Bangladesh, gifts revisited and a waffle

So I'm reading the paper the other day and I hear that there has been a state of emergency declared in Bangladesh. This prompted me to figure out a few things: 1) where the hell is Bangladesh? 2) What do they mean by "state of emergency" and 3) why is this happening?

First things first, Bangladesh is almost entirely surrounded by India, except a small border with Myanmar....."You most likely know it as Myanmar, but it will always be Burma to me." --J. Peterman. Check out the Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh

Second, and intriguing, is the state of emergency declaration. According to the article I was reading, it sounded like in addition to a curfew, the government would strip its citizens of many civil liberties. That sounded pretty dramatic to me. According to Wikipedia though, "..the state of emergency suspends some basic rights provided by the constitution, such as the freedom of movement, assembly, and speech." Since there's the threat of violence and protests, some of that seems at least somewhat reasonable. But no freedom of speech? Why do they need to suspend that? According to the article I read, the news stations could only relay information pre-scripted by the government. Yikes.

Third, why this is happening seems very complicated. Near as I can figure, one party was leaving office and there were supposed to be elections, which a second party hoped would be beneficial to their cause. However, now the second party believes the fix is in and is rallying it's proverbial troops. Ugh.

How do you feel about this if you're India? It's like if Ohio decided to suspend all civil rights while they elected their governor. Except with Ohio, it's probably a good idea given Cleveland's population. Ha!!

On December 6th, in the Tempo section of the Trib, this was the lead story:






Hopefully you can blow it up and read both sides of the "gift card" vs. "present" debate. Too funny. I had the same discussion five days earlier here on my blog. I'm scooping the Trib now!

New England's postseason record with Tom Brady and Bill Belichick (11-1) is starting to make me think maybe the the Patriots can pull this out. Schottenheimer is 5-12 in the playoffs and his QB Phillip Rivers is 0-0. Those are daunting numbers. So I'm officially flip-flopping on that pick and taking the Patriots in an upset. Probably should stick with my first thought, but what fun would that be?