When we arrived in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay we were petrified. The U.S. media's portrayal of this city, the center of a zone on the frontiers of Argentina and Brazil known as the Tri-Border Area, left us expecting to see cars bombs exploding, terrorists training and American flags burning. We soon realized that picture painted by U.S. media was inaccurate. Ciudad del Este, Paraguay
October 16th is the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization's World Food Day - a yearly reminder that there are people who are constantly hungry due to poor agricultural methods, inadequate distribution, poor food storage, and armed conflict.
Three years ago Lakshmi Bhagel, a dishwasher earning about $2 a day, wandered through the doors of a newspaper she'd heard about from a friend. She was nervous, and though illiterate, she had reason to hope the editors might publish her story. Without hesitation the editors of Mahila Paksh--a weekly, family-run broadsheet in the central Indian city Gwalior--sat down and listened to Bhagel. They told her she could do more than talk to the editors: She could report her own story for the paper.
As the earth warms, a growing number of researchers are investigating the far-reaching consequences of the increasing average temperature. One of these consequences is the effect on wildfires.
It is hard to shock journalists and at the same time leave them in awe of the power of nature. A group returning from a helicopter trip flying over, then landing on, the Greenland ice cap at the time of maximum ice melt last month were shaken. One shrugged and said: "It is too late already."
Like many people who lived under the Baathist dictatorship, Abdelhussein Saddam passionately yearned for change. Born in 1957 in Basra, Saddam became known as a progressive thinker, for which he was imprisoned for two years by state security forces. When the US/UK coalition invaded Iraq in 2003, he understood that the future lay within Iraq's ability to organize itself independently - free of both the gun-toting hypocrisy of western imperialism and the machinations of political Islam.Abdelhussein Saddam
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019