শুক্রবার, ২৮ মে, ২০১০
Death annevarsary of president Zia
Ziaur Rahman was elected for a 5-year term as president in 1978. His government removed the remaining restrictions on political parties and encouraged opposition parties to participate in the pending parliamentary elections. More than 30 parties vied in the parliamentary elections of February 1979, but Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) won 207 of the 300 elected seats.[5]
Acting behind the scenes of the Martial Law Administration (MLA), Zia sought to invigorate government policy and administration. While continuing the ban on political parties, he sought to revitalize the demoralized bureaucracy, to begin new economic development programs, and to emphasize family planning. In November 1976, Zia became Chief Martial Law Administrator (CMLA) and assumed the presidency upon Sayem's retirement 5 months later, promising national elections in 1978.
Islamic ideology
Zia moved to lead the nation in a new direction, significantly different from the ideology and agenda of Sheikh Mujib.[6] He issued a proclamation order amending the constitution, increasing the direct influence and role of Islam on the government. In the preamble, he inserted the salutation "Bismillahir-Rahmaanir-Rahim" (In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful). In Article 8(1) and 8(1A) the statement "absolute trust and faith in Almighty Allah" was added, replacing the commitment to secularism. Socialism was redefined as "economic and social justice." Zia further introduced provisions to allow Muslims to practice the social and legal injunctions of the Shariat and Sunnah.[7] In Article 25(2), Zia introduced the principle that "the state shall endeavour to consolidate, preserve and strengthen fraternal relations among Muslim countries based on Islamic solidarity."[8] Zia's edits to the constitution redefined the nature of the republic from the secularism laid out by Sheikh Mujib and his supporters.[7] Islamic religious education was introduced as a compulsory subject in Bangladeshi schools, with provisions for non-Muslim students to learn of their own religions.[9]
In public speeches and policies that he formulated, Zia began expounding "Bangladeshi nationalism," as opposed to Mujib's assertion of a Bengali national identity. Zia emphasised the national role of Islam (as practised by the majority of Bangladeshis). Claiming to promote an inclusive national identity, Zia reached out to non-Bengali minorities such as the Santals, Garos, Manipuris and Chakmas, as well as the Urdu-speaking peoples of Bihari origin. However, many of these groups were predominantly Hindu and Buddhist and were alienated by Zia's promotion of political Islam. In an effort to promote cultural assimilation and economic development, Zia appointed a Chittagong Hill Tracts Development Commission in 1976, but resisted holding a political dialogue with the representatives of the hill tribes on the issue of autonomy and cultural self-preservation.[10] On July 2, 1977 Ziaur Rahman organised a tribal convention to promote a dialogue between the government and tribal groups. However, most cultural and political issues would remain unresolved and intermittent incidents of inter-community violence and militancy occurred throughout Zia's rule.[10]
Reforms and International Relations
Notable mentions of Ziaur Rahman's tenure as a President have been radical reforms both in country's infrastructure and diplomacy. President Zia successfully pointed out the grounds those could be effectively and exclusively decisive for development of Bangladesh and his reforms covered the political, economical, agricultural and military infrastructure of Bangladesh. Reorganization of Bangladesh's international relations are especially mentionable because it had active influence over both economy and politics. He successfully bailed Bangladesh out of the Indo-Soviet bloc and grabbed the distancing strings to put bar on the gradually deterioration of Bangladeshi relations with the Western world. Zia gave attention to the other Eastern superpower China that later helped Bangladesh hugely to recover from economical setbacks and to enrich the arsenal of her armed forces.
The most notable of Zia's reformed diplomacy was establishing a magnificent relationship with the Muslim world as well as the Middle-east. The present bulk overseas recruitment of Bangladeshi migrant workers to several Middle-eastern countries are direct outcome of Zia's efforts those he put to develop a long-lasting relationship with the Muslim leadership of the world. The purpose of Middle-east relations has been largely economical whereas the rapid improvement of relations with China was particularly made to for rapid advancement of the country's armed forces.
Throughout the study of Zia's international relations it could have been suggested that attention to the bigger neighbor India has been largely ignored. But Zia was found to put strong emphasis on regional cooperation particularly for South Asia. It came evident after Zia took initiative to found SAARC. Zia's dream of Bangladesh's involvement in a strong regional cooperation was met after 4 years of his assassination when SAARC got founded on 8 December 1985 with a key role of the then Bangladeshi authroity
Acting behind the scenes of the Martial Law Administration (MLA), Zia sought to invigorate government policy and administration. While continuing the ban on political parties, he sought to revitalize the demoralized bureaucracy, to begin new economic development programs, and to emphasize family planning. In November 1976, Zia became Chief Martial Law Administrator (CMLA) and assumed the presidency upon Sayem's retirement 5 months later, promising national elections in 1978.
