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FOREIGN OBSERVERS IRKED BY GOVERNANCE STYLE
Crisis group warns of 'military take-over'
M. Shahidul Islam
Effective leadership being the ability to successfully integrate and maximize available resources to obtain targeted goals, those goals can not be achieved unless stability is restored first.
Dogged and hammered by a succession of crises since assuming power early this year, the AL-led regime now finds itself in the midst of more intractable challenges which many of the national institutions will fail to help overcome due to deliberate weakening of them by political influence peddling and partisan motivations...[ FULL STORY ]
Knots, now in C'hagen, next in Delhi
Sadeq Khan
By the time our Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina arrived at the high-level segment of the Copenhagen Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP-15), the sunshine of the conference climate was already under clouds of disagreement. Negotiations to revise the Kyoto protocol or to agree on contributions for rescue and relief of vulnerable populations threatened by sea-rise and melting ice-caps around the globe failed to take off. As Bill Mckibben, founder of 350.org, a campaign to spread the goal of reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide to 350 parts per million worldwide, noted in an article on Copenhagen:
Climate change politics
The physics of climate change is being swept under the carpet by the politics of climate change, and that "may mean the end of civilisation. Most political arguments don't really have a right and a wrong, no matter how passionately they're argued. They're about human preferences...[ FULL STORY ]
Victory Day celebrated
Holiday Report
The nation on December 16 celebrated the 38 years of victory in the Liberation War, 1971, saluting the gallant sons and daughters of the soil who made supreme sacrifices for self-determination and a secular democratic state.
Enthusiastic with the spirit of independence, people of all walks across the country gathered at the memorials of the martyrs at Savar.
They paid tributes to the war heroes amid calls for the young generation to bring positive changes to the nation. They also demanded a quick start of the trial of war criminals.
President, prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition in separate messages paid their tributes to the liberation martyrs and asked the people to take a fresh vow in building a prosperous nation...[ FULL STORY ]
ULFA threatens severe consequences if Dhaka doesn't change policy
Faisal Rahim
The war game is spreading in this part of the world, the latest being Bangladesh coming closer to the battle grounds when India is taking on ULFA insurgency.
Not only the country's infrastructures and important business and communication installations may become targets of ULFA insurgents in case the Bangladesh government is not changing its policy of capturing their leaders to hand over them to India who may be in hiding here for security reasons. Strategic analysts apprehend that the Bengali-speaking people of Assam who once migrated there, may also become their targets.
The insurgent leaders made no secret of the ultimate fall out as some newspaper reports here said last week quoting the outfit commander-in-chief Poresh Barua who talked about 'severe consequences' for Bangladesh in case it is not changing its actions and policies towards what he said the 'freedom struggle' of the state of Assam...[ FULL STORY ]
China for nuclear energy to fight
climate change
Fazle Rashid in New York
This piece will deal with not one but several issues, each with greater political, military and global importance than the other. China will build 10 nuclear power plants in each of the next three years to accelerate power generation as well to reduce greenhouse gas emission.
China has sought international help in training a force of nuclear inspectors. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the non-binding interim accord on climate change that will emerge in Copenhagen will not include the promised financial help for the developing countries. But there is a glimmer of hope. The interim non-binding deal will have a provision for compensating nations to preserve forests, peat soils, swamps and fields that play a crucial role in curbing climate change. ..[ FULL STORY ]
Nepali Maoists declare 13 states autonomous
Special Correspondent
Despite facing widespread criticism, Nepal's main opposition party UCPN (Maoists) have continued to declare autonomous states one after another as per its third round of protests against the President's move on army chief case.
Civilian supremacy
As a part of their ongoing third-phase agitation demanding 'civilian supremacy', the Maoists have already declared ten such states, so far...[ FULL STORY ]
Pakistan ignored demands of the Bangalees: Hassan
Abdur Rahman Khan
Pakistan regrets the tragedy of 1971 and the people are ashamed of the crime committed against the people of Bangladesh (the then East Pakistan.)
"But I am happy that Bangladesh won her liberation and now making progress after separation from Pakistan", said the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader Professor Mian Ijaz ul Hassan...[ FULL STORY ]
THE BOTTOM LINE
Taher Quddus
Few years ago I went to Kolkata for a short business trip. I was not very well, yet I could not avoid. No doubt the trip was short but the experience was memorable and hilarious. The whole thing happened on my return trip from Kolkata-Dhaka in the evening flight.
I arrived at Dum Dum Airport in time and boarded the wide-bodied aircraft of Bangladesh Biman. When all passengers boarded the pilot started the engines. Soon after we all experienced pungent smell of some thing like ammonia. Pilot without any announcement switched off the engines. The group of cabin crew started looking for the source of the smell but without avail. The drill continued several times...[ FULL STORY ]
AS SEEN BY GUWAHATI’S THE SENTINEL
Bangladesh in dilemma over ULFA
Over dinner at the plush Gulshan Club on Monday, Bangladesh Foreign Secretary Mohamed Mijarul Quayes regaled some thirty of us by singing not one, but two Tagore songs. Quayes just needed a mild prodding from one of his predecessors Farooq Sobhan — who had been Bangladesh’s High Commissioner to India before returning to Dhaka as Foreign Secretary —to break into song. An eloquent speaker, Quayes is a 1982 batch Foreign Service officer and is just about 49, quite young to hold the coveted job in any country. “My wife has family linkages in Assam,” he told me as we engaged in a conversation...[ FULL STORY ]
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