by Dawn Paley, Upside Down World, Canada - During the first two weeks of August, more than two dozen youth were assassinated by suspected paramilitary groups in the streets of Santander de Quilichao, and an extensive death threat was directed to Indigenous groups in the area.
by Dola Mitra, Outlook India, India - It all began with a murder. On August 23, a group of 30-odd masked gunmen forced themselves into the Jaleshpata Kanyashram, a Hindu ashram and residential school for tribal girls in Kandhamal. Their target: the ashram's 84-year-old head, Swami Lakshmanananda Saraswati. Using automatic weapons, they pumped bullets into his body and, before disappearing into the darkness, gunned down four others. Three of them belonged to the ashram.
by Marjorie Cohn, Media with Conscience, USA - In the months leading up to the Republican National Convention, the FBI-led Minneapolis Joint Terrorist Task Force actively recruited people to infiltrate vegan groups and other leftist organizations and report back about their activities. On May 21, the Minneapolis City Pages ran a recruiting story called "Moles Wanted." Law enforcement sought to preempt lawful protest against the policies of the Bush administration during the convention.
by Laura S. Washington, In These Times, USA - In August 1968, the most wrongheaded war in American history was being executed badly and brutally in distant Southeast Asia.
by Ina Merdjanova, Transitions Online, Czech Republic - Women can, and should, play a bigger role in the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. If only we could discuss it.
by Ananya Jahanara Kabir, The Hindu, India - The unrest in the Valley reflects the Kashmiri desire to define its collective identity on its own terms.
by Kari Lydersen, Upside Down World, Canada - The Anapra region of Ciudad Juarez is dry and dusty, the road leading there lined with junkyards. In spring, fierce winds blow dust so thick it stings the skin and fills the ears and nostrils of residents scurrying to tend their pigs and chickens on small farms dotted with shacks made from cinder blocks, scraps of wood and box springs.
by Sabina Vaqifqizi, Transitions Online, Czech Republic - If you're disabled in Azerbaijan, getting your benefits takes luck, or a bribe.
by Sonja Margolina, Sign and Sight, Germany - Four years ago Ukraine was a beacon of democracy in the post-Soviet region. Now it is struggling to stay afloat in the political battle of power and self-interest. The struggle of everyone against everyone else, in which populist fury Yulia Tymoshenko is trying to seize power from President Viktor Yushchenko has, for the time being, buried the prospect of stabilisation and a 'Europeanisation' of the country's political culture.
by Galina Stolyarova, Transitions Online, Czech Republic - Much of the Russian public and media are convinced that its leaders did the right thing in Ossetia, and they place the blame farther west than Georgia.
by Rebecca Solnit, Orion Magazine, USA - What remains hidden behind the nationalism of the Olympic Games.
by Anjali Puri, Outlook India, India - The more it becomes possible for urban elites to stay in gated communities, the less pressure there is to increase spending on the safety and security of the general public. This can be very detrimental to our very sense of democracy.
by Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, New Statesman, UK - Mahboubeh Karami has been languishing in Evin prison since 13 June. Amnesty's Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui explains how the journalist and activist ended up in Tehran's notorious jail.
by Jacqueline Bacon, FAIR, USA - How media moderators lowered the level of Election ’08.
by Ratna Bharali Talukdar, Frontline, India - The story of the Chakma and Hajong refugees is replete with endless conflicts and harsh struggles for existence.
by Sarah Kuck, WorldChanging, USA - During the past few decades, small organizations promoting sustainable agriculture have been popping up and banding together across the Midwest to create a patchwork of information, support and tools for those interested in taking part in the sustainable agriculture movement.
by Marie Cocco, Truthdig, USA - Before the energy-price crisis, before the mortgage crisis, before the credit crisis and the banking crisis, there was the crisis in health insurance that is in reality a crisis in care.
by Megan Tady, In These Times, USA - With more airwaves dedicated to broadband service, rural communities previously frozen out of the digital era may finally enjoy the same social and economic benefits of high-speed Internet as millions of other Americans.
by Stephanie Mencimer, Mother Jones, USA - Forget oil and gold. In the Lone Star state, the boomtown business is locking up immigrants.
by Nalini Nadkarni, Orion Magazine, USA - Roger Ulrich, a professor of behavioral psychology at Texas A&M University and a pioneer in the study of environmental influences on health, contends that the proximity of nature can enhance human well-being in measurable ways.
by Violet Cho and Aye Lae, Irawaddy Magazine, Burma - A handful of prominent female activists have made a significant mark on Burmese dissident politics, but true equality of the sexes remains elusive.
by Lila Abu-Lughod, Eurozine, Austria - Our lives are saturated with images, images that are strangely confined to a very limited set of tropes or themes. The oppressed Muslim woman. The veiled Muslim woman. The Muslim woman who does not have the same freedoms we have. The woman ruled by her religion. The woman ruled by her men.
by Rebecca Clarren, Orion Magazine, USA - Immigrants in California's Central Valley are sick of breathing poisoned air.
by Jennifer Gonnerman, Mother Jones, USA - The number first appeared in headlines earlier this year: Nearly one in four of all prisoners worldwide is incarcerated in America. It was just the latest such statistic. Today, one in nine African American men between the ages of 20 and 34 is locked up.
by Anne Applebaum, Slate, USA - Any child who sticks around in Saudi schools until ninth grade will eventually be taught that "Jews and Christians are enemies of believers." They will also be taught that Jews conspire to "gain sole control of the world," that the Christian crusades never ended, and that on Judgment Day "the rocks or the trees" will call out to Muslims to kill Jews.
