Tag: Luke Ryan

Imagine carrying a struggling pregnant woman through the bowels of the jungle, pushing your body and straining your spirit just to get her somewhere where she might have a shot at surviving. This kind of thing happens every day. The jungles of Burma (Myanmar) have suffered through a devastating civil war for over 70 years. While […]

History is punctuated by certain leaps in civilization–the discovery of fire, the leap from the bronze to the iron ages, or more recently, the industrial revolution. These advances are often surrounded by a huge upheaval of society.  Everyone had a certain way of doing things, and now this new technology or methodology is messing all […]

Today is United Nations day. 1945 brought about the close of WWII and the dawn of the United Nations. They hoped that such an alliance would prevent a war like that from ever happening again. After WWI, a group called the League of Nations was born.  Like the United Nations, its purpose was to stop […]

The news rarely reports the comings and goings of ordinary people living regular lives, and yet it’s those people who make up the mass majority of the earth.  The farmer in north the northern Thai countryside, the truck driver in Cairo or the gas station attendant in Arizona–they are the fabric of society, subject to […]

On October 23rd, 1983, an explosion ripped through an American barracks in Beirut, killing 220 U. S. Marines, 18 Navy sailors, and 3 Army soldiers.  58 French peacekeepers and 6 civilians were also killed in the blast. Beirut is the capital of Lebanon, and the country’s largest city.  Lebanon lies sandwiched between Syria to the […]

“It’s a lot of make it up as you go.” Dr. Jack Chamberlain has been practicing medicine in rural areas around the world since 1993.  A U. S. based physician turned humanitarian aid worker, he has practiced medicine everywhere from the ER of Detroit to the war-torn jungles of Burma. “Marginalized medicine” is a term […]

“How do we get ahead of crazy if we don’t know how crazy thinks?” Netflix’s “Mindhunter” follows two FBI agents in the 1970s.  Apparently at that time, the whole concept of a serial killer was a pretty foreign concept, and the two protagonists, special agents of the FBI, take on the burden of pioneering this […]

On 22 October, 1966, George Blake broke out of a British prison, only 5 years into his 42 year sentence. Blake was a communist sympathizer, which was what led him to his service to the KGB against the British government.  As a child, he had spent time in Egypt with his cousin, who would go […]

THE PLAYERS The Clinton Foundation – a non-profit organization run by Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton.  Its mission is “to bring people together to take on the biggest challenges of the 21st century.”  They focus on areas like global health, climate change, economic development, health and wellness, and programs built to enable girls and women […]

Fighting between the Karen people and the Burmese (Myanmar) government dates back to World War II.  I went for a trip into the jungles of Burma to meet with the Karen people back in 2015, and it was quite the profound experience. The conflict between the Burmese and its surrounding ethnic minorities has been described […]

On October 19th, 2004, an aid worker by the name of Margaret Hassan was kidnapped to be murdered weeks later. Hassan held a dual citizenship between England and Iraq, having been married to Tahseen Ali Hassan and moving to Iraq with him in the ’70s.  She taught English at the British Council of Baghdad and […]

Since February, Chechnya has been accused of kidnapping and imprisoning over 100 gay or bisexual men, purely based on their sexual orientation.  There have been reports of an unknown number of these captives who have already been killed in captivity.  They have reportedly faced torture and humiliation. Ramzan Kadyrov, Head of the Chechnyan Republic, has […]