Wednesday, October 02th, 2013

INTERNATIONAL DAY OF NON-VIOLENCE

It is no coincidence that the International Day of Non-Violence,  October 2, falls on the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi was the main leader and activist to lead India to its independence from British rule, and is best known for his strategy of non-violence. His philosophy influenced many other political activists that profoundly believe in non-violence to move forward against… [Read Full Article]

Thursday, September 26th, 2013

In Myanmar Outpost, a Fading Orwellian Link

KATHA, Myanmar — George Orwell created his first novel, “Burmese Days,” a scathing portrait of the imperious attitudes of the British, from this former colonial outpost on the banks of the mighty Irrawaddy River. His brutish characters swilled too much whiskey at a whites-only club, and wilted in the vaporous heat. A train that crawled through the jungle from Mandalay… [Read Full Article]

Monday, September 23th, 2013

Do you know what happened to the girl in this iconic Pulitzer prize winning photo from the Vietnam War?

8 June 1972, a plane bombed the village of Trang Bang, near Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) in South Vietnam after the South Vietnamese pilot mistook a group of civilians leaving the temple for enemy troops.The bombs contained napalm, a highly flammable fuel, which killed and badly burned the people on the ground.The iconic black-and-white image taken of children… [Read Full Article]

Monday, September 09th, 2013

California Students Document the Aftermath of the U.S. “Secret War” in Laos

Bomb craters create stagnant ponds, often harboringwater-born diseases, in Laotian farming villages.In spring of 2013, a group of 13 aspiring video journalists from Harvard-Westlake School in Studio City, California, spent ten adventurous days in Laos immersing themselves in the culture, volunteering at preschools, and interviewing cluster bomb victims. Forty years earlier, the U.S. military ceased its air war in Southeast Asia, but… [Read Full Article]

Monday, September 02th, 2013

The U.S.S.R. and U.S. Came Closer to Nuclear War Than We Thought

A series of war games held in 1983 triggered "the moment of maximum danger of the late Cold War."An ailing, 69-year-old Yuri Andropov was running the Soviet Union from his Moscow hospital bed in 1983 as the United States and its NATO allies conducted a massive series of war games that seemed to confirm some of his darkest fears.Two years… [Read Full Article]