies or TV in English, with subtitles if you need them, and watch the same programs over and over. Most people find that they understand more each time. Listening helps you become familiar with the rhythms and intonations of English. Once the sounds are familiar, try imitating them.

Practice With Music and Movies

Listen to music in English and sing along. Music is one of the best tools for learning intonation pronunciation. Listening to and singing songs might also help you remember vocabulary and phrases (if the song is easy to understand), and it will help you learn to pronounce English rhythm in a more natural way. By unconsciously imitating the singer, you’ll learn to pronounce phrases the way native speakers do. One good song for ESL or EFL students is “Tom’s Diner” by Suzanne Vega because it uses simple language to describe everyday scenes and actions. Movies are a much better choice for learning English. You’ll learn vocabulary, idioms, slang, pronunciation, and listening by watching movies. Be sure to use my movie technique when you do this!

Read Aloud

Reading out loud is a great way to practice speaking when there are no conversation partners available. Reading aloud gives you a chance to focus on pronunciation and pacing without worrying about coming up with words. Make sure to practice with material that you can understand. Some students find videos online that have transcripts. Many TED talks, for example, include word-for word transcripts of the talk. By reading aloud from a transcript, you can check your pronunciation by listening to how the speaker says something.

Talk To Yourself

Saying your thoughts out loud or narrating your actions (“I am drinking coffee, and now I’m going to open my book”) can be a very effective way to practice spoken English. By talking to yourself, you can become more fluent in translating your thoughts into spoken words. Practicing alone is also a low-pressure way to practice, since no one will hear your mistakes.

Why would an American learn Norwegian?

2019-04-04T14:46:00.003-07:00

Democratic candidate Pete Buttigieg speaks Norwegian, and several other candidates in the 2020 race also speak a second language. But for presidential contenders, being bilingual is not always a plus. Why are Americans surprised when politicians speak a foreign language?

Writer Asne Seierstad was introduced to Pete Buttigieg, a presidential candidate and the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, at a music festival in Texas last week. Without missing a beat, he began to speak with her about literature - in Norwegian.

Mr Buttigieg has "a South Bend accent", she says, but otherwise his Norwegian was excellent. Still she felt confused and wondered: "Why would an American learn Norwegian?" As it turned out, he'd decided that he wanted to read the work of Norwegian novelist Erlend Loe in the original language.

When the story of Mr Buttigieg's language ability appeared on Twitter, people across the political spectrum were impressed.

"It's an extraordinary story about intellectual curiosity," says Tom Nichols, the author of The Death of Expertise. "And it's such a contrast to the current occupant in the White House."

Mr Nichols - and Trump supporters too - agreed that a Norwegian-speaking presidential candidate was an anomaly on the campaign trail.

"The fact that he learned Norwegian so he could read Norwegian makes me want to know more about him," says Michael Caputo, a former adviser to Trump.

Mr Buttigieg's mother, Anne Montgomery, is a linguist, and he grew up with languages.

Aside from Norwegian, he speaks French, Spanish, Italian, Maltese, Arabic and Dari, says his campaign adviser Lis Smith.

The fascination that Republicans and Democrats alike have shown in Mr Buttigieg's skill as a language learner is part of a larger cultural story. In many ways the US is an insular society, and people there are less likely to study foreign languages than those who live in other parts of the world.

In Europe more than 90% of students learn a foreign language in school, according to the Pew Research Center, compared to only one-fifth of students who learn a language in the US.

The fact that relatively few people in the US can speak a second language means people there are amazed when their political leaders can.

During this campaign season, other Democratic candidates have embraced the Spanish language and used their ability to speak the language to appeal to a broader swathe of voters.

Democratic candidate Beto O'Rourke of Texas has launched Spanish campaign adverts. Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey has done the same.

George W Bush also speaks passable Spanish (his brother Jeb is even better), but he is an outlier among presidents.

Few in the modern era have spoken a second language - Trump and Barack Obama, for example, are fluent only in English.

Politicians and leaders in other countries have done better. Kevin Rudd, a former prime minister of Australia, knows Mandarin. British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt can give a speech in Japanese, and Nick Clegg, a former deputy prime minister, is fluent in Dutch (and speaks excellent Spanish).

Winston Churchill spoke French - but with an almost comically English accent. President Vladimir Putin speaks excellent German. He apparently speaks English, too, but is less confident in his skills and tries to avoid speaking it publicly.

In the US, linguistic ability does not always work in a candidate's favour.

For presidential candidates, everything is political, including the languages they speak, and on the campaign trail their use of language is seen through a partisan lens. In the past, a candidate's facility for language has at times been cast in a negative light.

Some Republican candidates have been under attack for being bilingual.

During the last primary season, Mr Trump criticised one of his Republican rivals, Jeb Bush, for speaking Spanish. "He should really set the example by speaking English while in the United States," Mr Trump told a Breitbart journalist in 2015.

Chastising Mr Bush for speaking Spanish fit into Mr Trump's own campaign narrative - he called for an overhaul in immigration laws and said that a wall should be built on the southern border.

"It's entirely consistent with the kind of nativist policy and rhetoric that he used," says Matthew Dallek, an assistant professor of political management at George Washington University. "But for the majority of the electorate being bilingual may be an asset - not a deficit."

Democratic candidates have been sensitive to this manner of criticism, however. At times they have been so concerned about how voters might react to their linguistic skills that they tried to downplay them.

John Kerry is fluent in French, yet he decided to hide his ability to speak the language when he was a Democratic presidential candidate in 2004.

As a candidate, Mr Kerry was portrayed as an elitist who was out of touch with ordinary people, and he seemed to believe that his ability to speak French would be used against him.

He may have been right. For some people in the US, the French language is seen as "a kind of shorthand for intellectual pretentiousness", according to Mr Nichols, the writer.

During the 2012 Republican primary, accusations were levelled against another French speaker, Mitt Romney.

One of Mr Romney's rivals for the Republican nomination made a video that cast him as too moderate for the party and compared him unfavourably to Mr Kerry. "And just like John Kerry," says a narrator, "he speaks French".

Mr Buttigieg had no compunction about speaking Norwegian while he was campaigning in Texas, however, and he did not try to hide his linguistic talent.

Still, political analysts agree that while the ability of Mr Buttigieg or another candidate to speak a foreign language will surprise voters - delighting some, and perhaps making others suspicious - it is unlikely to turn an election.

Bruce Berke, a Republican strategist who is "50% Norwegian", says that he admires Mr Buttigieg's fluency in the language but doesn't think it will win votes.

And Kelly Dietrich, who heads up an organisation called the National Democratic Training Committee, says: "Democratic voters don't care if you speak three languages, 12 languages or one language. What they care about is - can you beat Donald Trump?"

How sustainable is growth based on cheap labour?

2019-04-04T14:34:00.000-07:00

Bangladesh is seeing continuous economic growth despite natural calamities, political unrest, lack of good governance, weak institutions, bureaucratic delays, corruption, as well as inefficient ports and communication systems. Some economists home and abroad, term this success as the ‘Bangladesh Miracle’. But it is not any miracle or anything supernatural, given that economy is related to peoples’ endeavours. There is an explanation behind this success.

Firstly, the people of Bangladesh are industrious, full of energy and hope. They have kept the economy vibrant with despite various setbacks such as lack of natural resources and a dense population. International organisations like the World Bank regularly publish reports on the economic sectors of various countries. The overall economic condition of Bangladesh in terms of infrastructural facilities is not good compared to global standards.
Bangladesh is ranked 176 among 189 countries in World Bank’s ease of doing business index of 2019. All south Asian countries, even war-torn Afghanistan is in a better position than us. Bangladesh is placed 100th among 160 countries in WB’s logistics performance index. We have serious lacking in foreign investment environment. Khondokar Golam Moazzem of the Centre for Policy Dialogue maintains that Bangladesh does not have the criteria sought by foreign investors.

Pacing up of economy requires efficient and fast port facilities which Bangladesh seriously lacks. On average, unloading of goods in country’s main sea port Chattogram takes 15 days compared to only 4.4 days in South Korea. Our positions in different economic indicators are poor.

One of the main reasons of the upward trend of economic growth is the availability of cheap labour in the country. According to a recent survey of Japan International Trade Organisation (JETRO), Bangladesh pays the lowest salary and wages to production sector workers, engineers and managers as well as to service sector managers. The wage of a worker is $201, $227 and $265 in countries like Cambodia, Vietnam and India compared to a meager $109 in Bangladesh.
If that cheap labour is the main reason of high earnings by the industrialists and the subsequent economic growth, then there are questions about the sustainability that growth. The disparity created by this trend also has other negative impacts. We need to create a congenial environment to attract foreign investors. We need initiatives such as raising efficiency, ensuring good governance and strengthening institutions to advance in global economic indicators.

My town, my village

2019-04-02T13:04:00.000-07:00

Let’s not make the same mistakes with our rural planning that we have made with our cities

The outcome of the recently concluded parliamentary election witnessed the ruling party achieve supreme victory once again, giving them a chance to further flesh out the election manifesto put forth last year.

The manifesto is a 92-page document that articulates specific sectoral plans and objectives grounded on the achievements over the last two terms of the ruling party. Although the prime slogan of this manifesto is “My Village -- My Town,” it seeks to extend modern urban facilities to every village. The prioritization is in context of rural development, but perhaps for the first time in the history of Bangladesh has urbanization received such political significance.

The manifesto makes it a point that “initiatives will be taken to provide every village with facilities of modern towns, including developed roads, communicationfacilities, safe drinking water, modern health care and proper treatment, standard education, developed sewage and waste management, electricity and fuel supply, computer and high-speed internet facilities, electric equipment and standard consumer goods, as well as employment opportunities will be created through the establishment of agricultural and non-agricultural light manufacturing equipments and machinery servicing centres and workshops in village levels, supported by loan facilities to marginal and small entrepreneurs.”

But exactly how will these goals be achieved?

Although Bangladesh has made significant economic progress during the last decade, unfortunately, urbanization has always been neglected and has remained unattended, as cities and towns have been developed in an unplanned manner.

If we think about our cities or towns, at the very first glance, negative aspects like traffic jams, water logging, haphazard waste, dirty air and water, slums and squatters, encroachment, etc come to mind.

Why couldn’t we develop our cities and towns in a more planned manner?

The direct answer is the absence of efficient urban planning. Our institutions are not developed in a way that can tackle these challenges systematically. There is no doubt that people living in urban areas enjoy many helpful services, but they are not developed based on urban planning decisions.

So, the unplanned provision of service facilities has led towards the rise of unplanned urban areas in Bangladesh. We should not repeat the same mistakes in the process of bringing urban services to rural areas. When we think about extending urban services in rural areas sustainably, an approach can be introducing integrated rural planning that will provide efficient and effective use of land, water, and natural resources for the rural settlements and growth centres, while ensuring provisions for various kinds of infrastructure, services, and facilities.

