Eresh Omar Jamal

In a suburb of Damascus called Douma, that had been occupied by the militant group Jaysh al-Islam, the 2018 Syrian chemical attack that made headlines all over the world allegedly took place on April 7—right as Syrian forces were moving in to retake the area. The western media unequivocally accused the Syrian government of dropping gas cylinders on “moderate rebels” (thus anointing members of Jaysh al-Islam as “moderates”) and killing at least 43 people. Prompting US, France and Britain to launch a barrage of cruise missiles a week later against the Syrian government.

Nozomi Hayase, Ph.D, is a US-based liberation psychologist and widely published journalist. She has authored two books—Imaginative Cognition and Wikileaks, the Global Fourth Estate: History Is Happening.

Like most great historical events, the October Revolution of 1917 that shook Russia and helped shape the world into what it is today was the result of a confluence of factors that had slowly gathered momentum.

The problem of high un-employment that has been sweeping across the world ever since the 2008 financial crisis is yet to be adequately resolved. And with the passage of every year, creating enough quality jobs is looking increasingly difficult globally.

Since the killing of Abrar Fahad, a number of issues have been raised by people rightly outraged by his gruesome murder at the hands of some Chhatra League members, as well as revelations about how supporters of the ruling party’s student wing have been regularly terrorising ordinary students, with full exemption. Among them is the role of political activities on university campuses.

What are your thoughts on the UGC probe committee’s recommendation to withdraw the Vice Chancellor of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Science and Technology University in Gopalganj, following which he resigned on September 30?

It is no secret that people in general share a common perception that corruption in the country has gone off the rails to the point of becoming nearly unbearable. While high corruption, mainly facilitated by some members of the ruling party of the day, has been a

The United Nations General Assembly agreed to observe September 15 as the International Day of Democracy in 2007.

It's been a while since the Hallmark Group has been mentioned in the news. Except for when it has been used as an example of severe corruption and criminality, to illustrate the grave consequences that arise when certain principles and rules are ignored.

In a reversal of its stance, the Bangladesh Bank (BB) on August 27 decided to allow Beximco Ltd to reschedule its loan of Tk 430.05 crore, thus in principle approving the rescheduling of restructured loans.

Having acceded to the United Nations Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (UNCAT) on October 1998, Bangladesh was obligated to submit its initial State Report under Article 19 of the UNCAT to the UN’s Committee against Torture (CAT) by November 4, 1999. But it took Bangladesh 20 years to comply—and only after the CAT sent a letter to the Bangladesh government on December 10, 2018, reminding it of its overdue initial report and about the possibility for the Committee to proceed with a review in its continued absence.

Bangladesh’s economy has made massive strides since 1971. After independence, the initial challenges that the economy faced were enormous. And while Bangladesh managed to overcome most of them, many new challenges emerged in the years that followed.

If you said pre-2013...that the most private moments of your lives were being watched and recorded...people would call you a conspiracy theorist.” – Edward Snowden

Moving against the current of expert opinion, the government, in the budget for FY2019-20, opened up a five-year scheme to convert black money into white.

The First World War was contemporaneously described as “the war to end all wars”.

The Tk 5,23,190 crore budget proposed by the government, which is the biggest in our country’s history, was somewhat of a letdown. Governments sometimes struggle to fully make use of their budgetary plans in electoral democracies because the party in power may

One of the best instruments the government can use to serve those it works for—presumably the citizens—is the national budget. Unfortunately, if one was to ask ordinary citizens, independent analysts and experts to rate how successfully the government implemented

Dr Lissa Johnson is a clinical psychologist and columnist for the Australian news website New Matilda, with a background in media studies and sociology, and a PhD in the psychology of manipulating reality-perception. In an exclusive (electronic) interview with Eresh Omar Jamal of The Daily Star, Dr Johnson talks about a recent investigative series she wrote on the US government’s hunt for Julian Assange, how propaganda works, and the psychology that divides people and allows them to commit atrocities against “outgroup” members.

Stefania Maurizi is an investigative journalist working for the Italian daily La Repubblica. She has worked on all WikiLeaks releases of secret documents and partnered with Glenn Greenwald to expose the Snowden Files about Italy. She has authored two books—Dossier WikiLeaks: Segreti Italiani and Una Bomba, Dieci Storie. In an exclusive (electronic) interview with Eresh Omar Jamal of The Daily Star, Maurizi talks about the arrests of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and whistleblower Chelsea Manning, who together revealed to the world, the reality of the Iraq and Afghan wars.

No matter which approach is used, every method of measurement shows inequality has risen in Bangladesh (at least) over the last 10 years. If we take the latest Household Income and Expenditure Survey of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, we see that the country’s Gini coefficient—a measure of inequality—went up (indicating disparity has grown) from 0.458 in 2010 to 0.482 in 2016. From a different angle, a report released by Oxfam towards the close of last year ranked Bangladesh 148th in the world—out of 157 countries—for reducing inequality.