An exhibition featuring the work of India’s first female photojournalist is showing at the National Gallery of Modern Art through April 11. The collection of about 150 photographs by Homai Vyarawalla includes images of the last days of the British Empire, the Indian Independence movement and the birth and subsequent struggles of a new nation. […]
MUMBAI, India — “Chai Baby,” “Baby Masala” and “Made in India.” These are a few of the many blogs written by infertile Westerners trying to start a family through surrogacy in India. For the most part, the blogs tell tales of frustration, nervous anticipation and joy. Commercial surrogacy has boomed in recent years as a […]
MUMBAI, India — A poor girl in northern India is a member of the lowest caste. She winds up in jail after fleeing her alleged rapists. These alleged rapists are powerful men. What are the odds the story gets better from here? Slim, to say the least. “Here child marriage is rampant, abuse of minor […]
Presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain talk a lot about the Iraq War. They talk about troop withdrawals, permanent bases, legal battles over Guantanamo detainees. But then there’s everything else they rarely if ever mention – for example, the entire humanitarian crisis caused by the war. There are now more than 4 million Iraqis […]
Check out these powerful photographs by Simon Wheatley of Burmese refugees living in Malaysia. I spent a week in Malaysia in July 2005, listening to stories from some of the tens of thousands of Burmese who had fled religious or political persecution back home in the hopes of finding safety in Malaysia. They didn’t find it. Malaysia […]
Sen. Barack Obama used his speech in Minnesota tonight to discuss his planned policy towards Iraq, promising that if he becomes president he will end the war and withdrawal the troops. He said it’s now time to bring the troops home and demand more from the Iraqi politicians. It’s been five years, maybe I’ve forgotten…but wasn’t it […]
I wrote a post on April 22 highlighting the illegality of making a bomb joke at airports by discussing the arrest of a woman, Rosalinda Baez, for doing just that at JFK. A JetBlue flight attendant denied Baez access to the plane carrying her luggage, and she asked: “What if I had a bomb in my bag?” She was then […]
Burmese government officials handed out leaflets this weekend ordering people to stop donating to survivors of the cyclone. The UN estimates that 2.5 million people are still in need of help. Yet the junta wants Burmese people to stop donating aid directly to survivors in order to “save the prestige of Myanmar people.” More…
Check out my column on the Huffington Post’s Off the Bus today about Sen. Barack Obama coming to Wesleyan this weekend. Wesleyan University, my alma mater, is a small liberal arts school that gets a disproportionate amount of media coverage, usually for its uber-liberal ways. It has made the press for having a naked dorm and co-ed rooms. This […]
The Burmese junta continues to be more concerned about its image than about the safety of roughly 2.5 million people affected by Cyclone Nargis. Homeless people and beggars have been kicked off the streets in preparation for visits to cyclone-hit areas by the dictator, Sen. Gen. Than Shwe. The Irrawaddy reports that soldiers arrested eight Burmese journalists Monday night […]