The Fleming Foundation Cultural Commentary
Crocodile Tears
Reading stories on the teapot tempest over the sinking of ship and the subsequent attack on the survivors made me think, for just one second, that the Mainstream Media were finally going to tell the truth about Israel’s illegal and savage attack on the USS Liberty in 1967.
Wednesday’s Child: A New Congo
How to speak about politics without sliding into the pervasive banality of mainstream political discourse?
Studying War: Toward A Workable Just War Theory, Proem
War, much like marriage, is a necessary institution that responds to human need. Sexual desire and the impulse to violence—which can be fueled by cupidity—are both part of the human condition. In a state of nature, unfortunately, human needs are fulfilled without ceremony: rape, promiscuous sex, and incest, in the case of sexual desire, and raiding parties, looting expeditions, ambushes, and genocidal mass murders, in the case of violence.
How Many American Will Come Home From Venezuela in Body Bags?
Maybe Trump won’t invade Venezuela. Or maybe he’ll just launch some Tomahawks, blow up some government buildings in Caracas, and the CIA will a foment a coup to put in power an associate of Nobel Peace Prize Winner María Corina Machado
Senator Kelly Vindicates MacArthur
General MacArthur, it is true, overstepped the limits of his authority, but now Senator Mark Kelly, retired Navy captain, insists that American military personnel have the right to disobey the President–and thus a fortiori senior officers–if they regard an order as illegal.
Wednesday’s Child: The Arsonists
Or take another example, drawn from my four-year-old son’s videothèque – the sinking of the Titanic, which some inscrutable whimsy makes the child obsessed with at the moment.
Studying War: Between a Rock and a Hard Place
If wolves and chimpanzees can usually resolve conflicts within the group without massive blood-letting, why are modern human communities so wracked by violent crime? And, while it is true that in wars between groups of carnivorous mammals, the death rate can be very high, the numbers are only a small fraction of the human beings killed in brush wars that barely make the newspapers. Why, then, are human wars so devastating?
Living Pretty Well: Pasulj and Proja (Beans and Cornbread)
In this ten minute audio–I hope to graduate to video soon–I describe how I made a pretty good Serbian dinner, despite several mistakes. If anyone would like written recipes, I should be happy to supply them.
