Memo to Peace and Justice Activists: Can We Create a Movement for Change?

Weekend Edition
November 28-30, 2008
Memo to Peace and Justice Activists
Can We Create a Movement for Change?
By ROBERT ROTH
“If you want peace, work for justice.”
- Pope John Paul IV
There are literally thousands of organizations in the United States alone working for peace and justice.  I would probably think of them as constituting a [...]

“Anti-porn” bill could threaten Indonesian women

“Anti-porn” bill could threaten Indonesian women
by Soe Tjen Marching
25 November 2008
Jakarta – Two weeks ago, Indonesia’s parliament passed an “anti-porn”
bill, which bans anyone from wearing clothes or promoting material
that could incite “sexual desire”.
Although regulations regarding pornography are important, there is
some concern that there will be other implications, for instance for
women’s rights, even down to what [...]

Scholarship or Sophistry? Bernard Lewis and the New Orientalism

CounterPunch, June 28, 2003
Scholarship or Sophistry?
Bernard Lewis and the New Orientalism
By M. SHAHID ALAM
It would appear from the fulsome praise heaped by mainstream reviewers on Bernard Lewis’s most recent and well-timed book, What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response (Oxford University Press, 2002), that the demand for Orientalism has reached a new peak. [...]

John Bellamy Foster: Ecology and the transition from capitalism to socialism

Walk Against Warming, Sydney, 2006.
Photo by Alex Bainbridge/Green Left Weekly
By John Bellamy Foster
[This article, which first appeared in the November 2008 issue of Monthly Review, is a revised version of a keynote address delivered at the “Climate Change, Social Change” conference, Sydney, Australia, April 12, 2008, organised by Green Left Weekly. It is posted at [...]

Beware The Obama Hype: What “Change” In America Really Means

Beware The Obama Hype
What “Change” In America Really Means
By John Pilger
November 12, 2008 “Information Clearinghouse“ – -My first visit to Texas was in 1968, on the fifth anniversary of the assassination of president John F Kennedy in Dallas. I drove south, following the line of telegraph poles to the small town of Midlothian, where I [...]

Ten reasons to visit Indonesia

Ten reasons to visit Indonesia
Paul Smith suggests ten reasons, in no particular order, to consider a trip to Indonesia, one of the lesser visited destinations in Asia.
1. TANAH LOT, BALI
About 30km to the west of Bali’s capital Denpasar, Tanah Lot is a special place where Hindu temples sit on outcrops of rock along the volcanic [...]

An Open Letter to Barack Obama: Between Hope and Reality

CounterPunch, November 3, 2008
An Open Letter to Barack Obama
Between Hope and Reality
By RALPH NADER
Dear Senator Obama:
In your nearly two-year presidential campaign, the words “hope and change,” “change and hope” have been your trademark declarations. Yet there is an asymmetry between those objectives and your political character that succumbs to contrary centers of power that want [...]

Why capitalism can’t meet human needs

Socialism is the answer to

Why capitalism can’t meet human needs

By Fred Goldstein

Published Oct 26, 2008 10:10 PM
Three-quarters of a million workers have already been laid off this year, bringing the official total of unemployed to over 9 million. Trillions of dollars in retirement funds have been wiped out in the stock market in [...]

Vatican Hopes Obama Will Promote Human Dignity

Vatican Hopes Obama Will Promote Human Dignity

Vatican City, Nov 5, 2008 (CNA).- Speaking to Vatican Radio on Wednesday, the Director of the Press Office of the Holy See, Fr. Federico Lombardi, announced that Pope Benedict XVI has sent his greetings to President-elect Barack Obama, the content of which will not be made [...]

Evangelical foreign policy is over — By Andrew J. Bacevich

http://www.boston. com/bostonglobe/ editorial_ opinion/oped/ articles/ 2008/11/06/ evangelical_ foreign_policy_ is_over?mode= PF 
WITH Barack Obama’s election to the presidency, the evangelical moment in US foreign policy has come to an end. The United States remains a nation of believers, with Christianity the tradition to which most Americans adhere. Yet the religious sensibility informing American statecraft will no longer [...]