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Flying

A difficult passenger, a stormy ride, a passionate encounter

Sunbeams

The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.

David Friedman

Indefensible

David Krieger On The Continuing Threat Of Nuclear Weapons

The path to security can only be through total nuclear disarmament. We cannot indefinitely maintain a world of nuclear haves and have-nots, and we cannot go attacking every country that we think might be on the path to making a bomb.

The Decline And Fall Of The Suburban Empire

James Howard Kunstler On Reshaping The American Landscape

I hear two themes that both represent a big fantasy. One is the techno-triumphalist fantasy that assumes we’re going to invent our way out of our problems: some mythical “they” will come up with a techno-rescue — a new miracle fuel to keep the cars running, or something like that. The other fantasy assumes that we’re going to organize our way out of this mess. Both tend to ignore the likelihood that we’re going to be living in a more disorderly society with a lot of people who are unhappy and perhaps violent and who are going to be making disruptive political claims.

Everybody Wants To Rule The World

David Korten On Putting An End To Global Competition

And thanks to breakthroughs in electronic communication, we now have the potential to connect every person on the planet in a seamless web of cooperation. Technology has given us the means to build a worldwide movement grounded in universal human values that transcend the barriers of nationality, race, gender, and religion. Back in the early eighties, even domestic long-distance phone calls were a significant expense, and the cost of international phone calls was prohibitive. Now we can telephone around the world for pennies. If we prefer to meet face to face, affordable airfares have made that easier, too. Add the Internet, and the joining of ordinary people in a collective struggle to create a more cooperative global structure becomes a real possibility for the first time in the whole of human experience.

The Two Worlds

Walking into the temple compound, we walked into another world: quiet, serene, holy. Irregular stepping stones led us through a mossy garden to a steadily dripping little waterfall. Off to one side was a standing figure of Kwan Yin, bodhisattva of compassion, standing on a lotus pedestal.

To Look For America

There it is: I’m American. I flush a deep, hot red. Shame rises up in me so strongly I can barely breathe. How did this happen? How did it become shameful to be an American?

Thieves In High Places

Jim Hightower On Taking America Back From The Plutocrats

I think that there is a small-d democratic spirit in people that rebels against plutocracy, or rule by the rich, which is what we had from the robber-baron era to the 1920s and what the New Deal was designed to eliminate. Now here we are again with this increasing concentration of wealth. It’s not that people resent wealth; they resent greed.