Browse Topics
Terrorism
Sunbeams
February 2005It’s true that I’ve driven through a number of red lights. But on the other hand, I’ve stopped at a lot of green ones I’ve never gotten credit for.
Sitting In The Fire
Pema Chödrön On Turning Toward Pain
The first noble truth of the Buddha is that people experience dukka, a feeling of dissatisfaction or suffering, a feeling that something is wrong. . . . only in the West is this dissatisfaction articulated as “Something is wrong with me.”
January 2005
December 2004
Democracy didn’t leave behind a forwarding address. Who can blame her? Maybe she just got tired of being ignored, and lied to, and slapped around.
December 2004Homeland Insecurity
Stan Goff On Why U.S. Foreign Policy Endangers Us All
During the Clinton administration, when Hugh Shelton was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he began what Donald Rumsfeld calls the “revolution of military affairs,” which is the complete restructuring of the U.S. military. The shorthand for it is “full spectrum dominance.” This refers to dominance in three dimensions: technology, the full spectrum of conflict (from street riots to thermonuclear war), and geography. The belief that we can achieve such dominance is quite likely the most grandiose delusion in human history. It simply is not possible. It’s amazing and worrisome to me that people who hold the reins of power would actually believe in something like this.
November 2004
One Patriot Acts
Daniel Ellsberg’s Crusade Against The Abuse Of Presidential Power, From Nixon To Bush
There were times during the Vietnam War when I feared that if the escalation went on and domestic resistance grew, our system of government would move toward a totalitarian state. The FBI was abusing its power. The CIA was illegally spying against domestic “enemies.” There was a tremendous amount of wiretapping going on.
October 2004
September 2004
When I visited New York City a year after the September 11 terrorist attack, I wasn’t sure I wanted to see Ground Zero — not after learning that it had become the city’s number-one tourist attraction.
September 2004How The Winds Are Laughing
But adrenaline, my old friend from early motherhood, has come back to me, and I have taken up with her. I let myself be seduced by her charms, grab her hands for a tango, even though I know her game, the way she sticks around just long enough to see me through everyone else’s crises and then splits when I really need her.
July 2004
Resurrecting The Revolutionary Heart Of Judaism
An Interview With Michael Lerner
Jews jumped from the burning buildings of Europe and landed, unintentionally, on the backs of the Palestinians. Because our pain was so great from the Holocaust, we didn’t notice the pain we caused them.
April 2004
59th Parallel
You’d imagine that, in the wake of 9-11, New York City subways would be less crowded than usual, that at least the paranoiacs of the city (no doubt a large population, of which I might be considered a member) would not be in the subway, which seems like a target. For a month after the attack, I observed the multitude of bags every morning and wondered, What’s to guarantee there are no explosives here, no anthrax, no plague?
January 2003September 2002
My feelings change like the changing seasons. The trees will be bare soon and the darkness will call to me again. Miklós Radnóti: “Sometimes a year looks back and howls, / then drops to its knees. / Autumn is too much for me.”
September 2002
