A Master’s Blog
This past June, José Saramago died. He was 87. Awarded the Noble Prize for Literature in 1998, he was the author of such novels as Blindness, The Gospel according to Jesus Christ, and The Year of the Death…
Author: Mark J. Chmiel
Peripatetic
Shimmelstoy: Just today, I was walking to campus, and I could swear I saw Miguel Weiss on the bus! Max: Are you serious? Shimmelstoy: It had to be. Dead-ringer. Max: I thought you told me…
Responsibility to Our “Unworthy Victims”
On Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, The Politics of Genocide. Many years ago, I wrote a critical study of acclaimed moralist Elie Wiesel in which I tried to account for his trajectory from being…
Jokesters
1. Even before Hamas won in the January 2006 general elections, Israel had been further tightening the screws to the Palestinians in Gaza. The summer 2005 Israeli settler pullout was a relief: Gaza had been…
From Guatemala to Gaza
1. It was Ash Wednesday 1983. In a darkened sanctuary with some lighted candles, an unfamiliar Catholic priest and several other people entered the sanctuary and sat in the front row. The people wearing bandanas…
Wonderful To See Babies Burning: On Howard Zinn’s “The Bomb”
City Lights Open Media Series has done the U.S. people a service in publishing historian Howard Zinn’s The Bomb, a two-part pamphlet that is a contribution to critical thinking about war, and about one of…
Higher Law
Review of Steven V. Mazie, Israel’s Higher Law: Religion and Liberal Democracy in the Jewish State. Published first in Journal of Church and State, 2006. “Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.” This…
What Catches the Attention (And What Doesn’t)
A friend recently said about a group of doctors she knows: “They talk all about Lady Gaga but nothing about the wars we’re in.”
Book Recommendation: Gideon Levy
I highly recommend Gideon Levy’s new book, The Punishment of Gaza. Reading it reminded me of something Noam Chomsky wrote in 1996: “Those who came to be honored much later as the Prophets received rather different…
Iraq: Remembrance & Responsibility
My friend Laura Weis shared this quotation with me, and I want to share it with you. We all need to reflect on one fact that has been almost completely expunged from the U.S. consciousness:…