I sit here at my desk, looking out the window – and see someone walking through the parking lot. This is the most ordinary of moments. I shrug quietly. Life goes on. My impulse is to stop writing the column here. That’s it. Nothing more to say. Life is totally fine...
Peaceful protest, violent response – that says it all. Human politics – from global to local – remain mixed with hatred, dominance and... well, dehumanization. We've organized ourselves across the planet around one primary principle: the existence of an enemy. The...
It’s 10 p.m. at Montrose Harbor in Chicago. Kiko and Tamar help me step from the dock into the wobbly rowboat. Kiko rows us out to the Golden Rule and I climb aboard in wonder. Oh my God! This is it – the 30-foot, anti-nuke sailboat with a history going back almost...
There’s a crucial, overlooked aspect of Daniel Ellsberg’s legacy that’s very much worth saluting, you might say: his transformation from a believer in the Vietnam war to a horrified opponent of it, ready to risk prison time to bring classified truth about its...
What is democracy but platitudes and dog whistles? The national direction is quietly predetermined – it’s not up for debate. The president’s role is to sell it to the public; you might say he’s the public-relations director in chief:". . . my...
Somewhere out there in the geopolitical wilderness of Eastern Europe, two powerful beasts stalk each other. One of them is good. One of them is evil. The future of all life on this planet is at stake.We’ll be back after these messages . . . (or maybe not).This seems...
Love thy enemy? I get a chance to do so on a regular basis, thanks to the email (or nasty-mail) I sometimes get in response to my column, e.g.:"Must be a dearth of anyone with anything intelligent to say for the News to put your drivel out for us to chew on. Not...
What is a gaffe but an inadvertent uttering of an awkward truth? For instance:"This crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take a while."The "gaffe" part of George W. Bush’s post-9/11 announcement that the War on Terror had begun was, of...
A recent New York Timesop-ed was perhaps the strangest, most awkward and tentative defense of the military-industrial complex – excuse me, the experiment in democracy called America – I've ever encountered, and begs to be addressed.The writer, Andrew Exum,...
"Ten members of one family – including seven children – are dead after a US drone strike targeting a vehicle in a residential neighborhood of Kabul . . ."The youngest victims of Sunday's airstrike were two 2-year-old girls, according to family...
