Around the Globe:

Why Aid To Africa Doesn't Help - But Wolfowitz Just Might, July 08, 2005
Glenn Reynolds comments on a must-read article from Max Boot about the futility of pouring more financial aid into Africa: "Maybe the next concert should be called Liber8." ... Max Boot's article reminds me of why I'm happy that Paul Wolfowitz is the new head of the World Bank. ... Speaking of Wolfowitz, lots of folks are pointing to the SeekerBlog's excellent "exit interview" with the former Pentagon hawk....

Help Wanted, May 12, 2005
Tod Bolsinger has some good information on concrete ways you can help address the AIDS crisis in Africa. Look around at everything you have and realize how blessed you are before you reject his request. Bolsinger recently spent several days in Malawi. Here's one of his blog reports from the scene....

Sudan Blogging, April 14, 2005
Here's a blog about Sudan and the genocide in Darfur, Coalition for Darfur. This recent post looks at the Darfur Accountability Act pending in Congress....

Sudanese Ambassador Challenged on Genocide, April 14, 2005
Here's a very good report from The Tennessean on the appearance yesterday by Sudanese Ambassador Abdel Bagi Kabeir. Yesterday's event was organized, in part, by the college's office of Spiritual Development, which informed the ambassador that the audience would have a clear point of view against the Sudanese government. Many in the crowd — including one student refugee from the Sudan — accused the government of supporting atrocities such as murder and rape and what...

Sudan Ambassador Wednesday, April 12, 2005
If you are concerned about the plight of the people of Sudan, where starvation and genocide are killing people by the hundreds of thousands, and you live in the Nashville area, you can confront the Sudanese ambassador to the United States, Amb. Abdel Bagi Kabeir, with your concerns in person on Wednesday, April 13. Details here. For the past few decades, Sudan was wracked by civil war as Muslims from the northern part of the...

Perfect Storm, March 04, 2005
Marvin Hutchens has some thoughts about the perfect storm that may lay in America's future....

The Transformational Power of Liberty, March 04, 2005
George Miller in London reflects on the growing anti-tyranny movement in the Middle East:We should not be insufferable about this, but neither should we be apologetic in pointing out that the geo-political earthquake we are witnessing in Arabia is the result of the fortitude of a crazy American administration led by a stupid president....

"Tell it to the dead North Koreans.", March 03, 2005
Hugh Hewitt is outraged. And rightly so. Hewitt: "70 years ago American journalism did not cooperate with evil. It reported on it." But no so today at the Los Angeles Times, which waxes rhapsodically about normal life in North Korea, where the most brutally repressive regime on the planet is starving its own people....

Radio Free Nepal, February 16, 2005
The Media Drop has an online interview with the Nepal-based journalist blogging anonymously at the blog titled Radio Free Nepal, reporting on the "bloodless coup" in which the king of Nepal has ended that country's 14-year experiment with democracy. With Iraq, Iran and North Korea dominating the foreign-affairs news, the situation in Nepal is getting less coverage from the mainstream media than it deserves. Radio Free Nepal is risky blogness:King Gyandendra of Nepal has issued...

Duck and Cover, February 10, 2005
After years of diplomacy aimed at preventing it from happening, the insane leader of the world's largest deliberately-starved nation says he has the bomb, and isn't going to mess around with foreign diplomats any more. It's nice to see that multilateral diplomacy has seen the crisis over North Korea's nuclear ambitions safely through to its logical end without, like, a war or something. We're all safe now....

Remember To Prevent, January 26, 2005
Amanda Witt has written a powerful essay on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Read the whole thing....

Tsunami Relief: "A Very American Thing To Do", January 12, 2005
Chuck Simmins, keeper of the increasingly awesome The Stingy List, reports that donations for tsunami disaster relief by American individials and businesses has topped $615 million. And that's in addition to the hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and hand's on assistance by the military being donated by Uncle Sam. Simmins, by the way, took some heat from Lefty bloggers for noticing out loud that the very long list of private sector donations was...

The Worst Ever, January 07, 2005
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan "Calls Devastation in Sumatra Worst He Has Ever Seen," reports the New York Times.Mr. Annan and the World Bank president, James D. Wolfensohn, landed in the region and then drove to the shattered coastal town of Meulaboh. "I have never seen such utter destruction mile after mile," a shaken Mr. Annan told reporters afterward. "It's even worse than the devastation in Rwanda that we did nothing to stop." Mr. Annan...