Integrated rural planning can be explained as a “techno-economic plan,” which has to be prepared by engaging all stakeholders in a particular village. Although, historically, there have been many conflicts centring land in rural Bangladesh, evidence is also available in the context of other parts of the world that, by adopting land pooling and land-readjustment techniques, planned physical growth has been achieved and many conflicts have been resolved in the process.

Village-level planning should be considered an integral part of the long pending national physical planning system, which could be the solid base for identifying 100 economic zones in potential locations. Land-use plans and transportation plans are linked, so cannot be treated as isolated from one another.

However, the prime question remains: Who will prepare and steer the implementation process of such plans?

Given that our institutions are not designed to perform such dynamic physical planning processes, the establishment of an institutional mechanism is essential. Such a set-up should have clear mandates, and delivery mechanisms equipped with the right level of authority, sufficient funding, and competent human resources.

To that end, approval of the draft Urban and Regional (Rural) Planning Act 2017 through a Parliamentary debate could be a great initial step for achieving that vision

25 March is a reminder of our liability

2019-04-02T10:15:00.000-07:00

No Bangali can forget the night of 25 March 1971. The entire day was spent in anxiety and alarm. The 7 March speech had brought the people together in a non-violent movement, though there were all preparations for an armed resistance. The people were well aware that the unarmed democratic movement could at any moment turn into an armed struggle for freedom.

Bangabandhu had kept the doors open for discussion and also for an alternative way of resistance. He placed before the Pakistani rulers a way for political solution, but he also made it clear that there would be no alternative but to fight for independence if they rejected the political way out.

It was more or less obvious that the Pakistan armed forces would resort to violence, but the degree and brutality of the violence was unimaginable. They cracked down on the armed citizens on the night of 25 March, paying no heed to any rules of war. They hit their targets and went on a killing spree. Their brutality crossed all limits, no words can describe the horrors of their actions. They attacked those who upheld the Bangali nationalist spirit. They killed the Hindu men, women and children. Bangabandhu had given the poor people a vision for which they took to the streets and so their homes were razed to the ground. Fleeing men, women and children were shot dead.

The night of 25 March is known as the Black Night. It is the darkest night in the country’s history when the genocide began. It was first in 1949 that the word ‘genocide’ was used to describe the planned annihilation of a people for their race or ethnicity.

We have been observing 25 March as the black night since then. It has become a synonym for the brutality, killings, rape, arson and other horrors of the nine-month liberation war. And then we have 26 March, our Independence Day, juxtaposing the horrors and the freedom.

There has long been a demand for 25 March to be recognised as Genocide Day. In 2017 a proposal was unanimously passed in the Jatiya Sangsad (national parliament)to recognise 25 March as Genocide Day. Many felt that the day should be internationally recognised and that the UN declare this to be International Genocide Day. That did not happen. But there has been significant achievement. In 2015 the UN declared 9 December as International Genocide Day. The genocide in Bangladesh can be remembered on that day along with that of other countries.

There are other countries that have days to remember the genocides they faced. In Rwanda, 7 April is Genocide Day, in Armenia it is 24 April, in Cambodia 20 May and for the Jews it is 27 January.

In our neighbouring Myanmar, genocidal attacks that been launched on the ethnic minorities of the Karen, Kachen, Shan and most recently, the Rohingyas. One million Rohingya men, women and children were oppressed, tortured and driven into Bangladesh. Bangladesh, which itself was victim of genocide in 1971, today stands by the side of the refugees. Prime minister Sheikh Hasina and the people of Bangladesh have set this shining example.

So 25 March reminds us of our past as well as of our responsibilities. We must never forget the genocide and must see the international trial of the perpetrators of the genocide for the sake of truth and justice. This applies to the Pakistani war criminals as well as the rulers of Myanmar. That liability remains to be fulfilled. And 25 March resonates with that message for us, for humanity

Who is Brenton Tarrant?

2019-04-02T01:54:00.001-07:00

Brenton Tarrant, man claiming to be a suspect in the killing of 49 people in New Zealand, said his motive was to 'create fear'

An Australian gunman involved in attacks on New Zealand mosques yesterday that left at least 49 people dead published a racist manifesto on Twitter beforehand then live streamed his rampage, according to an AFP online analysis.

Brenton Tarrant, man claiming to be a suspect in the killing of 49 people in New Zealand, said his motive was to "create fear."

The New Zealand government said it could be illegal to share the video, which showed the gunman repeatedly shooting at worshippers from close range.

"Police are aware there is extremely distressing footage relating to the incident in Christchurch circulating online," New Zealand police said in a Twitter post.

"We would strongly urge that the link not be shared. We are working to have any footage removed."

AFP analyzed a copy of the Facebook Live video, which shows a clean-shaven, Caucasian man with short hair driving to the Masjid al Noor mosque in central Christchurch, then shooting as he enters the building.

AFP determined the video was genuine through a digital investigation that included matching screenshots of the mosque taken from the gunman's footage with multiple images available online showing the same areas.

The manifesto detailing motivations for the attack was posted on Friday morning onto a Twitter account with the same name and profile image as the Facebook page that streamed the attack.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Friday confirmed the attacker at the Masjid al Noor mosque was an Australian.

"We stand here and condemn, absolutely the attack that occurred today by an extremist, right-wing, violent terrorist," Morrison told a press conference.

New Zealand authorities said that three people had been arrested, but their identities were not made public.

They later announced one man, aged in his late 20s, had been charged with murder and should appear in court on Saturday.

A gym trainer

Christchurch mosque gunman Brenton Tarrant worked as a personal trainer at Big River gym in the northern New South Wales city of Grafton, reported ABC.

Big River Squash and Fitness Centre Manager Tracey Gray confirmed the man who filmed the attack and streamed it online was Tarrant.

She said he worked at the gym after he finished school in 2009 until 2011, when he left to go travelling overseas in Asia and in Europe.

"He was a very dedicated personal trainer," Ms Gray said.

"He worked in our program that offered free training to kids in the community, and he was very passionate about that."

Ms Gray said Tarrant did not strike her as someone who had an interest in firearms.

"I think something must have changed in him during the years he spent travelling overseas," she said.

Tarrant said he worked for a short time before making some money from Bitconnect, a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, then used the money to fund his travels.

Tarrant is known to have visited Europe, South Asia, South-East Asia and east Asia.

His travels also took him to North Korea, where he was photographed in a tour group visiting the Samjiyon Grand Monument.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported that the 28-year-old attended Grafton High School before getting his qualifications in fitness.

Last year, a message on Facebook from Mr Tarrant spoke of a trip to Pakistan, "an incredible place filled with the most earnest, kind hearted and hospitable people in the world".

"The beauty of hunza and nagar valley in autumn cannot be beat," he wrote.

Digital verification

AFP confirmed the authenticity of the live streamed video partly by matching the distinctive features at the mosque seen in the footage with images available online.

These included a fence, post-box and doorway at the entrance to the mosque.

Inside the mosque, the gunman's footage showed distinctively patterned green carpet that also matched images tagged on Google Maps as being at the same location.

Satellite navigational audio could also be heard in the video as the gunman drove to the mosque, which AFP tracked on Google StreetView showing his route for the two kilometres (1.2 miles) leading there.

The gunman spoke only occasionally while in the car, speaking in what sounded like an Australian accent.

Distinctive writing on the gunman's weapons seen in the footage also matched images posted on the Twitter account using the same name that posted the manifesto.

The manifesto was the final tweet on the account before it was suspended.

Photos of weaponry with distinctive writing on them were posted on the Twitter account on March 13. AFP took screenshots of the weapons shown in the Facebook Live video, which showed some of the exact same writing.

Scrawled in English and several Eastern European languages were the names of numerous historical military figures - many of them Europeans involved in fighting the Ottoman forces in the 15th and 16th centuries. A few took part in the Crusades, centuries earlier.

The Facebook account that posted the video was no longer available shortly after the shooting. The Twitter account of the same name was quickly suspended.

AFP downloaded the video and took screenshots of the Twitter account before they went inactive. AFP is not publishing any of the images.

A spokesman for New Zealand's interior ministry said the video is likely to be classified as objectionable content under local law, and could be illegal to share.

"The content of the video is disturbing and will be harmful for people to see," the spokesman said.

"This is a very real tragedy with real victims and we strongly encourage people to not share or view the video."

Against green nationalism

2019-04-01T19:56:00.000-07:00

WHILST the devastation wrecked by cyclone Idai barely registers in British news cycles, we should remember that climate change was responsible for around 5000 deaths and millions displaced in 2018. It exacerbated food crises in Ethiopia, Haiti, and Madagascar; civil disaster in Sudan, Chad, and the Philippines, and flash floods in eastern Indonesia.
The destruction caused by climate change is inseparable from the plundering of resources by the global north that makes life in the global south unsustainable. Apart from China, countries whose wealth and power was established by Empire continue to fund fossil-fuel extraction and contribute to carbon emissions the most. But their effects are most felt by countries with the lowest emissions rates.

‘Natural’ disasters?
WEALTHY countries like Britain are built on, and sustained by, impoverishing the global south. This means they have the resources to weather the storm whilst others are consigned to fate. With adaptation resources, a significant number of lives taken by Idai could have been saved.
We deal with this divided world by making death for some people seem unavoidable. The economic and technological safety nets for the wealthy are thought to result from a more enlightened approach to development. According to logics justifying colonialism, non-Europeans are subject to natural forces and corruption, whilst Europe is the source of civilisation. These frameworks continue to naturalise the position of racialized people at the frontline of climate-based extinction. Their deaths appear a matter of fate.
These disasters are not ‘natural’.
In this context, and amidst a sea of inaction, at first, the urgency of Extinction Rebellion-XR was refreshing. It mobilised mass civil disobedience and drew attention to impending climate collapse: ‘The science is clear: we are in the sixth mass extinction event and we will face catastrophe if we do not act swiftly and robustly’.

Problem of framing ‘Extinction’ as a moral problem
BUT XR doesn’t emphasise crises like Idai or Haiti, and it doesn’t talk about how vulnerabilities to climate change are manufactured by race and Empire. Extinction is framed as a moral problem that affects us all equally. Even the use of the term extinction calls to mind survival-of-the-fittest narratives. And, whilst its activism is spectacular, ultimately it is grand martyrdom and attention-grabbing embarrassment for the respectable middle-classes. XR’s non-political ecology is more fear-mongering than justice-seeking political programme.
However, what primarily concerns me is XR’s tendency towards a kind of ‘green nationalism’. For example, its ‘declaration of rebellion’ focuses on protecting and reproducing the ‘nation’ against the ‘destruction of all we hold dear: this nation, its peoples, our ecosystems and the future of generations to come’. XR’s use of apocalyptic imagery leads us to focus upon possible dystopia caused by climate collapse for the global north, rather than the very real apocalyptic present for many in the global south. And, like other populist movements, their pronouncement of a state of emergency mandates the need to tackle climate change outside of the realm of politics. Together, perhaps unwittingly, these leave the movement open to co-option, especially in a context where politics is increasingly centred on the interests of the nation.

