Lesbianism in India has traditionally been the great unmentionable - and the treatment meted out to women who love women still leads many couples to opt for suicide pacts, often burning themselves to death. But in the wake of a groundbreaking film, lesbians are asserting themselves more - and seeing some encouraging signs of change.
On November 1st, in Montpelier, the capital of Vermont, one hundred activists gathered to protest against General Dynamics, a weapons manufacturer operating in the state. Speaking to the crowd in front of the statehouse, VT-based filmmaker Eugene Jarecki talked about the presidential election and activism. "There's a moment of real crossroads here," he said. "But it's a crossroad for all of us not to be happy and go to bed but for all of us to be absolutely unrelenting and dissatisfied until real change happens."
The War on Democracy is John Pilger’s first major film for the cinema – in a career that has produced more than 55 television documentaries. Set in Latin America and the US, it explores the historic and current relationship of Washington with countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia and Chile.
"The film tells a universal story," says Pilger, "analysing and revealing, through vivid testimony, the story of great power behind its venerable myths. It allows us to understand the true nature of the so-called war on terror."
There are plans to deploy 'black boxes' in UK ISPs' networking hubs so that the government can capture and record every website that UK citizens visit. A similar operation is in full swing in the United States, where the NSA has hooked up their own 'black boxes' to American Internet Service Providers' (ISPs) networks to capture 'questionable content' passing through these networks. Unlike the Americans, who only examine questionable content, the UK government is planning to develop a database to hold the contents of all messages passing along their nations' telecommunications networks.
Today's food and energy crises are demonstrating what small-scale family farmers and rural peoples around the world have been saying for years: without support for local agriculture everywhere, hunger can grow anywhere. Rodrigo Lopes of the Landless Rural Workers Movement of Brazil (MST) and Stephen Bartlett of Agricultural Missions (based in Kentucky) are touring the US this month, aiming to clarify why this is so. Both groups are part of La Via Campesina, an autonomist, multicultural international movement of peasants, small farmers, landless, rural women, indigenous people, rural youth, and agricultural workers. Brazil's MST
In recent history, two concepts of justice have stood out. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., believed in a kind of justice that could only be achieved when systematic oppression had been eliminated from the world. George W. Bush, on the other hand, believed in the justice of old Western movies and gunfights. When he inherits the Bush legacy on January 21st, 2009, Barack Obama will have to choose between these two approaches. The decision he makes will reverberate around the world and be one of the first indicators of whether "Change We Can Believe In" was merely good sloganeering.US Troops in Afghanistan
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