Islamic ideology
Zia moved to lead the nation in a new direction, significantly different from the ideology and agenda of Sheikh Mujib.[6] He issued a proclamation order amending the constitution, increasing the direct influence and role of Islam on the government. In the preamble, he inserted the salutation "Bismillahir-Rahmaanir-Rahim" (In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful). In Article 8(1) and 8(1A) the statement "absolute trust and faith in Almighty Allah" was added, replacing the commitment to secularism. Socialism was redefined as "economic and social justice." Zia further introduced provisions to allow Muslims to practice the social and legal injunctions of the Shariat and Sunnah.[7] In Article 25(2), Zia introduced the principle that "the state shall endeavour to consolidate, preserve and strengthen fraternal relations among Muslim countries based on Islamic solidarity."[8] Zia's edits to the constitution redefined the nature of the republic from the secularism laid out by Sheikh Mujib and his supporters.[7] Islamic religious education was introduced as a compulsory subject in Bangladeshi schools, with provisions for non-Muslim students to learn of their own religions.[9]
In public speeches and policies that he formulated, Zia began expounding "Bangladeshi nationalism," as opposed to Mujib's assertion of a Bengali national identity. Zia emphasised the national role of Islam (as practised by the majority of Bangladeshis). Claiming to promote an inclusive national identity, Zia reached out to non-Bengali minorities such as the Santals, Garos, Manipuris and Chakmas, as well as the Urdu-speaking peoples of Bihari origin. However, many of these groups were predominantly Hindu and Buddhist and were alienated by Zia's promotion of political Islam. In an effort to promote cultural assimilation and economic development, Zia appointed a Chittagong Hill Tracts Development Commission in 1976, but resisted holding a political dialogue with the representatives of the hill tribes on the issue of autonomy and cultural self-preservation.[10] On July 2, 1977 Ziaur Rahman organised a tribal convention to promote a dialogue between the government and tribal groups. However, most cultural and political issues would remain unresolved and intermittent incidents of inter-community violence and militancy occurred throughout Zia's rule.[10]
Reforms and International Relations
Notable mentions of Ziaur Rahman's tenure as a President have been radical reforms both in country's infrastructure and diplomacy. President Zia successfully pointed out the grounds those could be effectively and exclusively decisive for development of Bangladesh and his reforms covered the political, economical, agricultural and military infrastructure of Bangladesh. Reorganization of Bangladesh's international relations are especially mentionable because it had active influence over both economy and politics. He successfully bailed Bangladesh out of the Indo-Soviet bloc and grabbed the distancing strings to put bar on the gradually deterioration of Bangladeshi relations with the Western world. Zia gave attention to the other Eastern superpower China that later helped Bangladesh hugely to recover from economical setbacks and to enrich the arsenal of her armed forces.
The most notable of Zia's reformed diplomacy was establishing a magnificent relationship with the Muslim world as well as the Middle-east. The present bulk overseas recruitment of Bangladeshi migrant workers to several Middle-eastern countries are direct outcome of Zia's efforts those he put to develop a long-lasting relationship with the Muslim leadership of the world. The purpose of Middle-east relations has been largely economical whereas the rapid improvement of relations with China was particularly made to for rapid advancement of the country's armed forces.
Throughout the study of Zia's international relations it could have been suggested that attention to the bigger neighbor India has been largely ignored. But Zia was found to put strong emphasis on regional cooperation particularly for South Asia. It came evident after Zia took initiative to found SAARC. Zia's dream of Bangladesh's involvement in a strong regional cooperation was met after 4 years of his assassination when SAARC got founded on 8 December 1985 with a key role of the then Bangladeshi authroity
Everest conqueror returns to plains
Musa received at Kathmandu amid flags, flowers and folks
He cried, laughed and said, "I'm back."
These were the first words Musa Ibrahim said when he met the advance team of Bangladeshis at Dolalghat in Kavre district, 90 kilometres from Kathmandu.
The Daily Star correspondent with the advance team was waiting there for Musa who along with other mountaineers started from Totopani, the Tibet-Nepal border, around yesterday noon.
Musa's bus reached Dolalghat around 4:30pm and stopped for the Bangladeshi team. The team greeted him with flowers, bouquets and the flag of Bangladesh while his Nepali friends coloured his face with vermilion.
Second Secretary of Bangladesh High Commission Nasrin Zahan gave him some rice pudding she made for him.
Seeing the mood of celebrations of Bangladesh High Commission officials, media personnel, Musa said, "I get a glimpse of Bangladesh here. Thank you all."
"I want to eat something but not bread and eggs. All these days I have been eating bread and porridge."
Musa spoke of his experience while having some snacks. But he was interrupted as many people including his wife, friends and colleagues kept on calling him. They knew Musa was supposed to be within mobile phone network by then.
Musa's group reached the base camp of Mount Everest on April 14. They stayed there for two days to get accustomed to the thin air. From there they went to the advanced base camp and came down to the base camp again to get used to low oxygen levels and altitude.
"We planned to start from the advanced base camp on May 20. But we heard Muhit and his group had already started for camp-1 from there on May 19. We started 15 minutes after Muhit," said Musa.
"Weather was really bad when we reached camp-1. It was still around 1,800 metres to Everest peak," he said.
"I saw 12 tents destroyed in the snowstorm. It was not possible to go out. Some groups gave up and decided to go down. But our Sherpa Kailash Tamang said, 'Let's wait for one more day'. The next day the weather was really good. We started for camp-2 and on May 22, we did the final push from there in the evening and reached the peak early in the morning on May 23," Musa said.
Musa's oxygen pipe leaked at 8,300 metres high.
"I felt like dying. I was panting and felt like dying. Luckily the sherpas noticed it and they fixed it quickly and I survived.
"When I reached the peak, dawn just broke… I saw the first light. We took photos there," Musa said.
He said they queued there to take photos with the Buddha idol.
"The peak is a small place. Only 20 people can stand there together. Our sherpa told us to go down," Musa said.
Musa said, "I started feeling bad descending. It was hard for me to go down, as I was thirsty. I saw a dead body there."
Sherpas told him that many people die while descending as they deplete their energy going up.
They hurried to go back to camp-1. "Then I met an Australian who gave me some water and 'power gel tablet' which helped me regain energy," Musa said.
Musa came down to base camp on May 24 and reached Kathmandu around 9:00pm (local time) yesterday.
Musa started from Kathmandu on April 12 and came back after 45 days.
The Bangladesh High Commission will receive Musa with a small party tomorrow.
"Everest is the highest peak of the world. Musa Ibrahim climbed the mountain and it is also a victory of Bangladesh. It indicates people from Bangladesh are capable of taking up any challenge," Neem Chandra Bhowmik, Bangladesh ambassador to Kathmandu, said while receiving Musa at Hotel Thamel.