The nation as ‘Fortress Britain’
XRS concept of the nation seems to coincide with the British state. So we need to think about the other narratives that have been used in mainstream politics to think about ‘Britishness’. Particularly prevalent since the mid-20th Century, and ratcheted-up under the domestic War on Terror, are protectionist narratives that frame migration as an existential threat to the UK.
Even naturalised Britons are never really British enough, inseparable from the ‘swarm’ of migrants outside. Migrants are seen either as passive subjects of British hospitality and toleration who should be forever grateful, or criminals who are deficient according to British values: ‘belonging is precarious for people of colour in Britain’.
We have become familiar with references to an ‘aboriginal Britain’, to the stoking of fears about ‘hyper-ethnic change’, and to obscene stereotyping of Muslims as misogynist, anti-Semitic, and terroristic. These don’t mark out a mythic natural indigeneity, so much as a complicity with the racist British state that frames migration as an existential threat. A unified ‘Anglo-Britishness’ has become the focus of Imperial Britain again – produced through the assertion of its collective identity against fears of racialized populations as both threat and justification for state violence.
Since 2014, the UK has witnessed a Brexit campaign fueled by anti-immigrant rhetoric. Not only symbolic, this led to a surge in hate-crimes – a hostility underpinned by anti-migrant reforms and strategies operating under a ‘state of exception’ as modus operandi. In response, our liberal media complain about the rise of racism and nationalism previously kept at bay by neoliberal globalism. In fact, the UK has long operated a regime of racialized state terrorism, with interior border enforcement changing all society into a checkpoint. We prevent access to health and education for refugees, deport 40,000 people a year, indefinitely incarcerate 25,000 people in removal centres, deprive citizenship for aid workers, and mass surveil and stigmatise communities of colour.
So, whilst climate crises caused by former colonial powers lead to increasing numbers of people needing to migrate for survival, our borders are increasingly securitized. The hostile welcome that migrants receive after risking their lives to enter ‘Fortress Europe’ is coupled with hotspot programmes that stem migrant movements in return for aid and setting up refugee camps, and push migrants towards more deadly routes. Our inaction in stemming emissions is coupled with anti-migrant action that entrenches hierarchies of citizenship, and leads to migrants drowning in the Mediterranean and Aegean seas.

Climate crisis and green nationalism
IT IS in this context that we have witnessed the rise of ‘green nationalism’. This may be familiar from Paul Kingsnorth and the Dark Mountain project, whose romanticism sees Brexit and Trump as victories against the ills of neoliberal globalization; Marine Le Pen’s emphasis on environmental issues in her presidential campaign; the Gilet Jaunes’ adoption of ecological discourse; or the manifesto justifying the Christchurch massacre stating ‘green nationalism is the only true nationalism’.
Quite clearly, XRs tendency toward green nationalism does not coincide with these stronger versions. There are also obvious distinctions between public rhetoric and mass movements. And there will be differences in positions held by those involved in the leadership of XR itself. But, the call to explicit nationalism within a mass environmentalist movement is striking. Also, whilst the thousands of us blockading London bridges last November may attract more attention than aspects of its stated declaration, it is undeniable that XR tapped into supposedly ‘commonsense’ views about what protecting the nation might mean in practice.
Quite possibly unintentionally, XR echo protectionist discourse. For example, not only asking us to focus on ecological crises impacting this nation, they also ‘declare it our duty to act on behalf of the security and well-being of our children’. This is compatible with protectionist narratives that connect together migration, population growth, and sustainability for the nation. We also need to be aware that ‘Fortress Britain’ is the context in which such calls are made. As such, XRs demands can easily look to be based on the bounded nation and its hereditary future, their apocalyptic tone reinforcing a logic of progressive politics for ‘us’.

Friendly police, ‘left’ nationalism
THE complicity between environmental protectionism and securitisation is visible in the collusion between XR and policing. Roger Hallam, co-founder of XR, paints a picture of conviviality with the police — ‘they’re not going to get pissed off at us’, whilst an arrestee regales how pleasant the transport journey was — their only lesson, ‘if you plan to get arrested take a book with you, for god’s sake’. Let’s also not forget Hallam’s crude dismissal of activist movements in the global south as simply misdirected violence. Furthermore, that crowding police stations for media spectacle gives primacy to the white-middle classes might be put down to being just be tactically misguided. But, defending the metropolitan police as ‘one of the most civilized police forces in the world’ as Hallam put it, not only erases historical and ongoing racial police discrimination and murder, but also excludes from demonstration anybody more vulnerable to contact with the police.
Similar issues have long-plagued left nationalism. For example, Len McCluskey of Unite argues that the needs of ‘working people’ require the control of labour and stability of communities. Paul Mason has called for a socialist economy that would ‘save democracy, democratic institutions and values in the developed world’ at the ‘cost of China, India and Brazil’. Wolfgang Streeck argued that open borders would undermine ‘collective property belonging’, simultaneously fixing race to labour hierarchies and nation-state: ‘Would you want Nelson Mandela to be a refugee in Germany? No! He’d be a mail carrier bringing Amazon parcels to your house… he was needed somewhere else’.
The ecological sustainability of wealthy nations provides another justification for fixing certain people in place. For example, in 2013, Green Party members called for the expansion of immigration controls because net population growth is antagonistic to economic and ecological sustainability. Similarly, ex-George Bush scriptwriter David Frum has argued that immigration flows into the global north should be stopped since emissions caused by the average American are 4 times that of the average Mexican and 45 times the emissions of the average Bangladeshi.

‘Lifeboat ethics’
Put bluntly, the problem is this. If we fail to meet demands from the Global South to limit temperature change to 1.5 degrees, if we continue to pursue technological or degrowth responses that privilege those inside the nation-state, and if we continue the securitisation of our borders, then ultimately we end up with what Garret Hardin called ‘lifeboat ethics’ — the kind of sustainability that saves rich nations at the cost of the poor. As Kingsnorth puts it, ‘This is a magic island. It knows how to defend itself’.
In fact, the underlying logic of green nationalism is not just that it is inevitable that some people will die. Rather, it is also that only through their extinction that some of us to survive. For example, as Lumumba Di-Aping (representative for the G77 countries) stated, the much-touted Copenhagen Accord was ‘asking Africa to sign a suicide pact, an incineration pact in order to maintain the economic dependence of a few countries’. In effect, environmentalism without ending border imperialism and the differential vulnerabilities of the global south, becomes a kind of securitized eugenicism.
This poses a significant challenge to environmental movements. As Labour members launch a green new deal, we should laud plans to decarbonize the economy. But focusing on national changes may just leave intact global vulnerabilities and anti-migrant securitization. We also need to resist the temptation to deploy green nationalism to garner support for change – something commentators are arguing for in the context of U.S. proposals. Otherwise, this is liable to collapse into a kind of progressive imperialism, seen as an acceptable cost for domestic security and social welfare.
Instead, climate politics should begin from the fact that ‘climate change is a racist crisis’. Rather than evading our colonial histories, securitization, and inequalities, we should start from the demand to the universal right to life. Not an abstract right that is indifferent to circumstance and context, but an insurgent universality, to borrow Massimiliano Tomba’s phrase. Necessarily, this begins with those whose lives are most vulnerable, and our responsibility in making them so.
Since disparities of wealth and power continue to wield control over life and death, foregrounding the universal right to life requires us to reverse practices of authoritarian expulsion and extinction. But it also grounds climate politics in struggles for redistribution and reparation — economically and by opening borders. In this way, lives across the global south will immediately be saved. Only in taking responsibility for how our actions leave certain people more vulnerable to premature death than others can we forge climate justice against green nationalism.

How a kingfisher helped reshape Japan's bullet train - BBC News

2019-04-01T12:17:00.001-07:00

মানুষ কি করে অন্য প্রাণীর দুধ খেতে শিখলো?

2019-04-01T12:01:00.003-07:00

বিবর্তনের প্রথম দিকে মানুষের অন্য প্রাণীর দুধ হজম করতে পারতো না। কিন্তু এখন অনেক জনগোষ্ঠীই গরু, উট, বা ছাগলের দুধ খায়।

কিভাবে মানুষের শরীরে অন্য প্রাণীর দুধ হজম করার ক্ষমতা তৈরি হলো?

ইদানীং বাজারে প্রাণীর দুধের নানা 'প্রতিযোগী' এসে গেছে। যেমন সয়া দুধ, আমন্ড বাদামের দুধ - এগুলো বেশ জনপ্রিয়ও হয়ে উঠছে।

যারা 'ভেগান' - তাদের জন্য, অথবা যাদের দুধে এ্যালার্জি আছে - তাদের জন্য এই বিকল্পগুলো বেশ সুবিধাজনক।

কিন্তু এগুলো এখনো জনপ্রিয়তার দিক থেকে প্রাণীজ দুধের কাছাকাছি আসতে পারে নি।

বিবিসির মাইকেল মার্শাল এক রিপোর্টে লিখছেন, প্রাণীজ দুধের সাথে মানুষের সম্পর্ক হাজার হাজার বছরের পুরোনো। এর ইতিহাসও অতি বিচিত্র উত্থান-পতনে ভরা।

মানুষ হয়ে অন্য প্রাণীর দুধ খাওয়াটা কি একটা 'আজব' ব্যাপার?

দুধ খাওয়াটা মানুষের কাছে এতই স্বাভাবিক ব্যাপার হয়ে গেছে যে কেউ যদি বলে - এটা একটা আজব কাজ - তাহলে এ কথা যে বলবে তাকেই বরং আপনার একটা উদ্ভট লোক বলে বনে হবে।

কারণ আমরা কখনো এভাবে চিন্তা করি না।

একটি গরু বা অন্য কোন প্রাণীর দেহে দুধ তৈরি হয় - তার বাচ্চাদের খাওয়ানোর জন্য। কিন্তু মানুষ কি করছে? তারা গরুটার বাঁট টিপে টিপে সেই দুধ বের করে নিয়ে নিজেরা খাচ্ছে। এটা কি একটা আজব ব্যাপার নয়?

