Know Thyself
There are many intellectuals who call the world into question, but there are very few intellectuals who call the intellectual world into question. –Pierre Bourdieu, Sketch for a Self-Analysis
Category: Power and Ideology
Elie Wiesel and Worthy Remembrance
See, Wiesel has often made this claim quite explicit: I am above politics, my message is so precious and pure it cannot afford to be sullied by compromise. Such is the transcendent dignity of the…
Authors for Reading Alongside Svetlana Alexievich’s Secondhand Time
I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading…
McNamara and Co./1
In his 1995 book, In Retrospect Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara [translation: former Secretary of Aggression) Made an apology to the American public For the harms brought to the country Because of his unwillingness…
Trump Trumpets His Real Plans by Ralph Nader
I receive regular emails from Ralph Nader, and want to share today’s correspondence. He’s been fighting injustice and serving as a consumer advocate in this country for over fifty years. Even for a…
The Real Crime of Cuba
The following comes from a 1990 discussion among U.S. and Canadian activists with Noam Chomsky. It may provide food for thought given the current focus on Cuba after the death of Fidel Castro. Look, the…
Chomsky on Central America, 1985
Noam Chomsky, Turning the Tide: U.S. Intervention in Central America& the Struggle for Peace, South End Press, 1985 The real victims of “America’s agony” are millions of suffering and tormented people throughout much of the Third…
The Way It Looked in 1988
Take a look at this morning’s New York Times (I had fifty cents to kill, so I bought a copy). There’s story about Israel, John Kifner, a pretty good reporter, is reporting about attitudes in…
Poem of the Week: Ode to Kissinger by Rob Trousdale
right there on my dad’s nightstand sat Kissinger’s latest World Order i opened it to snidbits of michiko kakutani’s review illuminating a powerful zoom lens a panoramic appreciation of history i flipped to the index…
Words Not Hearable in the US Mainstream
Obama challenged Raúl Castro on Cuba’s human rights record And though Fidel is renowned for his loquacity, Raúl himself could have gone on for hours to Obama— Elaborating on the fact of a million U.S….