Life, Dreams and Reality -- Sohel's Blog

Feast By Mahbubul Karim (Sohel) November 12, 2005 Sea of glowing beads round and plump rising over twilight plateau where growling bear twitches its sunken eyes and hairy paws seeing a skirring pheasant trailing a fleeing rabbit Such the nature of violence in dead leaves of ancient trees where battles raging on between opposing groups of ants and fleas In the troposphere the rumbling wind hot and cold in grumbling confusion flipping up, twisting down debris, molecules enlivened tearing apart superheated turbulence pockets of air bursting out in frenzied gist Down there where bear roams and lion brawls with shrieking hyenas pitch dark crows circle above a big feast

France - Explosion in the Suburbs Cars are burning in Paris, suburbs and many other places in France are in chaos. Riots raging, the boiling point of anger have reached for many disheartened youths, mostly the second generation young immigrants from France's colonial past, who had had enough of their being discriminated, subjected to bold faced lies, distortions and many other shrewed political maneuvering made to keep them under perpetual poverty and distress, couldn't take insults any longer. Burning cars, destructions of properties, harming innocent people can no way to be supported, however steadfast and fare their urging may seem, but the inept French politicians like Sarkozy whose naked desires to capture the political right by using derogatory terms describing the French immigrant societies is one of the factors out of many for that the current situation has reached so much in its violent zenith. A prominent anti-racist ...

Conveyor Belt By Mahbubul Karim (Sohel) October 30, 2005 Is there nothing to write about to muse at the expense of voluble time? What is it to write? Has the world sucked in all the remaining desire for a story to be renewed? Or foretold in vigorous charm? All one can see is oceanic depression in mid level ridge as the sea spreading and washed out sediments gorged inside earth like a large conveyor belt carrying all the filths, impurities, human destructions into the warmth of deepening earth See these gift baskets, immaculate ribbons from haven, merrily glistening And look at these crispy notes dollars, yens, euros, takas, rupees, silver coins, loonies, toonies, discolored paishas, chiming dimes smart cards, credit cards roars of laughter, moans of agonies overspilled hatred corner to corner hand in hand with Halloween costumes Goblins and make believe ghosts nudging the would be assassins, the human bombs, mechanized torpedoes blowing up everything...

Mud By Mahbubul Karim (Sohel) Summer 2005 Mix of Sun and cloud today's weather So defiant, so proud thunder chatter You walk under hot sun cloudless sky raging blue not a bird in sight boorish road splashing hue Here, the world is quiet a lazy day of summer wind blows now and then one or two Ford or Hummer rushes by green traffic light and empty parking lot while homeless and hermits gawk at colorful plot Thank God or Devil we are not there where flesh ripped off bones innocence vaporized in fiery flare and dreads for more blood hones under yearning retribution eye for an eye, blood for blood no end in sight for this illusion world is covered with irresolute mud!

Sound of Suave Lore By Mahbubul Karim (Sohel) October 27, 2005 Rush, rush, rush the way and bring me slush of clay Silly rhyme, meaningless rhythm on a day of rain and chasm Suave gentlemen walking by hand in hand with gorgeous sly lady and children carrying bags clapping, laughing amidst bickering nags You stand there like an wavering tree staring at the empty lobby spotless floor, uniformed bellmen chattering away a day of brewed zen Sound of guitar, piano muffled washing lonesome spirit and baffled heart in a sweeping flush as if clay of slush or slush of clay rush the way to a rhythmic lore Don't you dare to snore on an empty floor!

I don't have to be a scaremonger, the progression of bird flu from Asian nations to Europe and its eventual future migration to every corner of our world is beginning to rattle nerve of many, including mine. No real antidote, anti-virus medicine exists, only "Tamiflu" that according to World Health Organization "could minimize the potency of the illness but was not an effective vaccine against it" Europe started to move in stockpiling Tamiflu, but what about the poor Asian nations? What is the plan in saving millions and millions of citizens of Asian, African and South American nations? Is there really a viable plan to combat a potentially man annihilating virus in place? Would we be caught, again, in our pants down to our ankle, bare naked, like the Katrina romped Louisiana's backyard, front yard, or the devastating earthquake leveling Balakot in Pakistan, destroying all those poorly made homes, buildings that were no match for a 7.6 earthquake? Or would i...