কিন্তু এমন সংস্কৃতিও আছে, যেখানে প্রাণীর দুধ খাবার কথা অনেকেরই প্রায় অজানা।

এই সেদিন, ২০০০ সালে চীনে একটা প্রচারাভিযান শুরু হয়েছিল যাতে লোকে স্বাস্থ্যগত কারণেই আরো বেশি করে দুধ এবং দুধজাত খাবার খায়।

এই প্রচারাভিযানটিকে চীনের বয়স্ক লোকদের দিক থেকে গভীর সন্দেহের মোকাবিলা করতে হয়েছিল। দুধ থেকে যে পনির তৈরি হয় তা এখনও চীনের অনেক মানুষকে অসুস্থ করে ফেলতে পারে।

বলা হয়, মানব প্রজাতির ইতিহাস মোটামুটি তিন লক্ষ বছরের। সে তুলনায় দুধ খাবার ইতিহাসকে প্রায় 'নতুন' বলা যায়।

মোটামুটি ১০ হাজার বছর আগেও মানুষ দুধ প্রায় খেতোই না। খেলেও তা ছিল খুবই বিরল।

ছবির কপিরাইটGETTY IMAGES

Image captionএকজন মিশরীয় গরুর দুধ দোয়াচ্ছে, মেথেথি সমাধিসোৗধে আনুমানিক ২৫০০ খ্রীষ্টপূর্বব্দের দেয়ালচিত্র।

প্রথম যে মানুষেরা দুধ খেতে শুরু করে তারা ছিল পশ্চিম ইউরোপের কৃষক ও পশুচারণকারী জনগোষ্ঠীর লোক । এরাই ছিল প্রথম মানুষ যারা গরু বা অন্য পশুদের পোষ মানিয়ে গৃহপালিত প্রাণীতে পরিণত করেছিল।

বর্তমানে উত্তর ইউরোপ, উত্তর আমেরিকা এবং অন্য আরো অনেক জায়গায় দুধ পান করাটা সাধারণ ব্যাপার হয়ে গেছে।

মানুষের জন্য অন্য প্রাণীর দুধ খাওয়াটা যে 'অস্বাভাবিক' তার একটা বৈজ্ঞানিক যুক্তিও আছে।

'বৈজ্ঞানিক যুক্তি'

দুধের মধ্যে আছে এক বিশেষ ধরণের শর্করা - যাকে বলে ল্যাকটোজ। ফল বা অন্যান্য মিষ্টি খাবারে যে শর্করা থাকে তার চেয়ে এটা অনেক আলাদা। আমরা যখন শিশু ছিলাম, আমাদের শরীর এক বিশেষ ধরণের এনজাইম তৈরি করতো যাকে বলে ল্যাকটেজ - যার কাজ ছিল আমাদের মায়ের দুধ হজম করতে সহায়তা করা। কিন্তু শিশু যখন মায়ের দুধ খাওয়া ছেড়ে দেয় - তখন অনেকের দেহেই সেই ল্যাকটেজ তৈরি বন্ধ হয়ে যায়।

এই ল্যাকটেজ ছাড়া দুধ ঠিকমত হজম হয় না। তাই একজন পূর্ণবয়স্ক মানুষ যদি বেশি দুধ খায় তাহলে তার পেটে গ্যাস হওয়া, পেটে ব্যথা, খিঁচুনি অথবা ডায়রিয়ার মতো লক্ষণ দেখা দিতে পারে।

মানুষ ছাড়া অন্য স্তন্যপায়ী প্রাণী যেমন গরু, কুকুর বা বিড়ালের মধ্যেও দেখা যায় যে তারা পূর্ণবয়স্ক হলে তাদের দেহে ল্যাকটেজ উৎপাদন বন্ধ হয়ে যায়।

কিন্তু প্রাপ্তবয়স্ক মানুষের মধ্যে অনেকেই দুধ খেয়ে হজম করতে পারেন, কারণ তাদের দেহে ল্যাকটেজ তৈরি বন্ধ হয় না। মানুষের ক্ষেত্রে এটা কিভাবে ঘটলো?

দুধ হজম করার 'ল্যাকটেজ' এনজাইম কারো দেহে সারাজীবন থাকে, কারো থাকে না

প্রথম যে প্রাপ্তবয়স্ক ইউরোপিয়ানরা দুধ খেয়েছিল - তাদের হয়তো প্রচুর গ্যাস হতো।

কিন্তু কিছুকালের মধ্যেই তাদের মধ্যে একটা বিবর্তন ঘটেছিল। তারা মায়ের দুধ খাওয়া বন্ধ করে দিলেও তাদের দেহে ল্যাকটেজ উৎপাদন অব্যাহত রয়ে গেল, দেখা গেল তারা দুধ খেলেও কোন বিরূপ পার্শ্বপ্রতিক্রিয়া হচ্ছে না।

এর কারণ হিসেবে ডিএনএ'র একটি অংশকে চিহ্নিত করা হয়েছে - যা ল্যাকটেজ জিনের কার্যক্রম নিয়ন্ত্রণ করে।

ছবির কপিরাইটGETTY IMAGES

Image captionহংকং-এ একটি সয়া মিল্কের দোকান

এই প্রবণতাকে বলে ল্যাকটেজ পার্সিস্টেন্স এবং এর বিবর্তন নিয়ে একটি গবেষণা প্রবন্ধ লিখেছেন প্যারিসের 'মিউজিয়াম অব হিউম্যানকাইন্ড'-এর অধ্যাপক লোরে সেগুরেল। তিনি বলছেন, "ইউরোপের দক্ষিণাঞ্চলের মানুষের মধ্যে প্রথম ল্যাকটেজ পার্সিস্টেন্স দেখা যায় এখন থেকে প্রায় ৫ হাজার বছর আগে। আর মধ্য ইউরোপে এটা প্রথম দেখা যায় ৩ হাজার বছর আগে।"

বর্তমানে অনেক জনগোষ্ঠীর মধ্যেই এ প্রবণতা অর্থাৎ 'দুধ হজম করার ক্ষমতা' খুবই স্বাভাবিক হয়ে গেছে। উত্তর ইউরোপে এখন ৯০ শতাংশ প্রাপ্তবয়স্ক মানুষেরই দেহে ল্যাকটেজ এনজাইম তৈরি হচ্ছে।

আফ্রিকা এবং মধ্যপ্রাচ্যের কিছু জনগোষ্ঠীর ক্ষেত্রেও এ কথা সত্য।

কিন্তু এমন অনেক জনগোষ্ঠী আছে যাদের দেহে ল্যাকটেজের অব্যাহত উপস্থিতি অনেক বিরল। আফ্রিকানদের অনেকের মধ্যেই এটা নেই। এশিয়া এবং দক্ষিণ আমেরিকাতেও এটা সাধারণত দেখা যায় না।

কেন এমন হয়, তা এখনো এক ধাঁধাঁ

বৈজ্ঞানিকরা বলছেন: কোন কোন মানবগোষ্ঠীর মধ্যে কি কারণে দুধ খাবার অভ্যাস গড়ে উঠেছে এবং তাদের প্রাপ্তবয়স্কদের দেহে ল্যাকটেজ এনজাইম তৈরি হচ্ছে - এটার কোন সূত্র বের করা খুবই কঠিন।

মি. সেগুরেল বলছেন, "দুধ খাওয়াটা 'উপকারী' হয়ে উঠেছে কেন, বা অন্য অনেক রকম খাদ্যের উৎস থাকলেও একেবারে অন্য রকম একটি খাদ্য এই দুধই কেন এতটা 'গুরুত্বপূর্ণ' হয়ে উঠেছে - এটা বলা কঠিন।"

কেউ হয়তো বলতে পারেন, দুধ পান করার ফলে মানুষ নতুন একটি পুষ্টিদায়ক খাবারের সন্ধান পেয়েছে, তাদের অনাহারে থাকার ঝুঁকি কমেছে। কিন্তু বৈজ্ঞানিক অনুসন্ধানের ক্ষেত্রে এ যুক্তি খুব বেশি খাটে না।

যেসব লোক দুধ খেয়ে হজম করতে পারে না, তারাও অল্প পরিমাণ দুধজাতীয় খাবার কোন পার্শ্বপ্রতিক্রিয়া ছাড়াই খেতে পারে। তা ছাড়া দুধ থেকে যে মাখন, দই, ক্রিম এবং পনির তৈরি হয় - এর সবগুলোতেই ল্যাকটোজের পরিমাণ অনেক কমে যায়। চেডার এবং পারমিজিয়ানো নামে যে বিশেষ ধরণের পনির আছে তাতে মাত্র ১০ শতাংশ বা তারও কম ল্যাকটোজ থাকে।

"ঘন ক্রিম এবং মাখনে ল্যাকটোজের পরিমাণ সবচেয়ে কম" - বলছেন সেগুরেল।

ছবির কপিরাইটGETTY IMAGES

Image captionপারমিজিয়ানো নামে পনির উৎপাদন হচ্ছে। এতে ল্যাকটোজের পরিমাণ প্রায় শূন্যের কোঠায়।

জানা যায়, চিজ বা পনির তৈরির কৌশল মানুষ বেশ দ্রুতই উদ্ভাবন করেছিল।

গত বছর সেপ্টেম্বরে বর্তমান ক্রোয়েশিয়ায় পড়ে এমন একটি এলাকায় পুরাতত্ববিদরা কিছু মৃৎপাত্রের অংশ খুঁজে পান - যাতে ফ্যাটি এসিডের অস্তিত্ব পাওয়া যায়। এতে মনে হয় ওই পাত্র দই বা ছানা জাতীয় কিছু তৈরির কাজে ব্যবহৃত হতো - যা পনির উৎপাদনের একটি ধাপ। এটা যদি সত্যি হয়ে থাকে তাহলে বলতে হবে দক্ষিণ ইউরোপের লোকেরা ৭,২০০ বছর আগেই পনির তৈরি করতো। ইউরোপের অন্যত্র আরো হাজারখানেক বছর পরের পনির উৎপাদনের তথ্যপ্রমাণ পাওয়া গেছে। মনে রাখতে হবে তখনও ইউরোপের প্রাপ্তবয়স্ক লোকদের দেহে ল্যাকটেজ পার্সিস্টেন্স অর্থাৎ দুধ হজম করার এনজাইমের স্থায়ী উপস্থিতি তৈরি হয় নি।

তবে ইউনিভার্সিটি কলেজ লন্ডনের জেনেটিক্সের অধ্যাপক ডালাস সোয়ালো বলছেন, কোন ধরণের লোকের দেহে পরিণত বয়সে উচ্চ মাত্রায় ল্যাকটেজ থাকে এবং কাদের থাকে না - তার একটা স্পষ্ট প্যাটার্ন আছে।

তিনি বলছেন, যারা পশুচারণ করতো, গরু-ছাগল-ভেড়া পালতো - তাদের দেহে উচ্চ মাত্রায় ল্যাকটেজ পাওয়া যায়। কিন্তু যারা শিকারী এবং কোন প্রাণী পুষতো না - তাদের মধ্যে জিনের ওই পরিবর্তনটি ঘটেনি। যেসব জনগোষ্ঠী শুধু চাষাবাদ করতো কিন্তু কোন পশুপালন করতো না - তাদের দেহেও 'ল্যাকটেজ পার্সিস্টেন্স' নেই।

তার মানে হচ্ছে - যাদের জীবনধারার কারণে প্রাণীর দুধ সংগ্রহ করা সম্ভব ছিল না, তাদের দেহকে দুধ পানের উপযোগী করে তোলার জন্য বিবর্তিত হবার কোন চাপ ছিল না।

তাহলে প্রশ্ন হলো, কিছু কিছু পশুচারণকারী জনগোষ্ঠীর দেহে এই বৈশিষ্ট্য তৈরি হলেও অন্যদের ক্ষেত্রে তা হলো না কেন?

