The Way It Looked in 1973
In March 1973 Israel’s prime minister Golda Meir Paid a visit to Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger Politicians shmooze as easily as they breathe Meir was grateful for US support of Israel And urged the…
Category: Power and Ideology
Just Received a Book in Today’s Mail…
And opened to a random page which was “xi” of Arundhati Roy’s foreword to the re-issue of Noam Chomsky’s For Reasons of State She writes: Perhaps this belief in its own divinity also explains why…
Consider the Source
The Pentagon will gladly supply, on request, such information as the quantity of ordnance expended in Vietnam. From 1965 through 1969 this amounts to about 4.5 million tons by aerial bombardment. This is nine times…
Hamas and Ourselves
1. U.S. critics refer to “Hamas’s genocidal charter” as odious. No doubt it is. Of course, the U.S. was a practitioner of genocide of the indigenous population across this land. Perhaps a few of those…
The Thread of One’s Anger — Jean-Paul Sartre
I always felt I had to stay in contact with the world, with my world. Ever since Marx, philosophy must lead to action. Otherwise it is irrelevant. So a philosopher does what he has to…
Interstate Vision
Headed toward Indianapolis See exit for Ronald Reagan Parkway I think of 1980s See a small mountain Of Central American corpses Women & children & men The slaughtered The disappeared At the hands of contras,…
Elie Wiesel and the Question of Palestine
This essay was first published in Tikkun, November-December 2002. In his 1986 Nobel lecture, Elie Wiesel spoke with characteristic gravity on any attempt to reckon with the Holocaust: “There are no theological answers, there are no…
Right is Might
Secretary of State John Kerry asserted About Russia’s behavior in Crimea: “It is not appropriate to invade a country And at the end of a barrel of a gun Dictate what you are trying to…
To Convert the Whole World
Napoleon is said to have described the English as a nation of shopkeepers. It is a fitting description. They hold whatever dominions they have for the sake of their commerce. Their army and their navy…