Sex is a powerful tool. It can bring pleasure (lots and lots of pleasure), create babies, cause heartache, and even end wars? No effing way.

Aristophanes (the Greek comic playwright) introduced this idea in one of his plays, in which a woman named Lysistrata (translation: Army-disbander) comes up with a, well, attention-grabbing plan to bring an end to the Peloponnesian War: she convinces herself and all of the other Grecian ladies to withhold sex from their husbands until the men have negotiated a peace.

Thousands of years later, the women of Kenya are trying a similar tactic – they’ve gone on a seven day sex strike in an attempt to alleviate the violence that has resulted from the rivalry between Prime Minister Raila Odinga and President Mwai Kibaki (who currenty share power over the Kenyan government). Introduced by the Women’s Development Organization coalition, the strike includes the Prime Minister’s wife, Ida Odinga, many average women, a handful of prostitutes, and possibly President Kibaki’s wife. Read More »

Sure, if you want to go to the Olympics, you’ve got to be the best at your sport. But for some, even that isn’t enough.

This year’s Beijing Olympics are possibly the most politicized Olympics to go down on the planet in decades. It’s always ugly when politics enter into something supposed to be as pure an ideal as the excellence of sport, but the polluted skies over Beijing aren’t the only source of dirt and grime these days.

Everyone knows about the furious and polarizing debates and protests over Tibet. It’s hardly news anymore that there are monks on the march, and Chinese police cracking down on them. What I find even more disturbing, however, is the crushing influence of the Chinese government over people’s free speech. When so-called public opinion polls emerge saying that over 90% of all Chinese people are wholeheartedly in favor of every aspect of the Chinese government, as I’ve been reading about in the New York Times, you know something’s wrong.

No country likes their government that much, unless they’re too frightened to say differently. And now, this strong tendency to crack down on opposing opinions has gone one step further: it entered the olympics.

Princeton student Joey Cheek, class of 2011, a world champion speed skater and former Olympian (who was only going to the Olympics to support his team) has had his visa revoked by the Chinese government. The reason? Cheek is an outspoken activist for the genocide in Darfur, and has been critical of China’s many investments in the Sudan. Read More »