It rained last night, and more coming. In some ways, this is good news, because it means we don’t have to pay so much to irrigate our “dry season” crop. But it is bad news for the south, which is still recovering from the devestating storm that killed over a thousand people..
Superficially, the storm makes […]

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The NYTimes has an article about problems with the Global fund to fight AIDS.
It seems that they checked the books and found some of the money was stolen or diverted, and as a result, a lot of European donors are not giving any more money until the problem is cleared up.
You want honesty at […]

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A lot of Republican bloggers in the US are rolling their eyes up in mockery at the report that President Obama plans to send in US troops to fight the so called “Lord’s Resistance army” in Uganda.
A typical response is this, from the National Review Blog The Corner:
This is even crazier than getting involved in […]

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A lot of Americans seem puzzled about why NATO is so eager to get rid of Khadafi in Libya. Yes, he was behind the TWA bombing, but why get rid of him now?
But what the US press also misses is why Libyans are angry. To paraphrase James Carville: It’s the corruption, stupid. Khadafi has billions […]

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I am old enough to remember when women were exiled into specific specialties in medicine (quick: how many women Urologists do you know), and a similar problem was seen in college (few women in my advanced science classes) and in the newspaper (where women often were expected to write fluffy reports for the fashion and […]

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Many years ago, conspiracy theorists claimed the US was fighting in Viet Nam in order to exploit the oil fields in the Spratlys islands.
This fact allowed the anti war humanitarians to dismiss the story that the US was there because a communist takeover of the region that would result in hundreds of thousand sent to […]

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(Westminster) The Coalition Government plans to scrap the Disability Living Allowance in next week’s Budget which will be introduced by Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne in the House of Commons in Parliament. The Government plans to save over £1 billion pounds in the budget by scrapping the disability living allowance by 2014/15.
The Coalition […]

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I’ve been too busy to watch the US news on our cable network, but the BBC reports are mainly about the fighting in Libya.
But here in the Philippines, the headlines are about our workers. You see, there are at least 25,000 Filipino OFW’s (”overseas foreign workers”) in Libya, and although the government has arranged a […]

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While the US headlines were full of Charlie Sheen’s rants and news of labor union protests in Wisconsin,  here in the Philippines, the headlines are about our stranded OFW (overseas foreign workers) in Libya.
Every paper has photos of those who escaped arriving at the Manila airport, and the Philippine Inquirer notes that the government arranged […]

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People all over the world have been urged to join the UK Autism Foundation’s call for a World Autism Awareness Day Twitter Storm on Saturday 2nd April 2011. The event is being organised to mark the fourth United Nations World Autism Awareness Day.
World Autism Awareness Day was launched on the 2nd of April 2008 by […]

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The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, James Anaya, has urged Panama’s government to ensure the safety of indigenous peoples, farmers and others protesting against new reforms to the country’s mining code.
Dozens of men, women and children  have been injured and arrested since the protests began on February 7, when Panama’s […]

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What is going on in Egypt may have little to do Islamic fundamentalism or democracy per se.
It is probably the result of many factors, and many of us will probably compare the demonstrations to the uprising in Iran against the Shah.
Egypt’s government is corrupt, and the US has been propping up that regime for […]

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Peace on Earth, Goodwill to men…except in the headlines.
You see headlines about NATO troops killed in Afghanistan. Yes, that nasty war is still going on. But the headlines don’t put it into perspective: the Taliban wants to stop education of girls, and any western type education for anyone. But the headlines don’t talk about positive […]

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By William ChurchDirectorPalestine Israel Media Analysis Group (PIMAG)A stealth, seismic shift occurred October 22 in Jerusalem at the Conference on the Future of the Jewish People.  Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the conference and suggested that there will be no troop withdrawal in the West Bank even after a peace deal.  He also re-enforced […]

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I abhor the anti Muslim bigotry that lies behind the entire kerfuffle about some bigoted “pastor” getting his ten minutes of worldwide fame threatening to burn a Koran.
We Catholics put up with this type of ignorance for the last 250 years in the US. In the past, they picketed May processions/fiestas, telling us we are […]

