Truthout

Having promised a new and progressive direction in urban policy, President Obama has instead been "destructive" for America's cities, argues Yana Kunichoff.

Michael Klare argues that the revolution and turmoil sweeping so many of the Middle Eastern oil-producing nations will bring the age of cheap oil to an end.

Conservative political and media rhetoric aimed at "fat cat" public employees scapegoats middle-class workers for the economic crisis and threatens to undermine public welfare at all levels, write Max Fraad Wolff and Richard D. Wolff.

The Gulf Coast is home to diverse ethnic and racial communities that have already endured decades of pollution from chemical and petroleum industries. The BP leak may be the "nail in the coffin" for many of these communities, writes Jordan Flaherty.

William Rivers Pitt says it's all too easy to blame BP or the politicians who deregulated the oil industry. Ultimately, he says, all of us are to blame for the Gulf oil disaster and the damage wrought by fossil fuels.

Froma Harrop responds to Joel Kotkin's view that booming centers -- mostly in the Sunbelt -- represent the future of American urbanism.

Herve Kemp believes that the future of employment in Europe will include a million "family farmer jobs."

Three authors in the French Newspaper Le Monde pose possible futures for the car and the automobile industry.

In this review of Alex MacLean's new book, "Over: The American Landscape at the Tipping Point," Hervé Kempf of Le Monde describes MacLean's book as a photo essay on a nation at the end of an era.

This week international legal experts are meeting in Iceland to debate whether or not the world needs new international laws concerning the polar regions in the face of climate change.

Former federal prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega laments the incredibly disjointed and ad hoc approach to freshwater management in the United States.

Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) chastises those whom he calls the "homeownership ideologues" for promoting homeownership to lower income households.

Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research suggests that one way that the federal government could help millions of Americans squeezed by the housing crisis is to permit homeowners to enter "own-to-rent" arrangements.

A group of French academics have written an open letter decrying the latest in a long string of plans to deal with the working-class Parisian suburbs, which saw riots in 2005.

In an interview with French architect Françoise-Hélène Jourda, the newspaper Le Monde asks about sustainable development and the future of architecture.

NOLA human rights lawyer Bill Quigley outlines what he believes were thirty-three deliberate actions on the part of the federal government to undermine recovery in New Orleans.

A progressive -- if cynical -- argument for privatizing Amtrak: only private interests can borrow the necessary capital to upgrade it, and have the clout necessary to lobby Congress to support the service adequately.

Millions of middle-class homeowners may lose their life savings if the economy slides into a severe recession, so why aren't more politicians, bankers, economists and policy analysts taking the threat of a housing market collapse seriously?

Promised federal investments to upgrade America's electricity grid in the wake of the 2003 blackout have never materialized. As a result, the U.S. power grid "hangs by a thread."

Shortfalls in promised aid from Washington to rebuild New Orleans have led Mayor Ray Nagin to consider asking for help from abroad.