When I heard the news on Monday, I was surprised, but kind of happy. When I got home that night, I asked C- “Did you see the Nazi is retiring?” I know I just alienated a number of readers with that comment, but it really is how I have viewed the man.
I am not religious. I do, however, recognize the power of the Pope, and while we are pretty much guaranteed to end up with another old white guy who hates women and gays, maybe we can at least get one who was not part of the Hitler Youth.
I am Pro-Choice. I would love to see an entire world where abortion is legal, safe and rare. But before we can get to the rare part, we absolutely must focus on the legal and safe parts.
This week in the Dominican Republic, a 16 year old girl died of cancer because doctors at first refused to give her treatment on the off chance it would terminate her pregnancy. Their Constitution says the right to life is inviolable from conception until death. But apparently, the right to life is only inviolable for fetuses, and not for the women carrying them.
I think one of the things it is easiest to forget in theUS,Canada,Great Britain, and other countries that have long standing, successful, democratic governments, is what it means to vote, to have a voice in choosing your own government. We often take it for granted. We threaten to move to a different country if the leader we want isn’t elected or if policies don’t change. And we forget what a luxury it is to have that freedom.
For the first time in 30 years, Egyptians today get to have an actual voice in who runs their nation.
Living in the United States sometimes serves to insulate us against what happens in the rest of the world. We think that because of the internet and other modern conveniences that the rest of the world must be like us, think like us. And it’s not true. We need to be reminded about universal human rights, and that there are people in this world who do not enjoy them.
In Afghanistan, a man and his mother strangled his wife to death. Her crime? Giving birth to a third daughter instead of a son. Wasn’t that Ann Boleyn’s crime in 1533?
This makes me sad. I know that animals went extinct before humans even existed, and more went extinct in the years that we were hunter/gatherers, but now, when we have the ways and means to saving them, it seems like a greater tragedy.
And when I find out that the last of a species was killed solely for its horn- not for meat, not for survival, but for a luxury product –that makes me mad.
Whether you believe we were granted dominion over the earth or not, I believe we have a responsibility toward the creatures we share it with.
“We cannot achieve democracy and lasting peace in the world unless women obtain the same opportunities as men to influence developments at all levels of society” Thorbjoern Jagland, Nobel Peace Prize Committee Chairman
This year, the prize was split between three amazing women- Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the President of Liberia and the first female head of state in Africa, fellow Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee, and the very first Arab woman to win the prize, Takakkul Karman fromYemen.
Thanks to the enduring work and commitment of these women, the world is a better place than it used to be.
A major trial of a pill meant to help prevent HIV infection has been halted. Given how rarely drug trials are truly successful, this news isn’t surprising, but it is sad.
Women inAfricararely have options when it comes to protecting themselves from the virus. This pill was hope that they could finally exert some control over their health and the health of their children to be. Sadly, the results show it isn’t working. The women given the real drug and the women given the dummy pill are being infected at the same rate.
On to the next study.
Have you ever stood up for a friend? When it wasn’t really your fight, but you were more capable of taking on the challenge? Because your friend had done the same thing for you? Is it wrong to stand up for your friends?
This may seem simplistic, and yet President Obama is being criticized for going in to Libya in order to aid our European allies. No, we weren’t directly at risk, but they were. And guess who has our back in other places around the world?
We have alliances for a reason. We can’t expect them to be one-sided.
It was thought Troy was just a legend until Heinrich Schliemann paid for a dig in the late 1860s. While we don’t know if the Trojan War actually happened, we do know that Troy was real.
Now, researchers believe they have found the fabled lost city of Atlantis- in Spain. As with Troy, the only mention of the city was in ancient Greek writings, but it may be time to remove “fabled” from the description. Buried under centuries of mud in the marshlands north of Cadiz, there’s a city that was wiped out by a tsunami. Have we found Atlantis?
topics explored in exactly 100 words