Entries Tagged as ‘Sri Lanka’

June 16, 2009

Daily Oddities: Monday World Edition

There’s a lot to talk about in the World today, so lets jump right into it. You know about Tehran and you know about Binyamin Netanyahu’s speech, so we’re skipping that and getting straight down into the stuff you didn’t hear.

GLOBE:
More than a billion people go hungry, says the World  Food Program. That’s about as [...]

June 10, 2009

Daily Oddities, June 9th/10th

We’re starting this round of Daily Oddities with something everybody wants–a job! Today’s odd job listings include counting bees in New York City and catelouging controlled substances for the NYPD. Awesome much?
Now that you’re gainfully employed, lets take a quick gander around the globe.
GLOBE: Things are getting ridiculous in Russia, where the racing collapse of [...]

June 3, 2009

Terror Couture

Recently, I’ve become obsessed by terrorist chic- not the kind defined so brilliantly by bradtriescriticaltheory – the sort that’s already been coopted and comodified to the point that Palestinians should be embarassed to wear the kaffieyeh, but things you could only hope to buy abroad or in the untouched pockets of outer borogh New York. [...]

April 22, 2009

Sri Lanka vs Darfur: How We Read Conflict

*(reader note: since lots of my recent traffic seems to have an infants sense of irony, I’m marking anything I said ironic  with asterisks. ****)
I was asked in an interview recently why the Sri Lankan conflict (which has about 1/2 the deaths + 1/3 of the refugees of the Darfur crisis – 95% of the [...]

April 21, 2009

Check Out my Awesome Slideshow

I am consistantly amazed at how much i get to do whatever i want.

April 19, 2009

the things i like to write about (are weird)

From time to time, when I am writing, I have this thought—which I occasionally post on FB:
“sometimes i sit down and i write some shit and i think, holy mother of G-d i am a sick, terrible person. at least i’m thin”
Usually in those exact words . Anyone who knows me knows that i write [...]

April 11, 2009

A history of the conflict in Sri Lanka, from Guardian.co.uk

Chronicle of conflict
• Sri Lanka gained independence from Britain in 1948. The country has a population of 21 million, of whom about 3.2 million are of Hindu Tamil origin.
• Tamil is one of the principal languages of the Hindu Dravidian dialect, with more than 200 million speakers across India.
• Ceylon Tamils are ethnic Sri Lankans [...]

March 27, 2009

Little Big Things in South Asia Part 1—Lanka and what the 1W is missing

Lots o’ stuff going on in South Asia this week! Tata unveils the Nano, world’s cheapest car (cue whine-track from self-serving American environmental movement) U.N. announces Humanitarian Crisis in Sri Lanka (cue crickets). Orphanage in Bangladesh actually a terror cell? Because there’s so much to say about each (!) I’ve split the posts.
Lanka Lanka Lanka:
While [...]

March 24, 2009

3WI Special Report—Why they’re not listening to us

We spout off a lot about human voices and narratives and shit, but I’d rather read a bunch of solid numbers behind a single, strong argument than see another Maya/Fatima/Yelena, etc propped up in front of a camera and poked with a stick until she spills her unimaginably brutal survival story for another wannabe foreign correspondent’s lede. Human beings are the ONLY way to tell a story, especially a foreign story, but only if you treat them like humans instead of units of commoditized suffering. Anything else is just prostitution, and nobody likes a fucking pimp.

February 16, 2009

Straight from M.I.A.’s MySpace Blog

T O F A N S F R I E N D S O N F A M I L Y . M Y B A B Y I S H E R E
HAPPY VALENTINES!
SUNDAY NITE I CA M E HOME FROM THE GRAMMY’S STILL IN THE MOOD TO PARTY , I COUDA EASILY GONE [...]