(Photo: Pimthida via Flickr)Most people suffer from a sense of moral failure over environmental matters. The mismatch between being told to change our light bulbs when the planet seems in free fall—melting ice caps, polluted water supplies, drought—creates a needling angst and anxiety. We know that we are in deep trouble, but feel that there is little we—or anyone—can do individually.
A protester erects a flag at a Palestinian protest camp in early January. (Photo: Olivier Fitoussi)Last Friday, Palestinian peace activists created the village of Bab al-Karama on the lands of Beit Iksa village to prevent their confiscation by the Netanyahu government.
(Photo:maja*majika via Flickr)The blight was first detected in June 2002, when the trees in Canton, Michigan, got sick. The culprit, the emerald ash borer, had arrived from overseas, and it rapidly spread -- a literal bug -- across state and national lines to Ohio, Minnesota, Ontario. It popped up in more distant, seemingly random locations as infested trees were unwittingly shipped beyond the Midwest.
(Photo: Lucy Nicholson/ Reuters)On two major occasions—during his election-night speech and second inaugural address—President Obama has highlighted the need for election reform.
Supporters of clean elections rally in Chicago on January 19, 2013. (Photo: Public Citizen)Last November, Americans did more than suffer through the first SuperPAC presidential election, and they accomplished something more than the election of a president.
Here’s something I just learned: The annual budget for political reform groups in the U.S. is a combined $45 million, which amounts to roughly .01 percent of the $300 billion in total charitable giving in 2011. It's also less than one quarter of the Chamber of Commerce’s $200 million annual budget.
Private military contracting has ballooned into an industry worth more than $100bn a year. (Photograph: Goran Tomasevic/Reuters)In early 1995, Sierra Leone was on the brink of collapse. A violent civil war had ravaged the country, leaving thousands dead and countless others wounded.
