Rafah is back in the news (emphasis added): Until the start of the intifada, the houses in the Rafah refugee camp were only a few meters from the border. But since October 2000, the IDF began tearing down the houses closest to the border because of exchanges of fire, and now houses standing at a [...]
Please inform everyone you know, that the Designs on the White House (DOTWHO) contest deadline has been officially extend until Memorial Day! That means that the deadline for people to vote on the many wonderful designs already submitted has been extended as well. It is also worth mentioning that, DOTWHO’s list of judges has been [...]
Geoffrey Pullum’s scathing letter to William Raspberry about Ebonics reminds me of how hard it was for me to teach about Ebonics to undergraduates. The problem was that no student would ever volunteer to read aloud the sample of AAVE from the assigned text. I understood their reluctance, so I would have to read it [...]
I’ve had to look fairly hard for anyone else in the blogsphere who is as upset as I am about the idea that there is something we can call The Arab Mind. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, read here.) Fortunately, I am not alone. But it is not enough to point out [...]
John Fabian Witt asks, Can China protect its workers? China and other developing Asian economies are experiencing an industrial accident crisis of world-historical proportions. Official sources report 14,675 industrial-accident deaths in China last year, but statistics on workplace accidents are notoriously unreliable, and some observers suggest that the number may be closer to 120,000. … [...]
Amardeep Singh has a good profile of the man who looks to be India’s new PM: Manmohan Singh. Manmohan Singh is a Congress-wallah to the core: no one has ever seriously questioned his loyalty to the Congress Party or to India. If anything, one might question his tendency to reduce ideological problems to economic ones. [...]
A new study finds that total median compensation for CEOs in the S&P 500 rose to $4.6 million last year, a 27% increase from 2002. According to census data released last fall, the median household income fell to $42,409 in 2002, a $500 drop. (via Cursor)
We’re asking John Kerry to “go big” and campaign on a bold agenda for change. Sign the petition to Kerry now.
How did one man come to control a reported £5.3bn stake in Sibneft, a state energy provider that only 10 years ago was bequeathed to Russia’s citizens, predominantly the tens of thousands of Soviet oil workers and managers who built the industry? Read this article to find out. (via Crooked Timber.)
—> Sign the petition! Remember James Yee? Here is what Jeanne at Body and Soul wrote back in February: … James Yee, the Muslim chaplain at Guantánamo who was arrested last September on suspicion that he was part of an espionage ring. Yee was kept in solitary confinement for 76 days, much of the time [...]