Guest post by Barbara Rose Johnston
I received last week copies of two very different publications reporting on outcomes from the scientific assessment of life in a nuclear warzone. These studies consider, first, the health experience of resident populations living in areas contaminated by nuclear weapons fallout, and, second, the health of people as affected [...]
European colonists came to North America seeking religious freedom and economic opportunity. They destroyed the very same for those who had lived here for centuries.
One person’s liberty often means someone else’s shackles. One group’s success often means another group is in ruins.
The boom and crackle of Independence Day fireworks in the United States are [...]
Possibly trillions of dollars worth of mineral deposits lie untouched beneath the surface in Afghanistan. A recent New York Times report generated a flurry of discussion about whether this subterranean wealth would help Afghanistan and its people or prove to be a “resource curse” that instead brings more violence.
One thing is certain, if the minerals [...]
Journalist and filmmaker Sebastian Junger says that he wanted to make you feel like you are actually there in a remote combat outpost in Afghanistan in Restrepo. He and his partner Tim Hetherington, succeeded. After the documentary’s powerful 90 minutes, people in the packed AFI theater in Silver Spring, Md., on Friday June 28 [...]
Diana Putman, a USAID health specialist working with the Pentagon’s Africa Command, spoke up about a poorly conceived idea of the State Department in concert with the US military. She spoke up all the way to the top of the chain of command, to the four-star head of Africa Command, General William “Kip” Ward.
Putman [...]
Patricide, or the murder of one’s father, is often associated with political intrigue at high levels: a son seeks his father’s throne and doesn’t want to wait for his father’s natural death.
The reported murder of an Iraqi man by his son and a nephew because he worked for the U.S. military as a translator [...]
In the words of Nicholas Kristof, “The late James P. Grant, a little known American aid worker who headed Unicef from 1980 to 1995 and launched the child survival revolution with vaccinations and diarrhea treatments, probably saved more lives than were destroyed by Hitler, Mao and Stalin combined.”
The legacy of this “little known American” was [...]
Guest post by Helen Caldicott
Ever since white men appeared 200 years ago on the shores of Sydney Harbour in their uniforms, with their guns and flags, the aboriginal people have been hunted, shot at and herded off cliffs and escarpments, and have had to drink from poisoned water holes.
Until very recently, aboriginal children were [...]
Having lost his job as a Cultural Resource Management archaeologist working with the Klamath Indians, John Allison posted his cv online and was shortly contacted by the Human Terrain Systems. John had done his doctoral fieldwork in Afghanistan in 1969-70, making him a potential asset for the HTS. He listened to the HTS message that [...]
For those in the D.C. area, The George Washington University Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting are hosting a fascinating event on Monday. Details below:
Afghanistan: The Human Factor
Monday February 22, 2010
1957 E Street NW, Lindner Family Commons (Room 602)
Introductions:
Sean Aday, Director, Institute for Public Diplomacy and [...]
