Reading Václav Havel I Think of Gideon Levy
Glucksman says the role of the intellectual is to warn, to predict horrors, to be a Cassandra who tell us what is going on outside the walls of the city. I share this notion….I too…
Category: Dissidents
The Goal Is Justice, the Method Is Transparency
For those who would like to know a little more about the issues surrounding Julian Assange and Wikileaks, please take two minutes to read and ponder the following passages from Tariq Ali and Margaret Kunstler’s…
For So They Treated the Prophets…
Here’s Noam Chomsky–True prophets like Amos — “dissident intellectuals,” in modern terminology — offered both elevated moral lessons, which the people in power weren’t fond of, and geopolitical analyses that usually turned out to be…
Share the Wealth with Andrew Wimmer and Mark Chmiel: Making Use of Wikileaks
According to Geoffroy de Lagasnerie, “[Wikileaks] functions almost like a group of historians of the present. Its institutional mission is to reveal the secret activities of political leaders and, in the process, show the public…
This Weekend in Saint Louis: Colin McLaughlin’s “Jailbird”!
My friend Colin wrote the play! Spread the word. The Missouri History Museum and Bread and Roses Missouri presents the premiere of Jailbird, a new play. In 1920, Eugene Victor Debs ran a campaign for…
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…
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…
Remembering Alexander Cockburn
Dear Andrew, You and I make frequent reference these delirious days to Alexander Cockburn, who published us in his Counterpunch website back during both the Bush and Obama administrations. A while ago I reread his…
With Gratitude for Reinaldo Arenas
And then, at last, they saw the country and the countercountry – because every country, like all things in this world, has its contrary, and that contrary-to-a-country is its countercountry, the forces of darkness that…