The latest report on how to improve America's public diplomacy has its merits, but overall it inspires deja vu. We’ve been in this place before, trying to figure out how the world's most influential culture and most powerful government might finally achieve a public diplomacy organization that operates at the same level. The Brookings […]
Today begings the first of eight nights of Hanukkah, and as you Celebrate the Festival of Lights, please remember to give thanks for the children in your life, and prayer for those who are alone this holiday season. Nes Gadol Haya Sham ("A great miracle happened there"), and let us again see great miracles for children […]
Obama’s Team, Continued – Climate experts get key US posts is the headline from the BBC. John Holdren, a physicist, Harvard professor, and director of the Woods Hole Research Center, has been named Obama’s top science advisor. Holdren is a passionate advocate of early and decisive action on warming. See also this from Woods Hole […]
It was surprising to see the pictures coming out of Malmo, Sweden this week. At first I thought the images were from Greece, but in fact similar rioting (though not nearly as serious) has also hit the Swedish city of Malmo after youths, who were squatting in a former Islamic center, clashed with police. The […]
UNICEF's winning photo for 2008 comes from 21-year-old Belgian photographer Alice Smeets, the youngest person ever to win the competition. The picture comes from a slum in Port au Prince, Haiti called the “Cité Soleil,” or “City of the Sun.” Second place went to Israeli photographer Oded Baililty for his depiction of a child in the Chinese […]
Human Rights Watch just released a report condemning Morocco's human rights record. The watchdog says Morocco suppresses the activities of human rights activists in the occupied Western Sahara. The report also criticizes the Polisario. In August 2007 I spoke to Polisario leader Baba Sayed while visiting the refugee camps. His brother co-founded the Polisario movement. […]
On December 15, the Third World Congress of Imams and Rabbis for Peace began its three-day meeting at UNESCO in Paris. Christian leaders also took part in the conference. Previously, the religious leaders had named 2008 as the "year of reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians." The calls for peace in the Middle East were widespread […]
People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the […]
In front of me is a man who spent ten years in a secret detention center in southern Morocco.Here is a human rights activist who understands the world as it is, its beauty and its terror. Somewhere between both, lies the inspiration of human nature in all its complexities. While imprisoned in the Black Jail, […]
2008 was a year of dramatic developments in war crimes law. There were major events in the prosecutions of Radovan Karadzic, once the world's most wanted man; Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of the 9/11 attacks; and Charles and Chucky Taylor. The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court sought a historic indictment of Sudanese leader […]
Afghan women fear a retreat to dark days Human rights observers have warned Afghan President Hamid Karzai against rushing into a political agreement with elements of the Taliban, lest the nation risk rolling back the hard-fought and potentially tenuous rights restored to women after the fall of the Taliban. At the country's largest-ever women's conference, […]
As of today, we now have the last of the top energy and environment players in place. President-Elect Obama has named former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack to be Secretary of Agriculture and Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar to Interior. See this, including a video of the announcement, from the WaPo. Obama said “How we harness our […]
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Over the past few days, there have been update reports about the case of the potential forced marriage of a British resident, who returned to her home in Bangladesh. Dr. Humayra Abedin, a trainee general practitioner, had apparently been imprisoned in her family's home in Dhaka since August. Now, the new Forced Marriage Act in […]
I am still chuckling over this photo of Carl Bernstein deeply engrossed in his very own A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton on the plane. I want to read it too!