by Jodi Jacobson, RH Reality Check, USA - If Komen suddenly decides it is no longer about comprehensive breast cancer prevention services, it will be deciding as well to abandon those low-income and uninsured women whose primary care its grants were helping to support. And it will underscore that the anti-choice community--and now Komen with it--are less concerned about the health and rights of real women in need than they are about ideology and politics.

by Kerry-anne Mendoza, OpenDemocracy, UK - In response to a growing realisation that neo-liberal capitalism is morally and literally bankrupt, Britain’s political leadership have provided three visions of ethical capitalism for us to aspire to. So, is there such a thing as ethical capitalism? And why is this question being asked now?

by Flavia Dzodan, Tiger Beatdown, USA - Frontex exists to “protect” us. Their motto is “Libertas, Securitas, Justitia” (Freedom, Safety, Justice) And under that pretense, the agency allows deaths like those of Samba M. to happen. For me, for my neighbors, for my friends, for the girl who works at the supermarket check out. For you, if you are reading this from one of the countries that are part of the Schengen agreement.

by Zoë Marriage, OpenDemocracy, UK - Through an account of capoeira, the Brazilian dance-fight-game, we uncover two simultaneous stories of security: first, the gradual monopolisation of violence by the state; second, a somatic, lyrical representation of a history of violence, oppression and liberation.

by Elaine Graham-Leigh, Counterfire, UK - Climate change campaigns may not be able to bring down the system on their own, but what we can do is place ourselves at the centre of the movements which are taking on capitalism at the sharp end – campaigns against austerity, against cuts, against unemployment, against the war.

by Sara Moreira, Global Voices, Netherlands - The truth about the Angolan “petroligarchy”, in a country where the cornucopia of riches is restricted to some and more than half of the population lives in the most abject poverty, is a line which one simply does not cross.

by Stefanie Penn Spear, Common Dreams, USA - Obama wants to generate American-made energy and set a clean energy standard that encourages investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency. Good. But Obama continues to tout extreme fossil fuel extraction as a solution to our energy needs. Bad. And it’s still business as usual with the highly subsidized oil, gas and coal industries continuing to externalize their costs on the American people. Ugly. [ MSNBC)] (Photo: MSNBC)

by Michelle Chen, Colorlines, USA - Around the world, as long as people keep moving, politicians will continue to talk breathlessly about the immigration “crisis.” It’s a campaign trail standard in the U.S., but in Britain and Western Europe as well, political figures waste no opportunity to project voters’ deepest fears and wildest misperceptions onto whatever group of newcomers is most visible—whether they’re Egyptian, Roma or Polish.

by Svetla Dimitrova, Southeast European Times, Bosnia and Herzegovina - Nearly 22 years after the end of communism in Bulgaria, the country's parliament adopted a declaration last week condemning a campaign in the second half of the 1980s aimed at the forceful assimilation of the country's ethnic Turks.

by Robyn Cohen, Girls On It, Brazil - One would think that if women are controlling 80% of consumer spending, it’s because brands are doing a good job of advertising to us. Sadly, that’s not the case at all. The percentage of women that work as advertising Creative Directors is…ready, 3%.

by Alexis Erkert and Beverly Bell, Other Worlds, USA - As 2012 begins, a growing movement of displaced people and their allies in Haiti is actively claiming the right to housing, which is recognized by both the Haitian constitution and international treaties to which Haiti is signatory.

by Felicity Arbuthnot, Countercurrents, India - As the US occupiers leave Iraq the fate of former Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq Tareq Aziz's fate hangs in the balance.

by Melanie Vollick, Rabble, Canada - In the past 20 years, only 15 per cent of the 80,000 new chemicals that have been invented since the 1950s have been tested for health and safety, and none of them have been tested in combination.

by Maria Matienzo Puerto, Havana Times, Cuba - For my niece to grow up in a truly civil society of the 21st century, it would be necessary — now that they’re “updating” things — for them to pass a law that recognizes and orders racism to be treated as a crime.

by Afef Abrougui, Global Voices, The Netherlands - The year 2011 was a year of protests and sit-ins in Tunisia. During the first two weeks of the year, the police crackdown on protesters was disastrous, leading to more than 300 deaths. Things only started to change after the fall of the Ben Ali regime. But, in several occasions, Tunisian authorities continued to violently disperse protesters.

