Twenty-two Years Ago
The following is from Israeli novelist David Grossman’s Seven Days: A Diary, October 2001, in Death as a Way of Life: Israel Ten Years after Oslo MONDAYI keep reading hostile remarks about Israel in the…
Category: Power and Ideology
Elimination
“Total destruction… the orchard, apiary, destruction of hives, bees buzzing despairingly, the men blow up hives with gunpowder… attack the hives, a wild orgy…I feel sick about it all,” [Isaac Babel] wrote in the diary, and one Red…
Regarding the Dreyfus Affair
“It is my duty to speak up; I will not be an accessory to the fact. If I were, my nights would be haunted by the spectre of that innocent man so far away, suffering…
One Way or Another
[Emperor] Alexander II said he did not fear the Liberals because he knew they could all be bought, if not with money, then with honors. –Leo Tolstoy, Writings on Civil Disobedience and Non-Violence
Reckoning with Ourselves
I recently finished a course with my friends Dianne Lee and Martín Antonio Zaldívar-Barragán, “Reckoning with Russia, War, and Ourselves.” We read and discussed Tolstoy, Kuznetsov, Alexievich, and Politkovskaya. I invite you to check out…
When Life Starts to Improve
Leo Tolstoy, Spiritual Writings, edited by Charles E. Moore Prophetic witness consists of human deeds of justice and kindness that attend to the unjust sources of human hurt and misery. It calls attention to the…
Ed Snowden, Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald
Check out Matt Taibbi’s article today, The Washington Post Dabbles in Orwell: In scrubbed piece about Edward Snowden, the Bezos Post offers a preview of how history will be re-written. Here’s the penultimate paragraph: “That…
Problematizing My Faves: Matt Taibbi on Howard Zinn
The worst thing is to claim to be objective. Of course, you can’t be. Historians should say what their values are, what they care about, what their background is, and let you know what is…