After yesterday’s 7.1 magnitude aftershock in Japan I thought it might be good to check in and see how U.S. aid efforts were progressing. According to this report in the Washington Post, the U.S. continues to assist Japan with the search for victims of the earthquakes and tsunami: About 22,000 Japanese troops, along with 110 […]
Last month the RFK Center for Justice & Human Rights and the California International Law Center at UC Davis School of Law released a new report on the conflict in Sudan. The report analyzes the key transitional justice issues that Darfuris will be faced with once the conflict and violence ends. On March 23, the […]
Globalization has had a profound effect on the world over the course of the past three decades. We are experiencing a technological revolution; it’s far from over. Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina began saying in 2004 that we were “at the end of the beginning” of the information age and that the last 25 years […]
One of the many hats I wear is that of co-founder of an informal group of arms control and non-pro types, generously funded by the AAAS, who meet periodically to hear from experts in the field about topics of interest to the community. On the heels of a speech made by National Security Advisor Tom Donilon […]
A funky little site called “Motherboard” recently posted an interview with a guy named John Coster-Mullen. Apparently, Mr. Coster-Mullen, a former truck driver with no college education taught himself how to reverse-engineer the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. With jaw-dropping accuracy. So much so that Dr. Robert Norris, the highly regarded nuclear weapons […]
I have written on a number of occasions here about the Alberta tar sands. Like many environmentalists, I find the idea of ripping tar out of the ground with excavators the size of aircraft carriers – or sucking it up after spending months softening it with injected steam – repellent. The greenhouse gas implications are […]
As I write this blog, if Congress cannot agree on a budget in a few hours the U.S. government will be forced to shutdown. Thought I’d weigh in on what this will mean to the 1.6 men and woman currently serving on active duty. As someone who was on active duty in the military the […]
Since the the unrest and protests in Moldova and Iran in 2009, everyone’s been talking about a “Twitter Revolution.” Breathless media reports have cited Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms as the great democratizers of the 21st Century. After the earthquake in Haiti in January 2010, the Red Cross raised $24 million in five […]
“There are more than 190 countries in the world, and virtually all of them enslave children, women and men within, or across, their borders.” * Last night I had the honor to attend a screening at Georgetown University in Washington DC of the film, Not My Life, which is to be released in June 2011, […]
Eric Holder’s announcement earlier this week that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) and several other 9/11 plotters will be tried in military tribunals represents another step in Obama’s ‘close Guantanamo’ saga. The saga began in Obama’s first week as president, when he signed the infamous Close Guantanamo executive order (you can read the executive order here). […]
Will Schanbacher holds a PhD in Religious Studies from Claremont Graduate University. His research and teaching interests include social ethics, globalization and poverty, religious ethics, and liberation theologies. His recent book, The Politics of Food: The Global Conflict between Food Security and Food Sovereignty offers an ethical examination of the current global food system and […]
Wednesday, a Liberian-flagged tanker sailed out of Libya’s northeastern port of Marsa al-Hariga carrying one million barrels of oil. At spot prices, this means the cargo is worth $100 million. This represents a significant milestone for the anti-Khadafy forces based in and around Benghazi in the east (formerly known as Cyrenaica). Symbolically, this provides greater […]
Tamara Tunie, plays Dr. Warner, the medical examiner on the hit show Law & Order: SVU (Special Victims Unit), and while the SVU team on TV investigates fictitious crimes of abuse, the dramatized cases give a window into the trauma and horror that faces many children across the country. While Dr. Warner may not be […]
I am a fiction reader, and it’s rare when a non-fiction story grabs me in the same way as a good novel. Well, Gayle Tzemach Lemmon’s The Dressmaker of Khair Khana is such a book. Lemon was an accomplished journalist, in business school in 2005, who was assigned to write a story on women entrepreneurs […]
The U.S. has not just misplaced its priorities. When the most powerful country ever to inhabit the earth finds it so easy to plunge into the horror of warfare but almost impossible to find adequate work for its people or to properly educate its young, it has lost its way entirely. Nearly 14 million Americans are jobless and the outlook for many of them is grim.