Forget Pessimism
Just this morning I came across the following exchange with Noam Chomsky, which reminded me of what Steve said last night in his talk on Syria… Interviewer: Did you go through a phase of hopelessness,…
Just this morning I came across the following exchange with Noam Chomsky, which reminded me of what Steve said last night in his talk on Syria… Interviewer: Did you go through a phase of hopelessness,…
My friend’s typical work day 90 emails to respond to 7-8 meetings to move through 3 fires to put out 5 staff people in crisis to support 7:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. It’s go, go,…
Dear Friends, Please join us for a presentation by Andrew Wimmer on the political and cultural forces at work in the on-going U.S. fixation on Iran. We meet on Sunday 23 September from 6:00 to…
Pascal raised the question: How do you know whether God exists? He said, if I assume that he exists and he does, I’ll make out OK. If he doesn’t, I won’t lose anything. If he…
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…
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…
The Letters of Allen Ginsberg, edited by Bill Morgan (Da Capo Press, 2008) I have a file titled “Noam Chomsky” that contains several letters from the linguist during the 1990s. I first began writing him…
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…
Recently the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC sponsored an unusual exhibit, “Darfur: Who Will Survive Today?” Photographic images of the genocide in Darfur are flashed to incredible size at night outside on…
A review of Toward a Jewish Theology of Liberation, 3rd expanded edition, by Marc H. Ellis. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2004. First Published in the Journal of Palestine Studies (2005). At the 60th anniversary…