I was born, at slightly past the midpoint of the Twentieth Century, in the Deep South city of Birmingham, Alabama — “The Heart of Dixie.” My earliest memories are of a time of societal upheaval and cultural trauma. At the time, as the world witnessed and history chronicles, Birmingham could be an ugly, mean place. My [...]

Published in Amauta with special permission from TomDispatch Ver traducción al español en Sin Permiso Source: TomDispatch by Rebecca Solnit January 20, 2010 Soon after almost every disaster the crimes begin:  ruthless, selfish, indifferent to human suffering, and generating far more suffering. The perpetrators go unpunished and live to commit further crimes against humanity. They care less for human life [...]

Source: New York Times by David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt December 1, 2009 WASHINGTON — President Obama focused his speech on Afghanistan. He left much unsaid about Pakistan, where the main terrorists he is targeting are located, but where he can send no troops. Mr. Obama could not be very specific about his Pakistan strategy, his advisers conceded [...]

by Tristan McConnell in Mwingi October 22, 2009 “The last time I had a good harvest was 2003 – there has been nothing at all for the last three years,” said Mutindi Maithya, 36, a widow who lives with her six children on a four- acre plot of sun-baked land. Sitting beneath a thorny acacia tree, she picks [...]

by Sandy LeonVest October 23, 2009 It was only a matter of time before the nation’s skyrocketing unemployment translated into new recruits for the most powerful military force in the world. With the official US unemployment rate at 10 percent and climbing (that’s more than 15 million people struggling to put food on the table) and nearly double [...]

by Dahr Jamail September 17, 2009 On September 7 the Swedish aid agency Swedish Committee for Afghanistan reported that the previous week US soldiers raided one of its hospitals. According to the director of the aid agency, Anders Fange, troops stormed through both the men’s and women’s wards, where they frantically searched for wounded Taliban fighters. Soldiers demanded [...]

by Riaz Hassan September 11, 2009 Suicide bombing attacks have become a weapon of choice among terrorist groups because of their lethality and ability to cause mayhem and fear. Though they are depressing, the almost-daily news reports of deaths caused by suicide attacks rarely explain what motivates the attackers. Between 1981 and 2006, 1,200 suicide attacks made [...]

por Patrick Moser 10 de julio, 2009 Ghasan Matar, de catorce años, no habla nunca de la explosión que le segó las piernas y mató a su hermano. En realidad, seis meses después de que acabara la masacre israelí contra Gaza, apenas habla nada. Pasa la mayor parte del tiempo mirando fijamente hacia la pared y a [...]

por Ana Maria Montero julio 2009 Primero se juntaron en Rosario, Argentina. Y este año repitieron su particular encuentro nada menos que en Caracas, el epicentro de la revolución bolivariana que recorre América. El de Argentina, en el 2008, y el de Venezuela, el 2009, fueron dos destacados encuentros de la “intelectualidad de derecha”. Dos momentos en los [...]

To make people care, craft a ‘politics of meaning’. by Murray Dobbin July 9, 2009 “We hunger for communities of meaning that can transcend the individualism and selfishness that we see around us and that will provide an ethical and spiritual framework that gives our lives some higher purpose.” – Michael Lerner, The Politics of Meaning