Tag Archives: refugees

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. Madina Nalwanga as chess champion Phiona Mutesi in the film Queen of Katwe.Photo: Edward Echwalu/Disney Recognizing that an increasing amount of development policy is being done in developing countries, the prominent British NGO Oxfam is moving its headquarters from the UK to Nairobi. There’s some evidence that being exposed to relatable role models can improve performance in school or at work. A newly-published RCT compared the...

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. Madina Nalwanga as chess champion Phiona Mutesi in the film Queen of Katwe.Photo: Edward Echwalu/Disney Recognizing that an increasing amount of development policy is being done in developing countries, the prominent British NGO Oxfam is moving its headquarters from the UK to Nairobi. There’s some evidence that being exposed to relatable role models can improve performance in school or at work. A newly-published RCT...

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. Madina Nalwanga as chess champion Phiona Mutesi in the film Queen of Katwe.Photo: Edward Echwalu/Disney Recognizing that an increasing amount of development policy is being done in developing countries, the prominent British NGO Oxfam is moving its headquarters from the UK to Nairobi. There’s some evidence that being exposed to relatable role models can improve performance in school or at work. A newly-published RCT compared the...

A few days ago, I received a letter from Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi that works like a punch-in-the-stomach type of wake up call addressed to all Europeans. To crown its tough message, Bifo concludes that his conscience cannot fathom being a European any longer, given Europe’s daily crimes against logic and humanity. Thus, Bifo concludes, he is compelled also to resign from DiEM25’s Advisory Panel. You can read his...

Consider a country with a vicious ongoing multi-sided Civil War which includes some amount of deliberate large scale civilian extermination.  You know the sort of thing: Syria today is just the most recent example, but there are other well-known examples from the last few decades.  To keep things generic, let us refer to the various sides in the Civil War as A, B, C, etc. Militias from each group have been caught massacring civilians from the other group.  Or...

Treason is popular. As the tide of protectionism rises around the world, the concept has come back into vogue. If you believe in the right of all people, whatever their colour or creed, to seek life, liberty and happiness for themselves and their children, you are unpatriotic. I am one of many who have been labelled a "traitor" for voting Remain in the EU referendum. But I have got off lightly. The same label cost Jo Cox MP her life.Jo was a fervent Remain supporter. She believed strongly...

In response to my post about the lessons of history, Claudia Dias sent me this clip from The Times, March 31st, 1939: Four months after Kristallnacht, and two weeks after Hitler's annexation of Czechoslovakia, the British government was still repatriating Jewish refugees. This group knew they were being sent back to almost certain death. No wonder they were hysterical.Today, refugees in Greece face deportation to Turkey, and from there probable repatriation to their own countries. If they...

Yesterday, at the final of the Kent Schools Public Speaking Competition, a young boy stepped up to the podium. "What have we learned from history?" he asked. "We have learned that no good comes from killing people". And he went on to speak eloquently, first of World War II: "There has never been another major war," he said.True, there has not. The uneasy peace of the Cold War did not descend into outright conflict, though it was a near thing: the world very nearly went up in nuclear flames...

In the latest of his excellent reports for the BBC on the refugee crisis in Europe, Feargal Keene focuses on the plight of children. A baby, only a month old, makes the hazardous crossing from Turkey to the Greek island of Lesbos. Little children, freezing cold and wet through, climb the muddy path up from the beach. Volunteers from many nations provide food, blankets and medical care for these tiny lives.But Lesbos is only the start of their journey, And in Europe, it is winter. Across the...

The world turns on its dark side......it is winter A Child of Our Time, Michael Tippett "Man has measured the heavens with a telescope, driven the gods from their thrones," proclaims the contralto at the start of Michael Tippett's wartime oratorio A Child Of Our Time. Like our counterparts before the dark time of which Tippett writes, we too believe that science leaves no place for religion. But religion endures, and when the world turns, it comes back in its most violent form, tearing...