On April 20, 1945, only five days after their liberation and on the eve of the Sabbath, with dead still on the ground and with people dying daily, inmates at Bergen Belsen Concentration Camp sang the Jewish anthem of hope “Hatikva.” It was recorded by the BBC. The lyric for Hatikva was originally written in […]
Kenya, Conservatives and Colonialism
It really sticks in my craw. But that’s all right. I have a large craw. I suck it down and then I spit it out. I spit it out. According to the The Times of London (behind paywall) last week, Government efforts to cover up one of the worst episodes in British colonial history have […]
Birtherism and the Yearning for Reboot
Who is a conspiracy theorist but a diviner of the world’s order? What is a conspiracy theory but that order? In a world where either God or his plan – the teleological tit – has gone missing, the conspiracy is cold comfort: life has a meaning, though it may be to no one’s liking. Satan, […]
Libya and the End of the American Imperium
Watching the array of opinion on Libya play out over the screen of public pronouncement and positioning has been a marvel, a kind of international and inter-ideological performance art – the Western political mind CAT-scanned, back lit, and thrown onto a blotter. It looks a lot like a Pollack. We’ve got the neocon “freedom agenda,” […]
ALEC – Will the Real George Soros Please Stand Up?
It began with a March 15 blog post – University of Wisconsin Professor of History William Cronon’s fist blog post on his new blog, Scholar as Citizen – a blog post entitled “Who’s Really Behind Recent Republican Legislation in Wisconsin and Elsewhere? (Hint: It Didn’t Start Here) . It delivered on what the title offered. […]