Hamid Karzai is demanding an explanation for the “assasination” of numerous Afghan civilians, including several little girls, by a rampaging US soldier who evidently just went door to door, shooting whoever he happened upon. What could Obama possibly say? “Nothing personal, that’s just how we roll in the USA”? Just in the past week or [...]
I teach a community college course called “Women Respond to Violence” in which we examine varieties of violence and the multiplicity of ways that women (and their male allies) have struggled to understand and intervene in its causes and consequences. (Here’s the syllabus for the upcoming semester.) Most of the students are survivors of some form [...]
I was about to blog something sarcastic about the fantasy “War on Christmas” decried by Fox News and the rest of the right when the real news stopped me in my tracks. In Nigeria, Islamic militants bombed three churches, killing dozens and causing “mass carnage” on Christmas Day. The pictures are arresting: twisted metal, cars [...]
What does it feel like to live through a genocide? My student Chiemela’s father knows: He was a boy in Biafra during the Nigerian Civil War, which according to a reporter on the scene in 1968, “deteriorated steadily from a war in which the original motivation was the reincorporation of the breakaway east into Nigeria [...]
Violence is nonsense. While people often deploy violence for rational purposes, violence itself is the opposite of sense. Every abused child and battered woman knows this. You’re arguing with your parent or partner, pressing your point, trying to make yourself understood, working to reach agreement. Then — slam! — comes the slap or the kick [...]
I heard about the vicious gay-bashing of Mercy for Animals founder Nathan Runkle a few days ago but didn’t want to write anything until I was sure Nathan wanted the attack to be publicized. Now that Mercy for Animals has put out a press release about the incident, I guess it’s safe to speak of [...]
On this day ninety years ago, celebration broke out in lieu of gunfire on the Western front of the four-year conflagration known retrospectively as World War I. The armistice or truce between Germany and the allied forces of France, Britain, Italy, Russia, and the USA took effect on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day [...]
South African singer and activist Miriam Makeba is dead. In her memory, let me refer you to this past post inspired by her song “Soweto Blues.” In that post, I discuss the 1976 massacre of South African schoolchildren as well as present-day student activism in Baltimore. So you can understand why the post is entitled [...]
Islamic fundamentalists attacked the Marriott hotel in Islamabad over the weekend, killing 53 people, injuring hundreds, and terrifying everybody by driving a truck bomb up to the building. Since I was there — in that building — in 2002, this news feels a little more real to me than other reports of far-off killings. Let [...]
In honor of the opening of the RNC and in solidarity with my comrades in the Twin Cities, let me share with you this undated snapshot of sharpshooter Sarah Palin demonstrating that she’s ready to take over for Dick “shotgun” Cheney. Palin herself murdered the moose. Her daughter looks scared, doesn’t she? What kind of [...]