FIRST BANGLADESHI 8,000ERS
MA Muhit, the first Bangladeshi mountaineer to climb 8,000 metres, said yesterday that he is happy that somebody from the country hoisted the flag atop Everest.
“We all dreamed together that we would fly our flag on Mount Everest. I am happy that he [Musa] did it,” said Muhit at Bangladesh High Commission in Kathmandu yesterday.
In a brief interview, MA Muhit said, he came down from camp-1 on May 21 after waiting there for two days, as the weather was bad.
“My sherpa told me, life is more important than mountaineering. Mountain will be always there. So we decided to come back.”
On May 21, one member from the Muhit's team, Barcony, a Hungarian national died before his eyes due to snowstorm.
Muhit and his team decided to come down but Musa's team decided to wait a bit more.
Muhit said, he did not know that Musa's team was going to wait, as there was no communication between the two sides.
When Muhit was coming down on May 21, the weather started to get better on May 22.
Muhit was descending. Musa's team started climbing to reach the top of the world.
He cried, laughed and said, "I'm back."
These were the first words Musa Ibrahim said when he met the advance team of Bangladeshis at Dolalghat in Kavre district, 90 kilometres from Kathmandu.
The Daily Star correspondent with the advance team was waiting there for Musa who along with other mountaineers started from Totopani, the Tibet-Nepal border, around yesterday noon.
Musa's bus reached Dolalghat around 4:30pm and stopped for the Bangladeshi team. The team greeted him with flowers, bouquets and the flag of Bangladesh while his Nepali friends coloured his face with vermilion.
Second Secretary of Bangladesh High Commission Nasrin Zahan gave him some rice pudding she made for him.
Seeing the mood of celebrations of Bangladesh High Commission officials, media personnel, Musa said, "I get a glimpse of Bangladesh here. Thank you all."
"I want to eat something but not bread and eggs. All these days I have been eating bread and porridge."
Musa spoke of his experience while having some snacks. But he was interrupted as many people including his wife, friends and colleagues kept on calling him. They knew Musa was supposed to be within mobile phone network by then.
Musa's group reached the base camp of Mount Everest on April 14. They stayed there for two days to get accustomed to the thin air. From there they went to the advanced base camp and came down to the base camp again to get used to low oxygen levels and altitude.
"We planned to start from the advanced base camp on May 20. But we heard Muhit and his group had already started for camp-1 from there on May 19. We started 15 minutes after Muhit," said Musa.
"Weather was really bad when we reached camp-1. It was still around 1,800 metres to Everest peak," he said.
"I saw 12 tents destroyed in the snowstorm. It was not possible to go out. Some groups gave up and decided to go down. But our Sherpa Kailash Tamang said, 'Let's wait for one more day'. The next day the weather was really good. We started for camp-2 and on May 22, we did the final push from there in the evening and reached the peak early in the morning on May 23," Musa said.
Musa's oxygen pipe leaked at 8,300 metres high.
"I felt like dying. I was panting and felt like dying. Luckily the sherpas noticed it and they fixed it quickly and I survived.
"When I reached the peak, dawn just broke… I saw the first light. We took photos there," Musa said.
He said they queued there to take photos with the Buddha idol.
"The peak is a small place. Only 20 people can stand there together. Our sherpa told us to go down," Musa said.
Musa said, "I started feeling bad descending. It was hard for me to go down, as I was thirsty. I saw a dead body there."
Sherpas told him that many people die while descending as they deplete their energy going up.
They hurried to go back to camp-1. "Then I met an Australian who gave me some water and 'power gel tablet' which helped me regain energy," Musa said.
Musa came down to base camp on May 24 and reached Kathmandu around 9:00pm (local time) yesterday.
Musa started from Kathmandu on April 12 and came back after 45 days.
The Bangladesh High Commission will receive Musa with a small party tomorrow.
"Everest is the highest peak of the world. Musa Ibrahim climbed the mountain and it is also a victory of Bangladesh. It indicates people from Bangladesh are capable of taking up any challenge," Neem Chandra Bhowmik, Bangladesh ambassador to Kathmandu, said while receiving Musa at Hotel Thamel.
FIRST BANGLADESHI 8,000ERS
MA Muhit, the first Bangladeshi mountaineer to climb 8,000 metres, said yesterday that he is happy that somebody from the country hoisted the flag atop Everest.
“We all dreamed together that we would fly our flag on Mount Everest. I am happy that he [Musa] did it,” said Muhit at Bangladesh High Commission in Kathmandu yesterday.
In a brief interview, MA Muhit said, he came down from camp-1 on May 21 after waiting there for two days, as the weather was bad.
“My sherpa told me, life is more important than mountaineering. Mountain will be always there. So we decided to come back.”
On May 21, one member from the Muhit's team, Barcony, a Hungarian national died before his eyes due to snowstorm.
Muhit and his team decided to come down but Musa's team decided to wait a bit more.
Muhit said, he did not know that Musa's team was going to wait, as there was no communication between the two sides.
When Muhit was coming down on May 21, the weather started to get better on May 22.
Muhit was descending. Musa's team started climbing to reach the top of the world.
বৃহস্পতিবার, ২৭ মে, ২০১০
Video games: the addiction
While the GTA IV load screen appeared on my television screen, my friend chopped up a dozen lines, reminded me of basic snorting protocol and handed me the straw. I hesitated before taking the tiny hollow sceptre, but not for too long. Know this: I was not someone whose life had been marked by the meticulous collection of bad habits. I chewed tobacco, regularly drank about 10 Diet Cokes a day, and liked marijuana. Beyond that, my greatest vice was probably reading poetry for pleasure. The coke sailed up my nasal passage, leaving behind the delicious smell of a hot leather car seat on the way back from the beach. My previous coke experience had made feeling good an emergency, but this was something else, softer and almost relaxing. This coke, my friend told me, had not been "stepped on" with any amphetamine, and I pretended to know what that meant. I felt as intensely focused as a diamond-cutting laser; Grand Theft Auto IV was ready to go. My friend and I played it for the next 30 hours straight.
