Re: Breaking News Post -- Bangladesh is 10,000 times more interesting than your VP pick

1

The bigger issues are lost on me. The fish, how is it so vertical?


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08- 6-24 5:50 AM
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2

I guess it's frozen. Looting a fresh fish seems less premeditated. It's going to spoil soon so why waste it.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08- 6-24 6:06 AM
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3

30% of government jobs reserved for 0.2% of the population? That does seem enraging, especially when it's out there in black letter law - a lot of important jobs in the Eastern Bloc went to people in revolutionary families, but that was on the quite.


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 08- 6-24 6:12 AM
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4

Quiet.


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 08- 6-24 6:12 AM
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5

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/7/23/bangladesh-protests-are-no-longer-about-the-quota-system
Really nasty stuff.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 08- 6-24 7:10 AM
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6

Frozen drippiness might also explain the odd carrying posture.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 08- 6-24 7:13 AM
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7

The protesters are going to frighten the suburban white middle class voters if they keep trying to stop the police from illegally killing people.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08- 6-24 7:14 AM
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8

The sheer * of it is incredible. The life of a whole country wrapped up for fifty years** in two women's blood feud. GoT for real. There must be dramas, epics, operas. Maybe they exist already and I'm ignorant, or maybe it'll be the next generation who'll be free to write them.
*Drama? Tragedy? Pathos? Bathos? Humanity?
**Assuming optimistically Hasina and Zia are both done now.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 08- 6-24 7:38 AM
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9

(I mean, not just the two of them. Lots of blood, lots of feuds. But they're bigger.)


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 08- 6-24 7:49 AM
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10

The best thing George Washington ever did for America was to go away after eight years.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08- 6-24 7:53 AM
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11

It is precisely the largeness of a real-life sacrificial goat bought for the enormous sum of Takas 12 lacs (TK 1,200,000, approximately $10,000) whose picture, posted by its eager buyer on Instagram, that first drew the attention of Bangladesh's newspapers and Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) to the government official, Matiur Rahman, the President of the National Board of Revenue's Customs, Excise, and VAT Appellate Tribunal, whose son was the eager Instagrammer. While Rahman initially denied that the young man posing with the goat was his son he was revealed to be the "goatfather", and he and various members of his immediate family were found to have wealth that far exceeded his monthly salary of TK80,000 (approx. $681).


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 08- 6-24 8:09 AM
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12

Sheikh Hasina appeared to snap when asked about the students. She said, "If the grandchildren of the freedom fighters don't get quota benefits, should the grandchildren of razakars get the benefit?" As an aside, razakar' refers to those who helped the then-West Pakistani forces in their death-dealing attacks on the then-East Pakistan, later Bangladesh, in 1971. It is a term that has acquired more and more baleful elements across Bangladesh's history to indicate not just traitors in that historical juncture, but enemies within the body of the nation who need to be excised.
This and 11 both from this, which is way too wordy, but interesting. In short, the students just appropriated the razakar label for themselves. What strikes me is that Hasina evidently thought the label still carried a weight which apparently it didn't.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 08- 6-24 8:20 AM
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13

I can get you a goat much cheaper.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08- 6-24 8:21 AM
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14

Including shipping?


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 08- 6-24 8:23 AM
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15

That might be a problem.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08- 6-24 8:24 AM
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16

"I came out even though I was injured last night. I told my father that if I am killed, not to bury me until after this movement has succeeded. And I will be buried with my fellow students."


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 08- 6-24 8:32 AM
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17

The Dhaka Tribune reports this particular goat was of an especially large breed, weighing 175kg and standing 62 inches tall. (Using those units of measure.)


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 08- 6-24 8:33 AM
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18

they said that they had purged all goons associated with political parties from the halls, that they would not tolerate being associated with any political party or agenda, that they were representing only themselves and their legitimate demands. To reclaim the narrative of 1971, they drew a direct parallel between themselves and the students who had stood up to the Pakistani establishment and military, who had seized the halls, purged them of razakar, and who were killed for their actions.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 08- 6-24 8:34 AM
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19

I'm partial to measuring heights in terms of percentage of the height of Wales.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08- 6-24 8:35 AM
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20

Hence the exorbitant shipping coast from Pittsburgh.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 08- 6-24 8:36 AM
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21

Shouldn't that be in Empire State Buildings or Eiffel Towers?


Posted by: Barry Freed | Link to this comment | 08- 6-24 8:37 AM
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22

I have a long standing interest in why protests or whatever breakout when they do. Things suck but if you speak out too early, you get smashed because you're alone. How do you know when you have a plausible number of co-protesters?


