Blogs

More than 7,000 miles separate Chicago and Tehran. But on May 14, the city council of the American city will consider whether to take a stand on an event that would have far reaching consequences for residents of both: a US attack on Iran. A resolution introduced into the council by one of its members, Alderman [...]

Eighteen American war veterans kill themselves every day. One thousand former soldiers receiving care from the Department of Veterans Affairs attempt suicide every month. More veterans are committing suicide than are dying in combat overseas. These are statistics that most Americans don’t know, because the Bush administration has refused to tell them. Since the start [...]

The Presidential candidate who promises to change Washington raced into Washington’s arms right after the media crowned him as the presumptive Democratic nominee. During a Thursday visit to the nation’s Capitol, Barack Obama was fawned over by those he critiqued two days earlier: “Washington didn’t give us much of a chance,” he said during his North [...]

As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil At the summons of war, Let women now leave all that may be left of home For a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means Whereby the great [...]

A recent National Geographic survey ranked the environmental impact of consumer habits and lifestyles in 14 countries.The U.S. ranked last. People in Brazil, India, China, Mexico, Hungary, Russia, Great Britain, Germany, Australia, Spain, Japan, France, and Canada were judged to be more environmentally responsible than Americans. Yes, you read that right. India. China. Mexico. Et cetera. [...]

Twenty-five years ago, in the summer of 1983, a partnership was forged between a group of Nicaraguan women and a group of women in the United States. At the time, the US-backed Contra army was waging a campaign of killings, rape and abductions, with devastating consequences for women and their families. The organization that [...]

Stephen Harper equates criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. “Unfortunately, Israel at 60 remains a country under threat - threatened by those groups and regimes who deny to this day its right to exist,” he told a Toronto celebration marking the anniversary. “And why? Look beyond the thinly veiled rationalizations: Because they hate Israel, just as they hate [...]

There is no longer a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Forget the endless arguments about who offered what and who spurned whom and whether the Oslo peace process died when Yasser Arafat walked away from the bargaining table or whether it was Ariel Sharon’s stroll through the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem that did [...]

Even for Americans — who are constitutionally convinced that there will always be a second act, and a third, and a do-over after that, and, if necessary, a little public repentance and forgiveness and a Brand New Start — even for us, the world looks a little terminal right now. It’s not just the economy: We’ve [...]

More than 7,000 miles separate Chicago and Tehran. But on May 14, the city council of the American city will consider whether to take a stand on an event that would have far reaching consequences for residents of both: a US attack on Iran. A resolution introduced into the council by one of its members, Alderman [...]

Eighteen American war veterans kill themselves every day. One thousand former soldiers receiving care from the Department of Veterans Affairs attempt suicide every month. More veterans are committing suicide than are dying in combat overseas. These are statistics that most Americans don’t know, because the Bush administration has refused to tell them. Since the start [...]

BANGKOK - Exactly four years ago this month, a cyclone, the strongest in 30 years, hit Myanmar. A journalist, writing one month later in The Irrawaddy (a news magazine published by Burmese exiles), wondered how the country’s state-controlled news media could fail to make any mention of a typhoon that the United Nations said killed [...]

In April, the U.S. House showed leadership in the fight against global poverty by passing the Jubilee Act for Responsible Lending and Expanded Debt Cancellation of 2008, which would extend lifesaving debt cancellation to more poor nations around the globe. Too many of the world’s poor children needlessly starve or go without education because too many [...]

The Clintons have never understood how to exit the stage gracefully.Their repertoire has always been deficient in grace and class. So there was Hillary Clinton cold-bloodedly asserting to USA Today that she was the candidate favored by “hard-working Americans, white Americans,” and that her opponent, Barack Obama, the black candidate, just can’t cut it with [...]

I learned many things at the Nuclear Energy Institute’s (NEI’s) annual meeting, but perhaps none more surprising than this: When nuclear power executives discuss the state of their industry, they highlight many of the same issues as their environmentalist opponents.Of course, the emphasis and even the language are different. But presenters at the “Nuclear Energy [...]

“I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask, ‘Mother, what was war?’” - Eve Merriam One might think that, despite military propaganda, we would take a break from the “support the troops” tripe - at least on Mother’s Day - a day to remember the one who brought us into this world. If militarists [...]

The Greek myth is both simple and compelling. Daedalus, imprisoned on the island of Crete with his son (Icarus), fashioned wings made of feathers and wax in order for the two of them to fly to freedom. Daedalus warned Icarus, however, not to fly too close to the Sun because the wax would melt and [...]

At the age of twenty, being a mother of a three and five year-old was not easy. Being a single mom on welfare living in a cockroach-infested apartment was not living. I thought I needed to learn discipline, so I walked into the army recruitment office. I spent my 21st birthday in boot camp on [...]

“My civil neighbor, the tax-gatherer, is the very man I have to deal with, for it is, after all, with men and not with parchment that I quarrel,-and he has voluntarily chosen to be an agent of the government.” –Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience It was impossible to know how it would turn out. Of course, [...]

Twenty-five years ago, in the summer of 1983, a partnership was forged between a group of Nicaraguan women and a group of women in the United States. At the time, the US-backed Contra army was waging a campaign of killings, rape and abductions, with devastating consequences for women and their families. The organization that [...]