VIDEO: Steve Kowit reads his poem 'Intifada' (Aug. 12, 2006)
- Details
- Written by Fran Lucientes
Below is a link to a video of Steve Kowit reading his poem "Intifada."[1] -- Kowit teaches at Southwestern College in Chula Vista, CA, and lives in the San Diego back-country near the Tecate Mexican border. -- A few phrases from the poem: "This world of nettles and blood." -- "I can no longer be silent." -- "I can do nothing no longer." -- Recorded on Aug. 12, 2006, at Balboa Park, San Diego....
QUOTATION: Page Smith on the danger of the war power to constitutional government
- Details
- Written by Karen Havnaer
In a brief passage in his 1978 book on the United States Constitution, historian Page Smith (1917-1995) analyzed the danger to constitutional government posed by the war power as partly due to the nature of the war power itself, and partly due to developments in modern technology -- in particular, the demagogic potential of television.[1] -- Thanks to Karen Havnaer for sending this quotation....
COMMENTARY: Wendell Berry's call to rethink the industrial age
- Details
- Written by Hank Berger
These thoughts, published by the Kentucky sage Wendell Berry in the days following the Sept. 11, 2001, and a few months later as part of a small volume entitled In the Presence of Fear: Three Essays for a Changed World (Orion Society, 2001), are a frontal assault on the shibboleths of modern industrialism, the socioeconomic system whose ideals are free trade and economic growth. -- This system triumphed in the modern West and U.S. policy is presently committed to extending it throughout the world (see the Sept. 17, 2002 "National Security Strategy of the United States of America" and the Mar. 16, 2006 "National Security Strategy"), though the failure to effect that end in Iraq is evident to all. -- Wendell Berry, 71, believes that the long-term significance of September 11 will be that it represents the end of that order's plausibility. -- He calls for a new era, devoted to "economic decentralization, economic justice, and ecological responsibility." -- Berry concludes this piece, presented in the form of 27 theses, with these words: "An economy based on waste is inherently and hopelessly violent, and war is its inevitable by-product. We need a peaceable economy."