What the Rana Plaza tragedy means in 2024
Let’s visit this discussion on three levels of analysis on the local, national, and global scenarios and impacts.
1d ago
To catch a pirate
Today’s piracy further feeds upon those flows including petroleum and the growing numbers of African/Asian countries involved. Control is now imperative.
1m ago
Foreign policy quandary for Bangladesh: ‘Umbilical’ or ‘geopolitical’?
Bangladesh’s foreign inclinations increasingly sway between “umbilical” and “geopolitical” poles, as principles, policies and preferences compete for priority.
2m ago
The colour of war?
Today’s Red Sea skirmishes raise multifaceted concerns, which range from the war in Gaza widening and awakening old wounds, to geopolitical frontlines being rewritten by shifting chokepoints.
2m ago
Bangladesh as a ‘developed country’: ‘Graduating’ imperatives
“Graduation” has become a Bangladeshi buzzword. Journalists, scholars, and technocrats were working on that term even before November 24, 2021. On that day, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly green-signalled a possible exit from the “least developed country” (LDC) to join the “developing” list from 2026.
2y ago
9/11 anniversary, Afghanistan and values
“What goes around comes around” may be an apt and oft-used cliché, but in referencing 9/11 and Afghanistan, it only embitters. US President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from “forever wars” was supported by 54 percent of US adults, according to a September 4 Pew survey.
2y ago
Afghanistan, Taliban and the United States
Full US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan was announced by President Joe Biden on April 14, 2021. It raised eyebrows but did not ruffle public feathers.
2y ago
Branding Bangladesh: The ‘identity’ challenge
Identity matters. It matters most amid flux, which the 21st Century is riddled with. Compromising the past and adding “new” components always knock on identity doors. Distinguishing the non-negotiable identity components from the negotiable gives us a head start.
3y ago
March 24, 2019
Post-Christchurch social reconstruction: Global the message, local the onus
It is not enough to alert the public of social cracks: how they can be repaired must be part and parcel of any de-constructing exercise.
March 17, 2019
Christchurch and 'social cracks'
It was not, as Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern noted, “one of the darkest days,” in New Zealand's history, but “the darkest”. New Zealand
September 15, 2018
Back to a future jungle?
Green is “the colour of nature and health,” according to Jacob Olesen, a Dane lover of colours.
August 19, 2018
Iconoclast Donald J Trump?
To any question whether the US president and commander-in-chief is working against the country, Donald J Trump's tenure already supplied an overwhelming positive answer, even before he dramatised them all in Finland during mid-July 2018. We just preferred to look away.
August 11, 2018
Thinking the unthinkable: A 'Chinese' Century?
Henry Luce deserves more than the credit he gets for predicting the “American Century” (in Life magazine, February 1941). That was after the League of Nations was unceremoniously buried, but before both the Pearl Harbor bombings, which awakened a slumberous and isolationist United States (that is but a slight exaggeration...
August 5, 2018
From Russia With Fatal Love
Ian Fleming's trademark narrative has returned: Russia playing the same old game he wrote so much about (if one remembers James Bond, his boss, M, and their Soviet obsession).
July 28, 2018
Canada's US dilemma
Every time Donald J Trump berates Canada, the friendliest neighbour any country could have, those Gerry Rafferty/Joe Egan lyrics from a Stealer's Wheel song rings through my mind.
July 21, 2018
Losing that IQ feeling?
Homo sapiens could not have faced the erosion of their cutting-edge claims at a worse time.
July 14, 2018
Puff the plastic dragon
Puff was a mythological dragon, made famous by one of the original, 1960s, folk-rock bands, consisting of Peter, Paul, and Mary. He lived “by the sea”, and would “frolic in the autumn mist” in a land they called Honah Lee.
July 7, 2018
World Cup and International Relations
As one of the most widely watched human activity, soccer's World Cup Championship unleashes raw competition between countries, raising emotions that cover almost every stripe we know and triggering nationalism of even a guttural kind.
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