This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the World Citizenship Movement (WCM).
Browsing: Opinions
America is the world’s most powerful superpower, capable of destroying not only its enemies, but the planet itself. Yet our government is struggling to defend the U.S. Constitution, democracy, as well as the rule of law from former president Trump and Republican Congresspersons who operate more as a syndicate. Trump’s threatening rhetoric to “root out the communists, Marxists. fascists and radical left thugs that live like vermin’s,” bestows upon him the title Intimidator-In-Chief.
Exploiters and oppressors are quick to find people of color who will repeat, parrot, or rubber-stamp whatever they say or do.
MY TRUTH: Dear…
Which side are you on?
Israel, Palestine, Gaza, war, family and children
Coming up from the Metro into the Main Hall of Union Station, on my way to a prayer service for the people of Gaza, I paused to look at the Roman legionnaire statues standing guard over the crowds who entered and exited the great neo-Classical building. Appropriate statuary, I thought, for an imperial city—Rome 2000 years ago, Washington today.
Also implicit in the Secretary’s old thinking is that sacred cow of establishment thinking, deterrence. As long as we have more of the latest, fastest, most intelligent and most destructive weapons, we will not need to use them, because that will be sufficient to make our enemy think twice before taking us on. But contemporary asymmetric warfare (think 9-1l-2001, 10-7-2023), let alone the likelihood of either human or A.I. error, effectively undermines deterrence theory.
Thankfulness Buried in the Rubble
A few years ago we spent a week at Auschwitz/Birkenau in contemplation of horrors truly beyond imagination that we felt compelled to imagine nonetheless. We sat in meditation alongside the gas chambers and crematoria, in the grove where the children clung to their mothers awaiting their turn to die, letting the blood in the earth open and break our hearts.