WHEN the new year began, no-one anticipated that events would begin to move at a supersonic speed. Before the world’s billions can digest one issue – the kidnapping of the President of Venezuela – the United States and its allies moved on rapidly to another – the suffocation of the Cuban Revolution, and then the bombing of Iran. Each issue required information and thought, deep consideration of the complexity of each of these actions of the US and its hyper-imperialist bloc.

In January 2026, US President Donald Trump declared Cuba to be an ‘unusual and extraordinary threat’ to US security – a designation that allows the United States government to use sweeping economic restrictions traditionally reserved for national security adversaries. The US blockade against Cuba began in the 1960s, right after the Cuban Revolution of 1959 but has tightened over the years.

FOR the first time in the history of independent Bangladesh, Jamaat-e-Islami believes that a genuine possibility of victory has opened up before it. Even if it does not win outright, it is set to emerge as a powerful opposition force.

MARK Carney is not the person you would expect to deliver the message from within the Global North that their conspiracy to rule the world has ended. The Global North, the Collective West, whatever you want to call it, had formed into a decisive military and political bloc after World War II, which effectively ended the divisions within the Global North and gradually brought all its pieces into a line with the United States at its head.

LOOKING at approval ratings of US presidents after their first year in office is an interesting exercise. Most presidents in recent years have net negative approval, with more than half of the population disapproving of their work as president. The exception is George W Bush after 9/11, when the US public rallied around the president after the shock of the attack and after his bellicose rhetoric to conduct a War on Terror around the planet.