Common Dreams

During a recent visit to a military family center at Fort Hood in Texas, Joyce Raezer was dismayed to find a sign in a stall in the ladies' room. It asked women to clean up because janitorial service had been cut back. By Kevin G. Hall and David Montgomery

They're found in floor waxes and shampoos. They're used in many fast-food wrappers and microwave popcorn bags. They coat pizza boxes, carpets and frying pans. And they're in people. By Scott Streater

The Ross Ice Shelf, a massive piece of ice the size of France, could break off without warning causing a dramatic rise in sea levels, warn New Zealand scientists working in Antarctica.

In an ironic twist, officially listing a species as endangered drives up its value to collectors and consumers, putting it on an even faster track to extinction, researchers in Paris reported Tuesday. By Stephen Leahy

The Bush administration pleased farmers and frustrated environmentalists Monday by declaring that pesticides can be sprayed into and over waters without first obtaining special permits. By Michael Doyle

The former SAS officer who devised and executed the Iraq war plan for Australia's special forces says that the nation's involvement has been a strategic and moral blunder. By Patrick Walters

For Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi "human rights is a package....a way of seeing the world, a culture, which cannot "be imposed with cluster bombs" and brought to countries "in tanks".

My Thanksgiving for the election outcome was quickly tempered by gobbling from assorted turkeys – personal, political, and planetary. By Caroline Arnold

The culture and creativity economy and its contribution to sustainable development will be the central theme at a 10-day meeting of experts, artists and government delegates from more than 70 countries, which kicks off Friday in two Brazilian cities. By Mario Osava

There are signs that key U.S. officials are ready to take on global warming, even as much of the world community failed to show its will to deal with the impending threat at a recent global conference. By Haider Rizvi

The United States upset the regional balance in the Mideast when it invaded Iraq. Restoring it requires bold initiatives, but "cutting and running" must precede them all. By William E. Odom

Nuclear energy is not the panacea for tackling global warming, says one of the world's most celebrated climate change campaigners, former US vice-president Al Gore. By Leon Gettler

When mortars and rockets fall silent in the world's battle zones, the killings do not necessarily end with ceasefires and peace talks. By Thalif Deen

Bernard Sanders is the new U.S. senator in Vermont. He ran as an independent, but he is the first self-described socialist to be elected to the Senate. By Amy Goodman

Old toothbrushes, beach toys and used condoms are part of a vast vortex of plastic trash in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, threatening sea creatures that get tangled in it, eat it or ride on it, a new report says.

Calls for tougher action on global warming are intensifying as policy makers embark for Kenya, where weeklong talks on climate change are due to start Monday. By Haider Rizvi

After years of surging military spending by the Bush administration and a Republican-led Congress, the nation's defense industry is trying to gauge what life would be like if power on Capitol Hill shifts to the Democrats. By Dave Montgomery

From the beginning of time until the mid-1980s, improvements in lifestyles around the globe were sustainable in the sense that humanity's demands on the Earth did not exceed the capacity of the planet to renew itself. Since then, however, we have been overtaxing the planet.

Vice President Dick Cheney has confirmed that U.S. interrogators subjected captured senior al-Qaida suspects to a controversial interrogation technique called "water-boarding," which creates a sensation of drowning. By Jonathan S. Landay

The USA PATRIOT Act was signed into law by George W. Bush on October 26, 2001 – five years ago. At the time, many of us recognized it as the beginning of an enormous erosion of Bill of Rights protections. By Hope Marston

While widely deplored by the world community, North Korea's recent nuclear test has also prompted fresh calls for the major powers to get serious about dismantling their own weapons of mass destruction.

If Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki were inclined to bet his life on President George W. Bush's latest assurances that there will be no timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, he should probably give it a second thought.

Consumer Groups Outraged by Linda Quaid

A building boom that would add scores of new coal-fired power plants to the nation's power grid is creating a new dilemma for politicians, environmentalists and utility companies across the United States.

Scientists said on Monday that they had found the first direct evidence linking the collapse of an ice shelf in Antarctica to global warming widely blamed on human activities.

The question has to be, was this civil war always inevitable?

Rising tides of untreated sewage and plastic debris are seriously threatening marine life and habitat around the globe, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) warned in a report Wednesday.

by William Pfaff

Canada's open-ocean salmon farms are killing enormous numbers of wild salmon, threatening the species, a new study shows.