ছবির কপিরাইটGETTY IMAGES

Image captionসুদানের একটি গো-পালন শিবিরে দুধ দোয়াচ্ছে এক বালক

সেগুরেল বলছেন, মঙ্গোলিয়ার মতো পূর্ব এশিয়ায় যেসব পশুচারণকারী জনগোষ্ঠী আছে তাদের দেহে ল্যাকটেজের উপস্থিতি অত্যন্ত কম - যদিও তারা খাদ্য হিসেবে তাদের পালিত পশুর দুধের ওপর বিপুলভাবে নির্ভরশীল।

অথচ নিকটবর্তী পশ্চিম এশিয়া বা ইউরোপের জনগোষ্ঠীগুলোর জিনে এ পরিবর্তন হয়েছে, কাজেই পূর্ব এশিয়ার গ্রুপগুলোতেও এ পরিবর্তন ছড়াবে এটা তো স্বাভাবিক। কিন্তু তা হয় নি, এবং এটা একটা ধাঁধাঁ হিসেবে রয়ে গেছে, বলছেন সেগুরেল।

দুধ খাবার কি কোন উপকারিতা আছে?

সেগুরেল বলছেন, পুষ্টিগুণ ছাড়াও দুধ পানের হযতো আরো কিছু উপকারিতা আছে।

তিনি বলছেন, গবাদিপশুর যেসব রোগ হয় - তাদের পালনকারী জনগোষ্ঠীর মধ্যেও সেসব রোগ ছড়ানোর ঝুঁকি থাকে। এটা হতেই পারে যে গরুর দুধ পান করলে মানবদেহে এমন কিছু এন্টিবডি তৈরি হয়, যাতে এ্যানথ্রাক্স ক্রিপটোস্পোরিডিওসিসের মতো রোগ সংক্রমণ ঠেকাতে পারে। বাচ্চাদের মায়ের দুধ খাওয়ানোর একটি উপকারিতাও তাই - শিশুর দেহকে সংক্রমণ থেকে রক্ষা।

তবে কোন কোন জনগোষ্ঠীর দেহে যে ল্যাকটেজের উপস্থিতি থাকে না - এটা হয়তো নিতান্তই দৈবক্রমে ঘটেছে - এমনটাও হতে পারে।

ছবির কপিরাইটGETTY IMAGES

Image captionকলম্বিয়ার বোগোটায় শিশুকে স্তন্যদানরত একজন মা।

অধ্যাপক সোয়ালো বলছেন, "আপনি যদি পশুচারণকারী হন তাহলে আপনার দেহে দুধ হজম করার স্থায়ী ক্ষমতা তৈরি হবে - এটাই হচ্ছে সবচেয়ে আমাদের ছবিটার সবচেয়ে যৌক্তিক অংশ।কিন্তু দুধ হজম করতে হলে আপনার জিনের সেই বিশেষ মিউটেশনটা হতেই হবে - প্রাকৃতিক নির্বাচনের প্রশ্নটা আসবে তার পরে।"

অধ্যাপক সোয়ালো বলছেন, মঙ্গোলিয়ান গো-চারণকারী গোষ্ঠীগুলোর মধ্যে দেখা যায় যে তারা সাধারণত গাঁজানো দুধ খায় - যাতে ল্যাকটোজের পরিমাণ কমে যায়।

অধ্যাপক সোয়ালোর ছাত্রী ক্যাথরিন ওয়াকার বলছেন, "মানুষ দুধকে গাঁজিয়ে ল্যাকটোজ কমিয়ে ফেলার ক্ষেত্রে এত উন্নতি করেছে, কিন্তু তার পরও তার দেহে দুধ হজমের এনজাইম রয়ে যাচ্ছে কেন সেটাও একটা প্রশ্ন - যার উত্তর পাওয়া কঠিন।"

হয়তো মানবদেহে ল্যাকটেজ পার্সিস্টেন্স তৈরি হবার একটি নয় বরং অনেক কারণ রয়েছে।

অধ্যাপক সোয়ালো বলছেন, "দুধে প্রচুর চর্বি, প্রোটিন, শর্করা বা সুগার, এবং ক্যালসিয়াম ও ভিটামিন-ডির মতো অন্যান্য পুষ্টিগুণ রয়েছে - এবং এটাই হয়তো মানবদেহে দুধ হজম করার এনজাইমের স্থায়ী উপস্থিতির আসল কারণ। তা ছাড়া এটা পরিষ্কার পানিরও একটা উৎস। এটাও হয়তো কোন কোন জনগোষ্ঠীর বিবর্তনের কারণ হতে পারে।"

মানবদেহে এই পরিবর্তনটা এখনো ঘটছে কিনা তা অবশ্য স্পষ্ট নয়।

ছবির কপিরাইটGETTY IMAGES

Image captionউত্তর পশ্চিম ফ্রান্সে একটি খামারের দুধেল গরু

অধ্যাপক সোয়ালো ২০১৮ সালে একটা জরিপ চালিয়েছিলেন চিলির কোকুইম্বো এলাকায় পশুচারণকারী একটি জনগোষ্ঠীর ওপর। প্রায় ৫০০ বছর আগে দক্ষিণ আমেরিকায় নতুন আসা ইউরোপিয়ানদের সাথে এই জনগোষ্ঠীর পূর্বপুরুষদের যৌনমিলন ও সন্তান উৎপাদন হয়। এখন এই গোষ্ঠীটির মধ্যে দুধ হজম করার ক্ষমতা ছড়িয়ে পড়ছে। ঠিক যেমনটা ৫ হাজার বছর আগে উত্তর ইউরোপে ঘটেছিল।

তবে কোকুইম্বো জনগোষ্ঠী দুধের ওপর নির্ভরশীল, তাই তাদের অবস্থাটা পৃথিবীর অন্য জায়গার মতো নয়।

দুধ খাবার অভ্যাস কি কমছে?

গত কয়েক বছর যাবৎ যে প্রবণতা দেখা যাচ্ছে তাতে মনে হতে পারে, লোকজন বোধহয় দুধ খাওয়া ছেড়ে দিচ্ছে। ২০১৮ সালের নভেম্বর মাসে ব্রিটেনের দৈনিক গার্ডিয়ান একটি রিপোর্ট করে।

এতে বলা হয়, ব্রিটিশ জনগণের মধ্যে গরুর দুধের প্রতি আকর্ষণ কমে যাচ্ছে, বরং ওট এবং বাদামের দুধ উৎপাদনকারী কোম্পানিগুলোর ব্যবসা ক্রমাগত বাড়ছে। এতে মনে হয় ঐতিহ্যগত দুধের জন্য একটা লড়াই আসন্ন।

কিন্তু পরিসংখ্যান দেখলে দেখবেন ব্যাপারটা উল্টো। আইএফসিএন নামের ডেইরি রিসার্চ নেটওয়ার্ক তাদে ২০১৮ সালের রিপোর্টে বলছে, ১৯৯৮ সাল থেকে বৈশ্বিক দুধের উৎপাদন প্রতি বছরই বেড়েছে। ২০১৭ সালে বিশ্বে দুধ উৎপাদন হয়েছে ৮৬ কোটি ৪০ লাখ টন। আইএফসিএন বলছে, ২০৩০ সাল নাগাদ দুধ উৎপাদন আরো ৩৫ শতাংশ বাড়বে।

মানুষ কি খাচ্ছে তার পর ২০১০ সালের এক রিপোর্টে বলা হয়, যুক্তরাষ্ট্রে দুধ খাওয়ার পরিমাণ গত দু দশেকে কমেছে, এর জায়গায় কোমল পানীয় পান বেড়েছে। অন্যদিকে এশিয়ায় দুধ খাওয়া বেড়েছে। ২০১৫ সালে ১৮৭টি দেশে চালানো আরেক জরিপে দেখা যায়, বয়স্কদের মধ্যে দুধ খাওয়া বাড়ছে, এর অর্থ হতে পারে তরুণদের মধ্যে দুধ অতোটা জনপ্রিয় নয়।

ছবির কপিরাইটGETTY IMAGES

Image captionএশিয়ায় দুধ পানের প্রবণতা বাড়ছে, আমেরিকায় কমছে

কাজেই বিশ্বে দুধের প্রতি আকর্ষণ যেভাবে বাড়ছে - তাতে 'বিকল্প দুধ' যে তার জায়গা দখল করে নেবে, বা বাজারে আঘাত হানবে - এমন মনে হয় না।

তা ছাড়া সয়া, ওট বা আমন্ডের মতো বিকল্প দুধে দুধের মতো পুষ্টিগুণও নেই। এটা শুথু ভেগান বা দুধে এ্যালার্জি আছে এমন লোকদের জন্যই সুবিধাজনক।

এশিয়াতে দুধের চাহিদা যেভাবে বাড়ছে সেটা বেশ বিস্ময়কর।

কারণ এশিয়াতে বেশির ভাগ লোকের ক্ষেত্রেই বড় হবার পর তাদের দেহে দুধ হজম করার ল্যাকটেজ এনজাইম উৎপাদন বন্ধ হয়ে যায়।

তুলনামূলকভাবে দুধের উপকারিতার চেয়ে অধিকাংশ এশিয়ানের ক্ষেত্রে এটা হজম করতে গিয়ে যে সমস্যা হয় - তার পরিমাণ বেশি।

উন্নয়নশীল কিছু দেশে জাতিসংঘের খাদ্য ও কৃষি সংস্থা মানুষের মধ্যে লামার মতো অন্য প্রাণীর দুধ প্রচলিত করার চেষ্টা করেছে, কারণ এটা হয়তো গরুর দুধের চেয়ে সহজপ্রাপ্য বা সস্তা হবে।

এ বছরই জানুয়ারি মাসে একটা গুরুত্বপূর্ণ জরিপে এমন কিছু বৈশ্বিক স্বাস্থ্যকর খাবারের কথা বলা হয়েছে - যাতে স্বাস্থ্যও ভালো থাকবে, আবার পরিবেশের ওপর বিরূপ প্রতিক্রিয়াও কম হবে।

এতে রেড মিট অর্থাৎ গরু-ছাগল-ভেড়ার মাংস ব্যাপকভাবে কমিয়ে আনার কথা বলা হয়েছে। কিন্তু প্রতিদিন এক গ্লাস দুধ বা তার সমমানের কিছু খাবার কথা ঠিকই বলা হয়েছে।

সুতরাং মানুষের খাদ্য হিসেবে দুধ এখনো ভালোভাবেই টিকে আছে, এবং এখনো তার প্রসার হচ্ছে।

যদিও আমাদের দেহে এই দুধ হজম করার ক্ষমতার বিবর্তন থেমে গেছে।

Recycle and Upcycle: A trend in education

2019-04-01T10:19:00.002-07:00

Bangladesh has seen phenomenal development in the education sector. If we are to compare this developing country’s education to what it was around 10 to 15 years ago, no doubt it has been revolutionised in both primary and secondary schools. The World Bank statistics show that almost four in every five children complete primary schooling in time. In 2017, statistics show that net enrolment in primary and secondary schools was around 95% and 62%, respectively. Literacy rate shows an increasing trend with 73% in 2017 as opposed to 45% in 2011. In 2017, about 28% of the total population was within the age group of 0-14 in which a certain percentage will enter school in due course.

