Habib Siddiqui

The government has formed an 11-member national committee, headed by the prime minister, to formulate a strategy for the speedy and sustainable repatriation of Rohingyas and coordinate the roles of law enforcement and intelligence agencies involved in the process. The Cabinet Division issued a gazette notification on Sunday announcing the formation of the ‘National Strategy Formulation Committee for Rohingya Affairs’. According to the notification, the committee will set priorities on key issues related to Rohingya repatriation, oversee coordination among relevant ministries and agencies, and define the responsibilities and operational areas of law enforcement agencies and intelligence organisations. The committee includes the home minister, the foreign minister, the adviser to the finance and planning ministry, and the adviser to the defence ministry and the Armed Forces Division as members. The principal staff officer of the Armed Forces Division was made the chief coordinator, while...

  War and War in the Age of Planet-destroying Globalized Capitalism Since the Russian Federation waged its NATO-induced war against Ukraine, a post-Cold War proxy war – in April 2021, the talk of “civilization” – as in “civilizational states” (Russia, China, etc.) has been in vogue again. Thirty years ago, following the dissolution of the USSR after the Cold War ended, with the North Americans sounding triumphalist, Samuel Huntington, the renowned Harvard political scientist, first published his influential “The Clash of Civilizations” (in Foreign Affairs, 1993), which he later published as a 367-pages book, with the expanded title, The Clash of Civilizations Remaking of World Order” (Simon and Schuster, 1996). Huntington in effect recycled centuries-old Orientalist myths – for instance, “the rule of law” was a quintessential feature of “Western Civilization”, stemming from Roman law or that social pluralism and “civil society” were exclusive to “Western civilization” (pp.70-71)....

  Floods triggered by a week of heavy rainfall and upstream hill runoff have killed 1,12,827 livestock and poultry across five districts of Chattogram division, with total losses estimated at Tk30.15 crore, according to a preliminary government assessment. The initial report, prepared by the Divisional Department of Livestock Services and released yesterday (12 July), said the dead animals include 46 cattle, 123 goats, 40 sheep, 1,11,098 chickens and 1,521 ducks. The financial loss from animal deaths alone has been estimated at Tk3.78 crore. The report said livestock feed suffered extensive damage across 156 unions in 36 upazilas of the division. A total of 18,468 tonnes of straw, grass and concentrated feed were destroyed, including 11,920 tonnes of straw worth Tk17.88 crore, 6,430 tonnes of grass valued at Tk6.86 crore and 118 tonnes of concentrated feed worth around Tk70.8 lakh. Overall losses in the livestock feed sector have been estimated at Tk25.45 crore. The floods also dam...

  Democratic politicians, as they regularly do, have displayed an inverted double standard regarding the Graham Platner affair and serial sexual abuser Donald Trump. Usually, a political party covers up its own misbehavior even as it accuses its political opponents of similar misdeeds. Instead, the Democrats drive out their own accused – e.g., New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, Senator Al Franken (D-MN), Representative John Conyers (D-MI), and others, while giving Donald Trump, the all-time giant, recidivist, boastful, sexual predator, a free pass. Notice the unusual silence of Donald Trump on the high-profile controversy involving Platner. For good reason, he has constrained his frothy mouth. Why provoke the self-immolating Democrats or the media to turn their laser beam focus on Trump’s assaults of women?  After all, he has gotten away with physical and verbal misogynistic behavior for years. Back in 2016–2017, Democrats and their allies tried to nail Trump on his many sexual ...

  This is the year 2026. One might have hoped that, after thousands of years of war, humanity could have come up with a better way to resolve conflicts than killing and mass destruction. Unfortunately, that is not the case. There is now more war and bloodshed raging across the world than at almost any point in decades. In February 2022, Vladimir Putin, without provocation, invaded Ukraine. The result: hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians killed, millions displaced and a war that grinds on with no end in sight. In October 2023, Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 innocent people and taking 251 hostages. In response, Netanyahu and the Israeli military did not simply wage war against Hamas — they waged war against the entire population of Gaza. At least 73,000 Palestinians have been killed, the real toll almost certainly far higher, most of them women, children and the elderly. Virtually the entire physical infrastructure of Gaza has been destroyed. I agree with the major ...

  Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has said US envoy Steve Witkoff described Gaza’s entire population as “two million Nazis” during a private meeting last year. Speaking at a conference in Israel on Thursday, the far-right minister recounted a conversation held after Witkoff’s visited Gaza last August at the height of the Israeli genocide. Smotrich said: "When Witkoff was appointed, I sat with him and Ron Dermer [former Israeli ambassador to the US]." They showed Witkoff a propaganda video, after which the US envoy turned to Smotrich and reportedly said: "Bezalel, I will not let two million Nazis live next to your children on fences." Witkoff, a former property lawyer with no previous foreign policy or humanitarian experience, publicly presented the Gaza visit as an effort to “help craft a plan to deliver food and medical aid to the people of Gaza”. At the time, Israel was deliberately starving residents by restricting food entering Gaza and driving much o...