Unpronounceable Words

George McGovern and William R. Polk, Out of Iraq: A Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now March 2007 Dear Andrew, I have finished McGovern and Polk’s primer on the catastrophe in Iraq and how to get…

Who Is Learning from History?

1. Oscar Romero’s Letter San Salvador February 17, 1980 His Excellency The President of the United States Mr. Jimmy Carter Dear Mr. President: In the last few days, news has appeared in the national press…

Chomsky on Central America, 1985

Noam Chomsky, Turning the Tide: U.S. Intervention in Central America& the Struggle for Peace, South End Press, 1985 The real victims of “America’s agony” are millions of suffering and tormented people throughout much of the Third…

Reasons of State Or Reasons of Memory

First published in The Ecumenist, 1997.   Edward T. Linenthal, Preserving Memory:  The Struggle to Create America’s Holocaust Museum. New York:  Penguin USA, 1995. $27.95, U.S.A; $36.99, Canada.   Throughout this spring, there have been several…

Jotting from a Notebook Early 2011

Please remember Victor Jara, in the Santiago Stadium. Es Verdad, those Washington Bullets How can one take seriously anything The U.S. government says about being pro-democracy When it supported the Mubarak dictatorship for 30 years?…

Cambridge

Now that you’ve been accepted To the Kennedy School of Government Where you’ll have access To current and future movers and shakers Where there’ll be balanced discussions About “America’s humanitarian role in the world” Where…

Questions for Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel—Holocaust survivor, author of Night, 1986 Nobel Peace laureate, adviser to American presidents, acclaimed humanitarian—is speaking at Saint Louis University on Tuesday 1 December 2009 at 7:00 p.m.. What follows are some questions students and…

Gaza: Toward Understanding and Action

Because of the extensive, though sanitized, U.S. news coverage of Israel’s bombing and invasion of Gaza, many Americans are paying closer attention to the Israel-Palestine conflict (those with access to Arabic news programming and Youtube…