By Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury* DHAKA | 11 January 2024 (IDN) — Although the 7 January 2024 general election in Bangladesh has been free, fair, and peaceful, which has already been applauded by foreign and local election observers and media, policymakers at the US Department of State are not willing to admit this fact. Instead, […]
Taiwan: The Impact of Developing US-China Rivalry
By Jonathan Power LUND, Sweden | 10 January 2024 (IDN) — Is what you see what you’ll get? President Xi Jinping of China is poking the US in the eye again. China, he suggests, is all set to wrest Taiwan back into the “China fold”. Xi appears far more determined than his predecessors to try […]
Beyond Gaza and Ukraine, 10 Humanitarian Crises Demand Urgent Attention
This story was originally published by The New Humanitarian* GENEVA | 8 January 2024 (IDN) — As the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine continue to dominate headlines going into 2024, it’s important to remember the many other crises that are too easily forgotten by the media and neglected by aid donors—often just because of their […]
India: Desperate Youths Taking to Illegal Migration to the West
By Devinder Kumar NEW DELHI | 8 January 2024 (IDN) — A charter flight heading to Nicaragua from Dubai with 303 Indians on board was stopped in France on 21 December 2023 because of the authorities “human trafficking”. The plane was stuck in France for four days as neither Nicaragua nor the United Arab Emirates […]
Thailand: Farm Academy Training Takes Kids Away from Screens
By Pattama Vilailert KHON KAEN, Thailand | 6 January 2024 (IDN) — Nalinthip has been a nurse for 13 years and is the mother to two children aged three and five. Her husband is a YouTuber who spends most of his time on the screen at the age of 40. His Internet using behavior alarmed […]
Controversies Mar the Reputation of Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus
By Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury DHAKA | 2 January 2024 (IDN) — For many decades, Muhammad Yunus succeeded in remaining in the attention of international media and global celebrities and leaders by continuing self-promotion as the ‘savior of the poor’, ‘father of microcredit’ etc. Interestingly, many leaders in the West, including former US First Lady […]
One Man’s Fight Against the Madness of Missiles
By Jonathan Power LUND, Sweden | 2 January 2024 (IDN) — The nuclear weapon missile business is contradictory, full of missteps, highly dangerous and prepared in its madness (Mutually Assured Destruction, aka MAD, they used to call it in Cold War days) to plunge the world into a nuclear war that will reduce most of […]
Peace and Security: Homage to a Buddhist Spiritual Leader and a Great Writer
By Ramesh Jaura BERLIN | 1 January 2024 (IDN) — “Even an old fountain pen, if it happened to have belonged to some great writer, is looked on with awe and reverence by the people of later times, for they feel that somehow it is capable of revealing the secrets of the great man’s masterpieces,” […]
President Biden: Learn the Names of Children You’ve Helped Israel to Murder
Following is the letter Norman Solomon* wrote to President Joe Biden on 26 December 2023. SAN FRANCISCO | 29 December 2023 (IDN) — You’ve often spoken of how much you care about children and how terrible it is when they’re murdered. “Too many schools, too many everyday places have become killing fields,” you said at […]
India: Is the World’s Largest Democracy A “Mockery”?
By Kalinga Seneviratne SINGAPORE | 28 December 2023 (IDN) — India’s national Parliament—known as Lok Sabha (Lower House of the People)—has become a “mockery of democracy,” says the main opposition party Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge following a splurge of expulsions of their members from the chambers before important criminal law reform bills were debated and […]