A variety of links to articles/interviews on current topics that may be of interest.

Somehow, I doubt we’re going to hear Glenn Beck or John Hagee speculate about this today.

“As any student of aid and development should know,” Nathan Hodge writes in the prologue to his book Armed Humanitarians, “efforts to aid the developing world have often done more harm than good.”

Patrick G. Eddington is a rarity in Washington these days: an intelligence officer with a conscience. His book, Long Strange Journey, is a riveting account of how he became a whistle-blower at the CIA and exposed how his own agency and the Department of Defense for years covered up the truth about “Gulf War Syndrome” – the exposure of U.S. troops in Iraq to chemical weapons used by Saddam Hussein during the First Gulf War. It also provided a detailed account of what it means to be an imagery analyst in the US intelligence community and how imagery is (and should be) used on battlefields to assist US soldiers and commanders.

Why, if the U.S. prevented Duvalier from returning in 2006, they were either unable or chose not to prevent his return this time?

This week, there have been several days of protests in Haiti against the presence of UN troops in the country. The immediate catalyst has been the widespread belief among Haitians that UN troops are responsible for the outbreak of cholera in Haiti – a belief for which there is considerable evidence, which the UN has encouraged by its refusal to support an investigation into the causes of the cholera outbreak, ignoring calls from Haitian officials and international public health experts for such an investigation. Why are there UN troops in Haiti? What is the timetable for their withdrawal?

Haitian women, aided by women’s rights organizations, are banding together to protect themselves and all women in post-earthquake Hatii from sexual assault, rape and other forms of gender-based violence.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner just announced support for a full cancellation of Haiti’s debt, and the IMF will join him, ending Haiti’s crippling economic burden which hampered development long before last month’s earthquake.

Looking over the news this week, from Haiti to Iraq and Afghanistan to Guantanamo, there’s news of debts national and personal that show the costs of our misdirected relationship with the world.

Krugman writes that Wall Street is “clueless”, unaware of their evil. Brooks writes that Haitians need a dose of the Protestant work ethic to avoid future man-made [natural] disasters.