Prefatory Note: The following post was written a few days after Daniel Ellsberg’s death, which occurred on June 16, 2023. It was published in its original form on June 23 in Counterpunch under a different title, and republished several time since. This version takes advantage of reactions from others and reflections by myself. Points of […]
Edward Curtin “The technical achievement of advanced industrial society, and the effective manipulation of mental and material productivity have brought about a shift in the locus of mystification. . . . the rational rather than the irrational becomes the most effective vehicle of mystification.” Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man “General, man is very uselful. He can fly and he …
Edward Curtin We have come to Cape Cod for a few days to forget the man-made world that is too much with us. I have asked my forgettery to get to work. As my childhood friends used to say to me, “Eddy spaghetti, use you forgetty.” The adults had no idea what they meant. Many …
Edward Curtin Sixty years ago this summer, on August 7, 1961, President John Kennedy signed the bill creating The Cape Cod National Seashore in Massachusetts. It consists of forty miles of immaculate sandy beach, marshes, ponds, and upland along the Atlantic Ocean, with some portions stretching across the land to Cape Cod Bay in the west. …
Because the corporate press is about selling products and services to billions of consumers, it is loath to discuss the claim that an authentic, incomparable bliss is located within the human heart, and can be experienced by directing some attention away from external sources of 'happiness' to internal feelings in meditation. And yet this has been the assertion of every great spiritual master for thousands of years.
There was a strange view expressed about the worldwide status of Henry David Thoreau in the New York Review of Books on August 17: “Thoreau hardly makes it onto the list of notable American authors outside of his home country.” That was followed by the assertion that “his peculiar brand of American nativism has little international appeal.” In fact, we can[Read More...]
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.
— Martin Luther King Jr.
CALGARY, CANADA — Oil and natural gas drilling in the province of Alberta has turned Calgary in a boomtown. Glittering skyscrapers, monuments to the obscene profits amassed by a fossil fuel industry that is exploiting the tar sands and the vast oil and natural gas fields in Alberta, have transformed Calgary into a mecca for money, dirty politics, greed and industry jobs. The city is as soulless and sterile as Houston. The death of the planet, for a few, is very good for business.
