Early this week, much of South Africa was disconnected from the internet due to a problem with an undersea cable. For this reason there was no new posts on Conflict Health. However, everything is now back up and working and here is a list of the stories I missed last week. Enjoy.
Our Business: Trafficking Weapons, Delivering Aid
The global transport industry plays a crucial role in conflict economies. Ethical Cargo, a new information portal by one of our partners, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), sheds light on this role and helps donors to choose the right companies when giving out contracts.
Feeling Warehoused in Army Trauma Care Units
But interviews with more than a dozen soldiers and health care professionals from Fort Carson’s transition unit, along with reports from other posts, suggest that the units are far from being restful sanctuaries. For many soldiers, they have become warehouses of despair, where damaged men and women are kept out of sight, fed a diet of powerful prescription pills and treated harshly by noncommissioned officers. Because of their wounds, soldiers in Warrior Transition Units are particularly vulnerable to depression and addiction, but many soldiers from Fort Carson’s unit say their treatment there has made their suffering worse.
How to Write About Afghanistan
Always use the word ‘war-torn’ in your title. Subtitles may include the words ‘tribal,’ ‘Taliban,’ ‘corrupt,’ and ‘Sharia.’ Also useful are words such as ‘shuras,’ ‘fighters,’ ‘refugees’ and ‘insurgency.’ Do not distinguish between different ethnic groups with different languages, religions and histories, or regions with different landscapes and livelihoods. If people in Kandahar tell you something, assume people in Kabul feel the same way, and vice versa. Whenever possible, mention Pashtunwali. (Note: you do not need to understand what Pashtunwali is. You get points for mentioning it anyway.)
We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint
“PowerPoint makes us stupid,” Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander, said this month at a military conference in North Carolina. (He spoke without PowerPoint.) Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster, who banned PowerPoint presentations when he led the successful effort to secure the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar in 2005, followed up at the same conference by likening PowerPoint to an internal threat.
1889 Pandemic Didn’t Need Planes to Circle Globe in 4 Months
The 1889 Russian flu pandemic circled the globe in just four months, captivating the world, despite the lack of airplanes or hyperventilating cable news stations.
If that was possible, closing down air traffic in the event of a new pandemic might not do much, argue the authors led by Alain-Jacques Valleron, an epidemiologist at the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale in Paris.
Christopher R. Albon is a political science Ph.D. specializing in armed conflict, public health, human security, and health diplomacy.
Want more? Subscribe to Conflict Health through RSS or email.
Comments on this entry are closed.