We all know that the earth and all upon it face a growing crisis. Global climate change is rapidly advancing, melting glaciers, eroding soil, causing freak and increasingly wild storms, and displacing untold millions from rural communities to live in desperate poverty in peri-urban slums. Almost every human victim lives in the global South, in communities not responsible for greenhouse gas emissions. The atmosphere has already warmed up almost a full degree in the last several decades and a new Canadian study reports that we may be on course to add another 6 degrees Celsius (10.8 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100. [...more]
Internet porn, which offers "new partners" at each mouse click, registers as so rewarding that the brain easily rewires itself to focus more attention on these opportunities. [...more]
Through hundreds of autonomous chapters globally, it shares free vegetarian food to relieve hunger besides protesting against war, poverty, and social injustice. FNB isn't a charity. Through grassroots activism, it advocates peace and liberation of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine throughout the Americas, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Australia. In addition, for 30 years, it's worked to end hunger and backs efforts against globalization, free movement restrictions, exploitation, and environmental destruction. [...more]
In a recent Rolling Stone magazine interview, you spoke of this administrations commitment to civil rights while simultaneously insulting the intelligence of those who are concerned with civil liberties. It is this administrations actual record on civil liberties, a record that is in fact worse than the preceding one, that is both clearly inexcusable and dangerously
irresponsible. [...more]
The entire electric utility industry spent more than $264 million on lobbying alone in 2009 and the first half of 2010. Oil and gas interests spent a record $175 million lobbying in 2009 a 30 percent increase from 2008 and have spent $75 million already in 2010. The oil, gas, and coal industries have spent over $2 billion lobbying Congress since 1999 [...more]
So what's the biggest time-bomb for Obama, America, capitalism, the world? No, not global warming. Not poverty. Not even peak oil. What is the absolute biggest, one like the trigger mechanism on a nuclear bomb, one that'll throw a wrench in global economic growth, ending capitalism, even destroying modern civilization? [...more]
The food crisis of 2008 never really ended, it was ignored and forgotten. The rich and powerful are well fed; they had no food crisis, no shortage, so in the West, it was little more than a short lived sound bite, tragic but forgettable. To the poor in the developing world, whose ability to afford food is no better now than in 2008, the hunger continues. [...more]
This is an article about men, but I'm going to begin by talking about women's experiences. Many of us women go through our daily lives fending off unwanted male attention; most of us have worried about being attacked by men. If I stroll down a city street or take public transit alone, I can count on being approached by men I don't want to talk to. If I walk home after dark, I can't help fearing assault -- so much so that if a man or group of men come near me on the street, I feel my heart lodge firmly in my throat until they pass. [...more]
The secret to understanding US foreign policy is that there is no secret. Principally, one must come to the realization that the United States strives to dominate the world. Once one understands that, much of the apparent confusion, contradiction, and ambiguity surrounding Washington's policies fades away [...more]
The study was carried out by Circle of Blue, a network of journalists and scientists dedicated to water sustainability, and could have implications not just for the relationship between energy demand and water scarcity in the U.S. but elsewhere in the world, as well. "It is not just that energy production could not occur without using vast amounts of water. It's also that it's occurring in the era of climate change, population growth and steadily increasing demand for energy," explained Circle of Blue's Keith Schneider, who presented the findings in Washington Wednesday. [...more]