Realizing most of us know little about Haiti and how it got to be the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, and put off by how the media portray the country, Brown Man of the Brown Man Thinking Hard blog put together an informative video.
We think Brown Man has done an impressive job on his [...]
Posts under ‘Foreign affairs’
Good insights into Haiti’s history
Haiti relief effort still too little, too slow
As Haitians endure additional big-Richter aftershocks, struggle among the dead and hang on for help that’s trickling in, the U.S. aid effort fumbles along, with high-level officials making lame excuses for bad decisions and poor execution.
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US military defended its management of the flow of aid flights into Port-au-Prince airport Wednesday, saying [...]
Haiti response a Katrina-style fiasco
No, Gates, the purpose of this exercise is not to prevent desperate people from rioting around aid distribution sites. The purpose is to get enough food, water and medical help to them quickly enough that they won’t be driven to rioting. What’s more, fully armed U.S. troops should be well capable of seeing to it half-starved Haitian civilians simmer down, especially if the aid those civilians are after is right there and being handed out.
As world sends help to quake-stricken Haiti,
Robertson contributes tale of deal with devil
The supposedly Rev. Pat Robertson practices a perverse theology, one in which it’s standard operating procedure in times of calamity, pain and grief, to blame the victims — any way his twisted excuse for a mind can devise.
While the U.S. and much of the rest of the world began marshalling money, manpower and all manner [...]
Airliner incident reveals weaknesses
in effort to protect against terrorists
It’s still early in the investigation of would-be mass murderer Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and his attempt to blow up an airliner coming into to Detroit Friday, but what he did and why he did it are clear enough.
In coming days and weeks we’ll learn more about how Abdulmutallab, 23, a Nigerian, came to be [...]
Plan for Afghanistan hopeful, costly and iffy
President Obama today ended three months of fact finding, consultations and consideration, formally announcing his decision to send another 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan, bringing the total there to about 100,000.
Obama presented his plan at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., addressing an audience made up largely of cadets, some of whom have [...]
Bright lights, big city, bad move
Someone with the Empire State Building’s owning company or management has an elevator that doesn’t go all the way to the top, judging by their choice of honoree.
The landmark skyscraper was topped with red and yellow lighting this evening, to mark the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China.
That would be the [...]
Victory in Afghanistan requires
going to war with Pakistan
Pakistani help for the Taliban and al Qaida has been constant since the first U.S. forces entered Afghanistan late in 2001. It matters little what Pakistan’s central government says its policy is. What matters is what the people of Pakistan do.
Oil made and could very well break the U.S.
If you’re not familiar with the term “peak oil” you should be, because it signifies something with the power to profoundly transform American life, create huge economic dislocations and, in all likelihood, cause our troops to fight a series of Iraq-like wars on into the indefinite future.
In Bad Money*, one of the most powerful [...]
Iraqi’s confession alleging bribery
undermines credibility of regime
In the wake of last week’s deadly truck-bomb blasts outside Baghdad’s finance and foreign ministry buildings, Iraq’s government is publicizing what it says is the confession of a planner of one of those attacks.
Iraqi television carried the confession of Wisam Ali Khazim Ibrahim, 57, a Sunni who says he’s a former Baath Party member [...]
