Requiem

23Sep07

If Sundays are for the sacred, then surely spending an hour or so with opera and Mozart’s Requiem will count towards my score in heaven. Wandering through the house, I heard bits of it coming from the living room where my housemate watched the film Amadeus.
The film is about mediocrity, really – the mediocrity [...]

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Back in Blackwater

21Sep07

Officials in Iraq have resumed travel under the protection of the U.S. private security firm Blackwater. The move may come as a shock to Iraqis, considering that this morning’s headlines reported that the Iraqi government had concluded that deaths caused by the agency a few days ago were unprovoked.
The New York Times comments that [...]

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Normalizing Justice

21Sep07

Several news agencies have reported that former Peruvian head of state Alberto Fujimori now faces extradition to Peru on human rights abuse charges. Based on evidence of a direct link between Fujimori and death squads that murdered and disappeared Peruvian students and other citizens during the early 1990s, Chile’s Supreme Court has ruled to [...]

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Senior officials appointed for Iraqi refugees

20Sep07

After months of calls for increasing the number of refugee admissions to the U.S. from Iraq, the Bush administration responded several months ago by agreeing to allow 7000 refugees into the country. The figure, illustrated in comparison to the graphic above, was considered a paltry response by human rights organizations and other Middle Eastern [...]

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FGM Banned in Egypt

19Sep07

The BBC & New York Times reported today that Egypt has banned the practice of female genital mutilation (or female circumcision, as supporters call it) universally. One of the interesting things noted in the Times’ coverage was the shift in social taboos surrounding the topic in Egypt. Unlike years past, the media [...]

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Las colonias de los EEUU

07Sep07

Today’s New York Times features a story on the colonias of south Texas – communities where the homes are half-built and are only recently gaining access to water systems, electricity, and paved roads. The Times report focuses on the growth and determination of the residents of these neighborhoods, who appear akin to [...]

Filed under: Community Development & Housing, Texas, basic needs, colonias, housing   |  Leave a Comment