Strangechord

A roundup of what I’m reading online today:

• I was moved by this article about Blue Jays’ player, Carlos Delgado, who is carrying out his own little anti-war protest in ballparks across the country this summer.
  
• “Fahrenheit 9/11″ Making GOP Nervous and right it should be.
  
• A juicy thread discussion over at kuro5hin on capitalism and globalization. It’s very satisfying to be able to read along, understand, and formulate my own arguments in response to what’s written - the globalization seminar class I took in the Spring was a huge boost.
  
• Everything I come across by Bill Moyers leaves me further impressed. He’s a straight-shooter and writes with real compassion. Democracy in the Balance is his article from the latest Sojourners. In it, Moyers discusses democracy, Christian faith, inequality in America, the religious right’s skewering of Jesus’ teachings:

  Our times cry out for a new politics of justice. This is no partisan issue. It doesn’t matter if you’re a liberal or a conservative, Jesus is both and neither. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Democrat or Republican, Jesus is both and neither. We need a faith that takes on the corruption of both parties. We need a faith that challenges complacency of all power. If you’re a Democrat, shake them up. If you’re a Republican, shame them. Jesus drove the money changers from the temple. We must drive them from the temples of democracy. Let’s get Jesus back.

• Really long New Yorker article that I plan to read later on John Kerry’s foreign policy platform and plans.
  
• From Salon, Arianna Huffington asks, “Why is it so difficult for the media to accept a strong, smart and opinionated prospective first lady?” Teresa Heinz Kerry is attacked by the media as being “too outspoken,” “too opinionated,” “slightly zany,” “eccentric and unpredictable,” while Laura Bush is “praised by her husband for not ‘trying to butt in and always, you know, compete’ and lauded by the media for her ability ‘to balance strength and subservience.’ Ah, sexism, alive and well.
  
• Court Relief for Bhopal Victims: looks as if 500,000 victims of the 1984 Union Carbide leak (a subsidiary of Dow Chemical) and their dependents will finally receive some financial compensation. The leak was one of the world’s worst industrial disasters, killing over 3000 people; Union Carbide notoriously squirreled out of any adequate accountability.
  
• Ms. takes a look at the tie between organic farming and feminism. “… women coming to farming through environmental studies as well as with traditional farm families. A new graduate program in sustainable agriculture at Iowa State University, she says, has more women students than men.”