Via S. Mitra Kalita

Ashok Malik, a writer for the Indian Express seems to think that media conglomerates in the West hold a different mirror to the current disaster in South and South East Asia. He feels networks like CNN and the BBC are more prone, and somewhat comfortable, showing corpses of brown bodies on their telecasts; something they deliberately shied away from after the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center or The Pentagon in the interest of preserving the privacy of those families who were grieving.

What are your thoughts?

I am usually not one to jump on a bandwagon, but a few days back, I openly proclaimed my loyalty to Apple.

As you will see below, the company that brought us the Macintosh and more recently the iPod , wears its heart on its sleeve; where it matters. Despite one of the hottest “selling” seasons, Apple has moved away from pushing it wares to show compassion in this time of great need. The company's web site says it all.

Conversely, Microsoft which to great hoopla opened up a division in Hyderabad, India is more concerned now about stamping out Spam.

Perhaps it is a wee bit unfair to pick on the behemoth in Redmond, Washington. But I find the great difference in approach quite telling of the company's priorities.

Am I buying a new Macintosh in 2005? You betcha! And the advertisement you see below is intentional. Go Apple!

Via Shahidul Alam

As we watch in horror at the scale of the event, several things come to mind. How events a thousand miles away can affect our lives in so many ways. How connected we are in our joys and our sorrow. I realise that Bangladesh was not as badly affected as our neighbours, and that we should take pride in our achievements, but Bangladeshi newspapers today gloated over the victory of the Bangladeshi cricket team over India in their headlines! While I fret over the fact that the media plays on the negative, to downplay a disaster of such proportions in favour of a cricket match said a lot about our sense of proportions. In 1991, when nearly a million people had gathered to demand the trial of a war criminal, the government had chosen to ignore the news and mentioned instead the man of the match in a cricket game in Shunamganj. I had hoped a free media would play a more responsible role.

As I watch BBC and CNN interview British and German tourists, and the director of Oxfam from her office in Oxford, I remember my experiences in the 1991 cyclone where one hundred and twenty thousand people died in Bangladesh. As I stumbled through the debris, trying to get a sense of what had happened on the night of the 29th April 2001, I kept asking “What happened that night?” The aid workers told me of the number of bags of wheat they had distributed. The government officials quoted the figure in dollars that would be needed for reconstruction, the engineers spoke of the force of the wind.

A young woman in Sandweep looked at me and said “The land became a sea, and the sea became a wave”.

I try to imagine the tsunamis hitting the coasts of India, and Sri Lanka and Indonesia, and remember her words. The thousands whose lives have been wrecked by the earthquake do not constitute the ‘experts' that the media consider worth asking.

Shahidul Alam
27th December 2004
Dhaka

Cops in India must sure have it made. What pleasure do they engage in by falsely accusing and then arresting a revered spiritual and religious leader one week and an employee of a multi-national auction company another week?

Is due process in the world's largest democracy a running joke? Someone please tell me what the hell is going on back home. Are civil liberties on a steady decline? I still get chills replaying clips from Ardh Satya.

Via Santhosh Daniel

Let the flames begin!

I think it is a hilarious take on what Rush Limbaugh and his ilk have had to say since the elections on November 2. Personally, I'll take the 5th on this one.