Happy Thanksgiving to all. On this day, I hope that most of my readers are fortunate enough that should they suffer at all, it is because they are the victim of their qualities. Most people in much of the world cannot stake claim to such fortune. The Asia Foundation has a wonderful donation program called […]
Bangladesh is becoming enmeshed in the broader regional strategy by which political Islamists in Bangladesh and Pakistan might bring down secular governments and establish a wider Islamic emirate. I want to propose that Bangladesh has been chosen as the alternative ground from which Pakistani militants will launch attacks into India. Before I get to […]
Pursuant to the developing story on the 3 men arrested in Bangladesh for plotting to attack U.S and Indian political institutions, I’d like to point out an interesting piece of editorial analysis by the India based South Asia Analysis Group. The short paper examines the history of Lashkar e Taiba in a broader, electoral context […]
I’ve been following reports that three Bangladeshi men affiliated with Lashkar E Taiyeba and Harkatul Jihad al Islam have been implicated in a plot to attack the U.S. Embassy and Indian High Commission in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. This story just got a lot more interesting and puzzlingly complicated. Even though the piece is […]
Today is Universal Children’s Day. 50 years ago today, on November 20th, the UN General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of the Rights of the Child. 20 years ago today, the General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights the Child. These declarations and conventions are aspirational, high reaching rhetoric and are considered normatively obligatory […]
The Supreme Court of Bangladesh delivered judgment on an appeal brought by 5 former Army officers who were held responsible for the 1975 murder of the founding leader of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Rahman, known hagiographically as Bangabandhu–the Friend of Bengal– was the first Prime Minister of Bangladesh. After electing to switch to a presidential form […]
I’d almost think my previous post was an unfinished affair, where neither party in love understood anything substantially valuable or interesting about the other. There was much more left to be said; much left to do. Pursuant to that, I think anyone who wants to know something tangible about the grey haze and temperature of […]
Photograph and copyright, Brendan Corr, copyright 2006 Foreign Policy The photograph above is one piece from a photo essay published in Foreign Policy Magazine more than three years ago. The work, as a whole, is no less a moving document today as the day it was first birthed into the world. The ship breaking industry […]
The day’s news about the promise to make a promise a year out on Climate Change is frustrating, to say the least. This tactic of kicking the ball toward the goal post has just one problem: there is no goal post that all 192 countries convening in Denmark will agree upon. In fact, it is […]
On a lark, I’d begun to write today’s post with the idea that I’d deal mainly with the ill-gauged foresight with which even the most vaunted media outlets in the U.S deal with Bangladesh and her political economy and “culture”. With no small irreverence, I’d started the piece with the following declaration and all that […]
The Foreign Minister of Bangladeshi, Dr. Dipu Moni declared that member states attending the UN Climate Change Conference soon to be held in Copenhagen must give grants–not loans–to countries that are victims of the consequences of global climate and environmental change. Addressing the Climate Vulnerable Forum in the Maldives, Begum Moni said “River erosion, land slide, […]
I’ve been following the news of three Bangladeshi men who’ve been implicated in an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Dhaka. One of these men is the son of a leader of a major Islamist political party in Bangladesh. I will continue to follow this story, but promise that there will be much else to […]
The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed piece by one Bjorn Lomborg, who occupies the role of Director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, a Danish think tank. Dr. Lomborg is interested in prescribing some hard to swallow medicine to all those environmentalists who claim that capping carbon emissions is the magic pill that will solve […]
Whether or not moral imperatives cut mustard, surely medium term strategic interests will be more successful in delivering workable solutions to the crisis of rising waters in Bangladesh. If developing and advanced industrial economies do not move to radically control carbon emissions, not only–in time–will Manhattan and parts of Florida be underwater, but those islands […]
Now that our quiet and uncomfortable introductions are out of the way, I’d like to point to another article that follows up on the one I wrote about yesterday. The Daily Star reports that : “The Detective Branch of police produced Mufti Harun Izahar, son of Islami Oikya Jote leader Mufti Izaharul Islam, Shahidul Islam […]