March 2011
11 posts
10 tags
Changing the Climate: The Not-so-Clearcut Tactics...
Amsterdam
Shortly after she had moved her family from their isolated cabin on British Columbia’s tiny Cortes Island to the biggest city in the most densely populated country in Europe, Tzeporah Berman’s seven-year-old son, Quinn, had a moment of culture shock. His mother, exhausted from the move and the controversy that forever swirls around her, had picked up the phone and ordered a pizza....
6 tags
Why a Cellphone May be Better than a Toilet if...
London
About a third of the world’s people have no toilet. This is both unsanitary and inconvenient. In villages, it’s often customary for the women to rise at 5 a.m. and pay a visit to the field, and the men to make their pilgrimage an hour later. In cities, there are open cesspits, fetid back alleys and plastic-bag “flying toilets.”
Nowadays, it’s increasingly familiar to see people composing...
1 tag
Japan's Nuclear-Energy Contest of Terrors: Nature...
London
The earthquake, just off the coast, was swift and terrible, registering almost 9.0. Even more deadly were the 15-metre tsunami and the raging fires that soon followed. Thousands of people died or were swept out to sea, their homes reduced to mountains of rubble.
And what’s more, it had hit what seemed like the most careful, prosperous and well-prepared country, the one most...
5 tags
The Arrival City at the Centre of the Arab...
When Cairo rose up against dictator Hosni Mubarak in January’s Tahrir Square protests, the unsung hero of the moment was not an individual but rather a rough-and-tumble neighborhood. Bulaq al-Dakrour, a haphazard labyrinth of narrow streets and jerry-built buildings on the city’s western edge, provided the main crowd of protesters who stormed into Tahrir Square, risking their lives against angry...
13 tags
Saving Libya, Let's Not Forget Lessons of Bosnia,...
London
The world once again has a global policeman. The six Canadian fighter jets and many more warships and aircraft that are being sent to Libya are taking part in a most controversial form of warfare: the bombing of a sovereign state to protect its people from their ruler.
As any cop will tell you, police operations are rarely quick, easy, clean or surgical. The United Nations Security...
10 tags
In China, Egypt and Worldwide, A New Social Class...
London
In China, the second Tiananmen Square was smothered at birth, the planned “Jasmine Revolution” democracy protests quashed discreetly by police before they could even reach the pavement. But another sort of movement, possibly even more potent and world-changing, is emerging not from the streets but from the thousands of highrise apartment towers that loom above them.
In a hundred cities...
11 tags
While Libya Burns, the West Argues
London
As Libya’s uprising escalates into something approaching full-scale war, the leaders of the Western world are engaged in their own heated conflict over how, when and how much to recognize and support those fighting dictator Moammar Gadhafi.
Libya’s loose-knit coalition of rebels is making increasingly urgent calls for a Western military intervention in the form of a no-fly zone and its...
7 tags
Why is Britain the Most Hawkish Voice on Libya?...
London
The newly elected Conservative Prime Minister in Britain, fresh from making deep budget cuts to the military, responds to a faraway political crisis with sudden and dramatic calls for military action against the ruling dictatorship, with top-secret raids and gunboats steaming to a foreign coast.
To some here in Britain, David Cameron in 2011 is coming to resemble Margaret Thatcher in...
1 tag
Do Egypt, Tunisia and Libya Suffer a...
Ras Ajdir, Tunisia
When we study the prehistory of the Arab revolutions of 2011, the most emblematic moment may prove to be a two-hour meeting on Jan. 19, 2007, in a large tent surrounded by camels in the Sahara, between Robert Putnam, the great American sociologist, and Moammar Gadhafi, the self-appointed leader of the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.
Dr. Putnam is famous for...
5 tags
For Black Africans, the Road Out of Libya is...
Ras Ajdir, Tunisia
Two young men named Oboun Maabi and K.K. Ezekiel, friends and fellow construction workers from Ghana, may have been the only black men to escape from western Libya Tuesday. Their journey was neither safe nor easy.
They had slept in the freezing air for two nights as Tunisians blocked their passage. Waking before dawn Tuesday, they walked far into the Sahara to begin a six-hour...
5 tags
In Tunisian Towns, It's Students Teaching Lessons...
Zarzis, Tunisia
It’s late morning, and the streets of this desert town are impassable because high-school students are, in the words of 16-year-old Haifa Zardeded, “holding our own revolution.”
The entire student population, plus one teacher, have defied their principal’s orders and skipped school to pack the streets in a jubilant and defiant mood. They are demanding a quick move to democracy –...
