“What but design of darkness to appall?” — from Robert Frost’s Design How can you teach children in a community that is hungry for food? I’m talking about kids suffering from severe hunger. Children who — also — have no way to secure proper medical attention when they’re sick. Little ones whose parents can’t find work. Since Martin’s time things[Read More…]
“One in ten Americans live within ten miles of highly radioactive Superfund and other sites.” — Richard Martin Oxman You can’t arm the world — like Obama and Trump — and claim that you care about school massacres. Neither can common citizens (who support our unconscionable geopolitical madness, proactively, silently and/or ignorantly) think there’s any chance whatsoever of addressing school[Read More…]
“Parents want their kids’ approval, a reversal of the past ideal of children striving for their parents’ approval, and that has led to consumer craziness with high tech gadgetry purchases, excessive time permitted in isolated narcissism, and many other ills. Parents need to grow up.” — Richard Martin Oxman The farther back you look, the faster kids grew up.[Read More…]
The haunting works made by the painter Ahmed Alsoudani are born out of extreme states of violence. The artist grew up in Baghdad, Iraq, during the Iran-Iraq War and the First Gulf War, but he was forced to leave the country as a teenager after vandalizing a mural depicting Saddam Hussein. His paintings, drawings and prints are laden with elements[Read More…]
“Who trusted God was love indeed And love Creation’s final law Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw With ravine, shriek’d against his creed” — Tennyson Most college professors of literature — most readers of Flaubert across the board — will tell you that the characters in Madame Bovary are bourgeois. But one thing that should be called attention to[Read More…]
“It’s not just the government’s bum that NPR wipes.” — Geoff Dutton I have 101 articles in front of me which document the degree to which National Public Radio (NPR), arguably the most popular “political” station in the U.S., is a VERY poor source of news. ZNet, Black Agenda Report andCounterpunch provide three examples of decent attacks on their documentation and agenda, and[Read More…]
“Our faith in technology consumes resources and begets complacency. “ — from Jennifer L. Lieberman’s “Why Technology Will Not Solve Our Criminal Justice Problems” To lay oneself out in respect or obedience does not require that one believe in a Supreme Being of any particular kind, does not demand that one assert anything except acknowledgement of there being inscrutable[Read More…]
An act of creation is only half the story: the other half is the community into which that creation lands. The realm of blending is all-important. Novelty is insufficient — what’s also required is resonance with one’s society. That should be obvious, but it’s not. For instance, the “creativity” involved in the Occupy hey day in New York sparked a[Read More…]
“…creation can only be understood as a gift….” — Pope Francis underscoring that faith tells us that the earth is not a possession to be used and destroyed… very much in the spirit of indigenous beliefs Pope Francis sees the cause of the collective crises in what he calls a “technocratic” mentality, one that considers “the rise of a[Read More…]
Thomas Paine’s pamphlet of January 10, 1776 was, as everyone knows, an important factor in bringing about the issuance of the Declaration of Independence. Common Sense pointed out that the colonies received no advantage from their connection with the mother country, which was intent on exploiting them; a firm and final and violent break from the mother country was[Read More…]
“Consumer Reports surveys rank Raley’s among the top U.S. supermarket chains, in particular for customer service, and that fact can be used as a point of departure for changing a great deal about our collective crises.” — one of the author’s home schooled youngsters. We are now heading, eyes narrowed and shut, towards an environmental catastrophe that might end the[Read More…]
“The big kahunas of business are to be blamed, but the finger-pointers have to be held accountable too.” — Rachel Oxman A recent Gizmodo article focuses mainly on worker horror related to the business practices of Amazon and shocking revelations respecting lack of legislation, but there’s lots more to focus on in reviewing the Amazon phenomenon, which accounts for[Read More…]
“Why aren’t they screaming?” — from Philip Larkin’s The Old Fools The Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) is typically taken by students some time during their last two years in high school. It purports to assess how well test takers solve problems. However, the Big Problem for the students — for us all, truth be told — is that no[Read More…]
Special note: Don’t read about the films recommended prior to seeing them. I’d recommend watching the 2012 documentary Four Horsemen — immediately — along with the 2017 Oren Moverman feature film The Dinner. I urge the reader to do that post haste, in spite of the fact that the former only received a 67% approval rating by critics on[Read More…]
“There’s many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.” — Flannery O’ Connor As Wikipedia indicates, Maus is cartoonist Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel about an exchange with his father respecting WWII Holocaust matters. It was the first graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize, but it’s not what I’m focusing on here, my title notwithstanding. That[Read More…]
“‘Let there be light!’, he said, as he lit the dry grass with his Rick and Morty customized Bic. ‘Sick, sick, sick’, he whispered to himself as he drank in the swim of the flames, left, right, all swirly up and down as they grew in the wind, his grin widening. Wondering where he should go next. Thus begins[Read More…]
There was a strange view expressed about the worldwide status of Henry David Thoreau in the New York Review of Books on August 17: “Thoreau hardly makes it onto the list of notable American authors outside of his home country.” That was followed by the assertion that “his peculiar brand of American nativism has little international appeal.” In fact, we can[Read More…]
“There will be no lasting improvement in any realm unless the excessive violence embedded in our diversions dissipates. The Hollywod celebrities who are — understandably — protesting the disgusting actions of Weinstein are routinely involved in generating much more disgusting fare for far more folks across the world. And they aid and abet our wars.” — Richard Martin Oxman ATS: Do[Read More…]
“King Trump is no more or less than a malarial mosquito in a stinking swamp of quicksand we’ve created. You can say the same about the Queen of England with regard to the British historical record and present momentum. They’re both deadly forces, but — ultimately — distractions from ourselves, our responsibility.” — Richard Martin Oxman Malaria comes from[Read More…]
Proactive concerned citizens attempting to bring about institutional changes in the midst of our horrid momentum — rife with what makes us wretch morning, noon and night now — must embrace humor as they heft their sad sandbags onto barricades being used to fight the powers that be.