by Amy Alexander, The Nation, USA - "The blogosphere is like the real world in many ways," says Chris Rabb, founder of Afro-Netizen.com, a blog focusing on African-American news, information and activism. "Some of the same obstacles, challenges and inequalities that exist in the real world exist in the blogosphere, too."
by Galina Stolyarova, Transitions Online, Czech Republic - When politics is in a comatose condition, more and more people turn to the written word as a substitute for political standoffs, battles, and controversy. Political forecasts are moving into literature.
by Coeli Carr, Time, USA - Sharon Rowe knew her fledgling business had struck a chord when she sold 3,000 string bags at five bucks apiece in four hours flat during an Earth Day celebration.
by Lillian B. Rubin, Dissent, USA - Until recently, my husband and I had been seeing one of those “Oh-I’m-so-glad-he’s-my-doctor” physicians for two decades.
by Laura Carlsen, North American Congress on Latin America, USA - About every six months or so, the media provide a fleeting show of North American unity. Whether on the shores of the Mexican Caribbean, the forests of Quebec, or the hurricane-torn streets of New Orleans, the script is pretty much the same. It includes a lot of back-slapping and almost no public information.
by Elisabeth Abeson, Combat Law, India - A determined action has marked the beginning of the end of “the POSCO era” – a particularly sinister period characterised by Orissa government's support of a corporate land-siege which threatens to rob farmers, forest dwellers and indigenous people of their lives, livelihood, and cultural heritage.
by Vasanthi Vasudev, The Hindu, India - The fear of having to live up to unrealistic expectations, the threat of disapproval and the menace of corporal punishment – when will our children be free of these nightmares?
by Nisha Susan, Tehelka, India - There is probably no phrase more contentious than ‘the best interest of the child.’ The latest to come to terms with this reality is the National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR).
by Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop, Newsweek, USA - In Vietnam, performance art is gaining favor as a way to push boundaries while evading censorship.
by Sharon Weinberger, Foreign Policy, USA - Why the Department of Defense needs a lesson in risk management.
by Lindsey Hilsum, New Statesman, UK - The economic order was transformed not by any altruistic movement or political awakening, but by globalised capitalism.
by Nayantara Sahgal, Outlook India, India - India is a mini-world with a multicultural population where people don't always see eye to eye. There should be room for competing ideas in a democracy—but if I cannot disagree with someone without vandalising his house or burning his book or bashing his head in, then this method of banning, unacceptable to me, amounts to terrorism.
by Saskia Sassen, openDemocracy, UK - It is surprising to see the high price in terms of ethical and economic costs that powerful ‘liberal democracies' seem willing to pay in order to control extremely powerless people who only want a chance to work.
by Casey Greenfield and Jeff Greenfield, Slate Magazine, USA - A father-daughter smackdown over sexism and the media's coverage of Hillary Clinton.
by Angela Robson, Le Monde Diplomatique, France - The case of Laos shows the extreme need for the new international ban on cluster bombs. Thirty years after the last bomb was dropped there in the secret war on Vietnam’s ‘other theatre’, the Laotians treat the unexploded ordnance as a natural resource to be exploited, dangerously, for its metal content.
by Nomi Prins, Mother Jones, USA - Forget subprime. The next price bubble to watch is food speculation.
by Ana Carrigan, Open Democracy, UK - The struggle of Colombia's Farc guerrillas has lasted more than four decades. But the pressures the movement is now facing - symbolised by the death of its legendary co-founder Manuel Marulanda - present the Farc with a historic choice, says Ana Carrigan.
by Amy Goodman, Al Jazeera Magazine, USA - "We started the Millennium with the war on terror, and all our resources are concentrating on terrorism."
by Michaela Schiessl, Der Spiegel, Germany - Four years ago, investors urged him to sell the company. Tanti begged off, telling them: "In a few years, Suzlon will be buying up the leading European companies." As it turned out, he was right.
by Tatiana Zhurzhenko, Eurozine, Austria - Before we talk about European solidarity, we need to trace the emergent fault lines running through eastern European memory.
by Elizabeth Pisani, Prospect Magazine, UK - An HIV diagnosis in Britain is no longer a death sentence—thanks to costly new drugs. But as the spectre of death fades, so do the most visible reasons to avoid risky behaviour. Now the Aids prevention industry has a whole new set of problems
by Ferda Ataman and Jürgen Gottschlich, Spiegel Online, Germany - Turkey's highest court in Ankara ruled on Thursday that a law passed by Erdogan's government easing the ban on headscarves at universities was unconstitutional. The ruling is a precursor to a dramatic confrontation likely to emerge in the coming months between Erdogan's Islamist-rooted AKP party and the country's secularist forces, led by the powerful military.
by Susanne Koelbl and Ullrich Fichtner, Spiegel Online, Germany - President Hamid Karzai has come under fire for not doing enough to stem corruption in Afghanistan. He speaks to SPIEGEL about the coalition forces' ties with warlords, rumors about his family's influence and why he believes dirty deals are sometimes necessary.
by Gerd von der Lippe, Eurozine, Austria - You need balls to play football. So it is obvious that being a girl just won't do as far as the guys are concerned, says Gerd von der Lippe in a devastating critique of the state of affairs in the reporting and support of women's football in Norway.
by Michelle Tsai, Slate Magazine, USA - The Italian government called in the army on Tuesday to clean up the mounting piles of waste in the city of Naples. Residents blame the authorities for not doing more to stop the Camorra, the region's Mafia group, which controls garbage collection and has caused the city's constant waste problem for more than a decade. Organized crime appears to have a hand in trash collection all over the world, from Naples to Tony Soprano's northern New Jersey. Why are gangsters always hauling garbage?