by Michele Simon, Appetite for Profit, USA - Given all the defeats and set-backs this year due to powerful food industry lobbying, the good food movement should by now be collectively shouting: I am mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.

by Jamilah King, Color Lines, USA - As the 2012 presidential election kicks into full gear, operatives from both parties will be looking to engage younger voters. And as they do, they’ll have to pay attention to what drives young folks into the political process, and how they’ve managed to turn that process inside out.

by Andrea Domínguez, Comunidad Segura, Brazil - If Latin America is to lower the levels of violence that afflicts the region, the solution lies with prioritizing citizen security over mano dura type public security.

by Annie Bird, Upside Down World, Canada - The United States is advancing a regional security strategy which apparently is oriented toward the militarization of Central America and the participation of private security contractors in policing, a strategy also being promoted for the region by the Inter American Development Bank (IDB) and former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe.

by Chandra Muzaffar, Counter Currents, India - Any conflict in West Asia and North Africa (WANA) is a threat to world peace. For WANA is of tremendous strategic, economic, political and religious significance to the whole of humanity.

by Khadija Sharife, Pambazuka, Kenya - Why are the solutions proposed to halt and reverse climate change placed firmly in the hands of financiers and key state polluters, who consistently elide investigation of the macroeconomic system at the root cause of both the economic and environmental crisis?

by Kerry Dawborn & Caroline Smith, Countercurrents, India - Permaculture is much more than organic gardening. Some believe it is one of Australia’s greatest intellectual exports, because it has helped many people worldwide to design ecologically sustainable strategies for their homes, gardens, farms and communities.

by Sheila Musaji, The American Muslim, USA - Did this program not meet Lowe’s advertising guidelines because it showed a Muslim policeman who self-identifies as an American? Why is it “troubling” that he loves America? Was it because Muslims and Arabs were not portrayed as evil villains who are not “real Americans” and have no right to act as if they are normal human beings with families, mortgages, jobs, etc.? Does every television program about any minority need to include an “appropriate” offensive bigoted stereotype?

by Loga Virahsawmy and Florence Sipalla, Gender Links, South Africa - The lives of women and forests are closely intertwined. Women use trees for wood fuel, as a source for herbal medicine, gum, fodder, wax, honey and fruits. Forests assist in poverty alleviation, as women can sustain their families by selling their fruits.

by Sussan Tahmasebi, Nobel Women's Initiative, Canada - “We are worn out but [are] neither bent nor broken. We continue to stand erect, although with wounded and restless hearts. We bear witness to the efforts of dictators looting a fertile land nurtured by the selfless sacrifices of past and present generations.”

by Princess Sumaya bint El Hassan, SciDev Net, UK - Most of our pressing challenges cannot be tackled at national or regional levels. Climate change, energy, poverty, disease, under-development and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction — these are assaults on global prospects for survival.

by Perpetual Sichikwenkwe, Gender Links, South Africa - From 28 November to 9 December 2011, Africa will host a historical meeting on climate change in Durban, South Africa. Different stakeholders will come together to discuss solutions to decisively deal with the growing threat of climate change.

by Penelope Paliani-Kamanga, Gender Links, South Africa - A study conducted by the Malawi Human Rights Commission in 2010 found that battered women often contemplate suicide because they see no other escape from the cycle of abuse, and that as many as a third of women who do commit suicide each year have suffered abuse by a male partner.

by Vanessa Barrington, Grist, USA - Cities all over the country are addressing the lack of access to fresh and healthy food on the part of their residents, but few are in as much of a bind as Baltimore.

by Theodora Filis, UK Progressive, UK - Oil and gas are the only two industries which are allowed by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to inject hazardous materials either directly into or near drinking water supplies, unchecked, with no monitoring by the EPA, at all. How has this been allowed to happen?

by Miriam Mannak, Business Live, South Africa - With COP17 around the corner, the debate around green versus carbon energy is heating up. Some say that if the South African government would genuinely commit to renewable energy, it could kill two birds with one stone: curbing our nation’s carbon footprint and paving the way for thousands of new, sustainable jobs.

