HIGH NOTES LOW NOTES
Relax, America is not falling apart. Not yet.
Two days ago, I received an earnest query from a friend in Dhaka. He was concerned that the US was showing some signs of becoming dysfunctional. Could it be that the Empire itself may soon become a failed State?
Decency vs Banality
Last week we witnessed two extraordinary events. First, President Barack Obama bid farewell to his fellow countrymen. He shed a drop
HIGH NOTES LOW NOTES / Too late, too little, Mr. President
President Obama's heroics at the fading hours of his presidency may have come too late too little, but it was just enough to ruffle both
Let's talk polls and politics
There is some very good news for Bangladesh's ruling party in a poll conducted by the US-based Democracy International. More about that later. Let's for a moment focus on the value of opinion polls.
PERSECUTION OF THE ROHINGYA COMMUNITY / The complicity of silence
There is a genocide taking place in Myanmar. An entire people is in the process of being annihilated. Entire villages have been plundered, mosques have been torched, people have been killed.
Coming to grips with an absurdity called Trump
In simplest terms, the victory was a clear rejection of the rural white America of Washington's elitism. These folks, under tremendous economic stress due to globalisation and continuing economic depression, exacted a revenge on the rest of the country.
A requiem for the Sundarbans
Why is the Bangladesh government so determined to go ahead with a project that every sane-minded person not affiliated with the government thinks will do more harm than good? In September, I put this question to the members of the delegation accompanying Prime Minister Hasina who was in New York for the annual UN General Assembly. One of them, speaking on behalf of the group, replied with a counter question: Do you think our Prime Minister would do something that would go against our national interest?
HIGH NOTES LOW NOTES / Exercise in democracy or “Bolirkhela”?
Imagine two heavyset men in the middle of a mud pool lunging at each other. They huff and puff, throw up their arms in the air screaming obscenities – some in earnest, some to stir their supporters.
The Face of New Fascism
I always thought of Donald Trump as a poor entertainer with bad hair and an over sprayed tan. He still is, but he is also the presumptive Republican nominee and could very well end up as the next president of the United States. He is also the face of 21st-century fascism, a phenomenon largely fueled by demographic anxieties of white America and nearly eight years of a black President.