Politics and Society

Over four months have passed since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing eleven workers and setting off a chain of destructive events with economic, political, and environmental repurcussions that will reverberate for decades. British Petroleum looks like it'll come out of the disaster with merely a few cuts and bruises. In this illustrative essay, artist Joe Bigley recounts the tragic events, and the resurrection of BP.

Earlier this year, Michael Marquand traveled to the remote village of Chaullacocha, Peru to photograph indigenous people who weave products sold globally by the non-governmental organization, Threads of Peru. Michael's striking images of these distant players in the growing, worldwide trend of eco-tourism weave their own tale. Photo essay.

The United Nations doctrine on the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is state-centric, there's no doubt about that, but does that mean states are the only viable actors when it comes to protecting civilians from mass atrocities? In this essay, Corrie Hulse argues that when states fail to act on R2P, it is the responsibility of civilians and N.G.O.s to step up and push governments into action.

In this essay, award-winning, veteran journalist Danny Schechter reflects back on his decades-long career in mainstream and independent journalism and offers advice for the next generation of reporters. Would be muckrakers, media critics, progressive journalists and speakers-of-truth-to-power, listen up: the News Dissector has something to say.

Americans can be very generous under the right conditions. After the Haitian earthquake this year, total donations to help rebuild the devastated island amounted to more than $2 billion. Indeed, Americans are fine if a significant portion of their federal budget goes to foreign aid. Actual lending amounts, however, don't measure up to the public's expectations. Marie Mainil and Jeremy Worthington investigate American giving abroad.

To what extent should global leaders listen to world public opinion? In this essay, Evan Lewis argues that American presidents tend to shun public opinion and rely on "expert" advice in making foreign policy decisions. If Barack Obama continues this trend, global public opinion of the United States will remain suspect.

Barack Obama is cool. He's brought new style and swagger to the White House, but has he also brought in new ways of conducting business in the U.S. and abroad? The federal government has jumped onto the social networking bandwagon, leveraging websites like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to get its messages out to a wider, younger, globally savvy audience. Daryn Cambridge examines Obama's cool to determine if it translates in a Web 2.0 world.

The Mantle and CONTEXTS Journal teamed up on March 26, 2010 to present six emerging voices from the next generation of intellectuals, writers, artists and critics. The event took place at The New School University. Watch the two-part video.

Sudan's elections and Comprehensive Peace Agreement, in the words of Southern Sudanese, Abraham Awolich: "This is the moment in history when we can walk tall in our African continent and declare that we are a new nation and a country, born again with a promise to work for the good of her people. We can sound the bells of freedom and democracy in Africa and the Middle East and declare dead the days when it was believed that Africans were incapable of solving their own problems." Read on...