Many children who want to believe their tastes are adult will bravely try coffee, find it to be undeniably awful, but recognise something that could one day, conceivably, be enjoyed. Once our tastes as adults are fully developed, it is easy to forget the effort that went into them. Adult taste can be demanding work – so hard, in fact, that some of us, when we become adults, selectively take up a few childish things, as though in defeated acknowledgment that adult taste, with its many bewilderments, is frequently more trouble than it is worth. Few games have more to tell us about this adult retreat into childishness than the Grand Theft Auto series.
In GTA IV you are Niko Bellic, a young immigrant with an ambiguous past. We know he is probably a Serb. We know he fought in the Balkans war. We know he was party to a war-crime atrocity and victim of a double-cross that led to the slaughter of all but three members of his paramilitary unit. We know he has taken life outside of war and it is strongly suggested that he once dabbled in human trafficking. "I did some dumb things and got involved with some idiots," Niko says, early in the game, to his friend Hassan. "We all do dumb things," Hassan replies. "That's what makes us human." The camera closes on Niko as he thinks about this, and for a moment his face becomes as quietly expressive as that of a living actor. "Could be," he says.
Niko has come to Liberty City (the GTA world's run at New York City) at the invitation of his prevaricating cousin, Roman. He wants to start over, leave behind the death and madness of his troubled past, and bathe in the comfort and safety of America. Niko's plan does not go well. Soon enough he is working as a thief and killer. Just as Lolita, as Nabokov piquantly notes in his afterword, was variously read as "old Europe debauching young America" or "young America debauching old Europe", GTA IV leaves itself interpretatively open as to whether Niko is corrupted by America or whether he and his ilk (many of the most vicious characters whose paths Niko crosses are immigrants) are themselves bacterial agents of corruption. The earlier GTA games were less thematically ambitious. Tommy from Vice City is a cackling psychopath, and CJ from San Andreas merely rides the acquisitionist philosophy of hip-hop culture to terminal amorality. They are not characters you root for or even want, in moral terms, to succeed. You want them to succeed only in gameplay terms. The better they do, the more of the gameworld you see.
The stories in Vice City and San Andreas are pastiches of tired filmic genres: crime capers, ghetto dramas, police procedurals. The driving force of both games is the gamer's curiosity: What happens next? What is over here? What if I do this? They are, in this way, childlike and often very silly games, especially San Andreas, which lets you cover your body with ridiculous tattoos and even fly a jetpack. While the gameworlds and subject matter are adult – and under no circumstances should children be allowed near either game – the joy of the gameplay is allowing the vestiges of a repressed, tantrum-throwing, childlike self to run amok. Most games are about attacking a childlike world with an adult mind. The GTA games are the opposite, and one of the most maliciously entertaining mini-games in Vice City and San Andreas is a mayhem mode in which the only goal is to fuck up as much of the gameworld as possible in an allotted period of time.
Niko's real pathos derives not from the gimcrack story but how he looks and moves. Vice City and San Andreas were graphically astounding by the standards of their time, but their character models were woeful – even by the standards of their time. Niko, though, is just about perfect. Dressed in striped black track pants and a dirty windbreaker, Niko looked like the kind of guy one might see staring longingly at the entrance of a strip club in Zagreb, too poor to get in and too self-conscious to try to. When, early in the game, a foul-mouthed minor Russian mafioso named Vlad dismisses Niko as a "yokel", he is not wrong. Niko is a yokel, pathetically so. One of the first things you have to do as Niko is buy new clothes in a Broker (read: Brooklyn) neighbourhood called Hove Beach (read: Sheepshead Bay). The clothing store in question is Russian-owned, its wares fascinatingly ugly. And yet you know, somehow, that Niko, with his slightly less awful new clothes, feels as though he is moving up in the world. The fact that he is, only makes him more heartrending. The times I identified most with Niko were not during the game's frequent cut scenes, which drop bombs of "meaning" and "narrative importance" with nuclear delicacy, but rather when I watched him move through the world of Liberty City and projected on to him my own guesses as to what he was thinking and feeling.
What many without direct experience of the games do know is that they allow you to kill police officers. This is true. GTA games also allow you to kill everyone else. It is sometimes assumed that you somehow get points for killing police officers. Of course you do not get "points" for anything in GTA IV. You get money for completing missions, a number of which are, yes, monstrously violent. While the passersby and pedestrians you slay out of mission will occasionally drop money, it would be hard to argue that the game rewards you for indiscriminate slaughter. People never drop that much money, for one, and the best way to attract the attention of the police and begin a hair-raising transborough chase is to hurt an innocent person. As for the infamous cultural trope that in GTA you can hire a prostitute, pay her, kill her and take her money, this is also true. But you do not have to do this. The game certainly does not ask you to do this. Indeed, after being serviced by a prostitute, Niko will often say something like: "Strange. All that effort to feel this empty." Outside of the inarguably violent missions, it is not what GTA IV asks you to do that is so morally alarming. It is what it allows you to do.
