Never again. Remember that? The world was very determined to never allow another attempt at genocide after the Holocaust. We know now that those words were as empty and hollow as a whiskey barrel on the George Bush ranch. Genocides have happened again and will continue to happen if it is not in the “international […]
My previous attempt to get ahold of Shahbagh, its recent history and its politics has left many questions answered, many issues untouched. In this present attempt to gather some understanding of the currents in Shahbagh, I’ll address the political resonances of the protests begun February 5th, 2013, on the heels of Abdul Qader Mollah life […]
The following post is based on an address I delivered at the Shanghai Maritime Strategy Research Center two weeks ago. The punditry gods were smiling when Beijing and New Delhi declared 2012 as the Year of Sino-Indian Friendship. After all, it was a most curious designation, and not just because 2006 had received the same […]
A picture of Indian Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde; a picture of murderer and rapist Ram Singh; a picture of a guileful, fatal bus ride, caught on CCTV. Ram Singh, age 34, the leader of the gang of six that raped and murdered a 23 -year-old physiotherapist, was found dead yesterday, hanging in his jail cell […]
Shahbagh: The Set Up (Part 1 in a 3 Part Series about the Shahbagh Movement, its Politics and its Moral Content) Since this past February 5, now for the past month and more, the “youth” of Bangladesh have ebbed and flowed in the hundreds of thousands from the neighborhood of Shahbagh, in Dhaka. An occupying […]
My last post focused on the domestic implications in Pakistan of the latest revelations about the 1999 Kargil mini-war. Since the crisis is a key point of contention – a sort of Rorschach test, really – in the debate over whether the proliferation of nuclear weapons in South Asia has stabilized or aggravated the India-Pakistan […]
Give the people sports and they will forget all about politics. Such a maxim could be attributed to all manner of political figures from Commodus to Machiavelli. We can now add Kim Jong Un to that list after the North Korean leader welcomed former NBA weirdo Dennis Rodman to Pyongyang for a basketball game between […]
On Sunday, February 24, 2013, a regional peace accord was agreed upon in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, by 11 African nations from both the Great Lakes region and Southern Africa in an attempt to finally end two decades of conflict that have plagued most sections of the war-riddled country, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), particularly its mineral-rich eastern provinces. Appropriately labeled […]
For those physically-challenged weaklings who are constantly badgered and harassed by stronger bullies, joining a gym and working out can be a rational response. A quicker method, however, would be to enlist the assistance of your friends. No longer having to rely on your own limited defense against a stronger bully, you can take greater […]
Last week saw Laos formally become the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) 158th member. Before the ink had time to dry on the agreement, Asia-based pundits were already weighing in about the potential benefits of such a move, which took fifteen years in the making. Gretchen A. Kunze, the Laos-based representative for The Asia Foundation writes […]
My last post noted how skirmishes in the disputed Kashmir region last month have put a spanner in the promising rapprochement between India and Pakistan. This is a familiar theme in bilateral affairs. The exemplar of how military tussles in Kashmir can escalate into a wider confrontation and subvert important diplomatic initiatives is the 1999 […]
“In particular, I strongly believe that Europe should join the United States in increasing and deepening our defense engagement with the Asia-Pacific region.” These words are from outgoing U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta in his final overseas address to an audience at King’s College, London, delivered on January 18. This raises the question: […]
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