I have not read any of Harold Pinter's writings, and heard his name just for the first time early this morning when the Nobel prize committee announced his name as this year's award winner in literature. A few strokes on my keyboard brought me the following acceptance speech by this British author, it was given at Wilfred Owen Award ceremony earlier this year. Read this speech and you will see how courageous this writer is whose honesty reveals itself in every paragraph. If you are like me so much in dark in world literature, perhaps it is a good time picking up one or two of Harold Pinter's published books. Regards, Sohel Wilfred Owen Award Speech - 18 th March 2005 This is a true honour. Wilfred Owen was a great poet. He articulated the tragedy, the horror and indeed the pity – of war – in a way no other poet has. Yet we have learnt nothing. Nearly 100 years after his death the world has become more savage, more brutal,...

Ms. Merkel's assend to the top in German political scene is quite interesting. As a student of physics she must have keen eyes and ears for natural laws of our world, and perhaps could bring Germany a long sought equilibriam between two bitterly divided factions, the right and left into a common ground. Is it too much to ask for? Her pro-war stance certainly is disturbing, but perhaps that can prove to be usual misstep of many politicians in their journey toward maturity. Regards, Sohel Angela Merkel: Politician Who Can Show a Flash of Steel By MARK LANDLER FRANKFURT, Oct. 10 - On Nov. 9, 1989, the day the Berlin Wall fell, Angela Merkel made her weekly visit to a sauna. Hours later, she caught up with thousands of East Germans, who were streaming jubilantly into the West. It was not the last time her rendezvous with German history was delayed. On Monday, three weeks after a deadlocked election that she had once been expected to win handily, Mrs. Merkel finally eme...

Authoritarian way of silencing opposing views cannot be part of modernity, it is like the old days of powerful creationists thumping their voluminous religious texts decidedly, squishing lights out of any vigorous debate requested by the then tormented Darwinists. It seems, at least on the surface, that today's "Intelligent Design" proponents are quite different from their scraggy fundamentalist predecessors, they make "use of generally accepted scientific data and agrees that falsification, not revelation, is the acid test of scientific validity." "Today, Darwinian fundamentalists fight to keep the evidence of intelligent design in the diversity of life on earth out of the classroom, because that would be at odds with a strictly materialist view of the world. Eighty years ago, the thought controllers wanted no Darwin; today's thought controllers want only Darwin. In both cases, the dominant attitude is authoritarian and closed-minded -- the opposite...

Such an undemocratic mean for a democratic medium. Why would any one nation retain control of Internet, which has become universal technology of our time, from rich to poor nation? Mr. Gross' inflexitlbe gesture that "certain things we can agree to and certain things we can't agree to" and his repeated assertion that "It's not a negotiating issue. This is a matter of national policy" sound like words from medieval kingpin. Though the U.S. defense department did play its historical role in the invention of modern Internet, so did the Chinese play similar role inventing paper press, and many other nations and races with their own invaluable contributions to the progress of our civilization, from mathematics to science to art. No nation and political ideologies should have absolute monopoly on any universally used medium such as Internet. This is NOT "a matter of national policy", this IS a matter of respecting our humanity. Regards, Sohel U.S...

This may not be a conclusive study, but it provides a good direction for further investigation on this supposedly catastrophic disease. Regards, Sohel Two Teams Identify Chinese Bat as SARS Virus Hiding Place By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN The SARS virus, which has killed 774 people worldwide, has long been known to come from an animal. Now two scientific teams have independently identified the Chinese horseshoe bat as that animal and as a hiding place for the virus in nature. The bats apparently are healthy carriers of SARS, which caused severe economic losses, particularly in Asia, as it spread to Canada and other countries. In Asia, many people eat bats or use bat feces in traditional medicine for asthma, kidney ailments and general malaise. The Chinese horseshoe bat does not exist in the United States. The finding is important in preventing outbreaks of SARS and similar viruses carried by bats because it provides an opportunity for scientists to break the transmission chain. One team from C...

Science and religion reside in different domain. Regards, Sohel Science vs. design: no debate By Leonard Rosen | September 23, 2005 PRESIDENT BUSH has suggested that we ''teach the debate" concerning intelligent design and evolutionary biology. Impossible. To a have a debate, you and I must speak to the same question and use evidence we both accept. Let's illustrate: We can all agree that the Bengal tiger is a wonder of nature. A biologist points to the tiger's stripes and says: ''What are these, and how did they come to be this way?" An intelligent designer, who argues that nature is too complex to be explained away by science, might ask: ''Why do these stripes form such an astonishing pattern? Who or what could have done this -- to what end?" The poet William Blake wondered much the same: Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright In the forests of the night: What immortal hand or eye, Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? For that matter, what ...

