Latest General Editorials
RSS-
Reflecting on the pursuit of equality and non-discrimination on LGBT Day
Every year on May 17, people all around the world celebrate the International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia, while reflecting how to achieve full equality and non-discrimination. In Cameroon, a young man was sentenced to three years in prison for sending a text message to another man, saying "I’ve fallen in love with you." The young man’s brave lawyer received ...
-
Editorial Four Corpus Christi port commissioners should reconsider conflict of interest
Two and perhaps all three of the recusals weren't necessary. The commissioner with what appears to be the strongest potential conflict, Mike Scott, hasn't recused ...
-
Editorial Americas duty to help Oklahoma
Photo credit: Mayita Mendez, 2002 On a memorable day 11 years ago, grateful Oklahomans donated a red and white rescue truck to the New York City Fire Department, purchased with money donated by schoolkids and adults. Called the Spirit of Oklahoma, the truck was the Sooner State's way of thanking the FDNY for its help in 1995 with search and recovery work after a terrorist bomb claimed 168 ...
More General Editorials
RSS-
Why So Many Syrians Wish For Rain
report issued last week documents 59 of these unlawful air strikes in northern Syria. They started in July and are still going on, seemingly intensifying with sunny weather. Some of the air strikes we documented seem to have deliberately targeted civilians. For example, repeated attacks on bakeries strongly indicate that the government intended to hit them. Hospitals seem to have been targeted ...
-
Comprehensive immigration reform or bust
Immigration advocates gather outside the Senate Judiciary Committee in the Senate Hart Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, Monday, April 22, 2013, as they wait to attend the committee's hearing on comprehensive immigration reform ...
-
NGOs Have a Right to Receive Foreign Funding
The first lesson taught in the School for Autocrats is to keep people isolated. When people join together to advance a political perspective, they gain confidence in their views and power in their collective voice. But when society is atomized, fear is more likely to dominate, and individuals acting alone have a harder time making their voices heard. A common way for people to join together ...
-
Search for extraterrestrial life goes on even without Kepler.
CNN that the much beloved telescope, which ';has found more than 2,700 possible planets orbiting stars other than our Sun, of which more than 100 have been confirmed,'; may be nearing the end of its life now that ';the second of four of the Kepler spacecraft's reaction wheels, which aim the vessel's instruments, appears to have failed. It remains to be seen whether full ...
-
Aesthetic path to enlightenment
Later, Buddhism brings in bhakti as a valid source of knowledge and therefore moksha, but surprisingly avoids aesthetic discourse and does not advocate the undertaking of aesthetic experience despite the fact that Buddhists were the most prolific image makers and mural painters. Asvaghosa's Budhacharita is considered to be one of the first poetic compositions in Sanskrit, rich with ...
-
Narendra Modi is a bubble — and voters today are sharp Jitin Prasada
"Two decades ago, you could have simply polarised people in the name of caste, community or religion and won elections — times have changed ...
-
Indias nowhere people The BJPs obstruction of enclave swaps with Bangladesh is hurting Indian citizens
One of the biggest casualties of the recently washed out budget session of Parliament is the 119th Amendment Bill to the Constitution. The amendment relates to the 1974 India-Bangladesh Land Boundary Agreement (LBA); the protocol for this was inked during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Dhaka in September 2011. Should the amendment pass muster in Parliament, it would operationalise ...
-
Bangladesh’s other workplace catastrophes
collapse of the Rana Plaza building on more than 1,000 workers, which made it the deadliest ever catastrophe in the history of the garment industry. Last November, a garment factory fire killed more than 100 people. So the tannery worker’s assessment sounds like a sick joke. But the truth is it was a realistic assessment of the deplorable health and safety conditions in Bangladesh. ...
-
Time for the UK to Show It Takes Torture Seriously
Looking back at its last review, the concerns seem almost quaint. The experts who make up the committee reminded the British government that the prohibition on torture applied to its forces in Iraq and overseas interrogations. But it knew, and nongovernmental organizations concerned with the subject knew, little or nothing of the scale of abuse that British agents and soldiers were already ...
-
Obama scandals could hurt Republicans
Republican politicians and activists can barely contain their glee at the simultaneous eruption of three major controversies about the Obama administration. Conservatives are at a low boil over the administration’s dissembling about its actions after the attacks on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya. The public is concerned about the targeting of conservative groups by the ...
-
Minnesota Legislature largely restrained unions
"They own the place," GOP state Rep. Pat Garofalo sarcastically said of labor unions Monday, as pro-union forces loudly celebrated the House's 68-66 vote to authorize state-paid child care providers and personal care attendants to organize a union. The contentious unionization issue was indeed a big-deal, long-sought victory for the state's union movement. It's seen as ...
