Archive for May, 2003
Politics prevent Taiwan from joining the WHO
Taiwan has long desired to join the WHO. Politics, specifically the objections of the Chinese Government, continue to prevent Taiwan from joining. Here is an excerpt from a fairly typical recent editorial on this subject from the Taipei Times.
How could a supposedly lofty organization such as the WHO continue to allow outdated political considerations to […]
Turn off those Air Conditioners!
The heat of Taiwanese summer could kill SARS if people just turn off their ACs!
Experts have estimated that the temperature range between 17?Ǭ?C and 26?Ǭ?C is the most favorable for the SARS virus. Taipei City’s average temperature in May is 26?Ǭ?C and in June the figure surpasses 28?Ǭ?C. High temperatures, coupled with effective measures adopted […]
Karzai wins showdown over taxes.
Afghanistan’s powerful regional governors have agreed to hand over hundreds of millions of dollars to the central government in a dispute over taxation.
BBC
Aid Workers Targeted in Afghanistan
“There’s been a very, very big deterioration in security countrywide, especially for aid workers,” said Rafael Robillard of ACBAR, an umbrella group of 86 aid agencies in Kabul. “Aid workers are being specifically targeted by people trying to destabilize the government, which is very dependent on aid. We’re easy targets. It’s a serious problem.”
Taipei […]
In Iraq: “You are Palestinian. Get out.”
Salon has an article with more on the plight of Iraqi Palestinians:
Al-Assa’ad is one of 850 Iraqi Palestinians living in a refugee camp 50 kilometers over the Jordan border, near the squalid town of al-Ruweished. The refugees report a kind of anti-Palestinian pogrom in Baghdad: People are being evicted from their homes at gunpoint; their […]
Arabic Names
Basically, a traditional Arabic name given in full consists of the kunya (’father/mother of X’), the ism (the actual given name, e.g. Muhammad or Abdullah), the nasab (’son/daughter of Y’), the nisba (an adjective indicating one’s place of origin, religion, or some other identifier), and one or more laqab s (nicknames to provide further identification), […]
The Economy
Doesn’t look good:
Official unemployment now stands at 6 percent; 8.8 million Americans are unemployed, an increase of 3 million since October 2000. The specter stalking the Fed is that of deflation, something that our central bank has not concerned itself with since the Great Depression. The Fed’s most recent report warns, in ever-cloudy Fedspeak, of […]
Saudi Arabia’s shrinking Middle Class
“The problem in Saudi Arabia is that the middle class is shrinking,” said Turki Hamad, a Saudi political scientist. “And the more poverty you have, the more fundamentalism you have.”
…Saudi Arabia’s problems have been decades in the making. In the early 1980s, the nation’s per capita income was $28,000 in current dollars, on a […]
The battle for Baghdad cost the lives of at least 1,101 Iraqi civilians…
The battle for Baghdad cost the lives of at least 1,101 Iraqi civilians, many of them women and children, according to records at the city’s 19 largest hospitals.
Philadelphia Inquirer
Big surprise - “intelligence agency” is an oxymoron
Intelligence agencies had a far less accurate picture of Iraq’s weapons program than participants believed at the outset of their search, they recalled.
Washington Post
An anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, 
