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There are a lot of reasons to donate money to a cause: tax write-offs, guilt, religious beliefs, security, and compassion are just the first the come to mind. Some reasons are self-serving and others are not. Here is a case of what looks like the self-serving kind. It appears that Bill Clinton traveled to Kazakhstan […]

Children look to us, the adults for guidance and inspiration, they look to us and they see their future. Therefore it us up to us to give them images of hope, leadership, strength and justice. We give our children two options, violence and hate or peace and love. One only has to look at the […]

We all remember these famous words from President Bush's 2002 State of the Union Address: "States like these [Iran, North Korea and Iraq], and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world."  But here are excerpts from two other State of the Union addresses given by President […]

Sean Stannard Stockton, who writes the blog Tactical Philanthropy commented Kiva.org's problem finding enough people to borrow all the money that people want to give. He rightly points out that there are probably many people who would like to borrow, but aren't able to for lack of microfinance access – leaving Kiva and its partners […]

Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles are a family of armored fighting vehicles designed to survive IED attacks and ambushes in Iraq and Afghanistan. In an article called “Hopes for Vehicle Questioned After Iraq Blast,” the New York Times described the first loss of a soldier in a MRAP. However, this soldier was a turret gunner […]

An opposition leader with Kenya's Orange Democratic Movement, David Kimutai Too, was killed in what police officials described as a “crime of passion.”  ODM leader Raila Odinga called the killing an execution targeting ODM members. “David Kimutai Too was killed by a policeman. I condemn this second execution of an ODM member of parliament. The […]

When it comes to issues of children's rights there is no debate as to the fact that children should not be abused either physically or sexually. Therefore when the debates do arise, they are mostly on the fact that we seem to be doing little as an international community to stop the continuous and often […]

There are a lot of interesting things to hear in this Forbes.com Video interview with Robert and Lucia Duvall. They are talking about the Latin American microfinance institution Pro Mujer. As their name suggests, Pro Mujer is specifically aimed at providing loans to women entrepreneurs. They also provide business training and healthcare. Neither of those […]

Somewhat in the spirit of the "Step It Up 2007" campaign from last April in which events all over the country focused on climate change and getting Congress to act, this week a group called Focus the Nation has organized thousands of teach-ins at schools and other entities like churches and businesses.  Here are links […]

Monday's State of the Union Address was heavy on the economy and ideological posturing. However, foreign policy issues were addressed, and this blog would like to touch upon what was said. Stepping back and taking a macro-viewpoint of the speech, Bush did not provide new policy initiatives, which we had wondered about on this blog […]

When the President spoke last night he categorized most foreign aid under the heading “compassion”. He specifically mentioned 1) Food Aid Reform, 2) HIV and Malaria Control and Prevention, 3) Basic Education Assistance, and 4) the Millenium Challenge Account. Compassion was also mentioned briefly as a side note to “Keeping America Safe by Fostering the […]

The UN Process , As you know, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), located in Bonn, is the governing body for the Kyoto Protocol, its Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), and much of the work that the UN does on climate change.  Its executive secretary, Yvo de Boer, has this perspective on the […]