Minneapolis Observer Quarterly - View From Abroad

Dreams as a Tool for Social Change

Mon, 27 Mar 2006 10:04:23 -0600

From The Sun
An interview with Jeremy Taylor

Go to: < http://www.thesunmagazine.org/>

A Daoist Renaissance

Tue, 21 Feb 2006 09:35:56 -0600

By Anthony Alexander (Resurgence magazine)
Can China's ancient Dao philosophy help its current ecological crisis?

Go to: http://www.resurgence.org/2006/alexander234.htm

I’m Recycling As Fast As I Can

Sun, 19 Feb 2006 11:45:42 -0600

By Juliet Eastland (Orion magazine)
One woman’s attempt to reason with the tireless and unrepentant junk-mailers at Time Warner Cable

Go to: http://www.orionsociety.org/pages/oo/curmudgeon/index_curmudgeon.html

Is America Actually in a State of War?

Tue, 07 Feb 2006 09:12:22 -0600

By James Carroll (Mother Jones magazine)
We’re endlessly told we’re at war, but something essential is missing.

Go there: http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2006/01/state%20of%20war.html

Genocide in Slow Motion

Tue, 07 Feb 2006 09:04:55 -0600

By Nicholas D. Kristof (New York Review of Books)
During the Holocaust, the world looked the other way. Allied leaders turned down repeated pleas to bomb the Nazi extermination camps or the rail lines leading to them, and the slaughter attracted little attention. The same paralysis occurred as Rwandans were being slaughtered in 1994 and much the same has been true of the Western response to the Armenian genocide of 1915, the Cambodian genocide of the 1970s, and the Bosnian massacres of the 1990s. In each case, we have wrung our hands afterward and offered the lame excuse that it all happened too fast, or that we didn't fully comprehend the carnage when it was still under way. And now the same tragedy is unfolding in Darfur, but this time we don't even have any sort of excuse. In Darfur genocide is taking place in slow motion, and there is vast documentary proof of the atrocities.

Moving Mountains

Tue, 24 Jan 2006 23:10:59 -0600

By Erik Reece, Orion magazine
The battle for justice comes to the coal fields of Appalachia

Go to: http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/06-1om/Reece.html

The World Through a Looking Glass

Tue, 24 Jan 2006 23:09:33 -0600

By David Shariatmadari, openDemocracy.net
An 80-year-old newspaper found behind a broken mirror provides a surprisingly fresh perspective on our anxious modern condition.

Go to: http://www.alternet.org/story/30751/

Spirit Rising

Tue, 24 Jan 2006 23:08:23 -0600

By Michael Nagler, Yes magazine
In the spiritual folklore of India, there is a recurring image of Mother Earth, unable to bear the sufferings caused by human beings, going to Lord Vishnu to beg for relief. This image was invoked years ago by Ammachi, one of the most popular of India’s living spiritual teachers, when she warned that the abuse of the Earth by modern economies would soon lead to a backlash if we did not learn to live sensibly—that is, lightly—on the planet that bore us.

The Ten Best Top-Ten Lists of 2005

Tue, 24 Jan 2006 23:07:05 -0600

By Tai Moses, Alternet
Top 10 lists are a staple of a culture obsessed with ranking things, yet in recent years the ubiquitous best-movie, -book and -music lists have become so baffling it seems as though their only goal is to eclipse the Top 10 lists of other critics. Still, lists can tell us much about ourselves -- our obsessions, anxieties and passions. Our Top 10 List of Lists hopes to capture the essence of 2005 by compiling the year's most superlative, truly notable, absolutely blue-ribbon cultural bric-a-brac.