Browse Topics

The Religion Of Politics, The Politics Of Religion

If American politics is more religious than it has been for a long time, we are not alone. The world of Islam is undergoing a tremendous religiopolitical revival. I’m not sure I understand what’s behind it. I have the sense that the explanations we read in any paper or see on television are not accurate. September 11 caught us all off guard, and we still have not digested it.

Willing To Die?

A body lies in the middle of a dirt road near where we live, tennis shoes poking out from under the cardboard and branches laid over it, flies buzzing around. Political demonstrations spin out of control as pro-government gangs swoop in with clubs and guns.

Sunbeams

Heroes are created by popular demand, sometimes out of the scantiest materials, or none at all.

Gerald W. Johnson

Sunbeams

I am not quite sure what the advantage is in having a few more dollars to spend if the air is too dirty to breathe, the water is too polluted to drink, the commuters are losing out in the struggle to get in and out of the city, the streets are filthy, the schools are so bad that the young perhaps wisely stay away, and the hoodlums roll citizens for some of the dollars they saved in the tax cut.

John Kenneth Galbraith

Political Paralysis

Years before I had been stricken by a debilitating illness. Perilymph fistula’s symptoms are like those of multiple sclerosis. On some days I was functional. On others — and I could never predict when these days would strike — I was literally paralyzed. I couldn’t leave the house; I could barely stand up.

What The Dead Know

It began in the hospitals with what seemed to be an epidemic of miracles. The most recently dead came back first. People whose heartbeats had just flat-lined a second earlier suddenly sat upright on their gurneys and beds and looked into the confused faces of those around them.

Twenty-Eight Words That Could Change The World

Robert Hinkley’s Plan To Tame Corporate Power

We can’t solve the problem of corporate irresponsibility by imposing volumes of laws and regulations that try to restrain the system, because the system is designed not to be restrained. I believe the solution lies in redesigning the corporation itself to build in some self-restraint.

Sunbeams

[The philosopher] Wittgenstein writes about a man who, not being certain of an item he reads in the newspaper, buys one hundred copies of the paper to reassure himself of its truth.

Richard Kehl

Sunbeams

Those are my principles. If you don’t like them, I have others.

Groucho Marx

Risky Business

Peter Sandman On Corporate Misbehavior And Public Outrage

I tend to be more passionate about the process of communication than about the outcome. I’m interested in people listening better and talking more and wanting to understand each other’s point of view. I try to eliminate the things that get in the way of that. And it’s a Sisyphean task, because industry people and activists aren’t really talking to each other; they’re doing theater with each other. Whichever side I am working for, I try to find a way for both sides to listen better.