Police broke up a commemoration in Baku last Friday of the murders of twelve people—most of them students—at the State Oil Academy on 30 April 2009. The perpetrator of last year’s massacre, Farda Gadirov, was a Georgian of Azeri descent who shot students and staff indiscriminately once he gained entry into the academy. As police […]
The chill in US-Azerbaijani relations may be thawing soon. After months of perceived snubs from Washington and acrimony out of Baku, which included a recent announcement by Azerbaijan that they have pulled out of a scheduled military exercise with the US, a Turkish newspaper reports that the two countries have discussed a possible visit to […]
There is a big debate in Jewish/pro-Israel circles on whether being anti-Israel is inherently antisemitic. The basic argument is that no other country has its legitimacy questioned and every other ethnicity/religion has its own country. The concept of Mexico is not generally called illegitimate nor is the concept of New Zealand, albeit some fringe groups […]
I’d earlier written about Rushanara Ali, the Labour candidate from the Bengali enclave of Bethnal Green and Bow. The latest news from the BBC shows that she’s won her seat handily, winning twice as many votes as her nearest competitor, the Liberal Democrat candidate. This is a good day for many, a bleak one for […]
When President Obama announced that he was sending an additional 30,000 American troops to work under Gen. McChrystal’s leadership in Afghanistan, his very next sentence stated that US forces would be starting a withdrawal 18 months later on July 2011. I was critical of this at the time and still am. The US and the […]
The Bangladesh Student League is running rampant, loose across numerous universities across the country and the politicians–often, members of parliament–who support them are doing nothing to arrest the Student League’s criminal and violent behavior. The Daily Star reports that a leader of the AL has gone on record to admonish these politicians aiding and abetting […]
Bangladeshis and the Bengali community in London and in the United Kingdom, more broadly, have reason to celebrate today. For today, for the first time the Member of Parliament from Bangla Town is sure to be a Bengali. Each major party jockeying for power in the 2010 UK General Election has chosen a Bengali to […]
By Sean Goforth (Latin America blog) During his tenure President da Silva has been a welcome, universally adored, conciliator in Latin America. In this week’s TIME, the annual “World’s Most Influential People” list starts with Lula. I am still not sure what to make of Michael Moore’s essay on him. Now Lula is moving center […]
The dire straits of European economy have made the necessity of major financial reforms blatantly obvious. Measures that a few months ago were taboo are now unabashedly aired. These days it is not unusual to find heretic ideas – such as the possibility of suspending a country’s participation in the euro – in the columns […]
Writing in Wall Street Journal, Sadanand Dhume asks the obvious question. Why do Pakistan and the Pakistani diaspora churn out such a high proportion of the world’s terrorists? Indonesia has more Muslims than Pakistan. Turkey is geographically closer to the troubles of the Middle East. The governments of Iran and Syria are immeasurably more hostile […]
The way journalism is treated in today’s Russia, perhaps it is not surprising that one of its greatest practitioners continues to linger in obscurity decades after his death. Yet The Guardian’s Luke Harding sees the hand of a new Stalinism behind the contemporary unpopularity of Vasily Grossman, the legendary war reporter and novelist whose Tolstoian […]
Russian journalists are used to being kicked when they’re down. But new proposed legislation could go much further by basically branding the country’s already curbed, cowed and embattled reporters accessories to terrorists. According to the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, The proposal, which was presented to the country’s lower parliament, the State Duma, […]
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