by Sabine Clappaert, WNN, USA - “When people ask me: ‘What can we do to help you do your job?’ I answer: I need more of me. Every year, more than 200,000 women in Sub-Saharan Africa die during pregnancy or childbirth, just because medical care was too expensive or difficult to reach.”

by Louisa Reynolds, Latin America Press, Peru - Despite changes on paper, barriers to safe and culturally-appropriate health care remains elusive.

by Casey Bell, Grist, USA - There are also ways we can streamline our energy use and alter our spending patterns to free up additional funds to support higher levels of employment overall, as well as promote a healthier and more robust economy.

by Elira Çanga, Balkan Insight, Serbia - Across the Balkans many survivors of the bloody conflicts of the 1990s still don’t know what happened to their missing loved ones. In Kosovo, even discussing the suffering of other ethnic communities is strictly taboo. What hope for lasting peace and reconciliation?

by Rebecca Solnit, ZNet, USA - Violence is what the police use. It’s what the state uses. If we want a revolution, it’s because we want a better world, because we think we have a bigger imagination, a more beautiful vision. So we’re not violent; we’re not like them in crucial ways.

by Nidhi Tandon, Pambazuka News, Kenya - Thanks to the US’s 2009 Global Food Security Act, food aid policy for the first time mandates the use of genetic modification technologies. Nidhi Tandon looks at how this legislation helps biotechnology companies monopolise the seed industry at the expense of farmers, and explores some of the dubious links between these corporations, the Gates Foundation and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa.

by Khadija Sharife, Pambazuka News, Kenya - Was Gaddafi the most threatening figure on the African continent? Or was he convenient as a pretext to push through military missions vying to establish bases in Africa?

by Beth Noveck, OpenDemocracy, UK - There is a global movement in the offing that is transforming what we mean by government and democracy from the ground up.

by Laura Miller, Salon, USA - African-American writers are taking on a literary genre dominated by nostalgia for Medieval England.

by Marianne de Nazareth, Counter Currents, India - By regenerating the forest our project proves that a healthy forest can be the source of sustainable income generation for the impoverished mountain communities.

by Khadija Sharife, Pambazuka, Kenya - Did France intervene in Libya out of desire to promote democracy, or simply to secure its business interests?

by Tatiana Félix, Upside Down World, Canada - Salvadoran activist Carolina Amaya says that the challenge of social movements is to deconstruct the false paradigm of development that triggered the economic and environmental crisis that puts the life of our civilization at risk.

by Sokari Ekine, Pambazuka, Kenya - Taking a look at what ‘African bloggers had to say about Gaddafi’s demise and Libya’s freedom celebrations.’

by Nicky Rehbock, Media Club, South Africa - South Africans Stefanie Botha and Angela Shields have shattered all stereotypes by competing as the only all-female rally racing crew in the country for 2011, showing they're every bit as skilful and capable as their male counterparts.

by Polly Pallister-Wilkins, OpenDemocracy, UK - The uprisings in North Africa, the subsequent increase in migrants crossing the Mediterranean and the cataclysmic predictions about an end to the Schengen acquis has highlighted a hitherto under-investigated policy practice of the EU: migration-management.

by Rebecca Solnit, TomDispatch, USA - The United States is now the wealthiest country the world has ever known, and has an abundance of natural resources, as well as of nurses, doctors, universities, teachers, housing, and food -- so ours, too, is a crisis of distribution. Everyone could have everything they need and the rich would still be rich enough, but you know that enough isn’t a concept for them.

by Claude Mangin, Pambazuka, Kenya - Enaama Asfari’s persecution by Moroccan authorities, recounted here by his wife Claude Mangin, illustrates the horrible extent to which the occupying power will go to quash Sahrawi resistance. But true freedom fighters will not give up until they liberate their homeland.

by Bojana Barlovac, Balkan Insight, Serbia - The Serbian public's support for joining the EU has hit an all time low following what some regard as “discouraging” moves by some EU officials regarding tensions in northern Kosovo.

by Ramona Wadi, Upside Down World, Canada - Cuban doctors have regaled people in Latin America and around the world with medical opportunities which, in capitalist ideology and implementation, remain remote. While Cubans are provided free health care provided by medics who are dedicated to science and society, the United States has created a scheme based on profits, which marginalizes a major segment of the population who cannot afford costly treatment.