USA: The never ending story of money motivated war crimes in Iraq continues

What BBC’s popular political TV magazine Panorama yesterday night called the greatest heist in history or Daylight Robbery seems now to be going into another round of new discoveries.

In the more than one hour long broadcast Panorama’s Jane Corbin tells us some of the stories of those who became rich from the war and those who stood up against the crimes and “got burned”.

…If you believe that such corruption happens by pushing around brown envelopes with money under the table, sorry, but that might just be a very small part of it. We have compiled a short list of the most common activities identified within Iraq below. Some of them have also been mentioned in the report of Panorama yesterday night…

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Cartoon: So the UN was right about Global Warming…

Great cartoon by “Jack Ohman” at Washington Post’s “Slate magazine”…

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UN: An on-line game to teach children how to save lives

As part of the 2006-2007 World Disaster Reduction Campaign “Disaster Risk Reduction Begins at School” the secretariat of the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction has launched an on-line game to teach children how to build safer villages and cities against disasters. Players can chose between five scenarios they will try to prevent - from earthquakes over hurricanes to flood and Tsunamis. Each scenario takes between 10 and 20 minutes to play, depending on the disaster you are trying to prevent and…

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AIDS: Costly Red Campaign Reaps Meager $18 Million

There is an interesting article in “Advertising Age” - one of the leading publications of the industry - about the RED campaign by Bono and a group of companies. We suggest to also read the comments on the article. There are a few interesting ones beside the normal “wood” and “heroic praises”. “…The disproportionate ratio between the marketing outlay and the money raised is drawing concern among nonprofit watchdogs, cause-marketing experts and even executives in the ad business. It threatens to spur a backlash, not just against the Red campaign — which ambitiously set out to change the cause-marketing model by allowing partners to profit from charity — but also for the brands involved…”

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Geneva: Symbolic “Broken Chair” re-erected

In September 1997, Handicap International unveiled the Broken Chair, a 12 meter high wooden sculpture in support of the global movement against land mines, outside of the Palais des Nations in Geneva. After a lengthy period of reconstruction during which the Chair was placed in storage, it will be reinstated as a reminder of the governments’ commitment to fully universalize and adhere to the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty…

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Health: The Challenges of Global Health

US magazine “Foreign Affairs” - one of the most influential publication on international affairs and foreign policy in America - has an excellent opinion piece on Global Health. The 12 page essay was written by Pulitzer Price winner and bestseller writer “Laurie Garrett” who is also well known for her book “Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public health”. We strongly recommend reading the document to anybody working in Global Health and to anybody who is interested in what is happening in fighting AIDS, Malaria and TB. We put some quotes together below…

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Quote of the day: UN and Nations

This quote is attributed to Carlos Romulo former president of the UN General Assembly:

“…If there is a problem between a weak nation and another weak nation and the UN takes action, the problem disappears.
If there is a problem between a strong nation and a weak nation and the UN takes action, the weak nation [...]

FAO urges food aid reform

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) today proposed a series of major changes how international food aid should be managed and delivered. In its today released annual report, “The State of Food and Agriculture (SOFA)”, FAO says that about a third of the global food aid budget (ca. USD 600 million) is being spent in donor countries and never reaching beneficiaries. The world’s leading food donors spend as much as half of their food aid budgets on domestic processing and shipping by national carriers, according to research quoted by the report. While the report acknowledges that there is no substitute for food aid in coping with humanitarian crises…

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ARTE.TV: Best General Overview on AIDS

We always liked Jean-Christophe Victor geo-political series “Le Dessous des Cartes” for European TV station Arte.tv. Every week since years he describes political topics with maps and info graphics. And for each episode there is a slide show with all the graphics put online. This year they have also created a 3-part special on AIDS…

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World AIDS Day: Speeches, Speeches, Speeches

Like at every “World AIDS Day” before it is also the day of speeches and memorandums. And clapping each other’s back to tell how great work we all do. The same has happened for more than 30 years within the “fight” against Malaria and Tuberculosis and – let’s face it - there is lots of room for improvement and more efficiency. Maybe people should just start getting the job done and…

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