adilscaping

In 2011, I had the privilege of interviewing Muhammad Yunus for the Abu Dhabi-based Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research (ECSSR). Prof. Yunus  has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for founding the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and other countries and for pioneering the concepts of microcredit and microfinance. In the wake of present banking turmoil and global economic downturn, the interview deserves to be republished. Q. Many theories have been proposed to explain the causes of current global financial turmoil, which began in 2008. In your view, are these distortions the result of a shift in global economy to the East or the fact that global economy is pegged to the vagaries of one country’s currency?   Ans:   The first thing I would like to say here is that I do not see the financial crisis as a standalone problem. This is just one of the many major global problems. In 2008, this crisis became more visible and grabbed the global headlines because it hit the financial sec

BY ADIL RASHEED (Khaleej Times Staff Reporter) / 15 January 2005 Sitting in her chair and watching the waves batter a bank of sturdy rocks at the Jumeirah Beach, Bollywood beauty Kareena Kapoor appeared a little pensive from a distance. A tinge of sadness lent stateliness to her demeanour as if innocence had finally reconciled to the early blows of experience (in the wake of the MMS pictures controversy). City Times caught up with this elegant and affable scion of the Kapoor clan, while she was filming the last few scenes of her forthcoming movie Milenge Milenge . Do you think 2004 taught you some hard lessons in life? Have you emerged wiser after the trials of the last year? You mean professionally. Yes! Your films Chameli , Dev , Yuva and Fida did not do that well at the box-office even though they won you critical acclaim. Was it a tough year? Please, do count in Aitraaz and Hulchul , which were successful and as you yourself said even films that were not commercial successes bro

  By Dr Adil Rasheed   In keeping with the statement attributed to Zhu Enlai on the French Revolution, it would be too early to call the Arab Spring a misnomer. Notably, the establishment of a stable democracy in France came about nearly a hundred years after the storming of the Bastille in 1789. This paper studies the period following the Arab Spring, which charts a somewhat similar course of counter-revolutions and ‘Reign of Terror’ and the recent resurgence of popular revolts across the region as countries like Saudi Arabia gradually introduce telling socio-economic reforms.   The season of spring does not last long in the arid, tropical climate of West Asia. It soon gives way to soaring temperatures and violent sandstorms. A similarly unpleasant fate awaited the popular political uprising commonly known as the ‘Arab Spring’, which spread almost simultaneously across many countries of the region over a decade ago. Even to the more educated detractors of this unrest, the coina