From 2010, the government focussed on the education sector. It distributed free textbooks for both primary and secondary schools and also published textbooks in five different ethnic languages (Chakma, Marma, Tripura, Sadri and Garo) in addition to braille books. This is a notable initiative to make education a priority in every household and to bring children under the literacy scheme.
Statistics show that between 2010 and 2019, the government distributed 2.94 billion textbooks to some 360 million students across primary and secondary schools. In 2019 alone, the government dispensed 352 million books to some 43 million primary and secondary students.
Issues: Direct and indirect costs
The pre-primary and primary school books are published in India and China while secondary books are published in Bangladesh. This involves not only printing and transportation costs (direct cost) but also creates harmful environmental footprints (indirect cost).
The global education system is focusing on making children responsible and credible. It is important that children from an early stage are familiarised with the factors that harm their environment. They should not only be acquainted to the term ‘recycle’ but also observe and work towards protecting their environment.
Each year in Bangladesh the curriculum does not change significantly. With the changing environment that we live in and with more and more application of technology and developments in artificial intelligence, academics, government and other think tanks should consider re-evaluating the curriculum.
Another issue is that adolescents are weighed down by their school bags (health hazard-indirect cost). Although the High Court in Bangladesh has passed a directive for schools to make sure that children do not carry bags in excess of 10% of their weight, whether this directive is enforced effectively or not is debatable.
We should think in terms of recycling the textbook at least for 3-5 years particularly for pre-primary and primary schools.
Recycle, upcycle to reduce harmful environmental footprints
Government, policy makers and schools can take the following initiatives in terms of recycling and upcycling:
• Easy to recycle textbooks at least for the pre-primary and primary schools as the curriculum does not change significantly every year.
• Initially, schools can give parents and children the option if they want a recycled copy or a new version. Later, recycling textbooks in every school can become mandatory. This will raise awareness among the children of the environmental footprints.
• Some sort of penalty maybe imposed on students if they mark their textbooks unnecessarily. This will make them responsible citizens.
• At least for pre and primary schools, textbooks can be kept at school and students do not have to be weighed down by their school bags.
• Classes can be interactive so adolescents are able to make use of the after-school time in extra curriculum activities. This will reduce frequency of going to coaching centres.Students will be able to spend more time in being peer evaluators and innovators.
• Bring transportation and printing costs to zero. Pre-primary and primary textbooks are printed by international bidders including China and India, leading to delay in delivery of the text-books but incurring costs. The government should think of technology friendly classrooms which will engage students in the class and increase collaboration in the learning space. Funding such activities will help children develop and become the best they can be.
• Books that cannot be recycled can be upcycled for better environmental value. Upcycle simply means to create something new out of unwanted materials. For example, textbooks that are not in use, can be converted into some innovative products. For instance, prepare a scrap book or paper crafts like boats, boxes, decorations, paper mats, etc. These products can then become a classroom or a home décor. Students can be rewarded for their work, which will motivate them to engage in more innovative activities. Schools can hold a half-day workshop to showcase what can be produced with unwanted materials or paper and encourage others to do the same.

The government can work along with the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) and others with a particular focus on the education sector to raise awareness at the early stages of education in relation to protecting our climate through reducing dangerous environmental footprints. Students need to be helped to think critically on very basic issues such as recycling and upcycling to protect the environment and develop a sustainable economy.
Some interesting examples of counting environment footprints round the world include Jaden Smith, a 20-year-old who established his own company “Just Water”, with the product’s packaging made from 82% renewable materials. More good news for children out there is that LEGO launched an 826-piece model that can be built into a fully functional, 3 ft wind turbine. The elements are plant-based and eco-friendly.
Finally, schools across the country should be pro-active in collaborating with climate change institutions, companies, research centres and government to introduce the importance of the concept of recycle and upcycle through holding regular fun-filled workshops, particularly for children and parents.
The government should be proactive in funding such activities.Schools should insist on changing the curriculum through introducing more practical and topical issues such as climate change in their curriculum.
* Mamiza Haq is a senior lecturer in banking and finance at The University of Queensland, Australia

Top mind 100: Can Christchurch heal our collective wounds?

2019-03-31T23:21:00.001-07:00

Top mind 100: Can Christchurch heal our collective wounds?: Collective pain helps us see each other as human beings first, where our differences, however great, can never be enough to justify or eve...

2019-03-31T23:19:00.001-07:00

https://youtu.be/YVU6YBPaaB8

Can Christchurch heal our collective wounds?

2019-03-31T11:15:00.000-07:00

Collective pain helps us see each other as human beings first, where our differences, however great, can never be enough to justify or even explain why three-year-old Mucad Ibrahim had to die, along with 49 other, beautiful and innocent people.

I VISITED the city of Christchurch on May 23, 2018, as part of a larger speaking tour in New Zealand that also took me to Auckland, Wellington, Hamilton and Dunedin.
New Zealand is an exceptional country, different from other countries that are often lumped under the generalised designation of the ‘western world.’ Almost immediately after my arrival to Auckland, New Zealand’s largest and most populous city, I was struck by the overt friendliness, hospitality and diversity.
This is not to downgrade the ongoing struggles in the country, lead among them being the campaign for land rights as championed by the Maori people, the original inhabitants of New Zealand; but, indeed, there was something refreshingly different about New Zealanders.
Just the fact that the Maori language, ‘Te Reo’, is one of the three official languages in the country, the others being English and Sign Language, immediately sets New Zealand apart from other colonised spaces, where indigenous peoples, cultures, languages and rights are, to various extents, inconsequential.
It is due to the empowered position of the indigenous Maori culture, that New Zealand is, compared to other countries, more inclusive and more accepting of refugees and immigrants. And that is likely why New Zealand — and Christchurch, in particular — was chosen as a target for the terrorist attacks carried out by an Australian national on March 15.
The Australian terrorist — whose name will not be mentioned here in honor of a call made by the prime minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern, as not to celebrate the infamy of the senseless murderer — wanted to send a message that immigrants, particularly Muslims, are not safe, not even in New Zealand.
But his attempt backfired. Not only will he live ‘the rest of his life in isolation in prison’, as promised by New Zealand’s foreign minister, Winston Peters, who was speaking at the Organisation for Islamic Cooperation emergency conference in Turkey on March 22, but the horrific crime has brought New Zealanders even closer together.
There is something sorrowful, yet beautiful, about Christchurch. This small, welcoming city, located on the east coast of New Zealand’s South Island, was devastated on February 22, 2011 by a massive earthquake that killed 185 people and destroyed much of the town.
Last May, I spoke at Christchurch’s Cardboard Cathedral, an innovative structure that was built as a temporary replacement to the Anglican Cathedral that was destroyed in the earthquake.
In my talk, I commended the people for their beautiful church, and for their own resilience in the face of hardship. The diversity, openness and solidarity of the audience reflected the larger reality throughout the city, in fact, throughout the country. For me, Christchurch was not a place of tragedy, but a source of hope.
My audience, which also included members of the Muslim community, some coming from Al Noor Mosque — the main target of the recent attack — listened and engaged me as I argued that the genuine authentic voices of ordinary people should be placed at the core of our understanding of the past, and our hope for a better future. While the focus of my talk was the history of the Palestinian people, the message exceeded the struggle for freedom in Palestine into the struggle and rights of all indigenous groups, guided by such uplifting experiences as that of the Maori people of New Zealand itself.
I also had the chance to meet with Marama Davidson, co-leader of the Green Party, among other MPs. It was strange to be in a position where solidarity from politicians came across as genuine as that of the unconditional solidarity of ordinary activists — once again, highlighting the uniqueness of New Zealand’s progressive politics and leadership.
Experiencing that myself, it was no surprise to see the outpouring of genuine love and support by prime minister Ardern and many members of her cabinet and parliament following the mosque attack. The fact that she, along with numerous women throughout the country, wore symbolic head-scarves in order to send a message to Muslims that they are not alone, while countless thousands of New Zealanders mourned the victims who perished in Al Noor and Linwood mosques, was unprecedented in the recent history of Western-Muslim relationship.
In fact, on Friday March 22, when all of New Zealand’s TV and radio stations transmitted the call for Muslim prayer, and as Muslims and non-Muslims rallied together in a massive display of human solidarity while mourning their dead, for a moment, all Muslims became New Zealanders and all New Zealanders became Muslims.
At the end of my talk, a group of Muslims from the mosque approached me with a gift, a box of dates to break my fast, as it was the month of Ramadan, the holy month of fasting and repentance for Muslims worldwide. With much gratitude I took the box of dates and promised to visit Al Noor when I return to the country in the future.
A few months later, as I watched the horrific images on television of the terrorist attack that struck this peaceful city, I immediately thought of the Cardboard Cathedral, of the beautiful solidarity of the Maori, of the numerous embraces of so many New Zealanders, and, of the kindly Muslims and the box of dates.
I also understood why the undeserving-to-be named terrorist chose to strike Christchurch, and the underlying message he wanted to send to Muslims, immigrants, New Zealanders and all of those who champion peaceful co-existence and tolerance worldwide.
But he failed. In fact, all other foot soldiers of racism and hate will continue to fail because tragedy often unites us. Collective pain helps us see each other as human beings first, where our differences, however great, can never be enough to justify or even explain why three-year-old Mucad Ibrahim had to die, along with 49 other, beautiful and innocent people.
However, one can be comforted by the Maori saying, ‘Ka mate te kainga tahi, ka ora te kainga rua’ — “when one house dies, the second lives’. It means that good things can always emerge from misfortune.
It will take much time for Christchurch, and the whole of New Zealand, to heal from this terrible misfortune. But the strength, will and courage of so many communities should be enough to turn a horrific terrorist act into an opportunity to heal our collective wounds, not just in New Zealand, but the world over.

