The fallen: Armistice Day, 2014
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The UK celebrated Armistice Day on November 11 in this 100th anniversary year of the outbreak of World War I with a display of 880,000 ceramic red poppies — one for each soldier from the British E Continue Reading
Don’t blame us! The excuses are already being tallied up.
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Two days after a near GOP sweep of the mid-term elections (Minnesota was one of the few to escape the massacre, though even here the GOP flipped the House of Representatives), apologists for the Party of Hope are toking up and blowing smoke in efforts to cast blame anywhere but where it belongs. Continue Reading
U.S. rejects claims that it targeted civilians
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AP — The United States government has flatly denied accusations that its military used excessive force or targeted civilians during its attack on what it says was a terrorist encampment along Sand Creek in the Colorado Territory. Continue Reading
Scare tactics: From Hiroshima to National Night Out
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As most of us know, August 5 was National Night Out, an annual event that promotes the value of getting to know who lives next door as a way of preventing crime in your neighborhood. August 6 is the 69th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. Is it possible there’s a subterranean connection between the two? Continue Reading
Liberty, equality, fraternity: America and the return of the Ancien Régime
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On Bastille Day, I posted a little screed on Facebook proposing that the French Revolution, which erupted 225 years ago on July 14, 1789, disproves the adage that history is always written by the winners. At least in English, I argued, the history has largely been written by people sympathetic to the aristocracy, supposedly overthrown in the name of equality, along with liberty and brotherhood. Continue Reading
The Great War and modern amnesia: Imperialism still coming home to roost
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Exactly 100 years ago, on the morning of June 28, 1914, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and his wife Sophie were assassinated when two bullets were fired at them at clos Continue Reading
Vampire Dairies: The revolution that won’t start without us
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Lately I’ve been reading, even in the pages of mainstream publications, forecasts of how the world’s growing inequality will result in a popular uprising that will overthrow predatory global capita Continue Reading
Me the people: public good, private greed
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A few days ago, I decided to celebrate the beautiful summer morning by taking my dog, Chance, to the off-leash park at Minnehaha Falls in Minneapolis.
A Modest Proposal for Francis I: WWJD to Paul Ryan?
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Here’s an idea for Pope Francis, a way of establishing his bona fides as a man who cares about the poor and the growing social inequities that are swelling the ranks of poverty in the wo Continue Reading
Ten years later: the Iraq invasion and the God of War
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In early 2003, poet Sam Hamill, founder of Cooper Canyon Press, which under his leadership became one of the top literary publishers in the country, called for poets across the nation to stage Continue Reading