How can those young men with hard eyes be made to understand that such acts of cowardly violence do not help the cause of India's Muslims? We need a more thoughtful response to the crisis our society now faces.

The rapid environmental degradation taking place in the world could make the current financial crisis look like a tea party. But despair is a luxury we can ill-afford. We must continue to strive for the transition to a more secure and sustainable way of life on our planet – for our children and grandchildren.

Webb calls for the media to become ‘a compelling force for helping usher in a world of peace with justice and prosperity for all’.

There is a cry against the predilection of poisonous political rhetoric that only seeks to divide a people committed to being the United States of America.

I was in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, when CNN announced that Obama had won. It was seven in the morning and, as word spread, the city seemed to surge with joy.

‘Today the long-awaited tide of history flows toward the non-white races. Those tides will lift burdens of the centuries and wipe out blood stains in the sands of time. Be sure that tide elevates all humanity,’ said Peter Howard.

Obama’s epic presidential campaign climaxed with a rally of 85,000 in Virginia. It was remarkable and fitting that his journey to the White House concluded in the state which led the way in institutionalizing slavery, fought a civil war to preserve it, and promoted Massive Resistance to school integration after one hundred years of Jim Crow segregation.

Without conscience, without the ‘invisible hand’ of divine providence, it seems that untamed capitalism too easily leads to corruption, greed, dishonesty and a loss of common humanity. Another take on Adam Smith.

Could it be possible for people ‘of the same spirit’ to join together across their creedal boundaries?

Newspapers are full of alarming news. Like a slow, subterranean fire, the 14-months-old credit crisis continues its rampage, this time bringing down major U.S. banks and insurance companies. By 15 September, four of them had lost over 80% of their value on Wall Street. The worst hit, a 158-year old institution, investment banker Lehman Brothers, was reduced to only 6.4% of its pre-crisis market value and did not even succeed in selling itself out, in spite of the fact that one of its core businesses was precisely to broker mergers and acquisitions!