AIDemocracy.org

American multiculturalism in danger?

March 23, 2012 By Ana Ila 1 Comment

In 1982, a young Chinese man named Vincent Chin was murdered on a racial and ethnic basis. The cause of Japanese growth and exports to the USA. The new culprit, besides Islam, seems to be China. Similarly to Japan in the 1970’s, China has recently experienced an unprecedented level of economic growth and exports to the USA. However, the USA is suffering from a recession, which has led many young Americans to view China as a threat. Among threats to the US, China is seen as being one of them. According to the 2012 study by Generation Opportunity, 6 … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Blog, Featured Less, Security Tagged With: anti - Chinese sentiments, China, multiculturalism, security

Fake snow is just the beginning of our climate change problems

March 22, 2012 By emma Leave a Comment

Every one of us has heard stories about what will happen by 2025, 2050, or 2080 to the environment if climate change continues at its current pace, and the outcomes are devastating. More extreme and more frequent storms like tornadoes and floods, an increase in temperatures that makes farming more difficult and the heat more unbearable, so why isn’t climate change at the forefront of our politics? Governments have been making an effort to reduce the effects of climate change by adopting biofuels as another fuel source, but because of misinformation … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Blog, Climate Change, Featured Less

Famine in the Horn of Africa caused by biofuels?

March 21, 2012 By emma Leave a Comment

While African countries like Madagascar, Mail, and Senegal dedicate hundreds of thousands of hectares of land to biofuel production, countries in the horn of Africa are suffering from extreme famine as a result. Western countries like Italy, Germany, France, the United States, and Brazil all own multiple biofuel companies that operate in different parts of Africa. This means that all that land is being used to provide energy for western countries, and not to produce food crops that could be used to help those suffering from famine in the region. … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Blog, Climate Change, Featured Less, Hunger Tagged With: biofuels, famine, Horn of Africa

Slavery Still Exists…But You Can Stop It!

March 14, 2012 By Tiffany Leave a Comment

We want to put a spotlight on an issue that is a threat to national security, public health, and democracy -- human trafficking. Worldwide, the State Department estimated there are an astounding 12.3 million adults and children in modern-day slavery! From sexual exploitation to involuntary servitude, victims of human trafficking, particularly women and children, experience horrendous crimes and injustices on a daily basis. Trafficking fuels gender violence and the subordination of women and their rights as human beings. We, as the next generation of … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Blog, Sex and Justice, Take Action Tagged With: action, campus, Congress, global health, human trafficking, women

The taboo of femidoms in South Africa

March 8, 2012 By Tiffany 1 Comment

By Carly James. South Africa has been ransacked by HIV for decades, consistently ranking as the country bearing the highest prevalence of HIV among adults in the world. Records indicate that roughly 5.6 million South Africans face the disease every day. Furthermore, statistics reveal that HIV rates among pregnant women in South Africa are significantly higher than among adults. With such a staggering rate of HIV, the southernmost country of continental Africa has been pin-pointed as a key distribution site for various forms of contraception, awareness … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Blog, Featured Less, Sex and Justice Tagged With: AIDS/HIV, contraception, femidoms, Feminism, sexual reproductive health, South Africa, taboo

Apartheid of Pharmacology: Priorities of the pharmaceutical industry in developing countries

March 6, 2012 By Tiffany 2 Comments

By Sofia Ahsanuddin When you think of the term, “apartheid,” what comes to mind? In his article for the 2000 edition of the French newspaper, “Le Monde Diplomatique,” Martine Bulard uses the term apartheid to refer to the unjust policies and practices of the pharmaceutical industry in developing nations. He provides ample evidence to support his claim that many international pharmaceutical companies have not only refused to produce essential drugs because there were no “guarantees of a return on an investment,” but have also engaged in … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Blog, Featured Less, Sex and Justice Tagged With: developing countries, disease, drug research, drug-dumping, drugs, pharmaceuticals

Biofuels: a truly global challenge

March 6, 2012 By emma Leave a Comment

Biofuels, although largely produced and consumed by Western countries like the United States and Brazil, are not a Western problem. The impacts of rising food prices and land grabs are affecting farmers and people at risk for hunger all over the world. In this blog post, I want to focus on the impacts of biofuels in Asian countries, because as the market for biofuels is increasing thanks to quotas created by the US and the EU, farmers in Asia are jumping on the bandwagon to try to make some money. One country that has been negatively affected by … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Blog, Climate Change, Featured Less, Hunger Tagged With: biofuels

Emerging technological trends and Global Security

March 5, 2012 By Usman Shabbir 1 Comment

Of the world’s 100 largest economic entities, 51 are now corporations and 49 are countries. Gross Domestic Product of corporations such as Wal-Mart, General Motors, Exxon mobil and Ford Motors are calculated to exceed GDP’s of states like Norway, Singapore, South Africa and Malaysia. Since domestic markets in a country like Bangladesh depends heavily on companies like Wal-Mart, it is not an alien conceept that these MNC’s today can leverage their economic power by impacting foreign policy in developing nations. Although they weild vast power, … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Blog, Featured Less, Security Tagged With: activism, advocacy, community, devfeloping countries, globalization, national security, US foreign policy

Keeping War or Keeping Peace?

March 5, 2012 By remi Leave a Comment

Acknowledgement: While much of this analysis is my own, I got many of the ideas from Shannon Beebe & Mary Kaldor’s fantastic book, The Ultimate Weapon is No Weapon, along with other human security and critical security literature. The withdrawal from Afghanistan after a decade of war provides us a unique chance for a retrospective. Because the war in Afghanistan had three very different phases, with a human security concept playing an increasingly important role in US military doctrine. This doctrinal shift marks not only NATO reacting to the … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Blog, Featured Less, Security Tagged With: Afghanistan, George W. Bush, human security, NATO, Obama

The key to a successful Syrian insurgency

March 1, 2012 By Ron 5 Comments

Syrians protest the Assad regime in Damascus

While the violence in Syria rages on, the calls for intervention falls on deaf ears. Why? Activists claim that there is no "interest" in Syria (read oil). I completely disagree (though not about the oil part...). Syria is a key piece in the Middle Eastern puzzle. Syria borders Iraq, and has been sending foreign fighters to instigate violence in the country. Syria also borders Israel, a vital US ally in the region, and has instigated attacks there as well. While the Cold War is over, there is still an emphasis on countering Russian influence, and Syria … [Read more...]