How ChatGPT artificial intelligence chatbot can help decolonise aid, ease access to donor funding
A few years ago, I spent months helping to create materials to help local organisations navigate the overcomplicated global humanitarian system. Today, the same tools can be researched and drafted in mere minutes using ChatGPT. With a few back-and-forth exchanges, the artificial intelligence chatbot can quickly summarise funding opportunities for...
Holocaust: Be it actual war or potential nuclear catastrophe, it’s certainly looking mighty ugly right now
In my youth, atomic war was, culturally speaking, all around us. It was even in outer space, as in the 1955 film This Island Earth in which another planet goes up in a version of radioactive flames, scaring the living hell out of the 11-year-old Thomas M. Engelhardt. So, yes,...
Everywhere in our lives there lurks the possibility we might be next victims of nuclear wipe out
Indulge me for a moment. This is how “The Prophecy” in my 1962 high school yearbook began. It was written by some of my classmates in the year we graduated from Friends Seminary in New York City. “Being an historian, I am jotting down these notes out of habit, but...
Why China wants the Ukraine war to drag on: China needs Russian oil and gas for its energy-devouring economy
As a noticeably puffy-faced Vladimir Putin welcomed his “dear friend” Xi Jinping to the Kremlin yesterday, the Russian despot acted as if he was hosting his equal. After all, he no doubt reasoned, China needs Russian oil and gas for its energy-devouring economy. The Kremlin is also a handy ally...
Refugee protection system in US, world is founded colonial and racist; can’t let the displaced lead policy conversations
As the first and only female CEO of an international refugee rights organisation with lived experience of forced displacement, I am painfully aware that colonialism and white supremacy are central to the formation and functioning of the global refugee protection system. Having to continually prove this obvious fact is exhausting,...
Who killed Ouko: 23 years since murder of foreign minister, lawyer warns Kenya is again in a rut
Rising uncertainty and fears that Kenya is sliding back to the dark days of dictatorship, humans rights activists and sticklers for rule of law and constitutionalism have raised the flag that ordinary citizens should be ready to defend freedom of expression and opinion. Human Rights Lawyer and Advocate of the...
Hazy US, Nato policy on Ukraine war sets stage for disruption of world economies and security
One of the most striking aspects about the past year is how little debate we’ve seen over US and Nato policy on Russian-Ukraine war. This is not to say that there is only one right position on Ukraine. Nor does it mean that there are not some deranged people who...
Muting criticism of US stand on Ukraine war encourages nuclear conflict, which Moscow is spoiling for
There is a disturbing aspect to the discourse in Washington DC and European capitals surrounding the war in Ukraine that seeks to quash any dissent from the official narrative surrounding Nato’s military support for Ukraine. As the world was thrust into Cold War 2.0, the Western commentariat dusted off the...
Ukraine reporter’s diary: After all the horror they’d experienced, the desperation I saw was hard to process
I’ve been covering conflict in Ukraine for more than eight years. I was in the country when Russia launched its full-scale invasion on February 24 last year and have visited several times since. Still, I was shocked by what I saw during my latest reporting trip in January. Before the...
Last year Congress allocated $45 billion more to military although America’s not won a war of faintest significance since 1945
Look, what matters to the American military-industrial complex isn’t either the truth or saving your taxpayer dollars but keeping those weapons programmes going and the money flowing. What matters, above all, is keeping America’s economy on a permanent wartime footing both by buying endless new (and old) weapons systems for...
