Last week in The New York Times Adam Nossiter told the strange saga of Guinea-Bissau’s recent coup and its chief beneficiary (and possibly its architect), José Américo Bubo Na Tchuto.
Every so often a piece such as this one appears. The argument is familiar: After (x number of years) since the end of Apartheid South Africa still (has not achieved its full potential/is failing its people/is a monumental disappointment to the ideals “we” once fought for). I am always mystified by these arguments. What sort […]
Global leaders and news organizations wasted little time condemning Israel for the raid on the fleet of aid ships headed to the Gaza Strip. But, if they spent half their efforts learning the facts first, perhaps that condemnation would have been directed in a more appropriate fashion — towards the people on the ships and […]
Cuba moves political prisoners ‘closer to home’ (AFP) As projected by officials of the Catholic Church last week, today the Cuban government began moving dissident prisoners to facilities closer to their homes in a gesture of humanitarian regard for the connection of families. The Archbishop of Havana announced that six prisoners have been transferred thus […]
The government of Bangladesh has shut down another media outlet, the daily newspaper Amar Desh (My Country). Quite apart from the political consequences of this hard boiled move, there’s the normative cost that bears on censorship. In fact, as if on cue, the government, like its cousins in Pakistan, has recently shut down access to […]
The World Cup kicks off in Soccer City Stadium in ten days and your faithful scribe could not be more excited. I will be leaving in a week and after a night in Addis Ababa will land in Johennesburg with what I hope will be enough time to scramble to my b&b, drop my stuff […]
Hijab is the Arabic word for “Curtain, or Cover”. It is taken from Hajb meaning to cover, to veil, to shelter. Muslim women wear the Hijab for different reasons. Some wear the Hijab to delight their God- in reference to holy Quran. Some to please their families and some to obey the Islamic law. Afghanistan is […]
The Norwegian Coast Guard (Kystvakten) has detained the Russian trawler “Izumrud,” or “Emerald,” in Tromsø, Norway. A helicopter from the coast guard filmed crew members of the Izumrud illegally dumping fish over the side of the ship near the environmentally protected maritime areas around Svalbard. Members of the coast guard’s KV Senja boarded the ship […]
Cuba continues to wait for the effects of the BP oil spill in the Gulf to reach its shores—to foul the pristine clear waters that attract tourists and scientists to the island and are the pride of locals. The island, which remains largely untouched by the environmental ills of modernity, has such clean waters that […]
There are currently 340 US soldiers helping to secure the United States’ southern border. To that, President Obama has ordered an additional 1,200 national guardsmen to support border patrol agents. They will not be directly confronting undocumented immigrants, but they will be performing intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions, freeing up border agents. It is a […]
This brief article in The Atlantic makes what to my mind is a curious argument. To wit: In the Central African Republic the most common crime for people to be accused of is witchcraft. Yet for reasons that should be fairly obvious, witchcraft is a rather difficult charge to prove, which does not make convictions […]
A day before here in the United States we honor all of those men and women who have fought for our armed services, I came across this tragic event that occurred in Khost, Afghanistan just yesterday: There was violence as well in the southeastern province of Khost, where a barely completed high school, built with […]
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