There is no question, though, that GTA IV's violence can be extremely disturbing because it feels unprecedentedly distinct from how, say, films deal with violence. Think of the scene in GoodFellas in which Henry, Tommy, and Jimmy kick to death Billy Batts in Henry's restaurant. Afterwards they decide to put Batts's body in the trunk of Henry's car and bury it in the forest. Of course Batts is not yet dead and spends much of the ride to his place of interment weakly banging the trunk's interior. When Batts is discovered to be alive he is repeatedly, nightmarishly stabbed. The viewer of GoodFellas is implicated in the fate of Billy Batts in any number of ways. Most of us presumably feel closest to Henry, who has the least to do with the crime, but is absolutely an accomplice to it. Henry's point of view is our implied point of view. Thus we/Henry, unlike Tommy and Jimmy, retain our capacity for horror.
In GTA IV, Niko is charged with disposing of the bodies of two men whose deaths Niko is partially responsible for. You/Niko drive across Liberty City with these bodies in the trunk to a corrupt physician who plans to sell the organs on the black market. Here the horror of the situation is refracted in an entirely different manner, which allows the understanding that GTA IV is an engine of a far more intimate process of implication. While on his foul errand, Niko must cope with lifelike traffic, police harassment, red lights, pedestrians, and a poorly handling loan car. Literally thousands of in-game variables complicate what you are trying to do. The GoodFellas scene is an observed experience bound up in one's own moral perception. The GTA IV mission is a procedural event in which one's moral perception of the (admittedly much sillier) situation is scrambled by myriad other distractions. It turns narrative into an active experience, which film is simply unable to do in the same way. And it is moments like this that remind me why I love video games and what they give me that nothing else can.
"Cocaine," Robert Sabbag tells us in the smuggling classic Snowblind, "has no edge. It is strictly a motor drug. It does not alter your perception; it will not even wire you up like the amphetamines. No pictures, no time/space warping, no danger, no fun, no edge. Any individual serious about his chemicals – a heavy hitter – would sooner take 30 No-Doz [caffeine tablets]. Coke is to acid what jazz is to rock. You have to appreciate it. It does not come to you."
Cocaine has its reputation as aggression unleaded largely because many who are attracted to it are themselves aggressive personalities, the reasons for which are as cultural as they are financial. What cocaine does is italicise personality traits, not script new ones. In my case, cocaine did not heighten my aggression in the least. What it did, at least at first, was exaggerate my natural curiosity and need for emotional affection. While on cocaine I became as harmlessly ravenous as Cookie Monster.
This stage, lamentably and predictably, did not last long. A large portion of my last two months in Las Vegas was spent doing cocaine and playing video games – usually Grand Theft Auto IV. When I left Vegas, I thought I was leaving behind not only video games but cocaine. During the last walk I took through the city, in May 2008, I imagined the day's heat as the whoosh of a bullet that, through some oversight of fate, I had managed to dodge. (I was on cocaine at the time.) Even though one of the first things I did when I arrived in Tallinn was buy yet another Xbox 360, I had every intention to obey one of my few prime directives: rigorous adherence to all foreign drug laws. I had been in Tallinn for five months when, in a club, I found myself chatting with someone who was obviously lit. When I gently indicated my awareness of this person's altered state, the result was a magnanimous offer to share. Within no time at all I was back in my apartment, high on cocaine and firing up my Xbox 360. By the week's end, I had a new friend, a new telephone number and a reignited habit. I played through Grand Theft Auto IV again and again after that. The game was faster and more beautiful while I was on cocaine, and breaking laws seemed even more seductive. Niko and I were outlaws, alone as all outlaws are alone, but deludedly content with our freedom and our power.
Soon I was sleeping in my clothes. Soon my hair was stiff and fragrantly unclean. Soon I was doing lines before my Estonian class, staying up for days, curating prodigious nose bleeds and spontaneously vomiting from exhaustion. Soon my pillowcases bore rusty coins of nasal drippage. Soon the only thing I could smell was something like the inside of an empty bottle of prescription medicine. Soon my biweekly phone call to my cocaine dealer was a weekly phone call. Soon I was walking into the night, handing hundreds of dollars in cash to a Russian man whose name I did not even know, waiting in alleys for him to come back – which he always did, though I never fully expected him to – and retreating home, to my Xbox, to GTA IV, to the electrifying solitude of my mind at play in an anarchic digital world. Soon I began to wonder why the only thing I seemed to like to do while on cocaine was play video games. And soon I realised what video games have in common with cocaine: video games, you see, have no edge. You have to appreciate them. They do not come to you.
There are times when I think GTA IV is the most colossal creative achievement of the last 25 years, times when I think of it as an unsurpassable example of what games can do, and times when I think of it as misguided and a failure. No matter what I think about GTA IV, or however I am currently regarding it, my throat gets a little drier, my head a little heavier, and I know I am also thinking about cocaine.
Video games and cocaine feed on my impulsiveness, reinforce my love of solitude and make me feel good and bad in equal measure. The crucial difference is that I believe in what video games want to give me, while the bequest of cocaine is one I loathe. I do know that video games have enriched my life. Of that I have no doubt. They have also done damage to my life. Of that I have no doubt. I let this happen, of course; I even helped the process along. As for cocaine, it has been a long time since I last did it, but not as long as I would like.
What have games given me? Experiences. Not surrogate experiences, but actual experiences, many of which are as important to me as any real memories. Once I wanted games to show me things I could not see in any other medium. Then I wanted games to tell me a story in a way no other medium can. Then I wanted games to redeem something absent in myself. Then I wanted a game experience that pointed not toward but at something. Playing GTA IV on coke for weeks and then months at a time, I learned that maybe all a game can do is point at the person who is playing it, and maybe this has to be enough.
Many children who want to believe their tastes are adult will bravely try coffee, find it to be undeniably awful, but recognise something that could one day, conceivably, be enjoyed. Once our tastes as adults are fully developed, it is easy to forget the effort that went into them. Adult taste can be demanding work – so hard, in fact, that some of us, when we become adults, selectively take up a few childish things, as though in defeated acknowledgment that adult taste, with its many bewilderments, is frequently more trouble than it is worth. Few games have more to tell us about this adult retreat into childishness than the Grand Theft Auto series.
