Lebanon has undergone some significant changes in the past six months. The pro-Western March 14 coalition narrowly triumphed in the surprisingly peaceful June parliamentary elections; after some intense political wrangling, a cabinet was formed that was acceptable to most; and recently Lebanon’s Prime Minister has been on the move garnering support for his country and […]
Rafael Caldera, the last Venezuelan president to serve in office prior to the administration of Hugo Chávez, passed away on Thursday. Interestingly, Caldera’s terms seem to have book-ended the more democratic period of the country’s history. In 1946 Caldera founded COPEI, a Social-Christian political party. In 1958 he played an instrumental role in the Punto […]
Zainab Jeewanjee comments on a DAWN article that talks about foreign “meddling” in Pakistani affairs. She discusses how foreign dealings in Pakistan could be a result of history wherein political infrastructure was never put in place, inevitably making Pakistan reliant on foreign assistance for development.
As Brazil’s economy has taken off, international companies have jumped at the opportunity to provide the Brazilian market with in-demand products and services. Some of the most successful areas include automobiles, home appliances (i.e. washing machines, TVs, etc), banking, and telecommunications. But according to a new study by IMS Health, the next big market in […]
Vietnam: The Asia Times has a fairly detailed article on Vietnam’s transportation bottleneck. Specifically, it takes a look at Vietnam’s port capacity as compared to its neighbors in the region, and how it’s current infrastructure needs to improve if Vietnam wishes to continue to see economic growth. To remedy the issue, the Vietnamese government is […]
There are times when I am tempted to accept Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) as a genuine political party. However, thankfully, I come to my senses as soon as MQM attempts one of those fascist maneuvers that have become synonymous with MQM. If anyone pays close attention, it is not difficult to see a pattern with […]
The Israeli government, settlers, the IDF, Palestinians, the Palestinians Authority, and terrorists all have diferent narratives and motivations on the events of the past few days that left one Israeli killed and six Palestinians dead. This situation brings to light some challenges and problems with the status quo of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Fact: An Israeli […]
Merry Christmas to all. It is a sign of the rising urgency of the necessary work that still needs to be done in order to foster tolerance in Bangladesh that the Awami League has taken security measures in order to ensure that peace prevails for the Christmas celebrations in Bangladesh. It were as if the […]
The Copenhagen Conference has claimed another victim: Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed’s prestige on the international stage. Her state visit to India to hash out issues as far ranging as investment in cross-border electrical grids, prisoner swaps and child trafficking got derailed when her Indian counterpart decided to attend the talks in Copenhagen. Her visit […]
In an op-ed in todays New York Times, Alan Kuperman, director of the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Program at the University of Texas at Austin, outlines the reasons that negotiations with Iran to thwart its nuclear program have not and will not work. Instead, he calls for precision, aerial strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. And instead of […]
On Monday, Hugo Chávez accused Colombia of using a US-manufactured spy plane to over-fly its airspace. Colombian officials denied not only that this happened, but stated that their military did not have such the required military technology. The retort from Bogotá via its Defense Minister, Gabriel Silva, included a little bit of humor: perhaps the […]
Upon the retirement of the Chief Justice M.M. Ruhul Amin, Justice M. Tazzaful Islam was elevated to teh seat of Chief Justice on December 22nd. Though he will serve his term for only a few months, he nevertheless intends to be an activist justice on the bench of the Bangladesh Supreme Court. However, his remarks […]
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