Archive | May, 2010

Political and sovereign debt risks in Spain, conflict in the Korean peninsula and US economic uncertainty send global markets tumbling in May.

Alvaro Uribe has received a great deal of criticism over his last few years in office from anti-trade advocates in the US, human rights groups and some of Colombia’s neighbours, especially Mr. Chavez, but despite this he was one of the most popular freely elected leaders in any country worldwide …

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 …

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 …

The annual Walk the World awareness event will take place on June 6th to raise funds and focus attention on the problem of child hunger.  Organized by the World Food Programme (WFP), the event will take place in cities all over the world and as a “

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Federal Times.com has a story this week about USAID’s moves to do more of their work in house instead of farming it out to contractors.
The U.S. Agency for International Development plans to bring in-house …

Highlights from my reading this week…
The Council on Foreign Relations has released a working paper on “The Challenges of Global Health Governance“.  Viewed in the context of recent rumours about USAID reform and last week’s release of the White House’s National Security Strategy, I …

Someone wished me a “happy Memorial Day” in passing and I wondered if they understood what the holiday was really all about. What is it really all about? The above photo was taken the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery and Memorial in France. According to

Though Memorial Day did not become federal law until the 20th century, per above document, its origins reside in the post-Civil War era.  Perhaps for this reason, the words of General William Tecumseh Sherman are with me today:

I confess, without shame, I am sick and tired of fighting—its glory is …

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 …

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 …

This week’s Sunday New York Times Week in Review section has a fascinating article on censorship in repressive states. At the heart of the article are the experiences of Nobel Prize laureate JM Coetzee during his native South Africa’s apartheid era when “The censors were part of …

If there was ever any doubt about Pakistan’s ability to survive as a country, the recent attacks in Lahore have once and for all settled the issue – Pakistan is a ticking time bomb with no way to unplug or stop the bomb from exploding.
And, even with this tragedy, …

What’s the old cliche? Victory has a thousand parents and defeat has none? Well, Bafana Bafana is on something of a roll. They have not lost a match in ten outings. Much of their success has been in comfortable home environs, but of course that’s not really …

The legal standing of indigenous people improved earlier this week when Nicaragua ratified the only binding international law for tribal people, the International Labour Organization Convention 169.
While ILO Convention 169 covers many of the same provisions as the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, …