The NYTimes has written a vivid account of how the US approach to tuberculosis care has changed as the disease has virtually been eradicated. They describe the last TB sanitorium, which still exists in Florida “where strangers live together for months with boredom, pills, pain, contemplation and the same ancient disease that killed George Orwell, Franz Kafka […]
This documentary focuses on what is probably a mostly overlooked group of people persecuted by German Nazis between 1933 and 1945: male homosexuals. The title of the film refers to the law, enacted in 1871, that was largely overlooked until the reign of Adolf Hitler. It claimed sex between two men was illegal; lesbians, however, […]
Today much of the world is flocking to their TVs to as the World Cup in South Africa kicked off. However while the joy of the game and international sportsmanship ensue, much of the World Cup and sport have been tainted by child labor, via sex trafficking and labor…including the stitching of soccer balls. Soccer […]
When Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski proposed a change in how the Clean Air Act is administered, I was shocked but not surprised. See The Reaction from January. Thankfully, her resolution was defeated in the US Senate yesterday. This was an attempt at a radical reconfiguring of how environmental law has been practiced in this country […]
Much of our chocolate comes from the Ivory Coast, which according to the International Labor Organization (ILO) produces 43% of the worlds cocoa. According to the ILO, over 132 million children, aged 5-14 years old, work in agriculture around the world, they are just a segment of an the estimated 246 million child laborers around […]
Rai al-Shaab (Opinion of the People), a Sudanese newspaper run by opposition leader Hassan al-Turabi, published an article earlier this month describing a secret weapons factory run by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on Sudanese soil. Sudanese officials have since arrested and tortured al-Turabi and several of his staff members and shut down the […]
My PC suffered a massive failure last week keeping me from the blogging scene. Currently traveling but wanted to pass on some thoughts on President Obama’s nomination of retired Air Force General James Clapper as the new Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and the latest round on UN sanctions against Iran. I first became aware […]
One of the recurring leitmotifs in this past winter’s hyper-inflated media coverage of the “debate” about climate science was that the public doesn’t care about the issue anymore anyway, and that the snow in Virginia and the stolen emails from the Climate Research Unit had soured people on the science, even though it has been […]
Mobile phones have already transformed life in developing countries. They have brought phone service to remote areas that had little hope of ever seeing landlines. They have also had major economic benefits for so-called micro-entrepreneurs, helping them with everything from establishing mobile barbershops to determining the best time to bring goods to market. And now […]
Foreign Policy’s, The Cable, has some clues on the USAID revamp, released in an email to USAID employees yesterday. They write: USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah is moving ahead with his promise to give the agency back its capability to think strategically by building an official policy planning staff. “This new bureau, bolstered by the agency’s […]
Here are a couple of events for anyone in the Washington, DC area (be sure to RSVP if you want to attend). Note that the second will also be webcast! Pakistan’s Lawless Frontier The Most Dangerous Place The New America Foundation and the Heinrich Böll Foundation are pleased to host Imtiaz Gul, a Pakistani journalist […]
Henrique Meirelles, Brazil’s central bank president, helped save President Lula’s hide back in 2003 when the bond markets priced Brazilian sovereign bonds at default levels. He was a key pillar of Lula’s credible economic team, which convinced markets that the firebrand leftist was not going to spoil Lula’s predecessor’s hard work crushing pernicious hyperinflation. Lula had the […]
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