A Website of the Radical Imagination
Paul Berman tells some pretty good stories, but you have to wait for the punch line. No one will be astonished to learn that Breyten Breytenbach, the celebrated South African novelist and homme de gauche, last year published (in Le Monde) an open letter to Sharon, and began with the now-rote observation that when any … Read more
Kanan Makiya – author of “Republic of Fear” and “Cruelty and Silence” – spoke about the future of Iraq on a panel organized by NYU’s Cultural Reporting and Criticism Program and the Center for War, Peace and the News Media on November 22, 2002. Arguing against other speakers at the forum, Makiya made a moral … Read more
On September 22, the New York Times Magazine ran a lengthy cover story about Paul Wolfowitz, the number two man in the Pentagon and the Bush administration’s most ardent proponent of overthrowing Saddam Hussein. Under the title of “Stalking Saddam: How Paul Wolfowitz’s agenda became the Bush agenda,” the Times’ Bill Keller used over 10 … Read more
The truth is, nobody knows what the 2002 election means. If the Republicans won by about 53-47 (the alt parties not even an irritant), six points difference is not so great that it can’t be imaginably recouped in some near future, nor is it itself evidence of a trend. That said, the news is all … Read more
Remarks delivered by Kurt Vonnegut at St. Marks on the Bowery on the night of September Eleventh, 2002. My text for tonight is from the Gospel of Matthew: “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God.” There has so far been only one nation crazy enough to detonate atomic weapons … Read more
We asked George Lakey – a longtime proponent of nonviolent direct action – to interview Mubarak Awad – a Palestinian Christian psychologist who organized a nonviolent resistance movement against occupation of Palestinian lands at the end of the 1980’s. Israel expelled him to the United States where he currently runs an NGO based in Washington … Read more
Just what is left and what is right were things in doubt well before 9/11. Now would not be a bad time to workout where we are. (1) We should try to see the situation as it presents itself rather than read the reviews. The position adopted by the “right” is not necessarily the right … Read more