In some circles it has become politically acceptable to state that poverty cannot be eradicated in our lifetime: that the means are not available, that there is a lack of political will, or even that those who "can't keep up" need to assume more responsibility for their own lives. Others are politically correct enough not to say any of this aloud, yet their actions (or lack thereof) expose them. Even the Millennium Development Goals call only for a halving of the proportion of people who suffer from hunger. In other words, the international community will consider itself successful if by 2015 "only" about 500 million people are left starving in the world (a target we do not look set to meet).

I would ask those who do not believe we can eradicate hunger to travel to the developing world - better yet, to travel to the slums of their own countries - and meet some of the close to one billion people who currently go hungry every day. Meet these people so that numbers become faces and faces receive names. After bearing witness to the suffering and even the deaths of these people, they might then find the means to make poverty history. It can be done; there is still enough food on this planet to feed all of us, it is how this food is allocated that needs changing.

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Tonight, White House Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett will deliver remarks to the annual dinner of the Human Rights Campaign in Washington, DC. While the Human Rights Campaign does not speak for or represent the gay military community, Jarrett will no doubt deliver assurances to the gathered crowd that President Obama and his staff strongly support the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT) - the outdated law that continues to make the lives of many gay troops a living nightmare. After her remarks, the crowd of 3,000 will no doubt reward Jarrett will thunderous applause and administration officials will once again think that it has appeased those who have been hounding the administration for its failures and inaction on DADT this year. And the administration will once again be wrong.

Servicemembers United, the nation's largest organization of gay and lesbian troops and veterans, has thrown down the gauntlet with this latest attempt at appeasement. The days when grand gestures made at black-tie galas with no meaningful follow through are over. The days of appeasement speeches in front of the least-critical organizational voice in town are gone. Those who are actually serving under the cloud of DADT each and every day, and those who have actually been harmed in very real ways by this discriminatory law, want to be heard by this administration. And they want to be heard now.

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Environmentalists and animal rights activists around the world have been sitting on pins and needles this past week as the annual dolphin hunt that claims more than 20,000 innocent cetacean lives every year kicked off in the coastal village of Taiji, Japan on September 1st. No one is more familiar with the on-going battle to end these senseless slaughters better than Ric O'Barry. The 70-year-old former Flipper trainer turned dolphin activist and star of the recent Academy Award-winning film, The Cove, has been at the forefront of the struggle to put an end to this brutal atrocity for over four decades. Per usual, he is back on the ground campaigning with his team from Save Japan Dolphins, a long standing initiative of Earth Island Institute. However due to escalated threats of violence by right wing extremists groups, this year he finds himself rallying media support in Tokyo, rather than staking out the "little town with a big secret" that has long been the singular focus of his personal mission and life's work.

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In Third World America, her forthcoming book about the gradual demise of the United States as an industrial, political, and economic leader, Arianna Huffington profiles middle-class American families struggling to recover from the recession. In this excerpt, Arianna writes about Lesa Deason Crowe, an Oklahoma City mother, military wife, and small business owner who almost lost her advertising firm to the recession, but has begun to bounce back with the support of other local women.

Lesa Deason Crowe, a small business owner who lives in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, saw the financial crisis nearly destroy her twelve-person advertising firm. "It started in the news," she recalled. "Every night, there would be another story about the recession, depression. This was in fall 2008. Clients started to get jittery and began to proactively get ready for 'disaster.' Part of that planning was to get rid of all the 'fat' in their budgets, which in my case meant cutting all advertising, marketing, and public relations work. My lowest point was when three clients quit in one day. I walked in, prepared for a typical monthly meeting, and the next thing I knew I was fired on the spot. Three in a row. Our two largest clients and our fifth largest. Gone."

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