Author: Mark J. Chmiel

What a Joy to Run the World!

When corporate-endowed foundations first made their appearance in the United States, there was a fierce debate about their provenance, legality, and lack of accountability. People suggested that if companies had so much surplus money, they…

Human Rights Doesn’t Go Far Enough

Armed with their billions, these NGOs have waded into the world, turning potential revolutionaries into salaried activists, funding artists, intellectuals and filmmakers, gently luring them away from radical confrontation, ushering them in the direction of…

The Good News of Dipa Ma

Dear Friends, There’s a phrase I came across in the last twenty years—“news you can use”—which I think came from one of Pema Chödrön ’s books. Which reminds me of U.S. poet Ezra Pound’s version…

Free Julian!

As founder and editor of WikiLeaks, his crime has been to make sense of dark times. WikiLeaks has an impeccable record of accuracy and authenticity which no newspaper, no TV channel, no radio station, no…

“What Will Become of Yiddish?”

Chava Rosenfarb, Confessions of a Yiddish Writer and Other Essays Edited by Goldie Morgentaler McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019 Scholar and professor Morgentaler has gathered an impressive collection of writings by her mother, Chava Rosenfarb. A…

If Not a Room, Perhaps a Shed

For Lala Above all, you must illumine your own soul with its profundities and its shallows, and its vanities and its generosities, and say what your beauty means to you or your plainness and what…