Little girl fatally hit while walking along Cobb County road at night

A frequent refrain is that Muslims hate America for its freedoms. While there is undoubtedly a large Muslim constituency that hates freedom of any kind, there is another contributing factor to these people’s hatred. The main contributing factor is this: The behavior of American military personnel while they are in those countries.

I’ve often joked when it comes to the Middle East that; if they were not fighting us, they’d be fighting each other. No, that’s not a very funny joke, especially now as we watch all the suicide bombings throughout the Middle East, and the 125,000 plus people (civilians) who have died in Syria’s Civil War (as of July 2013). Syria has always been problematic – in the past there have been as many as 10 international terrorist groups headquartered in Syria.

As an American expat living in Central America, life is pretty simple for the most part. Travel is rather easy when there are no real time constraints, and the most difficult part is merely deciding where to go. Crossing certain international borders, however, can be an entirely different matter, but even that can have a silver lining.

What happens when heirs live under a regime that faces economic sanctions? It is a very tricky estate planning problem.

Any number of people would like to improve the lot of the less fortunate; however they also need to know that the money is spent correctly. And to that effect most efforts – both public and private – have failed. Foreign aid has shown to result in not much more than increased consumption by the wealthier people in recipient countries, and very little of that money has reached the intended recipients.

There have been a number of exposes on food coming from other countries, especially things like fish from Asia. We worry about fish caught off the coast of Japan, as it could have radiation poisoning. We worry about fish farms in Asian countries being grown in polluted water. As humans eat our oceans out of house and home these issues become more and more serious. Today, we have a huge problem, and yet Omega-3 is a very important part of the human diet – our brains need it.

DiSC is a personality assessment method that is widely used today. Founded on William Marston’s DISC theory of personality, this assessment is based on four personality traits that are then used to create DiSC profiles.

In Syria the human misery is intense and agonising to watch. With over 2 million Syrians forced to take refuge in neighbouring countries, displaced from their homes and livelihoods, we are witnessing a huge humanitarian disaster. In Britain some say they are ashamed their country is standing aside from this suffering thus ‘allowing’ the horror to continue: and that for evil to succeed it just requires the good to do nothing. Others feel that punitive military action by the Western powers would be ineffective in stopping the civil war and actually make matters worse increasing the refugee flow, alienating Russia and its regional allies, and infuriating a newly moderate Iran. Are there any ethical principles that can throw light on this dilemma?

There are, and there always will be, people who are willing to help the less fortunate. However they will also need to know that the efforts toward that effect are being properly handled, and that the resources actually go where they are intended to go, instead of lining the pockets of some African official or some charity executive. I’ve been in contact with a powerful philanthropic organization, and one of their members related two stories of philanthropic efforts going wrong.

We explore the categories and some of the basics of chemical weapons. There is a great deal of confusion regarding how these weapons are manufactured and disseminated. The categories themselves add to the confusion and make the subject harder to understand. I try and make it a little easier.