Apt. 11D

Somalia

500,000 million in children are verging on starvation in Somalia. 

Time to open the checkbook. Hopefully, some of it will get to the right people. But do it anyway. Then call your representatives and tell them that it's not too late to do something good this year. 

Donation venues - UN Refugee Agency, Doctors Without Borders, UNICEF, (more links to come)

 

NGOs, Poverty Tourism, and Bloggers

A few weeks ago, Dooce announced to her readers that she was going to Bangladesh with Christy Turlington's group, Every Woman Counts, to witness the deplorable conditions of maternal healthcare in a developing nation. 

Today, the Guardian published a stinging rebuke saying that Turlington's group was using Dooce for free publicity. Rowan Davies writes that the practice of taking wealthy, white women from Western nations and having them write stories about the poverty amounted to Poverty Tourism. 

Dooce tweeted a response: "Shoddy journalism:http://t.co/drpM4Pk I paid my own expenses. Hey, Rowan. You have my email address."

I'm on the Dooce camp for this one. She brought attention and money to an important issue. I'm not sure what is wrong with that. 

So, is flying bloggers to third world nations tacky or is it smart publicity? 

Lead in China

A couple of months ago, Steve showed up at the Good Will on Route 17 with a car load of crap. They said they would happily take the clothes and cookware, but they wouldn't take our old toys, because they didn't want to deal with the lead paint from China.

China's lead problem is bigger than the paint on a Thomas the Tank Engine toy. 

A heart-breaking article in the New York Times reported that "one-third of Chinese children suffer from elevated blood lead levels." The article pointed to battery factories and metal smelters as the biggest offenders. 

How many of those products are ending up on the shelves in Target? 

Iraq's Orphans

The Bin Laden Debates

Since I was convalescing yesterday, I wasn't able to get my sick ass up to the computer room to properly blog. Well, we have 24 hours of sanity and maybe we can discuss this matters more rationally, than we could have yesterday. 

Here are the best chats from yesterday: 

• Was there too much cheering and flag waving yesterday? How did the rest of the world perceive of our jubilation? Did the death of Bin Laden really make us safer? The biggest contrarian voice came from Glenn Greenwald. He wrote, "Whenever America uses violence in a way that makes its citizens cheer, beam with nationalistic pride, and rally around their leader, more violence is typically guaranteed. "
• And what about waterboarding? Some of the information that was used to track Bin Laden MAY have come from the use of torture. Does yesterday's success mean more torture in the future? 
•     UPDATE: There is mounting evidence that the key bit of information were not gained through torture. 
• I spent a lot of time looking at this picture yesterday. 

Look at Hillary's face. Read the whole account of events here. 

• UPDATES: And what about the pix. Should release the death pictures of Bin Laden? Gourevitch says no. 
• Did Pakistan know? 

 

More Japan

It was 10:30 last night, and I really needed to take my book and head up to bed, but I couldn't turn away from the news. I kept watching the footage of the water washing away homes and tractor trailers, because I still can't quite believe that water can do that. 

And now the nuclear threat. 

It's heartbreaking. I have such admiration for the Japanese people and their culture. I hope they can weather this storm. 

If you're going to donate money, don't earmark your donations. Annie Lowrey explains,

Consider the case of the massive 2004 Asian tsunami. In Sri Lanka, for instance, aid agencies reportedly ended up building "mini-mansions," because they had to use certain donated funds for housing. In Indonesia, humanitarian groups found themselves with more funds than necessary for the construction of orphanages. That excess meant that "families resorted to abandoning their children … because they could not feed and clothe them." Needless to say, in both cases, had donors allowed for a more optimal allocation of dollars, the Sri Lankans and Indonesians might have been better off.

 

More pictures at National Geographic. 

 

Where Children Sleep

Where children sleep. 

Perspective

The poorest people in our country are richer than the richest people in India.

From the Economix.

Al Jazeera in the Background

Is the best converage of the unfolding crisis coming from Al Jazeera? (I've got it livestreaming in the background as I work.) Lots of people seems to think so. "Al Jazeera’s website saw a 2500% increase in traffic Friday, with over 50% of that spike coming from the US alone"

Egypt

I'm camped out on the sofa watching CNN and reading tweets on Twitter. It feels stupid to talk about anything else. Open thread.

from here.

from here