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 Just recently, I was accused by a writer for the ultra-Right Washington Times of being a "defeatist" when it comes to America's expansionist military policy abroad. The giveaway, it seems, is that I penned a book for the American Empire Project -- a series of critical volumes published by Metropolitan Books.
Contributors to the series, the article claimed, want "a retreat from Iraq to be the prelude to a larger collapse of American preeminence worldwide." My initial response on reading this was to insist -- like so many anxious liberals -- that no, I am not opposed to American preeminence in the world, only to continued U.S. involvement in Iraq. But then, considering the charge some more, I thought, well, yes, I am in favor of abandoning the U.S. imperial role worldwide. The United States, I'm convinced, would be a whole lot better off -- and its military personnel a whole lot safer -- if we repudiated the global-dominance project of the Bush administration and its neo-conservative boosters. |
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20th July 2006, Haider Rizvi, OneWorld Leaders of the world's industrial nations have drawn fire from international civil society groups after they embraced an energy plan that favors continued reliance on oil and other fossil fuels with no hint of any solid steps to deal with the impending threat of climate change. |
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 You can always spot them a mile away-he was white, middle-aged, overweight, hair cut close to hide the pattern baldness, red face, wearing a Harley Davidson motorcycle t-shirt and shorts.
All of the aforementioned is acceptable in the Middle East, of course, minus the shorts. Aside from a few places like Beirut, wearing shorts in the Middle East isn't exactly being respectful of the native culture. But when you are a mercenary, I suppose that's damned low on your priority list. Then there was the other one-I noticed him in Chicago before we board our Royal Jordanian flight to Amman. A 30-something white man, eyes wide open, looking over his shoulder constantly, chewing gum so hard his jaw muscles protruded. Blue-flames tattooed on his right arm above the wrist-running up under his sleeve I don't know how far up his arm. His tan combat boots and tan backpack kind of gave him away too, despite his wearing civilian clothing. During my flight I sat near a kind Palestinian man from the West Bank. The older gentleman works in Dallas, and is retiring from his electronics store which he is happy to tell me is being passed along to his kids. His wife remains in the West Bank, so that's why he's moving back home. I asked him what it's like to go home. |
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By what name will future generations know our time?
Will they speak in anger and frustration of the time of the Great Unraveling, when profligate consumption exceeded Earth’s capacity to sustain and led to an accelerating wave of collapsing environmental systems, violent competition for what remained of the planet’s resources, and a dramatic dieback of the human population? Or will they look back in joyful celebration on the time of the Great Turning, when their forebears embraced the higher-order potential of their human nature, turned crisis into opportunity, and learned to live in creative partnership with one another and Earth?
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19th July 2006, Bharat Dogra, IPS As the phenomenon of mass suicides by farmers turns into a major national issue, small cultivators in this sub-Himalayan state are demonstrating that the way forward to sustainable agriculture may lie in sticking to traditional methods. |
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 Congressional "Friends of Israel" are busy making noises about the "need" for the United States to provide that Middle Eastern land with full support as it assaults its neighbors. But no genuine friend of Israel can be happy with what is being done in that country's name by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his misguided followers. Israel's attack on Lebanon, which has already killed and wounded hundreds and destroyed much of that fragile democracy's infrastructure – including airports, seaports, bridges and roads -- has done nothing to make Israel safer or more secure from threats posed by the militant Islamic organization Hezbollah. Indeed, the terrorist group's attacks on targets in northern Israel have become more brazen – and deadly – since Israel began striking Lebanon. No serious participant in the contemporary discourse would deny that Israel has a right to protect itself. But no one in their right mind thinks Israel is going about the mission in a smart manner. |
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17th July 06 - Daniel Howden, The Independent
Huge soya farms financed by Cargill, the largest privately owned company in the world, are the rainforest's new worst enemy
The scars are unmistakably man made. Hard-edged squares and rectangles, hundreds of acres across, hacked and burned out of the Amazon rainforest. The dark green of the canopy is lacerated with thin red lines - the illegal dirt roads that stitch together these giant clearings.
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 As developing countries acquire a powerful voice, the US shuns multilateral trade deals because it can no longer get its own way. The freer movement of trade and capital has been a fundamental characteristic of the past 25 years of globalization. The Doha round, initiated in 2001, was the latest attempt to keep the process rolling. It now looks doomed. The deadlock between the US, the EU, Japan, and the developing countries seems final. And with the fast-track powers of the US president - which enable trade agreements to bypass Congress - scheduled to come to an end in 2007, any agreement later than this year will be subject to the unpredictability and delay of Capitol Hill. In other words, it is now or never, and it looks more and more like never. |
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18th July 2006 - Olga R. Rodriguez, Reuters High crude oil prices will more than offset the benefits of debt relief the Group of Eight rich nations gave to poor countries last year, and this year the G8 will make the situation worse by promoting more investment in fossil fuels, a new report warned on Wednesday. |
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 Humiliation in a Globalizing World: Does Humiliation Become the Most Disruptive Force?
Executive Summary
In order to understand a globalizing world, we need "global" research, as well as the participation of researchers who have a global outlook and global experience. In my case, a specific biography made me acquire a profoundly global perspective and identity. This experiential background has led me to conceptualize psychology in a specific way, firstly as being embedded within broader historic and philosophical contexts, secondly as being profoundly intertwined with global changes, and thirdly as currently gaining significance. I avoid single interest scholarship, work transdisciplinary, and probe how even local micro-changes may be embedded within larger global changes.
In my case, the lack of a clear sense of belonging during childhood (being born into a family of displaced people) made me particularly sensitive to identity quests and urged me to learn about and become part of the rich and diverse world culture that belongs to all of us, as opposed to being part of any particular national sub -culture. Nagata, 1998, wrote an article, Being Global: Life at the Interface, whereby living at the interface means living as an immigrant in another culture. In my case, I have accustomed myself to living in many cultures and in many interfaces, more so, have made the very interface my home.
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