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Column
What’s unknowable about N. Korea
As the inner group of the new North Korean leadership is inaccessible, it is impossible to know how and what decisions are made in the North. We only learn about them after they are officially announced. We struggle to understand what led to the decisions and to figure out what…
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Column
Arab Spring: good news
The good news about last weekend’s election in Libya, as relayed by the Western media, was that the “Islamists” were defeated and the Good Guys won. The real good news was that democracy in the Arab world is still making progress, regardless of whether the voters choose to support secular…
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Escalating suspicion
FTC should uncover truth of CD rate scandal Ripples from the suspected certificates of deposit (CD) rate-rigging scandal are spreading. Consumer groups are poised to lodge class-action lawsuits, saying many of the allegations revealed so far are suspicious enough to believe that banks and brokerage houses colluded to fix three-month…
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Column
Bangladesh people hit hard with commodity price hike in Ramadan
Dhaka–With the advent of Ramadan, the religious month of fasting for the Muslim community, the common people of Bangladesh, a Muslim majority country have been hit hard by the price spiral of the essential commodities. Apart from daily essentials, demand of certain commodities like, edible oil, onion, meat, fish, pulses,…
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[London Olympics] ③ In the love of Shakespeare
*Editor’s note: This is the third of six-part stories on the London Olympics When we were studying English literature at university there were two different editions of each Shakespearean work: a deluxe, medium-format British one printed on glossy paper, with additional explanations, on the first pages of which appeared the…
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Myanmar Media Law Reform A Key Test of Non-Partisan Press-1
*Editor’s note: This is the first of two part stories on Myanmar Media Law. Calling your bluff seems to mark the dealings between the censor and journalists as Myanmar set about to reform its Press system as part of efforts to burnish its democratic credentials. The quasi-democratic government plans to…
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[London Olympics] ② The world revives London’s architecture
*Editor’s note: This is the second of six-part stories on the London Olympics That’s how Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, wished the new tower to be a success as he unveiled it in the Olympic Village garden. Zaha’s icon and this tower have something in common: The engineer who built…
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A (Multi) Polar Bear? Russia’s Bid for Influence in Asia
*Author, Stephen Blank is a professor at the Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College. The views expressed here are his own. Russia’s call for a multipolar world, where power doesn’t reside with a single hegemon such as the US, is a veiled bid to exert Russian influence in Asia…
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Is Pyongyang changing?
South should help North shift to reform, openness Peeking inside a reclusive, authoritarian state is never easy. If the regime is an Orwellian communist dynasty, the job is harder still. Such is the analysis of what’s going on in Pyongyang now. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un took the title of…
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Column
Under ‘guidance’ in N. Korea
PYONGYANG – You don’t come here looking for news about North Korea. On the day after “Respected Leader” (that’s what we’re supposed to call him) Kim Jong-un and his mystery lady attended a show featuring Walt Disney characters on stage, our minders were fonts of ignorance. They professed to know…
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