In GTA IV you are Niko Bellic, a young immigrant with an ambiguous past. We know he is probably a Serb. We know he fought in the Balkans war. We know he was party to a war-crime atrocity and victim of a double-cross that led to the slaughter of all but three members of his paramilitary unit. We know he has taken life outside of war and it is strongly suggested that he once dabbled in human trafficking. "I did some dumb things and got involved with some idiots," Niko says, early in the game, to his friend Hassan. "We all do dumb things," Hassan replies. "That's what makes us human." The camera closes on Niko as he thinks about this, and for a moment his face becomes as quietly expressive as that of a living actor. "Could be," he says.
Niko has come to Liberty City (the GTA world's run at New York City) at the invitation of his prevaricating cousin, Roman. He wants to start over, leave behind the death and madness of his troubled past, and bathe in the comfort and safety of America. Niko's plan does not go well. Soon enough he is working as a thief and killer. Just as Lolita, as Nabokov piquantly notes in his afterword, was variously read as "old Europe debauching young America" or "young America debauching old Europe", GTA IV leaves itself interpretatively open as to whether Niko is corrupted by America or whether he and his ilk (many of the most vicious characters whose paths Niko crosses are immigrants) are themselves bacterial agents of corruption. The earlier GTA games were less thematically ambitious. Tommy from Vice City is a cackling psychopath, and CJ from San Andreas merely rides the acquisitionist philosophy of hip-hop culture to terminal amorality. They are not characters you root for or even want, in moral terms, to succeed. You want them to succeed only in gameplay terms. The better they do, the more of the gameworld you see.
The stories in Vice City and San Andreas are pastiches of tired filmic genres: crime capers, ghetto dramas, police procedurals. The driving force of both games is the gamer's curiosity: What happens next? What is over here? What if I do this? They are, in this way, childlike and often very silly games, especially San Andreas, which lets you cover your body with ridiculous tattoos and even fly a jetpack. While the gameworlds and subject matter are adult – and under no circumstances should children be allowed near either game – the joy of the gameplay is allowing the vestiges of a repressed, tantrum-throwing, childlike self to run amok. Most games are about attacking a childlike world with an adult mind. The GTA games are the opposite, and one of the most maliciously entertaining mini-games in Vice City and San Andreas is a mayhem mode in which the only goal is to fuck up as much of the gameworld as possible in an allotted period of time.
Niko's real pathos derives not from the gimcrack story but how he looks and moves. Vice City and San Andreas were graphically astounding by the standards of their time, but their character models were woeful – even by the standards of their time. Niko, though, is just about perfect. Dressed in striped black track pants and a dirty windbreaker, Niko looked like the kind of guy one might see staring longingly at the entrance of a strip club in Zagreb, too poor to get in and too self-conscious to try to. When, early in the game, a foul-mouthed minor Russian mafioso named Vlad dismisses Niko as a "yokel", he is not wrong. Niko is a yokel, pathetically so. One of the first things you have to do as Niko is buy new clothes in a Broker (read: Brooklyn) neighbourhood called Hove Beach (read: Sheepshead Bay). The clothing store in question is Russian-owned, its wares fascinatingly ugly. And yet you know, somehow, that Niko, with his slightly less awful new clothes, feels as though he is moving up in the world. The fact that he is, only makes him more heartrending. The times I identified most with Niko were not during the game's frequent cut scenes, which drop bombs of "meaning" and "narrative importance" with nuclear delicacy, but rather when I watched him move through the world of Liberty City and projected on to him my own guesses as to what he was thinking and feeling.
What many without direct experience of the games do know is that they allow you to kill police officers. This is true. GTA games also allow you to kill everyone else. It is sometimes assumed that you somehow get points for killing police officers. Of course you do not get "points" for anything in GTA IV. You get money for completing missions, a number of which are, yes, monstrously violent. While the passersby and pedestrians you slay out of mission will occasionally drop money, it would be hard to argue that the game rewards you for indiscriminate slaughter. People never drop that much money, for one, and the best way to attract the attention of the police and begin a hair-raising transborough chase is to hurt an innocent person. As for the infamous cultural trope that in GTA you can hire a prostitute, pay her, kill her and take her money, this is also true. But you do not have to do this. The game certainly does not ask you to do this. Indeed, after being serviced by a prostitute, Niko will often say something like: "Strange. All that effort to feel this empty." Outside of the inarguably violent missions, it is not what GTA IV asks you to do that is so morally alarming. It is what it allows you to do.
There is no question, though, that GTA IV's violence can be extremely disturbing because it feels unprecedentedly distinct from how, say, films deal with violence. Think of the scene in GoodFellas in which Henry, Tommy, and Jimmy kick to death Billy Batts in Henry's restaurant. Afterwards they decide to put Batts's body in the trunk of Henry's car and bury it in the forest. Of course Batts is not yet dead and spends much of the ride to his place of interment weakly banging the trunk's interior. When Batts is discovered to be alive he is repeatedly, nightmarishly stabbed. The viewer of GoodFellas is implicated in the fate of Billy Batts in any number of ways. Most of us presumably feel closest to Henry, who has the least to do with the crime, but is absolutely an accomplice to it. Henry's point of view is our implied point of view. Thus we/Henry, unlike Tommy and Jimmy, retain our capacity for horror.