Tsunami: Our Ever-Growing Stinginess, January 06, 2005
Chuck Simmins, compiler of The Stingy List, says Americans have now donated more than $382.6 million to the tsunami disaster relief effort. Er, and that's not including the massive outpouring of money and military resources by the U.S. government....

Post-Tsunami Stinginess Update, January 04, 2005
Chuck Simmins says American companies, individuals and religious organizations have now donated more than $236 million for tsunami relief. He's got The Stingy List. As I said in an earlier post, America's critics don't get that much of what America will do to help in the post-tsunami relief and rebuilding will not be done by the U.S. government in the name of the American people, but by the American people themselves....

Tsunami: A Survival Story, January 03, 2005
Donald Sensing presents a Tsunami survival story.We (and our families) are both physically and emotionally exhausted right now and I would really appreciate your prayers. As the death toll continues to rise on the island, we're having a hard time coping with and processing what has happened. We find ourselves asking "why us?" and "how do we still have each other?" The Lord saved us.He's good at that....

Tsunami: The $35 Million Myth, January 01, 2005
The media got it wrong when they reported on the USA's initial tsunami relief funding of $35 million, says Chuck Simmins. He nails them for incomplete reporting and misrepresenting the truth even though they had the facts in hand....

Tsunami: America Stingy?, December 30, 2004
Blogger Chuck Simmins has done some real digging - the kind mainstream journalists could do but probably won't - and has identified $127 million in donations for tsunami relief from American individuals and corporations - over and above funds offered by the U.S. government. Among the donors: Pfizer - one of those evil pharmaceutical companies, they only pledged $35 million) - along with Merck & Co., Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories, Coca-Cola, Wal-Mart, Cisco Systems,...

Tsunami Blogging, December 30, 2004
America can't win with some people. Yesterday, the mainstream media's meme was, America was stingy. Today, the story the MSM is carrying for the hate-America Left is that Bush's leadership of a coalition of countries on tsunami disaster relief is "undermining the UN.". The southeast Asia tsunami death toll is now above 120,000. Amazon's American Red Cross donations crossed the $5 million mark at 12:30 p.m. Central time, about 4.5 hours hours after topping $4...

Tsunami: Death Toll Hits 100,000, December 30, 2004
The tsunami death toll in southeast Asia has topped 100,000. Scott Ott at ScrappleFace comments, "with the death toll now placed above 100,000, please join millions of Americans in showing the love of Christ to the survivors." Donations to the American Red Cross via Amazon.com for tsunami disaster relief just topped $4 million (at 8:04 central time), with 67,290 individual donors having donated $4,000,153.11, an average of $59.44 per donor. Simply amazing. If you wish...

Tsunami Fundraising Update, December 29, 2004
The blogosphere's preeminent satirist, Scott Ott, is doing the Lord's work. And that's no joke. Meanwhile, Donald Sensing says there's already Nigerian email scams aimed at scamming folks out of their tsunami disaster relief donations. Be wary ... and stick to giving to the American Red Cross, or through your church or religious denomination, or through the Christian organization World Vision....

Tsunami Relief, December 29, 2004
Looking for a charity to give funds to in order to help with tsunami disaster relief? Several bloggers I respect, including Hugh Hewitt, Tod Bolsinger, and the Witts are suggesting World Vision. Meanwhile, more than 21,000 individual donors have donated more than $1 million to the American Red Cross via Amazon.com - well more than France has offered - and the amount and number of donors continues to climb second by second....

Tsunami, December 28, 2004
The death toll from the Indian Ocean tsunami has topped 59,000, and could double as disease and starvation take their toll on the decimated region. There's not much to say except pray and give. I'll be providing links in the days to come. Pray and give - and hug your children, your spouse or your parents a little longer tonight. UPDATE: Amazon.com has set up a donations page for the American Red Cross. Do what...

Something Rotten in Denmark The Netherlands, December 02, 2004
Tod Bolsinger points to some truly shocking news out of the Netherlands.Four times in recent months, Dutch doctors have pumped lethal doses of drugs into newborns they believe are terminally ill, setting off a new phase in a growing European debate over when, if ever, it's acceptable to hasten death for the critically ill. Few details of the four newborns' deaths have been made public. Official investigations have found that the doctors made appropriate and...

