Here’s one possible trajectory for ambitious print journalists. After making your name with aggressive reporting at a smaller newspaper, move up the ladder until you are at a top paper with a prestige beat. Go on the television talk shows to pontificate. Maybe snag a regular column. Offer analyses that seem critical but make sure never to challenge the conventional[Read More…]
We need to be practical when it comes to politics, to work for policies that we can enact today, inadequate though they may be to answer calls for social justice and ecological sustainability. We also need to maintain a relentlessly radical analysis, to highlight the failures of systems and structures of power, aware that policies we might enact today won’t[Read More…]
There’s a sad irony at the heart of Janice Raymond’s new book on transgenderism and feminism. After decades of research and activism, she is uniquely qualified to contribute to the polarized debate over these issues. But because she has long been demonized by the transgender movement, her insights on sex and gender will be overlooked by many. Doublethink: A Feminist[Read More…]
[An earlier version of this essay was presented to the National Conference on Racial and Social Justice on November 17, 2021.] We are at a tipping point in the racial history of the United States — perhaps the most important moment since the civil rights and more radical black/brown/indigenous movements of the 1960s and ’70s. Two dramatically different currents in American life[Read More…]
[This is an expanded version of testimony delivered to the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group on Commercial Sexual Exploitation, November 2, 2021.] My thesis: The pornography industry does the worst to women and brings out the worst in men. Let me explain this claim. I am a retired University of Texas professor who began studying the pornography industry in 1988, which[Read More…]
Although the rather inelegant term “allyship” had not yet become part of the social-justice lexicon, I first bumped into the complexity of being an ally in 1988 when I belatedly started to take feminism seriously. I was following a feminist anti-pornography group that challenged men’s use and abuse of women in the sexual-exploitation industries. That is the term I use[Read More…]
“We told you so” rings hollow. In the face of tens of thousands of lives lost, trillions of dollars spent, and countless communities destroyed, pointing out that early critics of the U.S. “war on terror” were accurate seems crass and cruel, sanctimonious and self-serving. But it’s also dangerous to ignore the dissenters. Those of us who were active in[Read More…]
Abstract The stability of the Earth’s ecosystems, and hence the future of the human species, depends on people recognizing and responding to multiple, cascading social and ecological crises that can easily overwhelm our imaginations. We need to cultivate restless and relentless minds to deal with unprecedented analytical questions and moral challenges if we are to go beyond the failed approaches[Read More…]
When a European graduate student emailed to ask if I would participate in an assignment to “do an interview with one of my favourite authors,” I said yes. My books have not exactly been best-sellers, and so I was an easy target for anyone describing me as a “favourite author.” But beyond my gratitude for someone noticing my writing, I[Read More…]
Who is “we”? We humans have made a mess of things, which is readily evident if we face the avalanche of studies and statistics describing the contemporary ecological crises we face. But even with the mounting evidence of the consequences for people and planet, we have not committed to a serious project to slow the damage that we do. One reasonable response to those statements is, “Who is ‘we’?”[Read More…]
The political left, and much of mainstream feminism, is characterized by an analysis of how systems and institutions shape our choices, a critique of capitalist media, and a commitment to a scientific/materialist worldview. But when faced with radical feminism’s compelling critiques of patriarchy, leftists and many feminists routinely abandon those principles. Radical feminist critiques of prostitution, pornography, and transgender ideology[Read More…]
In the current squabble on the liberal/progressive/left side of the fence over so-called “cancel culture”—in which one open letter in favor of freedom of expression led to a rebuttal open letter in favor of a different approach to freedom of expression—I can offer a report on the experience of being canceled. Several times over the past few years I’ve been[Read More…]
Notes from an Apocalypse: A Personal Journey to the End of the World and Back is a thoughtful, engaging book that ends in failure. But Mark O’Connell shouldn’t take that assessment too personally. His book fails in the way that his culture—the modern, cosmopolitan, left/liberal, individualist culture—routinely fails in the face of multiple, cascading ecological crises. That said, I’m still[Read More…]
The Case Against Free Speech: The First Amendment, Fascism, and the Future of Dissent by P. E. Moskowitz (Bold Type Books, 2019) In my last couple years of university teaching before retiring, I repeated two catch phrases as often as possible—“reasonable people can disagree” and “if two things are both true, then both are relevant.” The first assertion—which I[Read More…]
