Author: Tim Norman

Moscow/Washington (13/6 – 29) We took a holiday from reality. Immanuel Niven, a mathematician and philosopher, has long been scrutinizing Russia’s economic landscape, and his recent assertions suggest a dire forecast. He contends that the “Putin system” is on the brink of collapse, a scenario he had mathematically foreseen as early as March. Niven points to the pronounced tax hikes announced in Russia, the most substantial in its modern history, as well as Putin’s recent rhetoric urging citizens to work as if they were at the front lines. These developments, Niven argues, are symptomatic of the escalating toxicity within Russia’s…

New York. (11 June – 31) US federal agents have arrested eight Tajikistan nationals in the US on terrorism charges. The arrests, carried out by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, spanned across Los Angeles, New York, and Philadelphia. These actions coincide with recent alerts from US intelligence officials about a terrorist plot. ISIS, or the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, is designated as a terrorist organization by numerous countries and international organizations, including the United States, the United Nations, and the European Union. The ability to surveillance certain foreign targets has been a subject of intense debate in Congress,…

Bangladesh is not in the list of the US sanctions imposed ahead of the Human Rights Day as speculated by many in the country. The United States is marking Human Rights Day and the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10 by taking actions to promote accountability for human rights abuses and violations. Together, the Departments of State and the Treasury Friday imposed visa restrictions and sanctions on 37 individuals in 13 countries. There have been speculations in Bangladesh particularly from the opposition that Bangladesh will also come under sanctions. Many of the new US…

Toronto, Alaska (16/11 – 50) Our lives are being maneuvered and we are being manipulated by unelected, insidious forces, toward objectives not necessarily in the people’s interest. Now that the so-called “pandemic”, declared by the mysterious self-appointed World Health Organization, and followed obediently by governments everywhere, has been decreed “finished”, we should devote a moment to introspection, considering who is running the show and for whose benefit, as governments gaily abdicated their vested responsibility to govern. Pandemic is over? I hope they told those killer viruses who destroyed the population of Europe and North America. What? Oh, just 1% mortality?…

Since the mid-October 2023, women textile workers in Bangladesh have been demanding better wage conditions. The committee overseeing the category proposed a 56% increase in the basic monthly wage for four million workers in the sector, almost all of them women, the equivalent of US$94 per month. Labor rights groups and unions want more than double that level; therefore, they refused the offer, and protests further increased, especially in the capital, Dhaka. In the meantime, many demonstrations started, involving 150 factories and 11,000 protesting workers, the occupation of factories, and at least three deaths. In addition, 15,000 women workers demonstrated,…

A staggering 90 percent of the 111 countries that participated in a hearing on the review of the human rights situation have praised Bangladesh, Law Minister Anisul Huq has said. A high-level team of representatives, led by Huq, participated in the fourth review meeting of the Universal Periodic Review of the human rights situation in Bangladesh at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Monday (Nov 13). He later briefed the media virtually. The law minister said that steps to uphold human rights despite various obstacles have been highlighted there. Huq said that some countries reiterated that they want…

Brussels (16/11 – 83) Sri Lanka is still dealing with the aftermath of its most devastating economic crisis since independence, a government without popular support and intensifying geopolitical competition in its neighborhood, a year after the Sri Lanka’s massive unrest. Known as the Aragalaya protests which were spurred by the economic crisis, the protests led to mass resignations across the government with former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fleeing the country in July 2022. In the year since, the country has secured an IMF agreement, and its economy has ambled toward a slow path of recovery. However, there have still been concerns on the human rights front as the current government of Ranil Wickremesinghe has…

Bangladeshi garment manufacturers on Saturday shuttered 150 factories “indefinitely”, as police issued blanket charges for 11,000 workers in connection with violent protests demanding a higher minimum wage, officers said. Bangladesh’s 3,500 garment factories account for around 85 percent of its $55 billion in annual exports, supplying many of the world’s top brands including Levi’s, Zara and H&M. But conditions are dire for many of the sector’s four million workers, the vast majority of whom are women whose monthly pay, until recently, started at 8,300 taka ($75). Violent protests demanding better pay erupted last month, with at least three workers killed…

Toronto, Atlanta (28/11 – 20) A wise old expression intones “Behind every bad borrower is a bad lender”. Like many such cute, amusing aphorisms, it is accurate as far as it goes … but what if? What if a loan approval is held up, then granted, after a couple of phone calls from the office of the Vice President? What if the borrower is a crony or relative of Mr. Big, which is what practically bankrupted Indonesia, when the Soeharto vampire children took out multi-hundred-million-dollar “loans” (wink wink) for projects whose profit-making potential was near zero? What is the potential…

The government of Bangladesh is expecting to secure funds amounting to $800 million for two specific projects, following the presentation of the New Development Bank (NDB) Bill-2023 in the Jatiya Sangsad. This was disclosed by Minister Anisul Huq, who presented the bill on behalf of Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal. The NDB, an initiative of the BRICS bloc that expanded to include Bangladesh in 2021, has financed over 80 projects across its original member nations, with funding exceeding $30 billion. The proposed law is aimed at securing funds from this lending arm of the BRICS bloc. The bill also emphasized…