In GTA IV, Niko is charged with disposing of the bodies of two men whose deaths Niko is partially responsible for. You/Niko drive across Liberty City with these bodies in the trunk to a corrupt physician who plans to sell the organs on the black market. Here the horror of the situation is refracted in an entirely different manner, which allows the understanding that GTA IV is an engine of a far more intimate process of implication. While on his foul errand, Niko must cope with lifelike traffic, police harassment, red lights, pedestrians, and a poorly handling loan car. Literally thousands of in-game variables complicate what you are trying to do. The GoodFellas scene is an observed experience bound up in one's own moral perception. The GTA IV mission is a procedural event in which one's moral perception of the (admittedly much sillier) situation is scrambled by myriad other distractions. It turns narrative into an active experience, which film is simply unable to do in the same way. And it is moments like this that remind me why I love video games and what they give me that nothing else can.
"Cocaine," Robert Sabbag tells us in the smuggling classic Snowblind, "has no edge. It is strictly a motor drug. It does not alter your perception; it will not even wire you up like the amphetamines. No pictures, no time/space warping, no danger, no fun, no edge. Any individual serious about his chemicals – a heavy hitter – would sooner take 30 No-Doz [caffeine tablets]. Coke is to acid what jazz is to rock. You have to appreciate it. It does not come to you."
Cocaine has its reputation as aggression unleaded largely because many who are attracted to it are themselves aggressive personalities, the reasons for which are as cultural as they are financial. What cocaine does is italicise personality traits, not script new ones. In my case, cocaine did not heighten my aggression in the least. What it did, at least at first, was exaggerate my natural curiosity and need for emotional affection. While on cocaine I became as harmlessly ravenous as Cookie Monster.
This stage, lamentably and predictably, did not last long. A large portion of my last two months in Las Vegas was spent doing cocaine and playing video games – usually Grand Theft Auto IV. When I left Vegas, I thought I was leaving behind not only video games but cocaine. During the last walk I took through the city, in May 2008, I imagined the day's heat as the whoosh of a bullet that, through some oversight of fate, I had managed to dodge. (I was on cocaine at the time.) Even though one of the first things I did when I arrived in Tallinn was buy yet another Xbox 360, I had every intention to obey one of my few prime directives: rigorous adherence to all foreign drug laws. I had been in Tallinn for five months when, in a club, I found myself chatting with someone who was obviously lit. When I gently indicated my awareness of this person's altered state, the result was a magnanimous offer to share. Within no time at all I was back in my apartment, high on cocaine and firing up my Xbox 360. By the week's end, I had a new friend, a new telephone number and a reignited habit. I played through Grand Theft Auto IV again and again after that. The game was faster and more beautiful while I was on cocaine, and breaking laws seemed even more seductive. Niko and I were outlaws, alone as all outlaws are alone, but deludedly content with our freedom and our power.
Soon I was sleeping in my clothes. Soon my hair was stiff and fragrantly unclean. Soon I was doing lines before my Estonian class, staying up for days, curating prodigious nose bleeds and spontaneously vomiting from exhaustion. Soon my pillowcases bore rusty coins of nasal drippage. Soon the only thing I could smell was something like the inside of an empty bottle of prescription medicine. Soon my biweekly phone call to my cocaine dealer was a weekly phone call. Soon I was walking into the night, handing hundreds of dollars in cash to a Russian man whose name I did not even know, waiting in alleys for him to come back – which he always did, though I never fully expected him to – and retreating home, to my Xbox, to GTA IV, to the electrifying solitude of my mind at play in an anarchic digital world. Soon I began to wonder why the only thing I seemed to like to do while on cocaine was play video games. And soon I realised what video games have in common with cocaine: video games, you see, have no edge. You have to appreciate them. They do not come to you.
There are times when I think GTA IV is the most colossal creative achievement of the last 25 years, times when I think of it as an unsurpassable example of what games can do, and times when I think of it as misguided and a failure. No matter what I think about GTA IV, or however I am currently regarding it, my throat gets a little drier, my head a little heavier, and I know I am also thinking about cocaine.
Video games and cocaine feed on my impulsiveness, reinforce my love of solitude and make me feel good and bad in equal measure. The crucial difference is that I believe in what video games want to give me, while the bequest of cocaine is one I loathe. I do know that video games have enriched my life. Of that I have no doubt. They have also done damage to my life. Of that I have no doubt. I let this happen, of course; I even helped the process along. As for cocaine, it has been a long time since I last did it, but not as long as I would like.
What have games given me? Experiences. Not surrogate experiences, but actual experiences, many of which are as important to me as any real memories. Once I wanted games to show me things I could not see in any other medium. Then I wanted games to tell me a story in a way no other medium can. Then I wanted games to redeem something absent in myself. Then I wanted a game experience that pointed not toward but at something. Playing GTA IV on coke for weeks and then months at a time, I learned that maybe all a game can do is point at the person who is playing it, and maybe this has to be enough.
Nazrul's death anniversary today
The nation today observes the 33rd death anniversary of National Poet Kazi Nazrul Islam across the country with due respect.
Nazrul, popularly known as Bidrohi Kabi (rebel poet), through his powerful poems had inspired the people to fight against all kinds of bondage and injustice and repression during the colonial rule.
Nazrul's songs and poems were also a great source of inspiration for the freedom fighters during the country's liberation war in 1971.
The poet passed away on August 29 (12th Bhadro of Bangla calendar) at the age of 77 after suffering long from a debilitating disease.
Different government and non-government cultural organisations have chalked out special programmes to mark the occasion.
Dhaka University authorities will observe a daylong programme in remembrance of the great poet.
Students, teachers and employees, led by Vice Chancellor Professor AAMS Arefin Siddique, visited the mazar of the poet beside the central mosque and placed wreaths and offered fateha in the morning.
On the occasion, Bangla Academy will organise a discussion session at its seminar room at 11:00am.
Nazrul's death anniversary today
The nation today observes the 33rd death anniversary of National Poet Kazi Nazrul Islam across the country with due respect.
