Ask Beatty – 09.21.15

Beatty talked about the housing, medical, employment and mental health challenges facing transgender men and women. She also discussed the dangers of Paxil, an antidepressant, for teenagers and cautions everyone to be more consumer savvy when it comes to taking medications of all kinds. Your doctor does not always know what’s best!

Expat Files – 09.13.15

-Did you know that 95% of Latins drive with no car insurance coverage at all? That’s a fact even though most all Latin countries have mandatory insurance laws. How is that possible? How do they continuously get away with it?

-Did you know that in most Latin countries, if you go to a driving school to learn how to drive properly, the school will guarantee you a driver’s license upon completion? Here’s the crazy part: most schools will give you the “on the road” part of the driver’s test right on the premises… not in an actual car but in a simulator! Crazier yet, over half of Latin drivers either have no idea how to parallel park or are too afraid to even try it. So instead they circle and circle, block after block, waiting for an easier space to open up. That’s what happens when your license is approved by a simulator.

-What happens if you get in trouble with the law while in Latin America? Specifically, what can happen if you get in a car accident or hit a pedestrian?

-Another “boots on the ground” gringo tale of woe. This time we hear from a gringo personally involved in a hit and run accident. (He was the driver and the one who ran!)

Civil Society Denounces World Bank’s Conference on Land & Poverty

Oakland, CA — Every spring for the last fifteen years, the World Bank has organized the “Conference on Land and Poverty,” which brings together corporations, governments and civil society groups. The aim is ostensibly to discuss how to “improve land governance.” Whereas the 16th conference will take place in Washington D.C. from March 23 to 27, hundreds of civil society organizations are …

Violence Against Women: Why We Keep Getting It Wrong

With the passing of another International Women’s Day, during which much attention around the world has again been focused on tackling violence against women, I would like to explain why none of the initiatives currently being proposed will achieve anything unless we acknowledge, and act on, the cause of this violence. So let me briefly explain the fundamental cause of …