Mr. David Ignatius hit this point at the right place. Struggle within Islam is beginning to surface. How long peaceful believers of a peaceful religion silently see the rise of murderous zealots who are trying to recruit the vulnerable Muslim youths for their murderous and self-defeating intentions? It may not be the similar reformation that Martin Luther King instigated in the sixteenth century for the then "gone-awry" church, but the needs are intense that the traditional Islam that my and your father, mother, their parents, grand-parents followed, must be reestablished at the forefront, sweeping away the dangerous salafist movement. American pathetic way of winning Muslim hearts and minds by bombarding innocent civilians is hideous, at best, it is the practicing Muslims who needs to take the charge in clearing their sacred home from these disguised thugs who hide their criminality behind the multi-dimensional illusory cloak. Regards, Sohel Taking Back Islam The U.S. Ha...

"Fiction is dead". With all the due respect reserved for the Nobel Laureate VS Naipaul and all the accolades for his tremendous success of being a high caliber writer, I just can't disagree more of his seemingly credulous opinion. From time to time, writers in the time of traumatic ages, when wars, violences and natural disasters overwhelm our senses and sensibilities, "for a while", writers at the forefront of limelight packed world literary stages, who are considered our contemporary moral consciousness, bring about this trepid notion that fiction is dead. Ian McEwan and Tom Wolfe were not apart from this hypothizing crowd, though, in a few years or so from their uttered obituary pronouncement of fiction, they turned around and produced successful novels to capture the very essence of ages that they so eloquently talked about being dead for the fictional world. Inventing in the time of great confusions, trauma, and painful episodes surrounding a writer, is ind...

Is it only the Bush administration responsible for all the disaster episodes unolding in America? John Berger's article is thought provoking, but blaming everything on the easy scapegoat perhaps is not too intelligent. What the heck the Democrats are doing? Why aren't they raising the hell? Are they equally complicit with most of their muted nod, and silent gestures? Yes, the disconnections are systematic, but it is not only with the Bush and his incorporations, it also goes beyond the party line into the fold of so called democracy lovers, into the realms of greed, even in the time of dispair. It bothers me a great bit seeing such theatrical similarities between the uniform and bandanna wearing warriors, killing innocent civilians by government sponsored tanks and planes, or insurgent supported slaughters. Their goals are so same, and their mutual friendship amid bmbed apart tranquility gets more elaborated as days are passing. Katrina's violent force not only killed, maim...

Mountain Stones By Mahbubul Karim (Sohel) September 7, 2005 These mountain stones shall stay After I am long gone, away And gone are you Our beloved friends, ocean crew And cantankerous children Walk away with favorite playpen These silvery water falls shall flow After gone are charismatic entertainers The magicians will disappear too But the cold water will fall As it has been for millions of years Unless an ice age befalls And wraps the world with shivery embrace Look at these trees, green, tall and proud In the valley, limestone extraction plant Fuming white smokes to slanted sun While gray white cloud Hovers only a few feet above On top of this mountain We built spiraling roads Steep sides glimpsing oblivion Down the way, way down Couldn’t see even a bear or cougar From this height, from this fright I can see glowing sky But not the moon, not the moonlight!

Is education not enough in reducing extremism? What is extremism, anyway? What is not extremism? Is believing the code of any religion extremism? How about believing in Capitalism, or any other myriads of "ism"? Who defines what is good for any particular society? Inciting terror or hatred, is perhaps not too difficult for many. Getting rid of terror or hatred from a feeble heart, on the other hand, is quite a formidable task. Regards, Sohel The educated terrorist By Saleem H. Ali | September 6, 2005 THE ASSASSINATION of Sri Lanka's foreign minister last month has once again raised the question of how the conflict on this ill-fated isle will end. What bedevils conflict analysts most about Sri Lanka is that it defies the most common causal factor raised by terrorism experts -- a lack of education. Among all South Asian countries, Sri Lanka has the highest literacy rate of an astounding 92 percent. Yet this is the country where the cult of suicide bombings finds i...