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Guide to Dhaka: ‘an unplanned sprawl’

My name is Ershad Ahmed. I retired in 1994 after spending 27 years working in government. I started my photo blog, Dhakadailyphoto, eight years ago. I have been living in Eskaton, a residential neighbourhood in Dhaka, for 20 years. It intersects a stretch of the VIP road that connects two landmarks of Bangladesh’s capital: the Shahbag Square and the Pan Pacific Sonargaon Hotel. People in the neighbourhood are friendly and cooperative. A lot of businesses have moved here recently, taking advantage of its central location. During the World Cup, locals supported the two South American soccer giants, Brazil and Argentina: their flags fluttered in most houses throughout the tournament.

South Asian countries are still defining their identities

Tom Hussain

 August 14 and 15 are dates unique in modern history in that they represent the 67th anniversary of independence from colonial rule of three of the world’s most populous nations: India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, the latter initially being part of Pakistan until it split away in 1971. Between them, they account for roughly 20 per cent of humanity.Because of that, and their participation in Asia’s increasingly competitive strategic environment, they will invariably have a great bearing on world affairs as the 21st century progresses. The nature of that impact, however, remains unclear, because all three countries continue to struggle to define their respective national identities and, therefore, cannot state with any certainty what they ...

Israel bites hand that feeds, US feeds hand that bites

Thalif Deen

There is an age-old axiom in politics, says a cynical Asian diplomat, that you don’t bite the hand that feeds you. But that longstanding adage never applied to Israel, which although sustained militarily by the United States, has had no compunction at lashing out at Washington if the U.S. is ever critical of illegal settlements or human rights violations in the occupied territories. “The U.S. government has continued to serve as an enabler for Israeli slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.”—Norman Solomon

The triple whammy for indigenous women in Dhaka

I am one of many indigenous women living and working in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh where thousands struggle to make a living in the beauty, garment and domestic work industries. Most are poor, with little education and lack access to basic healthcare and social protection. In fact, indigenous peoples around the world share these injustices. khumi-women-iBut my story is different. I’m 32 years old and I’m from the Lushai community in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. In 2010 I left my family and headed for Dhaka on my own to work as a...

Freedom is shooting 28 Bangladeshis 

It sounds like Greek to you but it doesn’t sound like that to the Greeks. To them this is justice. Never have the scales of justice been so blindsided as they were on Wednesday when a Greek court set free four countrymen who were accused of shooting (with real guns) 28 Bangladeshi workers who were protesting non-payment of salaries for six months. This pathetic, fiscal wreck of a little country that no one cares about and is now Europe’s basket case had the temerity to destroy all these centuries of belief that Greece was an ancient civilization and that land of Plato and Socrates and Aristotle, Archimedes and Euripedes, the nation that gave the world Sophocles and Aritides and kings like Ptolemy and Antigone has fallen to such tragedy that even the republic as Plato knew it counts f...

Secrets of old ship found beneath World Trade Center ruins

It was a Tuesday when construction workers found it. The location was lower Manhattan and the year was 2010 — nine years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that toppled the World Trade Center towers. The workers were in awe. Underneath the black muck and ooze of the ruins lay an exoskeleton of something that hadn’t seen air for 200 years and, freshly exposed to the elements, was quickly deteriorating. [caption id="attachment_8467" align="alignleft" width="300"]Workers and members of the media inspect Workers and members of the media inspect the hull of a shi...