To mark the start of the Tibetan New Year, Losar, some of Seattle’s Tibetan community demonstrated downtown against China with colorful flags, angry chants and coffins.
Seattle Tibetans protest against China, Westlake Park
“The situation in Tibet right now is very, very bad,” said Jampa Jorkhang, president of Tibetan Association of Washington and one of the organizers of the protest yesterday. Continue reading
by Tom Paulson
Smart Global Health Policy meeting
Someday, perhaps it will be enough to say that making people healthy worldwide is just good for all of us.
But, apparently, we’re not there yet.
A blue-ribbon panel called the Commission on Smart Global Health Policy met in Seattle last week and, to a crowd of several hundred people, presented its pitch that global health has political and foreign policy value.
The first sentence of the commission report says:
“As the United States applies smart power to advance U.S. interests around the world, it is time to leverage the essential role that U.S. global health policy can play.”
It goes on to recommend in detail how a more strategic approach to global health — a so-called “smart power” approach — will “advance America’s core interests.”
I wonder: Is it really a good idea to cast global health efforts as a means to advance U.S. interests? Continue reading
