West Bengal's voters may not have articulated this distinction in theoretical terms. But they felt its weight. The images from Dhaka showed them what the far end of one trajectory looks like.
The Arab world is connected, but it is not unified. Its leaders may meet under chandeliers, embrace for cameras, and issue communiqués about common destiny in a common language. But beneath that ceremonial language lie rival economies, competing ports, divergent security partnerships, dynastic anxieties, and national projects.
If Iran is honorably invited back into the financial system its 90 million refined and energetic people, backed by huge oil wealth, will be able to make the greatest possible contribution to strengthening not only the whole world economy but specifically to saving the US currency.
The final irony of our current moment is that while the world watches the dramatic surface conflicts and the crises that dominate headlines and social media feeds, the deeper system is already adjusting, already adapting, already moving towards a different configuration.
55 years ago today, Pakistan as it existed then came to end as the Mujibnagar Government was formally formed. Two generations on, the peoples of the two countries share a common yearning for democracy. On both wings of the erstwhile Pakistan then, a prayer for democracy.
The economic man treated nature as a storehouse. The social man must learn to treat it as a home -- and eventually, as an authority.
In 840, the mayor always wins. The machine keeps humming. The tenders keep flowing. But the film exists. Someone made it. Someone watched it. Someone wrote about it. And that, perhaps, is where the next story begins.
For civilians, of course, the distinction between pause and resolution may seem academic. The absence of immediate violence is a tangible relief. But from a structural perspective, the conditions that produced the war remain unchanged.
Former American Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s phrase “unknown unknowns” best captures the near impossibility of predicting what comes next. That said, the ongoing Iran-United States ceasefire, offers a brief window of opportunity to take stock: A highly precarious, at best partial, cooling-off period in a region that remains very much in turmoil.
BNP must ensure that the caretaker government system, now revived, is built to last, not as a tool of partisan advantage but as the institutional guarantee that, now and going forward, no government, can close the door on the voters' right to choose their leaders.
From the Strait of Hormuz to the Bay of Bengal, the United States is fighting a war it has never fully declared -- one waged not against Tehran or Caracas, but against the architecture of a Chinese-led economic order.
Iran is delivering a master class in asymmetric warfare with real life military, geographic, and economic consequences.
Already, there are signs of classic crisis behaviour. Panic buying, hoarding, informal resale of fuel at inflated prices, and rising tensions at petrol pumps. These are not the symptoms of a stable system. They are the early tremors of a breakdown in trust.
A dual crisis of legitimacy in the opposition and civil society is creating a “twin vacuum” that weakens democratic accountability in Bangladesh
A month into the conflict, we have yet to see any meaningful adjustment in fuel prices. Even as international crude prices have skyrocketed, the domestic market remains insulated, standing in stark contrast to almost all other Asian nations, including our neighbors, which have already implemented price hikes.
Bangladeshis need to understand who they are and develop the self-confidence necessary to chart their future destiny. Bangladesh is the eighth-largest country in the world by population, it is the 26th-largest economy by GDP-PPP at approximately $1.9 trillion, and one of South Asia's fastest-growing economies -- with GDP per capita projected to reach $10,850 by the end of 2026.