DissidentVoice.org, March 28. Dr Ramzy Baroud is an author and a journalist. He is author of The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle and his latest My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story.

Let’s Make Our Children Innovative

2019-03-31T00:49:00.000-07:00

Two weeks back Cable News Network [CNN] flushed a news item on Alex Jacquot, a 10 year-old boy from Australia who wrote a letter to Qantas CEO, Alan Joyce on a very important issue that only chief executives can share. This letter was shared by Qantas on Twitter around March 12, 2019 and it received ovation from thousands of readers all over the world. Alex proclaims to be the owners of Oceania Express [may be a competitor of the Qantas in future] needs professional advices from Alan Joyce with a request “please take me seriously.” “I have already started some stuff like what type of planes I’ll need, flight numbers, catering and more,” and asserts that a chief financial officer, an IT head and a head of maintenance is working with commitment to make Oceania Express as the finest airlines in the world.

There are few things to look into the contents of the letter to judge the ingenuity of the boy, the exposure at the age of 10 on the nitty-gritty of opening an airlines and the response of the Qantas CEO, Alan Joyce. The ingenuity of the boy is on the nature of queries such as how passengers can get a decent sleep during a 25-hour journey from Sydney/Melbourne to London. He plans to buy A350 planes that the Qantas uses in the same flight. Alan humbly responds on this query than Qantas is looking at “different designs that give people spaces to stretch out and exercise.” He also invited Alex for personal meetings to brainstorm ideas and a tour of Qantas’ operation Centre. An interested reader may go the CNN online to look for the different comments and the more lively contents of the letter. Indeed, this is a news items captivating for all of us. The sweet hand writing and so lucid style of expressing the innocent dream in a reflective way manifest the superiority of the western education system. The boldness of the idea in the professional signature also bids an innovative and challenging career for Alex and we all wish an excellent career for this budding entrepreneur. It is also interesting to note that he sought this advice from Alan Joyce when he has time to work on his new airline on his school holidays.

This letter is indeed an eye opener for all of us, especially the educational planner in this country those who have already remodelled our education system just on Golden Five criterion but utterly failed to appreciate the quality of the students with Golden Five who cannot hop in different trajectory mainly for lack of knowledge. Many students with tertiary level of education cannot write a simple application and struggle to do simple mathematics with ratio and percentage. The World Bank flagship report, World Development Report 2018 [WDR] revealed a startling data on Bangladesh education scenario that students “lose about” 4.5 years in about 11 years of schooling due to poor quality of schooling. Candidly speaking, it is not 4.5 years but may be six or seven years a student loses; this is obvious when you see thousands of students failed in admission tests conducted by public educational institutions. The report confirms that 35 per cent of the third grade students scored too low to on reading comprehension and only 25 per cent of the fifth grade students passed the minimum threshold of mathematics. “The country should address this learning crisis by investing more in education and investing more effectively," the report urges, adding that despite Bangladesh’s remarkable success in providing primary education to nearly all children, the quality of education "remains a concern”. The WDR report lists several factors for this sluggishness. The most important ones are lack of access to early childhood development programmes, the low quality of teaching practices, low levels of overall spending on public education, pedagogical aura and poor school management.

Many academic institutions in early childhood programmes here emphasises rote learning and both parents and school teachers often encourage students to memorise so that they can get perfect score in the examinations; often with the leaked questions. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina while inaugurating the National Primary Education Week, 2019 urged the parents and teachers not to put additional pressure on children for study, the children learn things in a friendly environment. It is enough if they learn how to read books and do simple math such as addition, subtraction, multiplication and division in their first three years of schooling. The children should learn how to describe their favourite things such as why they love their parents or describe an event when they were in a shopping mail or they visited a library. We congratulate Prime Minister for her bold steps that primary students henceforth should not sit for examination until they cross the third grade. It is also high time to free the students from the curse of Primary and Junior school completion examination and substitute by only Secondary School Certificate Examination.

It is a unique coincidence that the decision by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina matches with the letter by the Alex Jacquot. When children learn how to read books, it is important that we buy them good books and help them read books. Even Children Page in leading daily newspaper is excellent in contents. We may encourage children to write in children page. Once they can express their idea and think logically, they embark on the path of creative writing; an essential element in education system in the western world. The solution is the adoption of Montessori education system and discards the traditional learning process.

https://www.facebook.com/topmind100/

What makes a country happy?

2019-03-30T22:51:00.001-07:00

Traditional measures of happiness are strongly influenced by economic conditions and are poor proxies for well-being

The Nordic countries are consistently ranked as the happiest countries in the world according to World Happiness Reports published since 2012. Because of this, other countries often look to them for guidance when it comes to nurturing the well-being of their people.

However, we found that people living in parts of southern Europe had higher mental well-being than those living in the north.

We used a scale which asks to what extent a person has felt good and functioned well over the past two weeks. “Feeling good” can mean feeling relaxed, optimistic, or energetic, and “functioning well” can mean being able to think clearly, deal with problems, and socialize.

We recently applied the scale in Denmark and compared the national mental well-being estimates of Danish people with people living in Iceland, Catalonia, and England. We found that people in Catalonia scored considerably higher on mental well-being than people in all three northern European countries -- challenging the prevailing idea that places in northern Europe are typically happier than those in southern Europe.

In the World Happiness Reports, which tend to show the Nordic countries as leading, happiness is measured using Cantril’s ladder of life evaluation. This asks people to rate how they currently view their life on a ladder scale in which zero is the “worst possible life for you” and 10 is the “best possible life for you” but such measures are strongly influenced by economic conditions and are poor proxies for mental health and well-being.

Research has shown that while life evaluation rises proportionately with income, emotional well-being -- measured by an individual’s experience of pleasant and unpleasant emotions -- rises with income only to a certain point. If people are below a certain economic threshold, they are more likely to be emotionally unwell and have low life evaluations. Above this threshold, life evaluations continue to improve, but ratings of emotional well-being do not.

In other words, high income may buy better life evaluations, but this is not the same as positive mental health and well-being. A recent report also showed that inequalities in life evaluation appear to be rising in several places in Scandinavia, and that a considerable amount of people in the Nordic countries appear to be struggling, contrary to what these countries are famous for.

The “happiest place in the world” label may therefore be misleading, given its rather simplistic focus on life evaluation. As our research shows, using more sophisticated measures of well-being can tell a different story.

New approaches to mental health

While there is widespread consensus that a “good” society is one that maximizes human well-being, how to measure and promote this is controversial.

There may be particular features of Catalonian culture and lifestyle that promote mental well-being more readily than in other places. It is now increasingly recognized that there can be “no sustainable development without mental health,” so Catalonia’s secrets might be valuable for learning more about what really matters for mental well-being.

So far, the conventional approach to mental health focuses on the treatment and prevention of mental illness, as well as efforts to de-stigmatize poor mental health. While these are valid, they are reactive and focus on risk factors for poor mental health rather than on how to promote and maintain positive mental health and well-being.

This approach does not account for the fact that mental health is more than just the absence of mental illness. The absence of pessimism does not automatically produce optimism, the absence of sadness does not automatically produce joy. So it goes with the entire spectrum of human thoughts and emotions.

Rather than just focusing on what causes and protects against mental illness, society must also consider the causes of positive mental health, and prioritize it.

Positive mental health and well-being is associated with better physical health, positive interpersonal relationships, and socially healthier societies. Positive mental health and well-being is, in other words, desirable in its own right, and may further help prevent common mental health problems occurring in the first place and help people during recovery from mental illness.

Promoting mental health and well-being throughout a population can mean encouraging active lifestyles, providing opportunities for people to interact and feel they belong within a community, or fostering a sense of purpose by increasing contribution to society or meaningful causes.

It can also include efforts focused on individuals, such as encouraging self-care and opportunities to hone personal and social skills and pursue creative endeavours. The combination of universal and individual approaches has proved important in many different settings.

There is still plenty to learn about positive mental health and how to promote it, and our results suggest people should not only look to the Nordic countries for guidance. Asking the right questions could enable a better understanding of what drives positive mental health, and how it can be promoted.

While reducing poor mental health is necessary to make life bearable, positive mental health makes life worth living.

Ziggi Ivan Santini is a post-doctoral associate, University of Southern Denmark. Sarah Stewart-Brown is Chair of Public Health, University of Warwick. Vibeke Jenny Koushede is a Senior Researcher, University of Southern Denmark. This article was first published by The Conversation UK.

Advice having already been known, but not adhered to

2019-03-28T12:01:00.002-07:00

THE committee that the National Road Safety Council set up on February 17 came on Wednesday up with 111 recommendations to restore order to the road transport management, which has for decades been mired in mismanagement and corruption. The prime among the recommendations, which will be submitted to the road transport and bridges ministry on April 4, is that no driver would be allowed to run vehicles with forged licences or unlicenced. The recommendation, at least this one, sounds both insensible and ludicrous. In a modern transport system, no vehicles should run unregistered and no drivers should go unlicensed. Other recommendations included on-job training and incentive for transport workers, the training of 1,000 driving instructors, the appointment of 3,500 staff members to the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority, which often cites lack of human resources to cover up its failures, the setting up of one or more task forces to monitor the implementation of the recommendations, bus route franchise, restrictions on unfit vehicles on the road, a ban on vehicle modification and the examination of health of drivers before they leave terminals with vehicles. The committee coming up with such recommendations to make roads safe is welcome.
But what makes all this strange is that there is nothing new in these recommendations, as New Age reported on Thursday, as they have all been advised or laid out in earlier directives and laws that govern the road transport sector. The Motor Vehicle Ordinance 1983, the Labour Act 2009, traffic laws and the directives given in the past by the prime minister, the High Court Division, various ministries and the Dhaka Metropolitan Police have somehow or the other mentioned almost all that the committee has come up with as recommendations. When all this has been set out in the laws and directives — only that they have almost never been adhered to, the recommendations that the committee has up again may very well end up not being adhered to, setting everything back at square one. The High Court Division, meanwhile, in a welcome move on Wednesday, directed the Road Transport Authority and the inspector general of police to submit to the court by April 30 reports on unlicensed drivers, and unregistered and unfit vehicles. The court further directed the home and the road and bridges secretary, the BRTA chair, deputy commissioners (traffic) of the city police and the BRTA director in charge of road safety to explain why their inaction to keep unfit and unregistered vehicles off the road and stop unlicensed drivers from running vehicles would not be declared illegal.
As for recommendations, the government appears to have reinvented the wheel, coming up laboriously with something that it already knew. Yet, it is expected that this time the government should put the wheel to work, setting out immediately the implementation of the recommendations and do whatever it needs to make the process successful to ensure road safety and streamline the road transport management. It is also expected that the government, showing respect to the court order and in the interest of people’s safety on roads, should earnestly respond to the court looking forward to a meaningful end.