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08- 6-24 8:45 AM
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23

https://www.thedailystar.net/opinion/views/news/the-shifting-political-field-and-the-price-permanent-war-3661946

We are a nation with selective amnesia. The students taking to the streets today have known nothing but one-party rule. They have not seen the fight against autocracy or the AL-BNP cycle, and 1971 is in the distant past. But they did grow up with Shahbagh, no-VAT, quota-reform, and the fight for road safety. A new form of student politics has taken shape over this cascade of movements that explicitly rejects the party/student politics of old, which for them represent only campus violence and corruption; this is a generational shift that our leaders are still failing to grasp. Each of these movements has built on the last, producing leaders and carrying visceral memories. They remember being crushed and met with sheer indignity every time, left alone to fend for themselves in the face of repression, being tagged as pawns of enemy forces, and the repeated hijacking of their causes. Above all, they have learned to trust no one.We are a nation with selective amnesia. The students taking to the streets today have known nothing but one-party rule. They have not seen the fight against autocracy or the AL-BNP cycle, and 1971 is in the distant past. But they did grow up with Shahbagh, no-VAT, quota-reform, and the fight for road safety. A new form of student politics has taken shape over this cascade of movements that explicitly rejects the party/student politics of old, which for them represent only campus violence and corruption; this is a generational shift that our leaders are still failing to grasp. Each of these movements has built on the last, producing leaders and carrying visceral memories. They remember being crushed and met with sheer indignity every time, left alone to fend for themselves in the face of repression, being tagged as pawns of enemy forces, and the repeated hijacking of their causes. Above all, they have learned to trust no one.
(Partly to 22.)


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 08- 6-24 8:50 AM
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24

1971 doesn't seem like that long ago.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08- 6-24 8:59 AM
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25

His mother's words, too, struck a chord: "You won't give him a job, fine, why did you have to kill him?"


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 08- 6-24 9:01 AM
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26

Yeah, that's not good. But there's a point where the next guy goes from thinking "I don't want to get killed either" to "They can't kill us all." That's what I wonder about.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08- 6-24 9:20 AM
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27

And in parallel, the point where the security forces start thinking "We can't kill them all." On the face of it the army reached that point over the weekend. Something like that happened to Mubarak in Egypt too.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 08- 6-24 9:27 AM
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28

That's a good point. Or even when the security forces start thinking, "If I kill this guy and we lose, I could go to prison."


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08- 6-24 9:28 AM
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29

Doug recommended a book about the opening of the Berlin Wall that looked at that. It was a good read.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08- 6-24 9:36 AM
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30

There's also the remote possibility* that some of them were thinking about US sanctions. You've only gone after a handful in the RAB, but commanders all over the forces might have been thinking "If this goes on long enough those fucks will freeze all my shit and I'll have to vacation in Belarus." And, conversely, that if they're useful enough sanctions can go away like they did for Gertler.
*And you should write your critters to get this studied, it would be valuable information.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 08- 6-24 9:47 AM
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31

I do love it when you can inflict punishment on a rich asshole without causing more harm to the nearby poor. That witch in Beauty and the Beast was probably more evil than the beast.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08- 6-24 9:59 AM
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32

29 Glad you liked it!


Posted by: Doug | Link to this comment | 08- 6-24 11:02 AM
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33

I was reading some Sheikh Hasina stuff while waiting for my MRI this morning, which may be why 8 does seem optimistic (though 27 supports it a bit) and I'm glad to see this here but still don't think I have much to add.


Posted by: Thorn | Link to this comment | 08- 6-24 12:11 PM
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34

May your MRI results be far less interesting than Bangladesh!


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 08- 6-24 10:16 PM
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35

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Posted by: Doug | Link to this comment | 08- 7-24 2:19 AM
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36

10. Somebody told George III that Washington was going to go away after eight years, and the King replied, "If he does so he will be the greatest man alive." So this has been noticed before.


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 08- 7-24 10:22 AM
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37

He should have noticed earlier and saved a bunch of shooting.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08- 7-24 10:29 AM
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38

Earlier, the reputation of Lafayette would have been higher than that of Washington.


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 08- 7-24 11:22 AM
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39

That's why Lafayette College is ranked higher than George Washington University.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08- 7-24 2:01 PM
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40

George Washington's greatest strength was his low sperm count.* If he had produced an heir, he would have requested and accepted the position of king, or at a minnimum set his son up to be his succeed him in offoce** King George XII, or maybe President Washington XII, would have attended Queen Elizabeth's funeral.

*Martha Washington was a young widow with two children when they married, so she doesn't get the credit.

**As his VP and successor, John ADams, did.


Posted by: unimaginative | Link to this comment | 08- 7-24 6:52 PM
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41

George Washington had no kids and therefor no investment in the future of America.


Posted by: Opinionated JD Vance | Link to this comment | 08- 8-24 9:10 AM
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42

Now that Sheikh Hasina is gone, the people who are going to be running the place are going to be much worse. There are already pogroms ongoing by the Jamaat e Islami goons against the Hindu minority there. Part of the reason for her downfall is the co-opting of the student protests by the Islamist's in Bangladesh. She had the courage to have leaders of the Jamaat prosecuted for their war crimes in 1971. See eg: https://www.reuters.com/article/world/bangladesh-executes-two-opposition-leaders-for-1971-war-crimes-idUSKCN0TA0UF/


Posted by: Tbf | Link to this comment | 08-10-24 9:05 PM
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43

I dunno, I suspect Mohammad Yunus is going to be a slight improvement on someone whose best feature is apparently that she hangs opposition leaders.


Posted by: Ajay | Link to this comment | 08-10-24 11:34 PM
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