Higher education, according to an Israeli Defense minister is not a humanitarian concern. Within the bantustan-like confines of the Palestinian territories, seven Gaza Strip residents awarded Fulbright scholarships are coming to terms with yet another causality of the Israeli blockade. Denied visas by Israel, the US State Department has had to withdraw their grants. Inside Israel, […]
In a new report issued by Amnesty International, the 2008 State of the Worlds Human Rights, it has painstakingly come to light that after sixty years after the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that human rights still widely abused in dozens of countries. The forward of the report was entitled, “Broken Promises”, […]
Here's a post I had in February: Coal Takes Some Lumps. I looked then at the demise of the federal government's flagship project on coal capture and storage (CCS) and at the concerted, and sometimes vicious, counterattack launched by a utility in Kansas against the denial of its permits for two new plants. Today's lead […]
Al-Jazeera reports that it is organizing a mass homecoming celebration in Doha for its Sudanese cameraman, Sami El-Haj, who had been held in Guantanamo Bay since 2002. The Qatari-based network has issued an open invitiation to the citizens and residents of the Gulf state to attend a celebration to be held Saturday night in the […]
While both European and American media continue to devote heavy coverage to the Democratic presidential primary race, there has been hardly reporting on the campaigns' activities in Puerto Rico, the semi-autonomous American territory – partly because Obama is now seen as the almost inevitable Democratic candidate and Puerto Ricans cannot vote in the actual presidential […]
2,234 days, in jail, tortured and without trial. And the saga continues. In the next few days, the United States is expected to deliver a death penalty verdict for twenty-nine year old British national and current Guantanamo Bay detainee, Binyam Mohamed. Mr. Mohamed maintains his innocence. The US government disagrees. It believes he trained alongside […]
“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.” – Haida Indian Saying When we borrow money we pay it back with interest, when we borrow a car we fill it with gas, and when we borrow our friends clothes we clean them before we return them. However when […]
Recent reports in Kenya of a Boy's suicide reveals gaps in HIV education, the boy was in secondary school when he received his fateful results which was accompanied by no counseling. Soon after his results where received to committed suicide by ingesting lethal amounts of pesticide. The boys death which occurred last month has sparked […]
Reuters reports today that as chief plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other 9/11 defendants, it is not clear whether inculpatory statements made by the defendants will be admissible into evidence at their trials or which statements prosecutors will seek to introduce. Since many defendants will likely allege such statements were only made as a result […]
Not only is the planet heating up, but, as we've seen here, so is the intensity and the seriousness of the debate on how to get GHG's down. One persistent theme is the necessity of "setting a price on carbon." We've heard this from the Stern Review, the IPCC, Lehman Brothers in their reports on […]
Frida Berrigan, a Senior Program Associate at the New America Foundation's Arms and Security Initiative, authored a scathing endictment of the military buildup that occurred during George W. Bush's presidency. In the section called "The Pentagon as Diplomat," Berrigan argues: ” the White House's foreign policy agenda has increasingly been directed through the military. With a military budget […]
A recent report published on the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt's website takes a look at some of the perceived causes behind Egypt's declining role as a regional player in the Arab world. It features commentary made by political scientists and journalists at an annual conference held by the Egyptian-based think tank the International Center for […]
I recently added this site to the links section here. It's a pretty extraordinary tool for accessing information. It is described as "a knowledge management project for international negotiations and related activities on climate change run by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD). Use it in good health.
In the "gotcha" spirit of our current politics, CNN is rudely replaying the archival footage of Scott McClellan dismissing Richard Clarke's tell-all book, written after Clarke left the Bush Administration in the wake of 9/11. "Why didn't he tell the President these things when he was in the White House, rather than waiting until he […]
At a meeting in Aberdeen, Scotland, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown urged oil industry leaders to find ways of increasing output as Britain's North Sea oil reserves decline. With the government struggling to combat rising fuel costs, Business Secretary John Hutton announced two new licenses for North Sea production, together with plans for further exploitation […]