I’m not using the “V” here to allude to the 2009-2011 mini-series, the 1983 television production, the Guy Fawkes mask, Thomas Pynchon’s debut novel or any other silly or pseudo-serious treatment of radical response to the powers that be. Rather, for me, there’s a need to address the repetition that we’re experiencing in the realm of activism, whereby — ad nauseum — vociferous citizens are voicing[Read More…]
“Near Eastern religions have a propensity for building massive temples and tombs and this tradition has been emulated by Christian tendencies to construct gigantic cathedrals. Temples, churches, and synagogues separate the faithful from the secular world and from the natural world as if religion needs to be isolated from the rest of human activities.” — Vine Deloria, Jr., God is Red:[Read More…]
Our Global Water Crisis 
3.5 Million March Across France Opposing Macron’s Pension Reform 
Election Commission of India must question the presence political nominees on BEL’s and ECIL’s Boards 
Ihan Omar Introduces Legislation to Combat Islamophobia 
Narendra Modi’s Cricket Coup 
The Big Picture And The Small 
Prophesies, Then and Now – My Life at World’s End 
How the Cuban Government and Its People Collaborated on the Family Code 
Stop Criminalizing Journalism and Human Rights Activism: Release Irfan Mehraj and Parvez Khurram 
Politics of Bhagat Singh’s trial 
The Tragedy of Footpaths: Impressions of a Pedestrian in Bangalore 
Altruism exists in nature, Reciprocal altruism in humans 
U.S. Trying To Cover Up Its Role In Nord Stream Sabotage, Says Seymour Hersh 
Open Letter To Rahul Gandhi, Indian National Congress Party 
Future Scenarios in Ukraine 
West Sends Depleted Uranium Weapons to Ukraine: MEP to Warmongers – “You Make Me Sick!” 
Sri Lanka’s unconvincing response to Universal Periodic Review’s forthright findings 
Kisan Mahapanchayat stages massive rally in Delhi 
The betrayers of Julian Assange 
The Truth About Our Failure to Curb Carbon Emissions 
They’re liars, Mexico’s President on U.S. 
Grameena Pedala Sangham, Telangana State conference, is an important mile-stone 
Imperial Visits: US Emissaries in the Pacific Enough is enough. Restore parliament 
Disgrace at the New York Times 
‘Israel is (Not) Back to Africa’: How African Countries are Challenging Israeli Plot on the Continent 
A Highway to Peace or a Highway to Hell? The Vast Power of the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex 
Accelerating Change on United Nations World Water Day 2023 
Defence Daredevilry 
Selling One’s Soul – The betrayal of Christ and Constitution 
Climate Crisis Has Caused Increasingly Irreversible Losses, Says UN Report 
Yarrow Mamout Masjid Dedicated at Georgetown University 
Adolf Hitler, Carl Orff & Sophie Scholl 
Algeria’s Gas vs. Rightwing Ideology: Will Italy Change Its Position on Jerusalem? 
From Balloons to AUKUS: The War Drive Against China 
Paul Keating’s criticism of Australia’s AUKUS deal is damming but not “astonishing”, – in fact, timely! 
In memory of 20th anniversary of the Iraq War 
CBI investigation against Harsh Mandar’s NGO is nothing but travesty of justice 
Concept of Gram Swaraj (‘Village Self-Reliance’) and Its Increasing Relevance for Our Times Indian Democracy & Chaos in Parliament! 
Our beloved K.P.Sasi is no more. Filmmaker, cartoonist, writer, mentor, friend and above all tireless activist championing the cause of every underdog, Sasi breathed his last, mid-afternoon this Christmas day – after battling a medical condition for months. I remember the last time I met him, almost exactly a month before he passed away, at the ayurvedic healing center in[Read More…]
