Bangladesh And Covid-19: A Disaster Within A Disaster
“The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but those who watch them without doing anything,’ ~Albert Einstein The government of Bangladesh seems to have no other choice but to reimpose a lockdown in order to quell the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic. The need for a second lockdown arises greatly due […]
Lives Or Livelihoods: Evidence From The Spanish Flu
The past is never dead. It’s not even past,” wrote William Faulkner. I think of this line as I continue to study the last great influenza pandemic to devastate the world, foreshadowing 102 years ago, the devastation of our current pestilence, COVID-19. Yes, as my medically trained friends point out, one cannot take the similarities […]
The United States, Trump And The Pandemic
According to the noted American linguist, political commentator, historian and philosopher, Noam Chomsky, the coronavirus pandemic could have been avoided altogether. He notes that among the western countries, the worst at handling the crisis were the United Kingdom and the United States.
Human rights groups urge Bangladesh to restore Rohingya refugee camps’ internet
Human rights campaigners have urged Bangladesh to restore mobile internet connections for hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees living in crowded camps, arguing that people there need access to information amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Some 50 organizations, including London-based Amnesty International, appealed Thursday in a joint letter to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina after Bangladesh reported […]
The Impact Of Covid-19 On The Bangladesh Economy
“COVID-19 is likely to have significant impacts on the Bangladeshi economy because it comes at a time when several major indicators of the economy were already in a downward slope. Before the pandemic, economists warned that the country’s “macro economy was under pressure more than at any time in the past ten years.” The government’s denial of […]
The US Electoral College is flawed
“The ballot is stronger than the bullet.“ ~President Abraham Lincoln The U.S. presidential electoral process is a very lengthy, rigorous and costly one. With a diverse population of over 327 million and a multitude of racial, social, cultural and religious backgrounds, an election essentially becomes a methodical process of inclusion, collecting as many demographic and […]
No one will ever be free as long as there are pestilences
So wrote Albert Camus in his great novel, The Plague, and so we are learning its truth as we cower in our shelters from the Coronavirus, spreading the Covid-19 influenza that grips most of the world. We are certainly not free. I and my friends and family, as well as most Americans and it seems a […]
As the Afghan peace process gets underway, reality eclipses magic
Two weeks ago, as we awaited the signing of the US-Taliban Agreement which intends to ignite a peace process in Afghanistan, I wrote of the magic realism in general of US foreign policy and specifically in the agreement about to be signed. The agreement was signed on February 29 in Doha and is now available […]
‘Our Democracy Is In Danger’: Muslims In India Say Police Target Them With Violence
‘Our Democracy Is In Danger’: Muslims In India Say Police Target Them With Violence When Aysha Renna decided last month to demonstrate against India’s new citizenship law on her college campus in New Delhi, it never occurred to her that doing so might be dangerous. Across India, students at other universities were organizing similar rallies […]
Magical Realism in American Foreign Policy
This theme struck me when I attended last week a discussion among three highly respected experts at a Washington think tank of the much-hyped agreement between the US and the Taliban to test the outline of a peace process for Afghanistan with a week-long cessation of violence. This is said to be the much longed-for […]
