Browse Topics

Going The Distance

Rubin Carter’s Long Journey From Convict To Crusader

When you spend a great deal of time in darkness, in solitary confinement, where everything blends into one, if you’re fortunate, you’ll begin to see things more vividly than you’ve ever seen them before. It may take days, weeks, months, years, but you’ll begin to see things as they really are. You’ll begin to see yourself as you have never seen yourself before. Because when you can’t see outside, you can only look inside.

Any Marine

Before the ground war started, we hunkered behind berms, firing shots at targets built from crumb rubber, careful not to shoot the Bedouins and their camels when they appeared on the horizon. We stood in jeeps and flashed the Saudis on the highway, making lewd gestures with our tongues and fingers at the Saudi women sitting in the back of their husbands’ Mercedes, because only men can drive in that country.

Earthly Delights

Cultivating A New Agricultural Revolution: An Interview With Michael Ableman

When we focus on regional production and regional distribution, the issues around the use of chemicals and other materials resolve themselves. It’s as simple as standing across the table at the farmers’ market from the person who’s growing your food. Ultimately the basic health of the food system is not about laws; it’s about relationships: interpersonal, ecological, and biological. The people who eat my food don’t need a legislative act to know that what I’m providing is safe to eat. They know me, and they know my farm. That, to me, is the best form of certification. It’s based on outdated ideas like honor and trust.

Sunbeams

You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.

Jeannette Rankin

Tricks Of The Trade

Alfred McCoy On How The CIA Got Involved In Global Drug Trafficking

We’ll never know what might have transpired if Western intelligence agencies hadn’t used the power of the underground drug economy and its criminal syndicates to fight communism during the Cold War. If the CIA hadn’t existed, would we have the levels of addiction we see today? I can’t say. But I can say that covert operations played a significant role in the expansion of drug trafficking after World War II.

Yes, You Are a Revolutionary!

Most people say, “I am not a revolutionary. I am merely a liberal,” or, “I am not a revolutionary. I am just a Republican.” Nonsense. Anyone can be a revolutionary. Just follow these simple steps.

Searching For The Soul Of America

An Interview With Jacob Needleman

Human beings are meant to do more than simply live out their physical lives on this earth. They’re meant to do more, even, than be good stewards of the natural environment. Humanity is meant to be a conductor of great forces, passing from above, through humankind, and back. That’s what I mean by the “American soul.” Our society has a unique spiritual function that is all too often forgotten.

Some Shelter

The atomic bomb would fall and we would duck and cover and it would be ok. There wasn’t a child in the room who didn’t know this was a baldfaced lie, the height of adult mendacity — as the older boys said, “Bullshit.”