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 […]

read more from this topic.....

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 […]

read more from this topic.....

 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? […]

read more from this topic.....

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 […]

read more from this topic.....

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 […]

read more from this topic.....

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 […]

read more from this topic.....

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 […]

read more from this topic.....

It is now a little over two years to the tenth anniversary of 9/11 and when that doleful event comes round can there be any doubt that we will have to say that the terrorists have won a victory beyond their wildest imaginings?  In the immediate aftermath of the attacks on New York and Washington […]

read more from this topic.....

The headlines are not helpful. This one is from CBS News:
“Mutant Polio Virus Spreads in Nigeria
124 Children Afflicted This Year By Paralyzing Disease, Believed To Be Caused By Same Vaccine Used To Fight It
And other new sources print the same story with even more frightening headlines…
Reality check please.
Let’s talk about Polio. I’m old enough to […]

read more from this topic.....

ICANN has forgotten who it works for - us. Thomas Jefferson noted that the exercise of political power without the consent of the governed is illegitimate. ICANN’s attempt to impose a governance structure on noncommercial users against our will calls into question ICANN’s legitimacy to govern; it undermines confidence in ICANN’s commitment to democratic values; and it appears ICANN is unable to protect the broader public interest against commercial pressures….

read more from this topic.....

An article on the left-leaning website Truthout announced yesterday that a “new direction in the war on terror” may result from a case that occurred in the last year of the Bush Administration. Bryant Neal Vinas, an American-born suspected terrorist who was captured in Pakistan, was given “all the rights of  American criminal suspects.” The results? […]

read more from this topic.....

Today’s Manila Bulletin has it’s usual supplement from the New York Times, and the headline blares:
A Nuclear Free Vision.
In the Depths of the cold war, in 1983, a senior at Colombia University wrote…about the vision of a “nuclear free world”.
It seems that President Obama was promoting nuclear disarmament in the 1980’s.
That in itself is strange […]

read more from this topic.....

Every day we see some new concern in the western media, our media or some apex western meeting. Richard Holbrooke’s recent congressional hearing was quite pithy in this context. One comment from BBC’s anchor is still frozen in my memory, that some people argue that instead of AfPak policy it should be called the PakAf […]

read more from this topic.....

The reports now coming out of foreign press sources are eerily similar to John McCain’s accounts of his P.O.W. treatment at the Hanoi Hilton. The Telegraph, a British media outlet, last week released photos  of Guantanamo abuses that President Obama had just announced would be kept confidential. And the government of Spain revealed that despite the president’s […]

read more from this topic.....

In Africa alone, 800,000 children die of malaria each year.
The death rate was actually once lower, but then economic problems, and the banning of DDT caused a rebound of disease carrying mosquitoes, and a resurgence in these diseases.
But it’s not only malaria: Southeast Asia has had a rebound in Dengue fever in the last few […]

read more from this topic.....

From the Desk of Charlie - Churchill’s Parrot.
Kites rise highest against the wind - not with it.
- Sir Winston Churchill
Sir Winston’s maxim above is so oft cited as to have become cliché. Every parent, teacher, coach, religious instructor, motivational speaker, and supportive friend worth their salt has employed it, or some variation of it, innumerable times.  […]

read more from this topic.....

Some Anthropology associations have been worried about the US Army recruiting trained anthropologists to help in the war on terror.
Part of this is because they remembered how anthropologist helped the US during the war in Southeast Asia, and they viewed the war around Viet Nam wrong (huh…fellahs, ever hear of the boat people? the Cambodian […]

read more from this topic.....

Yeserday I reported that Human Rights Activist Jestina Mukoko and 17 others, mainly members of the opposition party, had been rearrested and denied bail for the “crime” of “treason”.
This resulted in a huge international outcry. The original arrests occurred last December,when many were abducted by unknown abductors, and only after one month was it admitted […]

read more from this topic.....

Human Rights Activist Jestina Mukoko and 18 others have had their bail revoked and were rearrested by the Zimbabwe government.
Jestina Mukoko is a journalist and head of the Zimbabwe Peace Project, which has monitored the violence against civilians and intimidation of voters during previous political campaigns.
Others who had their bail revoked include several opposition MDC […]

read more from this topic.....

There has been a small story that has gotten a lot of criticism in the news lately, about a nine year old girl in Saudi Arabia whose father “married” her to his friend.
The news stories are unclear if he did this to get money, or if he just wanted to make sure the girl had […]

read more from this topic.....

Back in World War I, according to historian Margaret Anderson, many of the so called “German atrocities” in Belgium was in response to snipers. The German soldiers responded to what they assumed was an uprising by civilians; but some episodes were friendly fire incidents, and others were from the rag tag Belgian Army, whose […]

read more from this topic.....

The Philippine military continue to pursue the AbuSayyaf who hold one remaining European hostage in Sulu province.
Usually hostages get quickly ransomed for fear of being killed, but in this case things are slightly different.
For one thing, those kidnapped were from the International Red Cross, and were there to help the local Muslims: a fact that […]

read more from this topic.....

Today’s New York Times has an article on the plight of the Rohingya people from western Burma, who are now refugees in Indonesia.
Unless one follows Amnesty International, one might not know about this Muslim tribe in mostly Buddhist Burma who has been prosecuted by their present day government as unwelcome outsiders. As a result, hundreds […]

read more from this topic.....

Pirates in Somalia are getting rich because the civilized world no longer has the laws and will to confront them.
The dirty little secret is that if the pirates grab a crew, the company owning the ship will pay ransom.
Now the stakes are heightened with two attacks: One, where an American ship’s crew fought and the […]

read more from this topic.....

From the desk of Charlie - Churchill’s Parrot 
“My Father! If it be possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not My will, but Thine be done” (Mt. 26: 38-39).
Sacrifice.  It is core to the extraordinary teaching of Christ.  We are compelled to sacrifice by God’s commandment, love thy neighbor as they self, and the […]

read more from this topic.....

President Obama, in Turkey, speaking on the subject of the Armenian genocide stated, “Well, my views are on the record and I have not changed views.” Obama was mindful not to use the “G” word.
Seems the tracks are laid out, not doubtful of collaborated, calculated interests, once again throwing integrity, U.S. moral standing, and human-rights […]

read more from this topic.....

(London, UK) Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown has spoken out for the first time on autism. Writing from Number 10 Downing Street, Gordon Brown had contacted the British autism campaigner Ivan Corea who has formed a new charity, the UK Autism Foundation campaigning specifically on behalf of families with autism who are below the poverty […]

read more from this topic.....

Autism campaigners around the world have welcomed the message by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to mark World Autism Awareness Day.
In Britain the UK Autism Foundation has urged the United Nations and G20 leaders meeting at the London Summit to take action over Poverty and Autism.
World Autism Awareness Day was initiated by the UN General Assembly […]

read more from this topic.....

(London, UK) The leaders of G20 countries are preparing to arrive in the United Kingdom for the G20 Conference scheduled to be held at the Excel Centre in London Docklands. Barack Obama arrives in London with his wife Michelle on his first trip to the United Kingdom as President of the United States of America. […]

read more from this topic.....

Last week, the new Prime Minister of Zimbabwe, Morgan Tsvangirai, was injured and his beloved wife killed when his car was hit by a truck on a busy highway outside of Harare.
At the time of the accident, news reports played down that this was an assassination attempt, pointing out that the truck was carrying HIV […]

read more from this topic.....