Articles

“The fantasy of the faraway place, the fantasy of the skin, the fantasy of being somebody else” — John Berger, ‘Ways of Seeing’Sometimes, and not often enough, insights, understandings and new ideas just pop into your mind, unbidden. How? I have no idea but as the brain apparently operates somewhere …

Abu-Bakr al-Naqqash has reported Imam Ali as saying:One day, a Jew came to me saying, “In your book, there is a verse the meaning of which is difficult to understand. If you clarify it for me, I will become Muslim.” “Which verse is that?” I asked. The Jew said, “The …

Defining the Imperial StratagemIn the late 1990s Brzezinski wrote up the design for America’s imperial project in the 21st century in his book, “The Grand Chessboard.” He stated bluntly that, “it is imperative that no Eurasian challenger emerges, capable of dominating Eurasia and thus of also challenging America,” and then …

An excerpt from antiwar activist Swanson’s new book, War Is a Lie.Since the Vietnam War, the United States has dropped all pretense of a military draft equally applied to all. Instead we spend billions of dollars on recruitment, increase military pay, and offer signing bonuses until enough people “voluntarily” join …

Smart and amazing young women have somehow gotten the idea that in order to be treated with respect and love, they have to be damn near perfect.It’s not news that girls are feeling more pressure than ever to be perfect. As I’ve written before in my posts on the Martha …

A few days ago Facebook asked me to change my user name. The name I had chosen wasn’t obscene, it did not incite to racial hatred, it was not an attempt to usurp the name of the all-powerful Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook’s CEO, founder and majority shareholder), nor was it even …

The peoples of the world once looked up to America and Americans. They held them in high respect and esteem. They respected their ideals. They respected their know-how and products.Now, by its foreign policies of empire and their domestic counterparts, the U.S. government is destroying the dignity of America and …

The grave challenge of our time is not to reform the current system but to replace it. As our nation’s founders prescribed in the Declaration of Independence, when “any Form of Government becomes destructive” of the ends of “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” it is not only our …

The dismantling of motherhood as we once knew it is no longer a paranoid futuristic fantasy, but rather a mostly dystopic reality.If you’ve read much science-fiction, you’re probably familiar with the idea that, at some scary point in the future, the various aspects of mothering will be separated, enabling wealthy …

“The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.” – Philip K. Dick“Men must have spoken freely long before they formulated the idea of free speech. Perhaps the …