contributions

by Will Iredale
SCIENTISTS have for the first time found evidence that polar bears are drowning because climate change is melting the Arctic ice shelf.
The researchers were startled to find bears having to swim up to 60 miles across open sea to find food. They are being forced into the long voyages because the ice floes from which they feed are melting, becoming smaller and drifting farther apart.
Although polar bears are strong swimmers, they are adapted for swimming close to the (…)

Defeated in Iraq, Bankrupt at Home, Despised Around the Globe (And That’s Just the Good News)
By GABRIEL KOLKO
The dilemma the US has had for a half-century is that the priorities it must impose on its budget and its imperial plans have never guided its actual behavior and action. It has always believed, as well it should, that Europe and its control would determine the future of world power. But it has fought in Korea, Vietnam, and now Iraq—the so-called "Third World" in general—where (…)

by David McReynolds
Being retired, I decided I’d catch the 3 p.m. afternoon showing of Brokeback Mountain, thinking I’d have the theatre almost to myself. I was surprised to find it nearly half full. I’d wondered what possible audience (aside from gay men) there could be for a film about two cowboys and their homosexual affair. It would seem there is a wide audience - and the film merits it. Brokeback Mountain is not, in the usual sense, a gay film.Those looking for much "full frontal (…)

Philanthropy’s biggest challenge in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita is to move past just doing the familiar.
by Emmett D. Carson
man handing over FEMA envelope. Every so often, an event occurs that changes how a society views itself. Ideas and beliefs that were universally accepted before the event are sharply questioned afterward. Hurricane Katrina is likely to be such an event. The hurricane affected a 90,000-square mile land mass (the size of England), taking the lives of more (…)

By JAMES RISEN and ERIC LICHTBLAU
WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 - Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.
Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and (…)

By JAY BOOKMAN
ATLANTA - Think back a little more than a year ago, to the political campaigns of 2004. One of the hottest issues in presidential debates and congressional campaigns was the threat to traditional marriage posed by gay people seeking the right to wed.
At the time, President Bush and others were warning that the threat could be averted only by the most serious step available under our political system, amending the U.S. Constitution to ban gay marriage outright.
You may (…)

By Mark Engler and Nadia Martinez
NEW YORK AND WASHINGTON - With presidential elections in Bolivia on Sunday, Washington is buzzing with talk that another Latin American country may be "lost."
Evo Morales, a former president of Bolivia’s coca-growers’ union and the leader of the Movement Toward Socialism party, is the current front-runner, according to the latest polls. If he wins the election, Mr. Morales will be the latest head of state to join the ranks of the region’s burgeoning New (…)

by John Nichols
Four years ago, U.S. Senator Russ Feingold distinguished himself as the Senate’s premier defender of the Constitution, when he cast the chamber’s sole vote against enactment of the Patriot Act. As a time when every other senator - even liberal Democrats with long records of championing the Bill of Rights — joined the post-September 11 rush to curtail basic liberties, Feingold stood alone in defense of the principle that it was possible to combat terrorism and protect the (…)

By Richard Cohen
Last month Justice Antonin Scalia was politely quizzed by Norman Pearlstine, the outgoing Time Inc. editor in chief. The event, held in Time Warner’s New York headquarters, was supposedly off the record, but so much of it has already been reported that it will not hurt to add Scalia’s views on flag burning. He explained why it was constitutionally protected speech. It’s a pity Hillary Clinton was not there to hear him.
The argument that this famously conservative member (…)

by Haider Rizvi
NEW YORK, (OneWorld) - Coca-Cola, the multinational soft drink giant, is facing the wrath of rights advocacy groups here in the United States and abroad for refusing to take responsibility for abusive practices at its bottling plants.
While a number of universities and colleges in the United States have already banned the sale of Coke products on their campuses, mounting pressure from student bodies throughout Europe is pushing hundreds of schools to terminate their (…)