Birds of a Feather
From Matt Taibbi’s article today at Substack–Which brings us back to Cheney. All those things Trump is rumored to be, Dick Cheney actually is. That’s why it’s so significant that he appeared on the floor…
Category: The War-making State
Dear Daisy Zamora
(After Reading Riverbed of Memory) I admit itI am filled with guiltWe didn’t do enough back in the 80sWhen the Reaganites were determinedTo crush the RevolutionTrue, you might say, the Sandinistas were far from perfectBut…
Why Did All Those People Die?
W. D. Ehrhart, The Madness of It All: Essays on War, Literature, and American Life [2002] This is a collection of the Vietnam veteran and poet’s prose pieces up till 9.11. Some are quite short…
A Letter from 2005
April 6, 2005 Dear Andrew, I recently finished a small book by Edward Said, Humanism and Democratic Criticism, and it made me think of many conversations we’ve had over the past couple of years. So…
Start Small
In The Art of Living class, we just finished considering Chan Khong’s classic work of engaged Buddhism, Learning True Love. I shared with my friends at the beginning of the course, “The Rules” of the…
An Honest Man: Smedley Butler
Marine General Smedley Butler, in a 1933 speech: “I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in…
How It Was
Michele Turner has collected personal testimonies by the East Timorese about their recent history of suffering and resistance. Telling East Timor reminds me of Mev’s book of interviews with Brazilians, in that these, too, are…
This, That, and the Other
1. An excerpt from my 2015 novel, Dear Layla/Welcome to Palestine: Corporate Citizen/1 (Products/2) Some things changed and some didn’t on September 11 It shocked and angered us To see products we had built to…
Prevailing in This Epic Struggle: A Finkelstein Collage
Regarding [Israel’s] methodical breaking of Palestinian bones, Wiesel courageously chose silence: ‘I refuse to see myself in the role of judge over Israel. The role of the Jew is to bear witness; not pass judgment.’ …
Plus Ça Change, Plus C’est la Même Chose
The following is from a 1983 interview with MIT professor Noam Chomsky… Interviewer: If you were to wake up tomorrow morning, and find yourself at the State Department, not MIT, and you were Secretary, what…