Naomi Klein’s new book, On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal, has one crippling flaw—it’s inspiring. At this moment in history, inspiring talk about solutions to multiple, cascading ecological crises is dangerous. At the conclusion of these 18 essays that bluntly outline the crises and explain a Green New Deal response, Klein bolsters readers searching for hope:[Read More…]
A version of this essay was presented at the “Is the Future of Agriculture Perennial?” conference, Lund University, Sweden, May 8, 2019. The royal, prophetic, and apocalyptic traditions in the Hebrew and Christian bibles provide a compelling framework for understanding progressive intellectual and political work today, as we face the task not only of struggling to create a just and sustainable world[Read More…]
I am not as abusive as Harvey Weinstein, nor as narcissistic as Bill O’Reilly. I’m more respectful to women than Donald Trump, and not as sleazy as Anthony Weiner. Judged by the standards set by these public reprobates, most of the rest of us men appear almost saintly, and therein lies a danger. The public disclosure of these men’s behavior—from[Read More…]
Now that the violence in Charlottesville has forced “white supremacy” into our political vocabulary, let’s ask an uncomfortable question: “When will the United States transcend white supremacy?” My question isn’t, “What should we do about the overt white supremacists who, emboldened by Trumpism’s success, have pushed their way back into mainstream politics?” I want to go beyond easy targets[Read More…]
Naomi Klein understands that President Donald J. Trump is a problem, but he is not the problem. In her new book, “No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need”, Klein reminds us to pay attention not only to the style in which Trump governs (a multi-ring circus so routinely corrupt and corrosive that anti-democratic practices seem normal) but in[Read More…]
When a local organizer for a new adult education project in Austin, Texas, asked me to teach a course on politics in January, it was tempting to focus on the potentially disastrous short-term consequences of the election. Instead, I decided to frame the course around the disastrous long-term forces that shape the contemporary United States, no matter who is in[Read More…]
We are better people, individually and collectively, when we reject hubris and embrace humility, and we stand a better chance of making real progress — defined by Rowe as “whatever is conducive to sustainable participation in Earth’s ecosystems” — when we better understand the world and our place in it
Facing what seems like an endless stream of news about racialized conflicts and violence, many people call for us to get beyond our history and find solutions for today, concrete actions we can take immediately, ways of expressing love right now to help us cope with the pain. This yearning is understandable, but it’s just as important that we grapple[Read More…]
Mexico’s Zapatistas Warn Chiapas Is on “the Verge of Civil War” 
Why distress from railway accidents may be much higher than is commonly believed 
Stop Plastic Pollution as We Commemorate 50th World Environment Day 2023 
Modi Regime should be Called to Account for the Deadliest Triple Train Collision at Balasore 
Thoughts on World Environment Day 
Nuclear Fusion: Eternal Energy = Eternal Damnation 
Why There Should Be A Treaty Against the Use of Weaponized Drones 
Protests in Germany after Anti-fascists sent to five years in prison 
Women Wrestler’s Protests: Exposing Beti Bachao Slogan 
Inauguration of Parliament Building: Coronation Ceremony? 
FBI appears to be continuing investigation of Julian Assange 
And We Are Much More Than Our Uterus. (In Solidarity With the protesting wrestlers) 
Strike ends in Belsonika with reinstatement of 10 suspended workers 
A Man Without a Strategy: How Netanyahu Is Provoking Armed Intifada in the West Bank 
The Ancient Patterns of Migration 
Seven Reasons Why the Present Phase of Imperialism is the Most Dangerous Ever 
Unmasking Tourism’s Roadblocks 
Metro authorities humiliating ordinary commuters 
PLI Scheme- Do subsidies to profit-earning private manufacturers yield commensurate societal benefits? World Environment Day in India: Doing Justice with the Day 
Ben Roberts-Smith: The Breaking of a Plaster Saint 
Do we All need Religion? An Introspection 
Obama, Kissinger and the Nobel Peace Prize 
The Politics of Erdogan and Western Anxieties 
The Compulsion to Intervene – Why Washington Underwrites Violence in Ukraine 
Just War and Just War Theory 
Stolen Heirloom or poppycock 
‘Simply Inconceivable’ to Dump Fukushima Water in Pacific, Critics Say After Latest IAEA Report 
Eradicate Dowry, Eliminate Dowry Violence 
Growing number of elderly homeless in the US 
Rise Up in Solidarity with Protesting Wrestlers 
Plastic Pollution in Destinations: A Growing Threat to Environmental Sustainability 
The US Censors Dissenting Voices: On the Attacks Against the Midwestern Marx Institute 
The US Government Should At Least Listen to this Wisdom of its Top Experts on the Ukraine Crisis 
Indigenous Australians & Palestinians: Treaty, Truth, Voice, Referendum & Senator Lidia Thorpe 
Kya Sharmsaar hai hindustan……are wrestling champions of India going the Mohammed Ali way? 
Legislative Gaps Helping Overseas Shell Companies? 
Book Review: Marginalised but not Defeated 
When Will US Join Global Call to End Ukraine War? 
AUKUS, Congress and Cold Feet 
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…]
