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DHAKA AND BEIJING UNDER SPOTLIGHT
Armageddon to pounce on South Asia?
M. Shahidul Islam
The long held apprehensions of the subdued few are proving prophetic as one of the 'Great Games' of this century has already begun to enter its final phase in South Asia where about three-fourths of a billion people subsists on a US$1 per day, or less.
The prospect of an impending war between India and Pakistan is looming ever larger and the loyalty of Bangladesh in particular - and China in general - is being torn apart by competing regional and global interests of powers vying desperately for a quick victory in the ongoing global war on terror that the sole superpower, USA, had initiated in 2001 but failed to win...[ FULL STORY ]
DESIGN TO REHABILITATE FALLEN DICTATOR?
Grassroots supporters resent
party nominations
Faruque Ahmed
While nomination process was on, Awami League's enthusiasm to share seats with former dictator Lt. Gen. (Retd) H M Ershad by offering him the post of President of the Republic, has shocked the democracy-loving people of the country.
Political activists who had joined the movement to overthrow the dictator and the near and dear ones of the martyrs gunned down in the anti-Ershad movement are deeply surprised at the design to rehabilitate the ex-convict...[ FULL STORY ]
National polls vis-à-vis
geopolitical climate
Sadeq Khan
Through many trials and tribulations, Bangladesh polity is now set on a steady course towards the terminus of a perilous roadmap of emergency rule. The election schedule for the ninth parliament is being adhered to by all competing candidates, parties and alliances. A fully participatory and fairly observed hustings is under process on all sides. The guessing game over the date of complete withdrawal of emergency "ahead of polls" is also bound to be ended by derision of dysfunction, if not by announcement, under the heat of election fever and court rulings. The armed forces called on emergency duties have gone back to the barracks on Nov 3. They are expected to be called back for election duties only a week before the date of polling...[ FULL STORY ]
AMERICAN DIPLOMACY IN INDIA, PAKISTAN
Hillary's India link raises question about her impartiality
Sadeq Khan
In the context of current tension between India and Pakistan over terrorist attack in Mumbai, the nomination of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State by President-elect Barack Obama has come up for further scrutiny. Though the Indian-Americans have very good relations with the Republicans, it is widely believed that they have special relations with the Clinton family.
Because of their warm relations with India, Hillary's acceptability as an impartial negotiator between the two nuclear neighbours, India and Pakistan, may be questioned...[ FULL STORY ]
4000MW POWER GENERATION POSSIBLE
Solar power: Our viable energy option
Abdur Rahman Khan
"I am satisfied that I produce my own electricity and consume it without any interference", said Abdur Rob, a teacher living in a village house illuminated with solar power.
Abdur Rob of village Kanchabalia in the southern district of Jhalakathi had tried in vain over the years to get power connection from Palli Bidyut Samity of REB. Finally in September 2006, he bought a solar home system (SHS) through an NGO.
"The technology is not very expensive but affordable. I have installed the panel on the rooftop of my tin-shed house that gives me electricity sufficient to lit four bulbs, operate a black and white television and charge my mobile phone," said Abdur Rob, headmaster in charge of Gabha High School...[ FULL STORY ]
Polls game may lead to
parties' frustration
Special Correspondent
The parliamentary polls of December 29 may bring frustrating results for the political parties with no major alliance is foreseen to be in a position to win 151 seats required to form a government.
It is presumed that the selection of controversial candidates, cancellation of party nominations on various grounds and the growing dissatisfaction among the party workers may compel the major parties to embark on an uncomfortable ground this time...[ FULL STORY ]
Islam succumbs to burn injury,
probe demanded
Holiday Report
Ganotontree Party president Nurul Islam, 68, who sustained critical burn injuries in a mysterious fire at his Lalmatia home, died at the Dhaka Combined Miltary Hospital on Thursday.
His son Tamohar Islam, 36, also died in the fire. Islam's condition had remained critical since he was transferred to the CMH Wednesday noon.
BNP Chairperson Begum Khaleda Zia and Awami League President Sheikh Hasina visited the veteran trade union leader at the hospital...[ FULL STORY ]
US wants Dhaka to restore democracy
and prosperity
Holiday Report
US Republican senator John McCain has said Washington will continue to follow Bangladesh closely through the 'election process and transition' as it wants to see a return to the democratically elected government in Bangladesh through a free, fair and credible poll.
McCain, who lost to Barak Obama in the November 4 presidential election, urged Bangladesh's political parties to accept the election results and work together for the interest of the country, and said that the general elections of December 29 will possibly be 'the fairest one'...[ FULL STORY ]
GLIMPSES OF THE GREAT
Sigmund Freud
K. Z. Islam
Sigmund Freud's (1856-1939) fundamental idea - that all humans are endowed with an unconscious in which potent sexual and aggressive drives, and defences against them, struggle for supremacy, as it were, behind a person's back. His contention that the catalogue of neurotic ailments to which humans are susceptible is nearly always the work of sexual maladjustments, and that erotic desire starts not in puberty but in infancy, seemed to the respectable nothing less than obscene. His dramatic evocation of a universal Oedipus complex, in which (to put a complicated issue too simply) the little boy loves his mother and hates his father, seems more like a literary conceit than a thesis worthy of a scientifically minded psychologist.
Freud first used the term psychoanalysis in 1896, when he was already 40. He had been driven by ambition from his earliest days and encouraged by his doting parents to think highly of himself...[ FULL STORY ]
DISTURBING SIGNALS FROM DELHI
Stratagem to redraw South Asia's map?
Shamsuddin Ahmed
Is India preparing to attack Pakistan? New Delhi is almost totally convinced that the November 26 terrorist attack on Mumbai was carried out by Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba with assistance from its intelligence agency ISI. India's deputy Home Minister said attackers were all from Pakistan. Newly appointed Home Minister Chidambaram spoke of response to Pakistan with determination and resolve. The ruling Congress party spokesman, anxious to shore up confidence in domestic demands, called for stern and immediate action. "Certainly we are not going to sit back with Pakistan unleashing this terror on India," the International Herald Tribune (IHT) quoted an unnamed senior security official as saying.
The assertion of Pakistani involvement is based on confession by an alleged terror held from one of the spots of attacks, Ajmal Amir Qasab, who is in an Indian military hospital with injury in the leg...[ FULL STORY ]
TOP UNAIDS OFFICIALS SAY
Less funding could lead to millions of AIDS deaths
Thalif Deen at United Nations
The global economic crisis is threatening to undermine yet another key development goal set by the United Nations: reversing by 2015 the AIDS epidemic still devastating millions of people worldwide.
The continued refrain that "there is too much money for AIDS" is misleading, says Dr. Peter Piot, executive director of the Geneva-based UNAIDS. The "sobering reality" is that the AIDS response remains under funded...[ FULL STORY ]
Usual blame game follows
Mumbai mayhem
Fazle Rashid in New York
The United States with a lame duck president in office toughens its stand against Pakistan, its strongest ally in war against terror. Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state who visited India and Pakistan in the wake of the carnage in Mumbai employed harsh language against Pakistan and ordering it to cooperate with India to find out the terrorist. India and the US have both arrived at the conclusion that the Mumbai massacre was engineered in Pakistan, an allegation stoutly denied by Islamabad...[ FULL STORY ]
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