Twin Cities Daily Planet (https://www.tcdailyplanet.net/category/world/page/13/)
When he came to the University of Minnesota from Egypt in 2009 to get his Ph.D., computer science student Abdeltawab Hendawi had no idea that many of his good friends would be killed before he got back.
This weekend, we wrap up Lao Minnesotan Artists Heritage Month, and it’s been a wonderful month of seeing the artists in our community press forward with their many different projects. Continue Reading
The United Nations has announced that the number of Syrian refugee children has reached one million. This marks another milestone in a 2 ½ -year conflict that has taken the lives of more than 100,000 people and forced 2 million refugees from their homeland.
To be sure, President Obama will explain whatever decision he makes regarding Syria with a credibility problem, partly of his own making and partly inherited. The self-inflicted part can be summed up in a sentence: leakers of classified information to the press are in prison or hiding while war criminals are going unprosecuted. The general public might not care, but Obama’s base does, and he’s going to need our support for a potentially unpopular intervention. Continue Reading
There are basically two types of Democratic-Republics in the world – Parliamentary, or a Prime Minister led government, and a strong President based system. Hybrids of various kinds involving monarchs and other systems with varying degrees of power abound, but every democratically elected government in the world falls into one of these categories. The person who shows up at the international conferences has one of these titles. Continue Reading
Fighting continues in Egypt. On August 18th, the Egyptian government admitted that its security forces killed 36 Islamists who were in its custody.
In the story of the Wizard of Oz, the Scarecrow seeks a brain, the Tinman a heart, and the Lion his courage – Dorothy just wants her home. Their magical journey through Oz is being told with Cirque du Soleil flair under the big top at Circus Juventas, a circus school for youth in St. Paul.An Adventure Through OzLongfellow resident Iain Knopp-Schwyn plays the Cowardly Lion in the performance and has been a student at Circus Juventas for nine years. He commented, “I hadn’t seen the movie [The Wizard of Oz], so I elected to not watch it at all, and instead made my own character out of it.” He added, “It’s just fun to build a character and work with it for a year and then finally see it in costume.”With flying monkeys and witches, a trapeze house, and all of the glitz of the Emerald City, Oz is the most technical show that Circus has produced, said Founder and Artistic Director Betty Butler. “There’s a sense of adventure and friendship with these four characters as they make their way to the witch’s wicked castle,” she explained. Continue Reading
The Olympic movement professes to be above politics; but politics has dogged the Olympic Games since 1936. Berlin won the bid for the summer Olympics; and then the Nazi regime came to power, in 1933.
Another cycle of violence between angry mobs representing the majority religion flares up in another nation. What could be truly “new” in this news? This week it was in Sri Lanka, but there was a difference. The mob were Buddhists and their victims were the Moslem minority at prayer in a mosque. It seems to be a spillover from the much more violent confrontations in Myanmar where hundreds have been killed at the hands of “Radical Buddhists” who destroyed the homes of over 400 Moslem families. Has the world gone completely mad? Continue Reading
[Disclaimer: As a white male it is virtually impossible for me to fully understand and appreciate the burden of being a black male in this society. Even though I’ve been arrested and in jail and prison, lived in the inner city and rural South, I can only approximate what that experience is because I was always a phone call away from “connections” to the world of privilege and (somewhat limited) power – unlike Travyon Martin and others like him.] Continue Reading