-
Editorial Forget the man listen to the music
Musically speaking, Richard Wagner is one of the greatest talents that the Western tradition has ever produced. He not only redefined the nature of opera, he also reshaped the basics of music itself, laying the groundwork for everyone from Debussy to Strauss to Schoenberg. And all this, of course, while writing some shiveringly wonderful ...
-
Editorial The price we pay for open justice
There are difficulties in identifying suspects. The taint sticks even if charges are never brought, proponents of anonymity argue, citing the swathe of ageing TV personalities paraded across front pages thanks to Operation Yewtree. The alternative is so much worse, however. Not only because naming names may embolden other victims to come forward, as the Stuart Hall case amply illustrated. There ...
-
Putins State Capitalism Means Falling Growth
Russia's economic growth rate is causing serious concern. The fundamental problem is that Russia has almost reached full capacity. Growth is likely to stay low until Russia undertakes profound systemic reforms, but no such reforms are on the agenda. Russia's gross domestic product grew reasonably well at 4.3 percent in 2010 and 2011. The growth rate dropped to 3.4 percent in 2012 and ...
-
Editorial Crowns aims for science give focus for research
Science has been a black hole for taxpayers' money. Governments of all stripes agree that science is something they should fund without knowing very much about it. They maintain Crown research institutes for the needs of primary industries and for studying the country's weather, geology, minerals and the like. They also fund research in universities and hospitals with few questions ...
-
Globe Editorial Prime Minister needed to say more in speech to caucus
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper points to the door as he speaks to members of Caucus on Parliament Hill Tuesday May 21, 2013 in Ottawa. (Adrian ...
-
Russias spy tale about American sounds fishy
expulsion as a spy of a U.S. Embassy employee in Moscow last week. The Russian Federal Security Service, known as the FSB, said that Ryan C. Fogle was caught red-handed trying to recruit one of its officers, carrying cash, a letter, a compass, a map, sunglasses and two wigs. We don’t know what Fogle was doing, but the story sounds fishy. Back in the 1970s, perhaps, a CIA case officer ...
-
How a U.S. Spy Saved an FSB Agents Rear End
Yulia Latynina One month after the Tsarnaev brothers detonated bombs at the Boston Marathon, Moscow authorities arrested a U.S. citizen they suspected of being a spy. We are told that Ryan Fogle, a U.S. diplomat with the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, attempted to recruit an FSB officer who traveled with U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agents to the North Caucasus to investigate ties the ...
-
Rule by Proxy Is New U.S. Leadership Model
The demise of the Roman Empire resulted from a combination of strategic overreach and excessive delegation of security responsibilities to newcomers. Without making undue comparisons, the question for the U.S. today is whether it can remain the world's leading power while delegating to others or to technological tools the task of protecting its global influence. Using nonhuman weapons such ...
-
The Real Costs of CIA Cash
reported recently that the CIA routinely provides cash payments to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, totaling in the tens of millions of dollars, many were surprised. I wasn't among them. The Karzai scandal cycle has developed a certain amount of redundancy: his odd outbursts, his family's endless corruption, the vacillating positions on peace negotiations and about faces on the Taliban ...
-
Minnesota Legislature yields mixed results
No trumpets blared or crowds cheered Monday night as the 2013 Legislature’s regular session drew to a close. Weary legislators are expected to troop home today to confront mixed responses to the year’s labors. We share that ambivalence, and concede that it may spring from expectations that were too high. This year’s return to all-DFL control at the Capitol after 22 years of ...
-
Catholic nuns put faith before church hierarchy
Recently, opponents of deportations held a rally to commemorate the five-year anniversary of what they call an unjust immigration sweep of 389 people in a kosher meat-packing plant in Postville, Iowa. Last July, three people breached security and entered a nuclear facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn., housing highly enriched uranium, where they spilled blood at the site before being arrested. Last ...
Turkmenistan Featured
-
Turkmenistan's new olympic development could be blessing or curse
Work has finally begun on the massive Ashgabat Olympic complex development, a US $5 billion project that aims to enhance the standing of the capital city when Turkmenistan makes a bid to host the Olympic Games.
The sports complex being built in Ashgabat will be the largest and most state-of-the-art of its kind in Central Asia, underscoring Turkmenistan’s position as a regional power due to the country’s extensive natural gas and oil reserves, while its completion will also illustrate the growing presence of the country in the international community. Read more
News from around our Network