Out of Africa, September 20, 2004
Here's an interesting development as relates to oil development in Africa - specifically Nigeria and the tiny island nation of Sao Tome in the Gulf of Guinea. And here's a story out of Africa about U.S. Marines training soldiers from nine African nations how to better combat terrorists. If and when an accurate history of the Bush administration is written, I suspect one chapter will focus on the sucess of its quiet diplomatic efforts in...

Sao Tome Update: All The Right Moves?, September 01, 2004
AllAfrica.com reports from Libreville, Gabon, on developments involving oil exploration in Africa, and the battle against terrorism:A senior US military commander and an influential Republican senator will visit oil-producing Gabon and the potentially oil-rich state of Sao Tome and Principe this week to discuss security, oil and environmental issues, a US embassy spokeswoman said on Monday.The US government is currently paying for feasibility studies on the construction of a deep water port and extension of...

Oil War?, July 02, 2004
Paul Roberts, author of The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World, writes that the 21st century will be marked by geopolitical struggles over energy:...

French Dressing Down, June 29, 2004
London Calling blogger (and HobbsOnline London correspondent) George Miller explains how French President Jacques Chirac just provided the world with an object lesson in "How to insult your friends and influence nobody".Yesterday, the French President, Jacques Chirac, told President Bush to get his nose out of European business. Bush had told Turkish leaders that the United States is supportive of Turkey’s application to join the European Union. ... Chirac's reaction to Bush's statement is revealing...

Oh Canada, June 29, 2004
Nathan Moore says the election returns in Canada are good news for the future of American-Canadian relations....

Amazing, June 25, 2004
Online retailer Overstock.com, based in Salt Lake City, is now the largest source of private employment ... in Afghanistan. Wired.com has the amazing story of globalization's positive impact on the impoverished nation. Who knew that you could point-click-purchase and help America help Afghanistan win the War on Terror? And it's not just Afghanistan - Wired finds a trend....

Blogs From Iran, June 23, 2004
Persian Journal carries an AP story, Blogging boom gives Iranian women a voice, that warns that hard-liners who now control Iran's government may well crack down on Iranian bloggers....

The View From London, June 11, 2004
George Miller's new London Calling blog compares the contributions of the Soviet army and the other allies in defeating the Nazis, and remarks that the fact that the Soviets killed 3 million German soldiers while the rest of the allies killed just 200,000, says something good about democracies:All this statistic does is highlight the barbarity of the Red Army in comparison with the restraint, technological superiority and better planning of the Western Allies. Surely, for...

Sao Tome Rises in Strategic Importance for U.S., June 09, 2004
The tiny African island nation of Sao Tome & Principe is rising in strategic importance for the U.S. military, it appears, from this May 31 report from Voice of America of plans to include the region in naval exercises later this year. (Radio version of the VOA report here.) An excerpt from the VOA report is at the end of this post. Meanwhile, the London Telegraph reported recently that the U.S. government funded a feasibility...

U.S. Finds Way to Sao Tome, May 13, 2004
One of the more interesting and important - and, therefore, less covered by the American media - developments in American foreign policy is the United States' increasingly close relationship with the tiny island nation of Sao Tome & Principe, off the west coast of Africa, south of Nigeria and west of Gabon. Sao Tome is small, pro-American, and is predominantly Christian, unlike Nigeria, which is 50 percent Muslim is increasingly wracked by extremist Muslim violence...

Citizen-Powered News, April 19, 2004
Terry Heaton emailed to say that the recent elections in South Korea showed the power of the new online citizen-powered media.The liberal Uri Party swept into power [April 15] in the National Assembly elections, ending 44 years of conservative rule in the country. What you'll likely NOT read is that this was accomplished largely through the steady efforts of a New Media entity that fought the conservative press in South Korea. OhmyNews! is an Internet-based...

Defending Secular Democracy, April 06, 2004
A special report from HobbsOnline's new London correspondent. By George Miller LONDON - A report issued by the European Union's Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (isn't it comforting to know the EU has one?) has decided that, yes, attacks against Jews in Europe are on the increase, but, wait for it…they are being carried out, in the main, by European white racists. At the same time, the EU has suppressed a report by a...