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The three political leaders - Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg recently spoke out on Autism.
Gordon Brown recently said:“Too often people with autism don’t reach their full potential because those around them do not understand the condition. On United Nations World Autism Awareness Day, everyone should challenge their perceptions. I don’t find it […]

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(London, UK) Autism campaigners in the United Kingdom have urged the three party political leaders - Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg to take decisive action on Autism on World Autism Awareness Day.
The UK Autism Foundation has asked Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats to share their Autism Plans in the run up […]

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“Just saw a commrcl 4 EarthHour Mar 27…going 2leave my lights on that whole hour” -Join us! Let’s show Al Gore and all the other Global Warming nuts that they can take their theory and …well, shove it!

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Those Medieval painters were a bit less puritanical than we moderns: A common motif in paintings was the Madonna Les Latte: the Virgin Mother breastfeeding the baby Jesus.
Back in those days, if a woman didn’t breast feed her baby, it died. Yes, upper class women often would find a “wet nurse” to provide nutrition,  and […]

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Mischievous conservative writer Jonah Goldberg links to a British site that keeps a list of problems caused by Global Warming.
Acne, agricultural land increase, Afghan poppies destroyed, poppies more potent, Africa devastated,  Africa in conflict, African aid threatened, African summer frost, aggressive weeds, Air France crash, air pressure changes,  airport malaria, Agulhas current, Al Qaeda and […]

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Quick. Name the most dangerous terrorist organization in the US, organizations that are responsible for  47 of the53 most destructive terrorist attacks in the US.
Muslims? No.
Right wing Militias? No.
The Christian fundamentalist types? No.
It’s the Animal rights extremists.
Via SecondhandsmokeBlog, quoting from the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals decision U.S. v Christianson:
… between 2000 and 2005, 43 […]

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One of the frustrating things when working in child maternal health in poor countries is trying to integrate medical aims into the cultural background of the people, without destroying it.
This NYTimes story, about trying to get the Mullahs in Afghanistan to approve of their people using birth control, is a good example of how to […]

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One of the big blocks against the Health bill in Congress was the possibility of taxpayer money paying for abortion.
The Catholic Bishops, who have been on record supporting universal health care for thirty years, declined to support the bill because the clintonsque language in the bill allowed what the bishops to call “money laundering” to […]

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When last Zimbabwe was in the news, people were dying of cholera, there was a huge inflation rate that made the local dollar worthless, and the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC party, along with an MDC offshoot, had agreed to make a unity government with the President Mugabe.
But although the verbal agreement was that Tsvangirai’s […]

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First came Typhoon Ondoy, which flooded Manila and the Laguna area.
Manila had at least one million people displaced from their homes due to flooding, and many whose houses were built in low lying areas were drowned from flash flooding that they did not expect. When even movie stars have to flee to the rooftops of […]

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 Millions of refugees live in temporary camps all over the world today, and few westerners know or care about their problems.
Although most of these refugees will eventually return to the country of their origin, one question is what does one do with those who for political reasons cannot or are not allowed to go home? […]

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From Eliot Cohen:
Unless you are a connoisseur of small pictures of bearded, brooding fanatical clerics there is not much reason to collect Iranian currency. But I kept one bill on my desk at the State Department because of its watermark—an atom superimposed on the part of that country that harbors the Natanz nuclear site. Only […]

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The over-hyped story of a new “HIV Vaccine” cause a lot of people working in public health to worry.
Every time these stories come out, there are laypeople who think: well, there will be a vaccine so I don’t have to change my behavior”, and voila, case numbers spike.
That is why the Department of Health here […]

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The father of the “green revolution”, Norman Borlaug, has died.
Some of use are old enough to remember when famines in Asia were common, and when the “Population bomb” types were predicting mass starvation of millions of poor people.
The famines didn’t happen, because Borlaug, and other agricultural scientists, developed high yield wheat and grains, along with […]

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A lot of nonsense being written in the news about Conservative writer George Will deciding to throw in the towel in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan is a mess. Big deal. It’s been a mess for a couple thousand years, and trying to “win” a war there and put in a crumpets and tea democracy is a bit delusional.
But […]

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