The worst drought to hit southwest China in nearly a century is forcing farmers to take drastic measures to cope reports Michael Wines in The New York Times. Wines reports that as, “…serious as the dry spell is, it affects only about 6 percent of China’s farmland and a tiny portion of its 1.3 billion […]
A bill by Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and co-sponsored by Olympia Snowe (R-ME) called the Cybersecurity Act of 2009 (yes, I know, but remember the Senate is, well, a bit slow) just dropped out of committee and may see floor action soon.* It’s an interesting piece of work, and only 50 pages, so I’m actually going […]
The Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation is holding a conference in Buenos Aires next week from April 12-14. The conference, titled ‘Memory, Justice, Truth and Reparations as Tools for Genocide Prevention’, has been co-organized by the government of Argentina. It will host government officials and policymakers from 40 nations. I spoke today with AIPR’s […]
The US isn’t the only target of Chinese hackers that-of-course-aren’t-government-sponsored-though-the-PLA-does-fund-hacking-research-in-their-school groups. That other rising Asian great power – the one that fought a couple of wars with China and is harboring their archnemisis – got pwned in a bad way. The NY Times has a story on it that makes for interesting reading. At the […]
Victor Davis Hanson last week repeated a now familiar mantra: Obama = Bush. I wrote about this viewpoint before. As far as I can see, regarding national security, there’s nothing controversial about this conclusion. However, Hanson focuses on the liberal hypocrisy aspect of the issue and overstates his case. Obama campaigned on leaving a residual […]
The agricultural ministers of the BRIC countries outlined a new food security strategy after meeting last Friday. According to the meeting’s declaration, the plan is meant “…to promote food security, [by supporting]…a well-functioning, worldwide food market and a trade system based on the principles of justice and freedom from discrimination.” The declaration by the BRIC […]
Just a quick post to highlight a documentary that I downloaded over the weekend. The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard is an excellent and quick study on consumerism, which she describes as a system in crisis. Her description of a linear system being unsustainable is very interesting, quote: “you cannot run a linear system […]
Those of us in the human rights field often talk as though what we call human rights are clear, obvious, and of course never up to interpretation. This is certainly the case with some rights. It is never acceptable, for example, to imprison an innocent person for political reasons or commit violence for the purposes […]
*U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton argues that achieving women’s equality is central to global security in an op-ed for The Times of London: Women are still the majority of the world’s poor, uneducated, unhealthy and unfed. They are the majority of the world’s farmers, but are often forbidden to own the land they cultivate […]
Here’s another story like the one below on mountaintop removal mining in which a key environmental regulatory agency steps up to the plate and hits one out of the park. It’s not a walk off, but we’re coming to the bottom of the ninth now and Indian Point is down one run with, I daresay, […]
As a writer on children’s rights, the subject of abuse is commonplace, however the types of abuse are as varied as they are haunting. Most often I write about the horrors physical abuse, child labor, sex trafficking, etc. Though we often forget to bring much needed attention and awareness to the issues of verbal abuse. […]
Where should global health dollars go? The good news is that more funders are investing energy into devising ever-more-sophisticated ways to allocate health spending. When priorities are aligned, such as the international commitment to reducing maternal and child mortality rates through the Millennium Development Goals, these sophisticated allocation methods can assist in deploying scarce resources to greatest […]
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