As we sit on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the unforgettable tragedy that unfolded in the United States on September 11, 2001, across the globe people are taking time to remember the horrid events and reflect on how the world has changed since the fateful day. A day that took the lives of […]
Vladimir Putin was at a ceremony a few days ago at which he pressed the button that began the process of delivering natural gas to Germany through the Nord Stream pipeline. According to Gazprom, Nord Stream is the first direct link between Russia and the European gas transmission system. It runs under the Baltic Sea, […]
I’ve been reviewing some of the 9/11 commentaries and news reports that are saturating our media as the anniversary approaches and I have to admit that many of them leave me feeling cold. This commentary by Frank Rich in the New York Magazine, for example, raises many interesting and provocative points that I found myself […]
14.5% of American households were food insecure for at least some time in 2010, according to an annual study released by the United States Department of Agriculture. This is essentially unchanged from 2008 and 2009, but is higher than 2007 when 11.1% of American households were food insecure. For most of the decade starting in […]
Scattered across Vietnam modern day slave labor work centers are in full swing with the governments OK as corporations pad their profits off the backs of some 40,000 men, women, and children. Held captive in forced labor centers which are thinly disguised as drug treatment centers, the majority of victims are brought in on the […]
As C.S. Lewis states in The Abolition of Man, once you step outside of the Tao, by which he means the world of objective value, you and your civilization fall ultimately down a slippery slope into the abyss of value indeterminacy and the rule of a Nietzschean will to power. According to Lewis, “A dogmatic […]
No need to be naive: we all know that in quasi-military operations against drug lords, their not-necessarily-so-innocent significant others and their completely innocent children are bound to get killed sometimes. The same goes for operations against terrorists operating, say, out of Pakistan’s Northwest Territories: However precise the weaponry, it’s hard to kill a significant leader […]
I write often about communicable diseases, such as HIV/AIDS, which get a lot of international attention and popular support, spurred on by celebrities, government leaders, and the media. What is ignored, however, is the growing epidemic of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), also known as chronic or “lifestyle” diseases. With the upcoming United Nations High Level Meeting […]
Whether due to the hunt for Gaddafi, or in anticipation of Obama’s new plan to create jobs, Afghanistan has taken a backseat to other news developments vying for Americans’ attention. The Washington Post’s David Ignatius has an intriguing article, consequently, that some may have missed. Ignatius discusses a classified CIA analytical piece on the state of […]
I had just returned to the States from a relatively innocuous tour in The Bahamas as a diplomat with the U.S. Department of State. The most personally significant event during my time in Nassau was meeting and marrying my Romanian-born wife. My onward assignment was to Moscow, Russia with a year of intensive Russian-language training […]
In catching up on some reading this morning, I came across this article: Eight Bio-based Technologies for 2050. (I seem to have been spending the last 40 years catching up on my reading. You ever get that?) The article, from Biofuels Digest via Renewable Energy World, mentions eight “bio-based” technologies (or systems) that have tremendous […]
In yet more news of the reach of the “non-existent” A.Q. Khan network, the IAEA has confirmed in a recent report that North Korea used the black market network to acquire “material needed to establish a uranium enrichment facility at its Yongbyon nuclear complex.” In preparation for the upcoming meetings of the IAEA Board of […]
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