By David Loy Maybe every modern generation feels confronted by some crisis that will affect the fate of the world, but unless your head is buried in the sand (or some Buddhist equivalent) it’s impossible to be ignorant of the…
Category: Op-Ed
Upcycling Food Waste Can Make a Difference—12 Orgs Prove It
Danielle Nierenberg To begin this newsletter, I want to make sure that everyone reading this in the United States has information about how to register to vote and how to request a mail-in ballot. No matter your political affiliation, voting…
Power to the People
Alan Stoga “What building a state and what building a society means … is for people to come together, discuss, and agree on a shared way forward.” “When they come to power through military means, they tend to then rely…
SDGs Not Just About Collecting Data, but What You Do With it
By Tim Mohin AMSTERDAM, Sep 21 2020 (IPS) – The unprecedented challenges posed by COVID-19 have reminded us that we are an interconnected global community. While this crisis rightly has dominated our attention, we must not lose sight of progress…
Police May Pull the Trigger, but It’s the System That Kills
By Richard E. Rubenstein Fifty years ago this year, I published my first book, entitled Rebels in Eden – an exploration of mass political violence in America focusing on the uprisings that had by then incinerated substantial portions of the…
Freedom’s Backstory
Sudhirendar Sharma This study busts the persistent myths about colonialism, also detailing how many Britons turned against their empire’s endless oppression.
SWAMI AGNIVESH – A TRIBUTE
Dr Chandra Muzaffar Swami Agnivesh has left us. And yet he is still with us. He was undoubtedly one of the most courageous fighters against religious fanaticism and religious bigotry of our time. He spoke out without hesitation against fanatical…
Father Timm- My Benevolent Guide
M ZAHIDUL HAQUE YES, Father Richard William Timm was indeed a benevolent guide to me. He used to guide me whenever I would ask him for his advice. He was an ardent reader of my newspaper articles and would often…
The endearing legacy of the slain prince
Sudhirendar Sharma Dara was a great unifier of religions and essayed his brand of religious liberalism at a time when orthodox Sunni faith was on its ascendancy.
Glorious days: New Nation escaped internecine Ittefaq feud
Mostafa Kamal Majumder The publication of The New Nation remained uninterrupted and its journalists and employees worked in unbelievable safety for one full year when the proprietor and the members of his family were unable to enter the Ittefaq Bhaban,…
Over 1 mln Children Could Die for COVID-19 Economic Crisis
By Stella Paul IPS senior correspondent Stella Paul interviews Nobel Laureate KAILASH SATYARTHI on the eve of Fair Share for Children Summit, a global virtual conference in which Nobel Laureates and world leaders are calling for the world’s most marginalised…
Social Protesting Pre and Post Covid-19
By Elma Berisha ‘Global Protest Wave of 2019’, is a term used to describe the unprecedented global phenomenon of prolonged anti-government mass protests occurring throughout 2019. From start to the end of “the year of street protests”, more than 60%…
You are cordially not invited
Sudhirendar Sharma Much has changed since the faceless virus vitiated all civic life. Even the ‘made in heaven’ tag couldn’t save marriages from losing its sheen, with most guests falling under ‘you are cordially not invited’ list. A crash of…
Glorious Days: Dream housing society of Dhaka’s Journalists
Mostafa Kamal Majumder From the early eighties I started getting offers to contest elections of the Jatiya Press Club Managing Committee. I always sidetracked such offers because I felt I had little time to spare in Press Club activities. I…
Where Gender Equality, Forest Conservation Go Hand in Hand
By Rosamaria Loures and Sarah Sax NEW YORK, Aug 27 2020 (IPS) – On an early December morning last year in the state of Maranhão, Brazil, half a dozen members of the Indigenous Guajajara people packed their bags with food,…
Evolution of Zoom as Communication Platform during Pandemic
By Dr Jaspal Kaur Sadhu Singh Readers may be familiar with the idiom “at a rate of knots”. This aptly describes the pace in which a video conferencing platform evolved into a vital tool of expression,communication, and to China, a…
To Understand the ‘Other’: How Disabilities Define Us
By Jan Lundius STOCKHOLM / ROME, Aug 21 2020 (IPS) – You can shine your shoes and wear a suit you can comb your hair and look quite cute you can hide your face behind a smile one thing you…
Don’t be Hoodwinked by Trump’s UAE-Israel ‘Peace Deal’
Co-Written by Medea Benjamin and Ariel Gold “HUGE breakthrough today,” crowed Donald Trump on Twitter as he announced the new peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The deal makes the UAE the first Gulf Arab state…
‘There is No Solution Without You’
Alan Stoga “What Covid has done is to apply an extraordinary and unusually powerful microscope to worldwide governance. And much of what we see through that lens of the microscope is not pretty.” —Cardinal Michael Czerny
Glorious days: Walkout, division at first sitting of 1991 JS
Mostafa Kamal Majumder After the election of the 1991 Parliament on 27 February that year following nine long years of movement that toppled the rule of President Hussain Muhammad Ershad, private members belonging to the BNP, the Awami League, especially…
Keeping Education within the Grasp of Refugee Children
By Mantoe Phakathi MBABANE, Aug 13 2020 (IPS) – “Not being able to go to school is not something I’d wish on any child in this world,” said 21-year-old Nujeen Mustafa, a young advocate for refugees who fled the Syrian…
Beirut Blast
By Chandra Muzaffar Four days after the Beirut Blast of 4th August 2020, the Lebanese president, Michel Aoun, has attempted to explain what caused the largest explosion since the end of the Second World War. He attributes it to either…
Africa on the Run
Alan Stoga “Because there’s less external pressure on the continent now than there has ever been, we are beginning to see African countries coming together to figure out how they’re going to solve their problems.” —Carole Wainaina
Glorious Days: Experience of working with senior bureaucrats
Mostafa Kamal Majumder When The New Nation became financial stable by the year 2007, the proprietor of the paper started experimenting with CSP cadre bureaucrats to establish themselves at its helm. They were retired secretaries to the government. I took…
Beirut On its Knees
By Eliane Eid BEIRUT, Lebanon, Aug 6 2020 – Following the massive explosion in Beirut on Aug. 4, IPS correspondent Eliane Eid reports that the residents of the city are still shell shocked. Beirut looks like a battlefield, with destruction…
Triple Disasters of Flooding, Corona and Lost Livelihoods
By Farid Ahmed DHAKA, Aug 5 2020 (IPS) – With nearly 5.5 million people across Bangladesh affected by severe flooding — the worst in two decades — experts are concerned that millions of people, already badly impacted by COVID-19, will…
Leading by example: Cuba in the Covid-19 pandemic
By Helen Yaffe 4 Jun 2020 – The response of socialist Cuba to the global SARS-CoV2 pandemic has been outstanding both domestically and for its international contribution. That a small island nation, subjected to hundreds of years of colonialism and…
The True Price of Pesticides Is Unaffordable
by Layla Liebetrau NAIROBI – A mounting body of evidence suggests that industrial agriculture is failing the planet and its people. In particular, harmful chemical pesticides increasingly threaten the environment and public health.
Emerging Economies Should Build Back Greener
by Luis Alberto Moreno,Henry M. Paulson, Jr. WASHINGTON, DC – While lockdowns have slowed the spread of the coronavirus in many countries, their economic impact has been devastating. At the same time, with fewer commuters, factories at a standstill, and…
The enduring vulnerability of Indian scribes
by Nava Thakuria The vulnerability of working journalists in India is no way an alien issue as the populous country loses a number of working journalists to assailants and also medical emergencies every year. Even though there was only one…