Chintaa

Farhad Mazhar || Sunday 12 April 15 || READ BY SUBJECT: Envioronment, Ecology, Biodiversity

The word ‘sangkranti’ implies the moment of transition that has no beginning and no end; the notion is not linear, but cyclical. The sun moves through space and every month crosses each of the signs of the zodiac, known as rashi, and completes twelve cycles of the year. So there is no ‘new’ year but return of the cycle, or the ‘chakra’. In the cyclic movement, every point is literally the end of the cycle as well as the beginning. There is no new beginning, and therefore no ‘past’ in the linear sense of the term. The word ‘sangkranti’ captu (Read More )

Mustain Zahir || Wednesday 13 November 13 || READ BY SUBJECT: Media &Culture

“If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” – Malcolm X

Poet and writer Farhad Mazhar is not intimidated by the propaganda campaign being orchestrated by a partisan section of the media community. It is engaged in this activity to create the kind of political condition that would incite the regime to punish him. This particular section of the media fears the poet’s social critique which exposes the contradictions (Read More )

Farida Akhter || Monday 21 January 13 || READ BY SUBJECT: Wome's Issues

Every day we have to read or hear about some rape and also killing after rape occurring in different areas of the country. Rape and killings are direct physically attack on a woman’s body but violence against women is more than that. These other forms of violence caused by social, economic and cultural factorsand various development policies are often ignored not because that they are not directly physical or invisible but they must be made so to justify systemic violence. Injecting Depo-Provera into poor women’s bodies or implanting Norplant under her skin for population control and kee (Read More )

A Statement by the Asian Human Rights Commission and Odhikar || Saturday 20 October 12 || READ BY SUBJECT: Human Rights

The entire governmental machinery of Bangladesh, with its retinue of law-enforcement units, intelligence agencies, and security forces, has totally and abysmally failed to protect minority communities in the South Eastern region of the country. A large number of monasteries, temples, houses and establishments of the Buddhist communities of the area, and even those belonging to some of the Hindu communities, have been subject to open arson and looting. Starting on September 29th, 2012 for 3 straight days the rampage continued in Cox's Bazar and Chittagong districts. The devastating attacks began at R (Read More )

Farhad Mazhar || Tuesday 07 December 10 || READ BY SUBJECT: Bangladesh Politics

From Copenhagen to Cancun: Low expectation prevails

The COP 16 of 2010 UNFCCC climate conference began in Cancun from 29^th November for 12 days amidst much lower expectation of achieving significant commitment from the developed countries for lowering the emissions. After the failed climate conference of the COP 15, held in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2009, there is not much to expect from Cancun. The struggle of the environmental activists and the delegates of t (Read More )

Lena Meari and Tanzeen Doha || Wednesday 13 October 10 || READ BY SUBJECT: Interviews

Israeli Domination and the Workings of Ideology

Norman Finkelstein is one of the leading American critics of Israeli foreign policy. As a political scientist he wrote extensively on the exploitation of the holocaust as an ideological weapon and on the crisis in Palestinian occupied territories. He received his doctorate in 1988 from the Department of Politics at Princeton University.

He has a long history of teaching political theory and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Even though he clearly met publishin (Read More )

Farida Akhter || Monday 23 August 10 || READ BY SUBJECT: Worker & Industry

Garment Workers work harder but less food to eat

This paper presented  by Farida Akhter at the workshop  'South Asia Regional Workshop on Global Financial and Economic Crisis and its Impact on Women: A Human Rights Perspective'; it  took place on 22-23 August 2010 in Delhi, India and organised by UNIFEM, PWESCR and HEINRICH  BöLL STIFTUNG. It was prsented as a Bangladesh country perspective on the impact of the current crisis on women, their livelihoods and human rights.

(Read More )