Are we next siriya !!

2019-03-24T14:15:00.001-07:00

We need to prepare ourselves for the consequences of the Rohingya crisis

The White House had a clear stance on demanding Myanmar’s human rights improvements during the administrations of 41st President HW Bush and 43rd President GW Bush. Bush Senior sent generous financial aid to the Rohingya refugees and pressed Myanmar on human rights and democracy expectations.

President Clinton passed an investment sanction against Myanmar towards the end of his term. However, President GW Bush took a much stronger attitude against the humanitarian crisis in Myanmar and not only imposed investments sanctions, but his administration also banned selling weapons to Myanmar.

In the quest for democracy, the Obama administration may have rushed into diplomatic negotiations with Myanmar and missed out on preventing the crisis, a crisis that didn’t go out of control during the 16 years of both HW Bush and GW Bush.

An American top diplomat and former Obama-nominated ambassador Derek Mitchell in Myanmar acknowledged to Politico that the US didn’t predict the extent of the Rohingya crisis while being deeply engaged in rebuilding the relationship with Myanmar.

The inconsequential economic importance of the Rohingya people may have kept them in their blind spot as the US engaged with Myanmar. Could this be a freefall from here and become another major crisis like Syria?

Nothing is off-limits to a warmonger dictator who wants to stay in power and avoid legal prosecution from the International Criminal Court. Becoming friends with the enemy of an enemy is one of the most commonly used tactics by transgressors.

It is silly not to expect that the Myanmar military may collaborate with the antagonist in Bangladesh to commit terror attacks either in Bangladesh or in Myanmar. Various extremist groups that operate under the shadow of political opposition may seize such an opportunity against the ruling Awami League in Dhaka.

Terror attacks before critical elections usually catch voters by surprise, who then vote for nationalists. The Myanmar government may use such an opportunity to gain sympathy before the 2020 election. The point, however, is we need to stop the violence.

Myanmar can distort Bangladesh’s image by portraying themselves as a victim of Islamic terrorism out of Bangladesh, propaganda that helped in the past to embolden popularity among the hate groups. Killing their own people is nothing new to the military junta, but if Myanmar becomes friends with the Bangladeshi right-wing extremist groups who are adversaries to the secular Bangladeshi government and hires them to commit or claim on terror acts, Myanmar will justify their genocide once again in the name of fighting terrorism.

Myanmar’s large military power can easily attack civilians within Bangladesh, falsely claiming them as emerging targets. Myanmar’s rulers are in desperate need of a distraction before facing an international tribunal for committing genocide against the Rohingya people.

It’s prevalent that Myanmar has excellent international outreach since Aung San Suu Kyi and her followers built that for decades and now have aligned their resources together with the military power, calling out the unarmed Rohingya civilians as the terrorists.

The Bangladeshi government has also been diplomatically unconscious between 2012 and 2014 while Myanmar was committing the genocide against the Rohingya and gained full diplomatic access to Washington.

Compared to other nationalities and ethnicities, international organizations which work on Bangladeshis and the Rohingya people are few and far in between. Even ethnic Burmese people are more frequently hired and engaged with in those organizations.

If Bangladeshi people who have much higher stakes in the crisis are not included, Rohingya interest will be terrifyingly abandoned by these organizations as soon as some Bangladeshis are labelled with terrorism and an all-out war breaks out.

International peace organizations must understand the micro-level complexities in this crisis and engage with the Rohingya and Bangladeshi people who are most vulnerable to this. The crisis is endemic, but Bangladeshi leadership hasn’t been able to utilize this imminent threat to restore a sense of urgency among the Bangladeshis and Rohingya people around working towards a stronger and more diverse country.

Bangladesh does not have strong international advocacy groups to help if any war breaks out in the Myanmar border area. We need to prepare to keep life moving during catastrophes. After witnessing Syria, we should not ignore such a possibility.

Crisis management should include Bangladesh’s large population and emphasis on securing all religious minority interests. Myanmar has a powerful military and strong international alliances. Bangladesh shouldn’t count on any immediate military support from any country in case of military aggression from Myanmar since there is no such arrangement and ally to advocate for Bangladesh at any global stage.

By the time the international community may even agree on a possible intervention, the human losses in Bangladesh may be overwhelming, just like it was in Syria.

Mazher Mir is an Advisor to the ASEAN Council and the William H Seward Center for Economic Diplomacy

Will DUCSU usher in non-political rise of youth?

2019-03-24T11:58:00.003-07:00

Back in the seventies, Maulana Bhasani boycotted the election, with a fiery slogan to kick out the ballot boxes and free Bangladesh. Not one literally kicked out the ballot boxes. In fact, Awami League and many political parties in independent Bangladesh have boycotted the elections several times, but no one actually kicked out any ballot boxes.

But that did happen in this DUCSU election. The students of Ruqayyah Hall actually did so in protest of the irregularities in the election. Other than the university administration, the government and the ruling party’s student front, almost everyone termed this election as a sheer farce. Even the predecessor of the present vice chancellor, and the teachers observing the election expressed shame and dismay.

On the day after the Dhaka University Central Students Union (DUCSU) election, that is 12 February, the Daily Star carried a caricature of two faces in one – half depicting the Dhaka University VC Mohammad Akhtaruzzaman and the other half chief election commissioner Mohammad Nurul Huda. The cartoon indicated how these two characters had dragged elections down to an all-time low. They both aided and abetted the ruling coterie in rigging the elections, why spewing out rhetoric to deny ground reality.

Minor irregularities and errors are nothing new in Bangladesh’s elections. But the irregularities and manipulations in the DUCSU election can only be compared to the national election held under the political government. Chhatra League enjoyed the same facilities and in the DUCSU polls as did Awami League and its allies in the national election. In some cases they had even more perks, such a non-transparent ballot boxes, no seals or stamps on the ballot papers to verify they were genuine, polling centres controlled by Chhatra League leaders set up in the halls, not allowing polling agents to be present, and so on.

If the ballot box stuffed the previous night hadn’t been discovered at Kuwait Maitree Hall, then undoubtedly this controlled election model would be a success. Attempts were made to portray the recovery of the three ballot boxes at Ruqayyah Hall to be an effort by anti-government elements to snatch away the ballots and a case was even filed in his regard.

In Shamsunnahar Hall, the girls guarded the polling room the entire night. The panel of the general students’ rights council and won the election there, pointing to what the results are when the votes are not rigged. These students are not any different from the other students of the university. They anger and frustration is no different that the male students. The quality of the food at their hall, the furniture, the library facilities, the recreational equipment in the common room and the standard of living is not worse than that of the boys. They do not suffer more than the boys.

The fact is that the girl students managed to vote more or less freely and according to their own choice. This was not possible in the boys’ halls. Chhatra League was in control in the boys’ hall. Live telecast by Yamuna TV showed the Chhatra Dale candidates with the same complaint to the provost of AF Raman Hall. He had no befitting reply.

It has already been reported how certain strategies were adopted to slow down the voters’ line. It is a logical deduction, then, the trend of the voters would go in the same direction as that in the girls’ halls, had the voting been free and fair.

The question may arise, if the students had so much anger against the government, then why didn’t the candidates of the opposition ilk fare well in the election. And why are the common students apparently more inclined towards the non-political students who had been in the movement? After all, this university has a tradition of political struggle and movements. With Awami League and BNP being the two major political opponents, it would be assumed that their front organizations would also be equal rivals. But it is not so in DUCSU. And it is surely not just because of their long absence from the campus.

The left student parties had been fairly active on campus, but they too lagged behind in the election. But the common students had long been irate due to the ‘guest room’ sufferings, the rule of the pro-government elements in the halls, and violence used to stifle any different views.

In such unnatural circumstances, new leaderships are emerging on the scene from among the non-political students, and without any political patronage. They clearly are the actual representatives of the students.

This rise of non-political elements among the youth is significant. Youth make up the largest demographic dividend. There is a disconnect between the current trend of politics and the youth. What is the political vision of these young people? How can it be fulfilled. Is the depoliticisation the part of an organised process? Authoritarians benefit from such depolitisation. This is risky too.

The quota reform movement, the safe roads movement and the demand to increase the age limit for appointment to public service indicate the aspirations of the youth.

The crash of 2008 which resulted from an aggressive profit-hungry capitalist system, had had an impact over the past decade. Occupy Wall Street and 99 per cent were spontaneous movements centering on the financial markets.

Schools children in the US protested spontaneously, calling for gun control. This protest made waves in mainstream politics. School children also protested against climate change.

The rebellious voice of youth may not have direct link with global trends, but they have similarity in thoughts and action.

* This piece appeared in Prothom Alo print edition and has been rewritten here in English by Ayesha Kabir

Top mind 100

Who is Dr. Zakir A. Naik?

How to making democracy meaningful?

Who is the battle for leadership of the Muslim world?

How to enable the Search Description field on Blogger to increase page views

How to enable Search Description on Blogger

How to SEO your Blogger Blog

Creating Valued Brand Experiences and Deep Brand Community

How To Read People’s Minds: Everyday Mind Reading

How To Install Adobe Premiere Pro CS6-For Free With Life Time Active !! ...

How To Improve English Speaking Skills

How To Improve English Speaking Skills

Find An English-Speaking Conversation Partner

Make Sure To Listen As Well As Speak

Record Your Conversation Practice

Surround Yourself With The English Language

Practice With Music and Movies

Read Aloud

Talk To Yourself

Why would an American learn Norwegian?

How sustainable is growth based on cheap labour?

My town, my village

25 March is a reminder of our liability

Who is Brenton Tarrant?

Today's Paper

News

Business

Sports

Opinion

D2

Against green nationalism

How a kingfisher helped reshape Japan's bullet train - BBC News

মানুষ কি করে অন্য প্রাণীর দুধ খেতে শিখলো?

মানুষ হয়ে অন্য প্রাণীর দুধ খাওয়াটা কি একটা 'আজব' ব্যাপার?

'বৈজ্ঞানিক যুক্তি'

কেন এমন হয়, তা এখনো এক ধাঁধাঁ

দুধ খাবার কি কোন উপকারিতা আছে?

Recycle and Upcycle: A trend in education

Top mind 100: Can Christchurch heal our collective wounds?

Can Christchurch heal our collective wounds?

Let’s Make Our Children Innovative

What makes a country happy?

Advice having already been known, but not adhered to

Are we next siriya !!

Will DUCSU usher in non-political rise of youth?