Asia’s balancer, Bangladesh
Remember those expansive aphorisms, “Britannia rules the waves” and the “empire where the sun never sets”?
Oscillating Anglo-American relations
A rolling stone, as the cliché goes, gathers no moss. According to musician Robert Zimmerman, it is “like a complete unknown,” indeed, “with no direction home.” Under his more popular identity, Bob Dylan, he penned “Like a rolling stone,” often regarded the crème de la crème song in its genre. It might also be the swansong of a fabled bilateral relationship. Gone awry, that relationship arguably symbolises the upended global status of two partners.
There goes the neighbourhood: Sri Lankan spillovers
"Tragedy” only mildly describes Sri Lanka’s bombing spate. It was heinous, stirring the wrong juices, pitting the wrong spiritual brethrens against each other. It was evil, not only fanning flames between two religious groups...
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).
Stuck In The Middle Still? / 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.
Kissinger's rise and fall of enlightenment
Henry Kissinger did not mince his words. As one of the most erudite commentators of global power rivalry, he was truly jolted to see the computer game, Go, a prototype of the more mesmerising AlphaGo game, capable of making strategic decisions far faster than human beings, and predicting the winner more accurately.
Asia’s balancer, Bangladesh
Remember those expansive aphorisms, “Britannia rules the waves” and the “empire where the sun never sets”?
Oscillating Anglo-American relations
A rolling stone, as the cliché goes, gathers no moss. According to musician Robert Zimmerman, it is “like a complete unknown,” indeed, “with no direction home.” Under his more popular identity, Bob Dylan, he penned “Like a rolling stone,” often regarded the crème de la crème song in its genre. It might also be the swansong of a fabled bilateral relationship. Gone awry, that relationship arguably symbolises the upended global status of two partners.
A Giant Retreat for Mankind
Remember those first words ever spoken from the moon? In the half-century since Neil Armstrong uttered them, the space race has invited many other countries—from the rich to the poor, from the developed to the developing—and even attracted private-sector
‘Clash of civilisation’ or crash: Environmental doomsday?
What do the following civilisations have in common: Mesopotamia four millennia ago; the 8th-century Viking Greenland settlement; Mayas from the 10th century; and the Khmer empire in the 15th century?
Angela Merkel’s legacy: ‘Holy Roman Empress’?
Historians are often bemused by how the millennia-old Holy Roman Emperor was not holy, nor Roman, nor even an emperor.
GPA and beyond: Time to break out of old pedagogical models
Grumpy” was her name. In the flower-filled month of May, the world’s most famous cat of the same name bid her ever-cheering audience a sad adieu. Perhaps not the best of analogies, but it highlights grumpiness in another area, that, fortunately, we can do something about.
Galloping Bangladesh: Emperor with no clothes?
Don’t judge a book by its cover.” So goes a popular cliché, though appraisals become more sanguine the more one opens the volume. Recent (April) reports about the country’s top-flight economic growth-rates expose why heeding that message helps keep us on track.
There goes the neighbourhood: Sri Lankan spillovers
"Tragedy” only mildly describes Sri Lanka’s bombing spate. It was heinous, stirring the wrong juices, pitting the wrong spiritual brethrens against each other. It was evil, not only fanning flames between two religious groups...
Of fires, fates and fortunes
Fire,” Don McLean wrote in “American Pie”, “is the devil's only friend.” It must have been so for Roman Emperor Nero: he anecdotally “fiddled while Rome burned” in 64 AD.
'Civilising' Dhaka
Civil society cannot be built this way, upon the salacious preferences of home-builders, bus-drivers/conductors, and environment abusers.