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…
Category: Power and Ideology
The Preferential Option for the Rich
“[You in the Western countries] have organized your lives around inhuman values [which] are inhuman because they cannot be universalized. The system rests on a few using the majority of the resources, while the majority…
The World according to Chomsky: Winter Reading Group 2018
In recent years, I’ve known many people who ask themselves, “What can I do, given the state of the world?” In the past year, this question has been especially urgent, given the toxicity of…
Finkelstein’s Gaza
I just received Norman Finkelstein’s latest book, Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom. I noticed this blurb by Alice Walker: “This is the voice I listen for, when I want to learn the deepest reality…
December 10 Sunday Share the Wealth with Andrew Wimmer: Reckoning with Torture
In November 2005, Stop Torture Now, a project of the Center for Theology and Social Analysis in St. Louis, delivered a Peoples’ Indictment against Aero Contractors and the commissioners of the Johnston County airport in…
Don’t Expect Applause
Tom Hayden was a major player in the antiwar movement of the 1960s as well as a familiar liberal and progressive activist, commentator, and researcher since. His last book is entitled, Hell No: The Forgotten…
The Audacity of Impunity
Dear Carla and Perry Some thoughts for you Cal A few weeks before in took office Barack Obama said No one is above the law. But once he was in office Bush and Company Were…
Imagining Dubya Writing Barack
I came across the following when browsing Ralph Nader’s book, Return to Sender: Unanswered Letters to the President, 2001-2015. Ralph is not holding his breath that Obama’s successor will be any different. After nearly…
1967
Today’s Email: “Thank you for signing up for the [New York Times] Vietnam ’67 newsletter. Over the course of the next year, we’ll examine the participation of the United States in the long war in…
The Usefulness of Human Rights
Reading the odd, short book Things That Can and Cannot Be Said, I was reminded of the gripping 1979 study by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky on “the political economy of human rights.” The…