Nazrul, popularly known as Bidrohi Kabi (rebel poet), through his powerful poems had inspired the people to fight against all kinds of bondage and injustice and repression during the colonial rule.
Nazrul's songs and poems were also a great source of inspiration for the freedom fighters during the country's liberation war in 1971.
The poet passed away on August 29 (12th Bhadro of Bangla calendar) at the age of 77 after suffering long from a debilitating disease.
Different government and non-government cultural organisations have chalked out special programmes to mark the occasion.
Dhaka University authorities will observe a daylong programme in remembrance of the great poet.
Students, teachers and employees, led by Vice Chancellor Professor AAMS Arefin Siddique, visited the mazar of the poet beside the central mosque and placed wreaths and offered fateha in the morning.
On the occasion, Bangla Academy will organise a discussion session at its seminar room at 11:00am.
Nazrul, popularly known as Bidrohi Kabi (rebel poet), through his powerful poems had inspired the people to fight against all kinds of bondage and injustice and repression during the colonial rule.
Nazrul's songs and poems were also a great source of inspiration for the freedom fighters during the country's liberation war in 1971.
The poet passed away on August 29 (12th Bhadro of Bangla calendar) at the age of 77 after suffering long from a debilitating disease.
Different government and non-government cultural organisations have chalked out special programmes to mark the occasion.
Dhaka University authorities will observe a daylong programme in remembrance of the great poet.
Students, teachers and employees, led by Vice Chancellor Professor AAMS Arefin Siddique, visited the mazar of the poet beside the central mosque and placed wreaths and offered fateha in the morning.
On the occasion, Bangla Academy will organise a discussion session at its seminar room at 11:00am.
বুধবার, ২৬ মে, ২০১০
Gulf oil spill: BP says 'top kill' plug going to plan
BP says its operation to pump mud into a breached Gulf of Mexico oil well to try to stem the flow of oil caused by a rig explosion is going to plan.he US government is backing the "top kill" procedure, which has never been tried at such a depth.
BP is under intense pressure to succeed with its latest attempt to stem the leak, after previous measures failed.
A BP official said he believed mud, not oil, was exiting the well's ruptured pipe six hours after the work began.
Continue reading the main story
We saw that the cargo they carry home is not seafood but large plastic bags stuffed full of filthy, greasy, sticky, brown oil-soaked absorbent boom
Rajesh Mirchandani BBC News, Grand Isle From shrimp fisher to oil-collector
"What you've been observing coming out of the top of that riser is most likely mud," BP Plc chief operating officer Doug Suttles told reporters in Houston.
"We can't fully confirm that because we can't sample it. And the way we know we've been successful is it stops flowing."
Company officials say it could be a couple of days before they know whether the "top kill" operation has worked.
Thousands of barrels of oil have been spewing into the Gulf every day since the accident on 20 April.
Barack Obama says every resource will be utilised to "put a stop to this thing"
Mud will continue to be pumped into the well for hours, spokesman Steve Rinehart said.
"The procedure is intended to stem the flow of oil and gas and ultimately kill the well by injecting heavy drilling fluids through the blowout preventer on the seabed, down into the well," a BP statement said.
If the oil flow is successfully capped, engineers will follow up with cement to seal the well permanently.
BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward has put the operation's chance of success at 60-70%.
TOP KILL PROCEDURE
Continue reading the main story
* Drilling mud pumped from surface
* Goes into blowout preventer
* If pressure and density sufficient, oil and gas flow stops
* Well then filled with cement
What is a 'top kill'?
The procedure began at 1300 local time (1800 GMT), shortly after federal officials approved the plan.
Officials say the method has been used before in other areas of the world, but not at the depths required to stem the oil from the Deepwater Horizon rig.
There is a risk a weak spot in the blowout preventer that sits on top of the well could breach under the pressure, causing a brand new leak at the site 50 miles (80km) off the Louisiana coast.
'No guarantees'
Speaking in California, US President Barack Obama said his administration would commit all resources necessary to stop the flow of oil into the sea.
Continue reading the main story A BP contract worker cleans the beach at Port Fourchon, Louisiana In pictures: Battling the spill
"If it's successful - and there are no guarantees - it should greatly reduce or eliminate the flow of oil now streaming into the Gulf from the seafloor. And if it's not, there other approaches that may be viable," he said.
Mr Obama said the "heartbreaking" oil spill underscored the need to find alternative energy sources.
"We will not rest until this well is shut, the environment is repaired and the clean-up is complete," he added.
Mr Obama is due to make his second visit to the Gulf of Mexico region on Friday.
His visit will come a day after he receives a report into offshore drilling that is expected to recommend tougher regulations and demand more safeguards.
'Series of failures'
London-based BP has acknowledged that a series of failures occurred on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the hours before the explosion that killed 11 workers and triggered the spill that has so far spewed at least 7 million gallons (26.5 million litres) into the Gulf.
MEMO: KEY WARNING SIGNS
Continue reading the main story
* Abnormalities in pressure testing
* Indications of potential gas leakage in cement work
* Failures in several functions of the blowout preventer
Congressional memo in full
Two leading US congressmen have meanwhile been briefed on thousands of BP documents relating to the accident.
In a memo, Representatives Henry Waxman and Bart Stupak say the explosion was preceded by several warning signs - including abnormal pressure readings and failures in some functions of the blowout preventer - but action appears to have been taken too late.
Questions have been raised over whether proper procedures were followed.
Speaking on US television on Wednesday, Mr Hayward said: "What we're seeing here is a whole series of failures. We've identified... at least seven.
"It's very clear that much more needs to be put in place to deal with this situation should it ever occur again."
He added: "It's clear that this will be a transforming event in the history of deep water exploration."
এতে সদস্যতা:
পোস্টগুলি (Atom)