Opinion-Columns.com

Seven Billion Reasons for a Fisheries Collapse

Sharon LaFraniere’s article for the New York Times, Empty Seas, is subtitled Europe Takes Africa’s Fish, and Boatloads of Migrants Follow. It’s another well documented piece about world fisheries collapsing and the roundup of suspects is (as usual) greed, politics (greed in another form) and overfishing.

A Guest Column

The following is by Charlotte McGuinn Freeman, who writes the LivingSmall blog from Livingston, Montana; she is the author of the novel Place Last Seen (read the first chapter).

Alice Waters finally responded to the questions I raised here about her involvement with the Ameya Preserve. Of course, she didn’t respond to me or to Ethicurean, but to the Wall Street Journal.

What Sets Them Apart is What Sets Them Off

One of the great attributes that sets Americans apart from most of their world kin is what sets them off. Kate got pissed on an Austin, Texas runway and in no time had 18,000 signatures on a petition holding Congress’s feet to the fire to pass a bill of rights for passengers. She wants regulation and by god, she wants it now, before another passenger sits another hour (or ten) on some dumb runway without so much as a Perrier or an apology.

We’ll Take the Money and Run

I can’t help but wonder what Steve Mufson over at the Washington Post has been smoking. Somehow or another, he seems to think that the overpowering and financially secure Big Coal interests in the nation are on the run.

British Petroleum (BP) Shames Itself With Green Ads and Disastrous Policy

I’ve written before about oil companies, chemical firms and pharmaceutical giants who grease the double-page spreads of magazines with ‘green-speak’ while they poison and flim-flam the public in the day-to-day reality of their business practices. It's a favorite subject of mine.

Losing Our Edge on Our Own Home Turf

John McQuaid makes the case in an editorial, The Can’t-Do Nation, that America is losing its knack for getting big things done. It’s an interesting premise.

Winner Take All is not the same as Democratic Process

The form of democratic government we have chosen to live under is meant to be contentious. Argument is the grease that slips and slides us on our way toward values we can live with. Not necessarily my values or yours, but shared beliefs, hammered out with enough consensus to keep us from screaming profanities and slamming doors.

A Pussyfooting, Wheedling, Sniveling Approach to Confronting National Shame

Roscoe Born, prior to writing a morally unsupportable editorial in the Sunday Baltimore Sun, was Washington editor of Barron's magazine and a reporter in The Wall Street Journal'swill someone please take George Bush into a quiet, unthreatening environment and talk a little Cheney-sense into him?   

Dow Chemical Continues an Ad Campaign in Poor Taste

It's an interesting corporate decision to ‘reintroduce’ a hundred year-old company with great fanfare and a $20 million annual budget. Since Dow bought Union Carbide, it may well need a reintroduction. Union Carbide was responsible for a continuing disaster in Bhopal, India, after it released 27,000 tons of MIC gas from a pesticide plant in 1984.

Why the Farce Continues Without Impeachment

There are those, and I am among them, who are amazed that this administration has yet to run afoul of an impeachment effort in the House of Representatives. The difficulty is that we who are in favor see the issue as one of necessary justice and the absolutely critical defense of the Constitution, while Nancy Pelosi sees it in terms of what is possible.