I have already blogged extensively on the current food price crisis affecting mostly poor countries. Now, via Le Monde, we learn, unsurprisingly, that riots have exploded in parts of Africa in response to the cost of food.

L’Afrique piégée par la flambée des prix des aliments
LE MONDE | 04.04.08

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This is the first in a (hopefully) collaborative series: WHSBP (title and series idea courtesy of Lambert) to counterbalance the Other Series (WWTSBQ). This series outlines issues on which Hillary Clinton was ahead of the curve, starting with microcredit. I have posted consistently on microcredit (here, here and here) but it is one obvious issue where HRC got it before everyone else.  Read more 

“Aid does not work” is a meme we often hear when it comes to development. Actually, it is a pronouncement made by people who would like foreign aid to stop and see it as “one of these failed government projects.” Aid does work under proper conditions, but quite often, as Jeffrey Sachs has demonstrated, aid does not work because of the donor countries who either do not live up to their commitment or actually set up aid to benefit themselves without much consideration for the people that are supposed to be helped. Two stories in the news highlight these problems.  Read more 

When she was first lady of Arkansas, Hillary Clinton did not just organize tea parties (contrary to what passes now for “common knowledge”). She had heard of a Bangladeshi economist who had introduced a great idea to help people out of poverty in Bangladesh and she thought his ideas might help the poor in Arkansas. The economist was Muhammad Yunus and the idea was microcredit. She was instrumental in introducing Yunus to Bill Clinton and they developed a program of microcredit in Arkansas. Yunus mentions her in every one of his books (with photos).  Read more 

America, that is. Let’s see, I think this blurb has it all. Tell me this doesn’t sound strangely like someplace you know, fast foward a few years:

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Most people, particularly those in the Blogosphere, don’t know or don’t care to know – it’s about to be on. Compton is about to look like Rio; Chicago, New York, Atlanta, Long Beach, Detroit – all those deeply impoverished areas, urban and rural; black, brown, yellow and white, are about to explode. France, Rio, Mexico. This is here in America, all the immigrants from America’s proxy wars in Latin America, the veterans of the drug war, they are all here getting hungrier by the day.  Read more 

It’s been just my luck to have a niggling health problem develop right when I’m newly arrived, and I got to spend the better part of my day dealing with it. Not because I love being fawned over by clinicians, but because I’m so new to the area that I haven’t had time yet to find a doctor and otherwise line up all my little health care ducks. So I got to experience a little “community health care,” a nice euphemism for what the poor “enjoy.” Let me remind everyone that we’re approaching 50 million uninsured in this country. I feel confident that what I experienced is at the upper end in terms of quality and service. So I thank my lucky stars for the little I did receive.  Read more