W.J. Astore: America’s Military Strategy? Persistent Overreach
Reports that President Obama is considering even more troops and bases to fight ISIS in Iraq put me to mind of Roman general Publius Quinctilius Varus. Two millennia ago, Varus … Continue reading
Jose Padua: On the Half-life of Memory and All the Lives Lost in the Process
After you’ve invaded someone’s country enslaved its people tortured its citizens insulted and belittled its culture and beliefs it’s a little late in the proceedings and in the course of … Continue reading
Marc Jampole: The New Jim Crow
“The New Jim Crow” has recreated the legal racism that existed before the Civil Rights movement As Michelle Alexander details in The New Jim Crow, her seminal 2010 study of … Continue reading
Vanessa German: My First Police Memory
My first police memory is of 1980’s Los Angeles being 7 or 8 in the back of the big van my mama drove us all around in. her 5 kids. … Continue reading
Chris Hedges: America’s Slave Empire
Three prisoners—Melvin Ray, James Pleasant and Robert Earl Council—who led work stoppages in Alabama prisons in January 2014 as part of the Free Alabama Movement have spent the last 18 … Continue reading
Video: Persepolis author Marjane Satrapi
When not hard at work on a page of comic art, Marjane Satrapi lights up a cigarette and remembers how, due to the last forty years of constant war and … Continue reading
Video: Haoma
Haoma is the Avestan name of a plant and its divinity, both of which play a role in Zoroastrian doctrine and in later Persian culture and mythology. Directed by Matthieu Deltour, … Continue reading
Pope Francis: On Our Common Home (a selection of passages from the Encyclical)
Our Relationship with the Earth Saint Francis of Assisi reminds us that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who … Continue reading
George Monbiot: Channelling the Joy
In defending the natural world, we should be honest about our motivations – it’s love that drives us, not money. Who wants to see the living world destroyed? Who wants … Continue reading
Doug Shields: On The Massacre in Charleston
I am sure someone, a politician, a civic leader, a talking head on the news will be quoted as saying, “This is not who we are as a nation.” That … Continue reading
Tashi Nyima: Rest in Peace
We pray for our Emanuel AME Church Sisters and Brothers The Rev. Clementa Pinckney, 41: A state senator and the senior pastor of Emanuel, he was married to Jennifer Benjamin … Continue reading
Vanessa German: Go in Ferocious
Go in ferocious. make the eye contact. make the eye contact and tell every sister you see that you Love her. say.i love you. find every embrace and meet it … Continue reading
Djelloul Marbrook: Poetry as a haunting ley-line system in the service of human evolution
A ley line is a fairy path to the Irish, a dragon line to the Chinese, a djinnway to Arabs, a spirit line to the Incas, a songline to the … Continue reading
John Keats: This Living Hand
. This living hand, now warm and capable Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold And in the icy silence of the tomb, So haunt thy days and chill … Continue reading
