Author: Alanna Shaikh

Ethnic Turkmen unrest in Iran and Iraq

By Alanna Shaikh | | 0 Comments |

I thought I was on to something – You almost never hear about ethnic Turkmens anywhere, but we’re heard about them twice in the last couple of weeks. First, Ethnic Turkmen Revolt in Baluchistan and Kurdistan in Iran. And now Iraqi Turkmens are asking for protection. I thought something was up.

However, my friend David Hunsicker, who knows everything there is to know about the Muslim world, tells me that Iranian Turkmens and Iraqi Turkmens are not actually the same ethnic group, and therefore the two news reports are most likely not related.

Friday Fear – 1 February 2008

By Alanna Shaikh | | 0 Comments |
Friday Fear:Friday fear is a new weekly feature which offers you a list of five or six things to be very, very, afraid of.

1. Internet outage in the Middle East Aside from losing access to your gmail, can you picture what would happen to the US economy if we lost internet access completely? Also – could terrorists do this on purpose?

2. Double dipping your chips really does spread bacteria. Perhaps someone at the party with you has XDR TB ?

3. You can’t trust your doctor. Or the FDA. Or the coroner.

4. Bats and bees are dying.

5. And, finally: Weaponizing the Climate.

Scientific Commons

By Alanna Shaikh | | 0 Comments |

“ScientificCommons.org aims to provide the most comprehensive and freely available access to scientific knowledge on the internet. The major aim of the project is to develop the world’s largest communication medium for scientific knowledge products which is freely accessible to the public.”

Lack of access to knowledge is a huge problem in the developing world. Projects like this can help to make a difference.

Cydney Mizell

By Alanna Shaikh | | 1 Comments |

Wow. This is really amazing. I don’t think I had ever heard of that before — an Afghan protest — a women’s protest — in support of a kidnapped American. Cyd Mizell worked with the Asian Rural Life Development Foundation, and she clearly meant an awful lot to the community she worked with.

The Asian Rural Life Development Foundation web page is here: http://www.arldf.net/index.html — and I really like the fact that they feature Mizell and her driver, Muhammad Hadi, with equal prominence on the front page. ARLDF is based in the Philippines, and it looks like their Afghan programs are pretty new. They do the kind of person-to-person community work that costs a fortune unless you have amazing volunteers, which they apparently do. Their work in
agriculture seems very good. They are incorporated as a 501c3 through the National Heritage Foundation.*

It sounds like Cyd Mizell is a compassionate, idealistic woman with good common sense. She knew the risk she was taking in going to Afghanistan and she did it anyway. She will be in my thoughts. One person’s personal account of Syd is here: http://globalpolitician.com/24050-afghanistan.

*National Heritage Foundation turns out to be a pretty interesting concept. Basically, they serve as an umbrella 501c3 to help small charities become tax-exempt. Their list of services is here:
http://www.charityadmininc.com/CAI_Info/List_of_Services.pdf. I can see how a small group would rather just pay a monthly fee for someone else to do their admin compliance and then get on with their good works.