First posted November 28, 2011 Archer Kent Blood (March 20, 1923 – September 3, 2004) was an American diplomat in Bangladesh. He served as the last American Consul General to Dhaka, East Pakistan. The Blood telegram (April 6, 1971) was seen as one of the most strongly worded messages ever written by Foreign Service Officers to the State Department. It was signed… Read More The Blood Telegram
Bharat Bhushan As Bangladesh moves closer to the general election due in January 2024, violence and instability in the country are set to increase. Nearly 10,000 opposition leaders and activists were arrested after the October 28 rally of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). Media reports suggest that the prisons have no room left. The opposition… Read More Cambodian template for Bangladesh elections
Ideology is the most devilish variation of the lie: Hannah Arendt, Approaches to the “German Problem”; in Essays in Understanding, 1994 NB: The American establishment, its allies and a vast section of its media use the word evil with Nelsonian vision. As someone who has observed evil with both eyes and no national, religious, or… Read More Evil, with one eye
Chile is a dagger pointed at the heart of Antarctica – Henry A. Kissinger. By Melvin Goodman / CounterPunch Our 240 years of history have not produced a more controversial secretary of state than Henry A. Kissinger. There are enormous achievements associated with Kissinger, including the Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in… Read More More Evidence Regarding Henry Kissinger’s Lies About Chile
Sounds of gunfire keep Modina Khatun awake every night in Cox’s Bazaar Bangladesh – the world’s largest refugee camp. She fears that spiralling gang violence there will make a widow of another Rohingya woman like herself, with young children to feed. By Anbarasan Ethirajan Ms Khatun’s husband, Bashir Ullah, became a grim statistic last June… Read More Rohingya: Gang violence stalks world’s largest refugee camp
First posted April 01, 2016 NB: This issue relates to the centuries-old debate about civil religion, a matter dealt with extensively by Ronald Beiner in his excellent book Civil Religion: a Dialogue in the History of Political Philosophy. After 1789, nationalism emerged as an alternative civic religion and patriotism became a political form of prayer. So zealotry… Read More David Bergman: As Bangladesh court reaffirms Islam as state religion, secularism hangs on to a contradiction
First posted Tuesday, April 09, 2013 Letter from Members of the CPI (ML) See the facsimile of the original here: http://www.sacw.net/article4164.html Explanatory Note 1./ This is an open letter I wrote in December 1971, as a Naxalite cadre (among many) who experienced the political crisis accompanying the disintegration of Pakistan in 1970-71. It was anonymous, and I was the… Read More An Open Letter to the world on the Bangladesh crisis of 1971
Arafat Ara These days, Suman Mia works a power loom in a factory on the outskirts Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. He stands 15 hours a day. “I go to work at 3pm, and come home at 7am,” he said. “I have very little time to sleep, but there is nothing I can do about… Read More Migrant workers still paying off debts that brought them to Qatar
there are indications that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia may have had prior knowledge that the coup d’etat would take place. Both countries recognised the “Islamic Republic of Bangladesh” very soon after Mujib’s death. Clearly, this represented some level of coordination between Islamabad and Riyadh. The coincidence is simply too coincidental… Lawrence Lifschultz has been writing… Read More Conversation with Lawrence Lifschultz (2014): The reporter who investigated the assassination of Mujibur Rahman
NB: December 1971 is a time I remember vividly. I was in Kolkata and travelled to Purnea in North Bihar to meet my dear comrade Lalloo, (Rabindra Ray). We were then amongst the last remaining comrades from amongst our collegiate group who were still in what was known as ‘the underground’. That story has been… Read More Memories of 1971
After the truth-shower 