Health

JURF-AL-SAKHAR/DUBAI (IRIN) | — November is usually a busy month for farmers in the Iraqi town of Jurf al-Sakhar as they sow their seeds ahead of the bitter winter months. Yet this year fields lie unplanted and untethered goats and cows wander aimlessly among slayed palm trees. Months of fighting have taken a heavy toll […]

Climate Change

Thanksgiving was always about Climate and Adaptation: Let’s Make it Green Again

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | — The popular story about Thanksgiving is an environmental parable that we would do well to remember today. It was a harvest festival in 1621, participated in by the 50 (out of 100) survivors at Plymouth Plantation and 90 Native Americans. Some of these latter, such as Squanto, had shared with […]

Economy

Child Homelessness rising in US — Red States wonder why they’re the Worst

contributors

ABC 15, AZ | — “Arizona ranks as one of the worst states for homeless children.” ABC 15 Arizona: “Increase in homeless children in the US”

Economy

U2’s Bono on ‘Band Aid 30’: Ebola is a ‘political failure’

contributors

Channel 4 News | — “The spread of Ebola is “not a medical failure” – U2 lead singer Bono tells Channel 4 News political leaders “need to keep their promises”.” Bono on Band Aid 30: Ebola is a ‘political failure’ | Channel 4 News

Epidemics

Ebola’s not the First Racial Germ Panic: The Long History of Xenophobia and Scapegoating

contributors

By Dan Dinello The attempt by some GOP politicians to tie the ebola outbreak to immigration issues is nothing new in American or European history. Immigrants have often been despised, feared and stigmatized by the native-born as harbingers of disease or even death. Conflating disease carriers with foreigners and social outcasts is a practice that […]

Coal

Top 5 Things More Americans will die of than Ebola this Year, including Guns

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole The odd hysteria about ebola is being driven more by a media frenzy than the actual public health risks. Ebola is not the sort of disease that is likely to turn into a pandemic, becoming really wide spread. It is too hard to contract (it doesn’t spread by infected persons just breathing […]

Colonialism

WWI: Remembering how Europe Blockaded Lebanese Civilians & Killed 200,000 with Famine

contributors

BBC “Unknown to many, a third of the Lebanese population [then West Syria] died of famine and disease during World War One. BBC Arabic’s Carine Torbey recounts the horrifying story of the Famine of Mount Lebanon.” The famine of Mount Lebanon during WW1 – BBC News Note: Contrary to what Ms. Torbey alleges, the Ottomans […]

Epidemics

Top 4 Things we can learn from War on Terror in “War on Ebola”

contributors

By Karen J. Greenberg via Tomdispatch.com These days, two “wars” are in the headlines: one against the marauding Islamic State and its new caliphate of terror carved out of parts of Iraq and Syria, the other against a marauding disease and potential pandemic, Ebola, spreading across West Africa, with the first cases already reaching the […]

Epidemics

Dear USA: Liberian-Americans don’t Have Ebola

contributors

By Philippa Garson (Follow @PhilippaGarson ) NEW YORK, 17 October 2014 (IRIN) – Africans living in the US from the three Ebola-affected countries of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, are under enormous pressure trying to help their families and ravaged communities back home. And they face an additional challenge: stigma. For the residents of “Little […]