Bangladesh

“Law on the margins is so joyful.  You are connecting with people!”

Amid today’s Churchillian parades and celebratory speeches, British media and schoolbooks may choose to only remember Churchill’s opposition to dictatorship in Europe, but the rest of the world cannot choose to forget Churchill’s imposition of dictatorship on darker skinned people outside of Europe. Far from being the Lionheart of Britain, who stood on the ramparts of civilisation, Winston Churchill, all too often, simply stood on the wrong side of history.

The best that the high level climate talks in Paris (COP21) can achieve is to agree measures and actions to limit the increase in global temperature of our planet to 2C. Scientists, however, believe that even our best efforts will see a rise of 3C. Leaders of the industrialized rich west believe that the consequences of such a rise can be mitigated in their own countries by their advanced technology and expertise. For some countries in the developing world, however, such a rise in temperature would be devastating.

Scientists in Bangladesh are preparing to conduct field tests of Golden Rice, the world’s first genetically engineered, vitamin A-enriched rice, before putting into production.

For all of the celebration of him as a “grand strategist,” as someone who constantly advises presidents to think of the future, to base their actions today on where they want the country to be in five or 10 years’ time, Kissinger was absolutely blind to the fundamental feebleness and inevitable collapse of the Soviet Union. None of it was necessary; none of the lives Kissinger sacrificed in Cambodia, Laos, Angola, Mozambique, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, East Timor, and Bangladesh made one bit of difference in the outcome of the Cold War.

Fleeing war, persecution and acute poverty, men, women and children have been arriving in Britain for generations. They come in search of peace: for work or education, and to build a decent life in a country were the rule of law is observed and human rights are respected.

Once a recipient of food donations from around the world, Bangladesh has now become a model for reducing food hunger. By supporting small farms and women, the country has reduced the number starving citizens significantly.
A recent UN report outlines how Bangladesh, a South Asian country who was once among the poorest in the world, has turned the corner when it comes to eradicating poverty and hunger – a huge step since the country was rampaged with devastating floods in the 1970’s.

Lots of good info, if you have the time to listen entirely. If not it is possible to pick that which interests you for listening.

1.  United States

NATO’s Worldwide Expansion in the Post-Cold World Era
Rick Rozoff
One of the most significant developments of the post-Cold War era, and certainly the most ominous, is the transformation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a military bloc created by the United States during the genesis of the Cold War in 1949, into one that has grown to encompass the entirety of Europe, has expanded military partnerships throughout the world and has waged war on three continents.

In an article for the Guardian, John Pilger describes the extraordinary life of Moudud Ahmed, who in 1971 led him into liberated East Pakistan, later Bangladesh. Now a political prisoner of the military dictatorship in Dhaka, Moudud Ahmed is seriously ill in a country which, says his wife Hasna, "is itself a prison".