By Amina J. Mohammed GENEVA, Jun 18 2020 (IPS) – I welcome this opportunity to speak to this urgent and necessary debate of the Human Rights Council. I bring you warm greetings from Secretary-General António Guterres, who shares your abhorrence…
Tag: Opinion
Glorious days: How a newspaper lost 14 years of web database
Mostafa Kamal Majumder The New Nation was at a high trajectory in respect of its circulation through the Internet. But at least 14 years of soft copies of the paper were lost as the website from where it was available…
Meritocracy Legitimises, Deepens Inequality
By Jomo Kwame Sundaram KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jun 18 2020 (IPS) – How often have you heard someone lamenting or even condemning inequality in society, concluding with an appeal to meritocracy? We like to think that if only the deserving,…
Matters of Chasing Onward
Dr. Sinha MA Sayeed Money is the root of all inconveniences caused off and often, noted Bengali literary Dr. Lutfar Rahman log time ago. Karl Marx calls it the most dominating factor in life. Religions of various natures, sizes, dimensions…
Forced marriage, organ trafficking rife in Asia Pacific – II
By Neena Bhandari The Asia Pacific region predominates in the numbers of victims of modern slavery. The region had 55 percent of the victims of forced marriage worldwide. This is the second of a 2-part series on trafficking and modern…
Covid-19 has increased children’s exposure to traffickers
By Tasneem Tayeb Jun 16 2020 – With Covid-19 bringing economic activities across nations to a halt, more and more people are being pushed into poverty. Job losses, business losses and farming losses, leading to economic stress, are pushing many…
Racism and Dominance
By Jan Lundius STOCKHOLM / ROME, Jun 15 2020 (IPS) – The #MeToo movement triggered worldwide protests that hopefully was instrumental in making people better aware of a continuous and often hidden mistreatment of women. Maybe can the current I…
Memorable days: Old Sangsad Bhaban now Prime Minister’s office
Mostafa Kamal Majumder At the close of a programme of the Ministry of Education at the Milanee Hall of Hotel Purbani International, education secretary Kazi Fazlur Rahman was exchanging views with journalists. Prime Minister Shah Azizur Rahman who was in…
American traumas
by Karin Pettersson on 8th June 2020 @AB_Karin Karin Pettersson explores the deep faultlines of unexpurgated racism tearing the United States apart. In 50 years, will the United States still exist? Or will the union have been pulled apart—in a…
Memorable days: The paper was flooded with reading materials
Mostafa Kamal Majumder Apart from two fresh editorials a day the inside pages of The New Nation started getting so much of up to date reading materials that those had to be accommodated through careful planning. Besides regular contributors like…
Leadership, Political Leadership and Statesmanship
Genesis of leadership When the number is one, question of leadership does not arise, when the numbers are two, a germ of leadership is sowed, when the numbers are more than two, question of leadership appears visible indistinctly but when…
Rethink free movement of capital against hostile takeovers
by Susanne Wixforth and John Weeks on 11th June 2020 Should free movement of capital any longer be sacrosanct when it leads to predatory takeovers and regional inequalities in a globalised economy?
Memorable days: When Kamal takes me people think I still can work
Mostafa Kamal Majumder The inside pages of The New Nation needed to be uplifted to increase its readership. I found the district page was two days’ stale. The man in -charge was not computer literate and was totally at the…
Facebook: A solace during coronavirus lockdown
M Zahidul Haque During the on-going corona lockdown, Facebook is serving as a solace to the locked-down people passing their time in some creative activities and in keeping communication with friends, relatives and others.
Sweden, the pandemic and precarious working conditions
by Lisa Pelling on 10th June 2020 @lisa_pelling Most commentary on the Covid-19 death toll in Sweden has been on the absence of lockdown, yet privatisation and precarity in eldercare should really be in the spotlight.
Economic Ghosts Block Post-Lockdown Recovery
By Jomo Kwame Sundaram KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jun 9 2020 (IPS) – As governments the world over struggle to revive their economies after the debilitating lockdowns they imposed following their failure to undertake adequate precautionary containment measures to curb Covid-19…
Science and politics: A new alliance?
by Valerio Alfonso Bruno on 9th June 2020 @ValerioA_Bruno The pandemic has brought science and expertise to the fore in the public sphere, as an anchor of trust—and put the populists on the back foot.
Glorious days: Wide DU teacher-student gap makes hit story
Mostafa Kamal Majumder I began attempting scoop news items apart from doing event-based stories and started attracting more attention of seniors and gradually made my place secure in The Bangladesh Times. One such report was on the worsening teacher-student relations…
Glorious days: Plugging in loopholes for economic baseline
Mostafa Kamal Majumder The proprietors of The New Nation did not ask me to look after the financial management of the paper. Yet I felt the burden because the journalists and general employees readily find the editor to tell of…
America’s unhappy middle
by Branko Milanovic on 1st June 2020 @BrankoMilan Branko Milanovic unpacks the malaise of the US middle class and its implications for Democratic strategy towards the presidential election. The voting behaviour of the American middle and lower-middle-class was, according to…
A global economy in unchartered waters
by John Evans on 3rd June 2020 Governments must learn from the financial crisis if they are not to repeat the errors of the recovery from it. Economic commentators have cautioned against drawing parallels between the economic impact of the…
Benefits of equality
by John Scales Avery A new freely downloadable book I would like to announce the publication of a book which presents evidence supporting the thesis that elimination of excessive economic inequality makes societies happier and better. The book may be…
Editor Mahbubul Alam won’t be forgotten
Tribute by Sir Frank Peters Saturday, June 6, 2020, is indeed a special day of remembrance. It marks the sixth death anniversary of Mahbubul Alam, that wonderful human being and newspaper doyen who once walked proudly among us sprinkling his…
Therapeutic Politik over Coronavirus!
M Zahidul Haque A few days back, the World Health Organization (WHO) had suspended the clinical trial of the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine following publication of a research paper in the peer reviewed medical journal-‘Lancet’ stating that people taking hydroxychloroquine were…
George Floyd: US’ Week of Broken Glass and Broken Dreams
By James Reinl NEW YORK, Jun 4 2020 (IPS) – The United States has been a story of broken dreams and broken glass this past week. Once again, an unarmed black man died at the hands of a white police…
Memorable days: Sheer luck to join a paper full of luminaries
Mostafa Kamal Majumder It was a matter of sheer luck that I joined The Bangladesh Times at the start of my career in journalism. The paper was the most dynamic among four English dailies of Dhaka City at that time…
A citizens’ conference on the future of Europe
by Marta Cillero Manzano on 4th June 2020 @martacille With agreement lacking on the future of Europe—even at the conference on that theme—it’s time to look to a European Citizens’ Assembly.
Conceptual Understanding of Leadership
Conceptual Understanding of Leadership Genesis of leadership When the number is one, question of leadership does not arise, when the numbers are two, the germ of leadership is sowed, when the numbers are more than two, question of leadership appears…
Covid-19 – Conspiracy or apocalypse?
By Daud Khan and Leila Yasmine Khan AMSTERDAM/ROME, Jun 1 2020 (IPS) – As the Covid-19 virus spread rapidly around the globe, so did various theories about what caused the pandemic. According to the standard scientific theory, the virus probably…
This year of living dangerously
By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Anis Chowdhury KUALA LUMPUR and SYDNEY, Jun 2 2020 (IPS) – Indonesia’s founding President Sukarno delivered his annual Independence or National Day address on 17 August 1964 anticipating the forthcoming year as Tahun vivere pericoloso,…