Opinions

Human Wrongs Watch By Cristiane Mazzetti* 1 September, 2016 (Greenpeace) – The Amazon is being burned. Here’s what you need to know. From July to November, it is fire season in the Amazon rainforest. But while fires can be a normal…

As I read of the latest coup in Brazil, once again removing a democratically elected leader from power, my anger surged. Not again! However, as I see and read about the ongoing massive protests, as well as calls by prominent…

What is really going on in Jeremy Corbyn’s [UK] Labour Party? An open-air meeting and the changes in a ward branch give some clues. By Paul Rogers 2 September 2016 for openDemocracy These columns have occasionally strayed from their usual…

By Jose Rafael Quesada* SAN JOSE (IDN) – Costa Rica, a small Central American country with a population of barely 5 million inhabitants, has a high human development index (ranking 69th worldwide) and is considered a consolidated democracy in Latin…

By Robert C. Koehler He’d left the water running, flooding neighbors’ apartments. He’d been running around outside naked. By the time police arrived, he was standing in the window of his fourth-floor apartment on Farwell Avenue — a few blocks…

Traditionally the preserve of religion and state, ritual is being used as a means to connect with others and reshape the future. By Lucy Purdy 31 August 2016 for openDemocracy Thousands of people holding lanterns stretch in procession along the…

Johan Galtung* This editorial 444–the number calls for attention–is dedicated to a global overview, the world “right now”, so unstable with imbalances everywhere that what we are living is fluxes and jumps. Let us start with two major relations: nature-human,…

Robert J. Burrowes I sometimes wonder whether one of the ways in which ‘Amercian exceptionalism’ manifests is that many US scholars and others are unable to consider the contributions of those who are not from the USA. For example, I…

The floodwaters are receding in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and the scale of the damage is revealing itself. It has been described as a 1,000-year flood, leaving at least 13 people dead and close to 60,000 homes ruined. According to Weather…

The earthquake Tuesday night in Amatrice, Central Italy, has brought back ugly memories. The scars of l’Aquila, where a similarly heavy earthquake took place in 2009, killing 308 people and leaving 67.000 without homes, have still not healed. The population…