UN: Entrepreneurs Good for the Economy, April 06, 2004
Jeff Cornwall says the United Nations "has finally noticed that entrepreneurial economic activity is sweeping the globe." Cornwall considers the new report from the UN’s Commission on the Private Sector and Development, titled Unleashing Entrepreneurship: Making Business Work for the Poor, and finds it strikes a good note: "The primary recommendation is, you guessed it, break down barriers created by governmental bureaucracy and get out of the way." He has a link to the report,...

Haiti, March 04, 2004
Clinton fumbled Haiti, Bush has a chance to save it. That's the summary version of this column by MSNBC's Michael Moran. UPDATE: Here's a piece from The New Republic's Adam Kushner about Aristide.Aristide's apologists go on about how he was Haiti's first democratic leader and how his restoration, at the hand of President Clinton, was a sterling liberal moment. But the fact is, Aristide's rule ever since has been illiberal, unconstitutional, and corrupt....

Horror in Pakistan , January 21, 2004
A regular reader of HobbsOnline asked me to link to this story about some horrific child-labor camps in the lawless areas of Pakistan. He's right - more people ought to know about this.Thousands of innocent people, including hundreds of young children, are subjected to unspeakable torture in slave camps in the lawless tribal areas of Balochistan province and the North Western Frontier Province (NWFP) of Pakistan, bordering Afghanistan.A 39-year-old man who escaped after 29 years...

Sao Tome Update, July 25, 2003
The coup in Sao Tome is over. Reuters reports coup leader Major Fernando Pereira says he lead the coup to safeguard democracy and wipe out corruption, and they report it with a straight face, as if they actually believe the guy. No scare quotes or anything. Voice of America, meanwhile, has a much better story suggesting the tiny nation's potential oil wealth motivated the coup plotters.Africa expert Alex Vines, of the Royal Institute of International...

Sao Tome Update, July 18, 2003
Click here for the latest news on the coup that ousted the democratically elected pro-American president of a small oil-rich non-Islamic African country. UPDATE: Donald Sensing has an answer to the question I posed at the end of this post. UPDATE: Looks like the coup perpetrators may be backing down....

Sao Tome Update, July 17, 2003
The Voice of America is reporting the Bush administration "is working diplomatically to restore Sao Tome's elected government, which was ousted by officers in the country's military Wednesday."The State Department says Washington is consulting other African countries and Portugal on how to resolve the crisis. Portugal is the former colonial ruler of Sao Tome and Principe. The American diplomatic effort is being led by the U.S. ambassador to Gabon, Kenneth Moorfield, who also has the...

Sao Tome Coup Update, July 17, 2003
Here's an excerpt of the transcript of the July 16 State Department press briefing by spokesman Richard Boucher in which the coup in Sao Tome was discussed:QUESTION: Do you have any comment on the coup? MR. BOUCHER: We have reports now from our Embassy in Libreville, Gabon, as well as from the media, that Prime Minister Maria das Neves and some other government officials were put under arrest about 3:00 a.m. local time in Sao...

A Coup in Africa, and the War on Terror, July 16, 2003
What does a military coup in a tiny impoverished African country have to do with the war on terror? Plenty. A military coup in Sao Tome & Principe, a tiny island nation off the west coast of Africa, has big implications for the United States and deserves a lot more attention than it is getting. I've written about Sao Tome, its untapped oil, and its friendly overtures toward the United States before (start here and...

This Story Is More Important Than You Might Think, January 02, 2003
A tiny nation you never heard of (unless you read this last October) has lost its one-boat navy. Nigeria appears to have swiped it. Why is that important? Because the tiny two-island nation of Sao Tome and Principe, off the coast of Nigeria, sits atop massive oil reserves. And is pro-American. And Nigeria - increasingly falling under the sway of Islamofascists - covets that oil and increasingly seeks to intimidate Sao Tome. Says today's WSJ:Everything...

Do You Know The Way to Sao Tome?, October 09, 2002
The New Yorker has an amazing story in a recent edition about the tiny West African island nation of Sao Tome & Principe, which sits atop potentially huge oil reserves, and how that nation loves America and is discussing with the United States the possibility of the U.S. establishing some sort of military presence there to protect Sao Tome as it develops its oil industry. The tiny nation could help the United States move a...