Articles by Common Dreams
We found 313 results.
“Coexistence” with Monsanto: Hell No!
Ronnie Cummins – Common Dreams,
27 Dec 2010
After 16 years of non-stop biotech bullying and force-feeding Genetically Engineered or Modified (GE or GM) crops to farm animals and “Frankenfoods” to unwitting consumers, Monsanto has a big problem, or rather several big problems. A growing number of published scientific studies indicate that GE foods pose serious human health threats.
→ read full article“Miami Rice”: The Business of Disaster in Haiti
Beverly Bell and Tory Field – Common Dreams,
13 Dec 2010
What is at stake in Haiti? What interests underlie the grab for power in the country? One answer is the large amount of aid and development dollars that are circulating. Among those benefiting handsomely from the disaster aid are U.S. corporations who have accessed U.S. government contracts. Below is the tale of one U.S. corporation and its subsidiaries, who have received contracts which involve both a conflict of interest and harm to one of Haiti’s largest and most vulnerable social sectors, small farmers.
→ read full articleWhy WikiLeaks is Good for Democracy
Prof. Bill Quigley – Common Dreams,
6 Dec 2010
Information is the currency of democracy. –Thomas Jefferson. By labeling tens of millions of documents secret, the US government has created a huge vacuum of information…. Wikileaks has the potential to make transparency and accountability more robust in the US. That is good for democracy.
→ read full articleCitizen Protests, Government Repression Mount in Haiti
Beverly Bell – Common Dreams,
25 Oct 2010
Activists interviewed say their call for MINUSTAH’s departure is based on the force’s violence, its ineffectiveness in accomplishing its mission, the waste of money, and the undemocratic and colonial nature of the operation in a sovereign nation. The actions have been convened by a coalition including a media network, human rights and housing rights groups, and committees from various camps. Asked what she and others in Haiti’s social movement want, Jetty Jenet said, “We’re calling out for help to make the authorities hear us. We’re all dying.” For nine months, Jetty has had no income and has lived with her children under a plastic tarp in Cité Soleil. “But we’re people, too.”
→ read full articleHonduras: Crisis and Progress
Bill Quigley and Laura Raymond – Common Dreams,
25 Oct 2010
Today, October 21, the democratic resistance in Honduras will celebrate Artists in Resistance Day. This event contrasts directly with today’s official recognition of Honduras Armed Forces day. The resistance, which is working for a truly democratic Honduras, renamed the day and created an alternative celebration because of a brutal police attack on musicians and others last month that left one dead and scores injured.
→ read full articleEconomics: Doing Business As If People Mattered
Robert Jensen – Common Dreams,
11 Oct 2010
When politicians talk economics these days, they argue a lot about the budget deficit. That’s crucial to our economic future, but in the contemporary workplace there’s an equally threatening problem — the democracy deficit.
→ read full articleSouth of the Border: Oliver Stone Does Chavez
Prairie Miller – Common Dreams,
28 Jun 2010
Cuban leader Fidel Castro was interrogated some years ago by the New York Times, demanding to know why freedom of the press is not allowed in Cuba. Meaning, of course, beyond buzzwords, the inclusion of pro-capitalist reporting. To which Fidel’s checkmate reply was something like, we’ll allow that to happen when you allow a communist reporter on the staff of the New York Times.
→ read full articleIs Blackwater’s Erik Prince Moving to the United Arab Emirates?
Jeremy Scahill – Common Dreams,
21 Jun 2010
With Blackwater’s top deputies indicted on federal charges and the company up for sale, rumors are swirling that Prince is preparing to bolt to a country with no extradition treaty with the US.
→ read full articleNo Nukes/No Empire: The Abolition of Nuclear Weapons Requires the End of the U.S. Empire
Robert Jensen – Common Dreams,
21 Jun 2010
[A version of this essay was delivered to the “Think outside the Bomb” event in Austin, TX, on June 14, 2010.] If we are serious about the abolition of nuclear weapons, we have to place the abolition of the U.S. empire at the center of our politics.
→ read full articleTale of Two Nuclear Whistleblowers
David Krieger – Common Dreams,
21 Jun 2010
What are we to learn from this tale of two whistleblowers, one fictitious, one real? One important lesson is the danger of nuclear double standards. We cannot be content to make a hero of a fictional Iranian nuclear whistleblower, while turning a blind eye to the treatment of a real-life Israeli nuclear whistleblower and to the Israeli nuclear arsenal.
→ read full articleProtecting the Perpetrators – Pedophiles and Popes: Doing the Vatican Shuffle
Michael Parenti – Common Dreams,
17 May 2010
The church seems determined to learn nothing from its transgressions, preoccupied as it is with avoiding lawsuits and bad publicity. Really Not All that Serious. First, pedophilia is not that serious if it involves only a few isolated and passing incidents. Second, an even more creepy way of downplaying the problem: child molestation is not all that damaging or that important. At worst, it is regrettable and unfortunate; it might greatly upset the child, but it certainly is not significant enough to cause unnecessary scandal and ruin the career of an otherwise splendid padre…. The damage done to sexual victims continues to go unnoticed: the ensuing years of depression, drug addiction, alcoholism, panic attacks, sexual dysfunction, and even mental breakdown and suicide-all these terrible aftereffects of child rape seem to leave popes and bishops more or less unruffled.
→ read full articleWHAT DO EMPIRES DO?
Prof. Michael Parenti – Common Dreams,
14 Feb 2010
When I wrote my book Against Empire in 1995, as might be expected, some of my U.S. compatriots thought it was wrong of me to call the United States an empire. It was widely believed that U.S. rulers did not pursue empire; they intervened abroad only out of self-defense or for humanitarian rescue operations or […]
→ read full articleISRAEL AND EGYPT CONTINUE TO SQUEEZE THE LIFEBLOOD OUT OF THE PEOPLE OF GAZA
Ann Wright – Common Dreams,
18 Jan 2010
Israeli Airstrikes and Tank Shelling and Egyptian Underground Walls and Maritime Blockade Two weeks ago, almost 2,000 internationals came to Egypt and Gaza in a massive show of civil society support for the people of Gaza. 1,362 persons representing 44 countries in the Gaza Freedom March and over 500 persons with the Viva Palestina Convoy […]
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