[Prefatory Note: A somewhat modified version of this pose was published online in CounterPunch on May 6, 2022 under the title “Toward a Ukraine Wars Peoples Tribunal. The most important change is the insistence that the Geopolitical War taking place under the rubric of the Ukraine War is different and farmore dangerous than what is being described […]
[Prefatory Note: The following post is my commentary on an essay by Heikki Patomiki, a leading Finnish scholar who has devoted his career to working on the normative frontiers of international relations: especially the struggle for global democracy. Here he explores and cautiously advocates a civil society global effort to establish a world political party in a form appropriate to global conditions and with the overriding goal of the enhancement of the individual and collective wellbeing of humanity.
[Prefatory Note: Initially published by Transcend Media Service, Oct. 29, 2018; the piece is dedicated to the memory of my cherished friend Marc Nerfin, whose creativity, social grace, progressive vision, and organizing talents are greatly missed, and most needed]
Transcending World Order Regressions?
On Thursday, rescuers in Mexico City continued to dig through the rubble of many downed buildings, attempting to pull survivors out of the wreckage from the deadly 7.1 magnitude earthquake that rocked the city on two days earlier.
It is very unlikely to expect that we can create a civil society using those mechanisms which have gradually contributed to its diminution. You cannot build a civil society from the top down. Luckily, the Internet is here to help.
Today's political climate is verging dangerously toward using force as a means of silencing opponents. Civil discourse is at a crossroads. We can either accept that violence will rule how we interact with others behind the protection of our computer screens (or openly in the public square) or we can decide to reign in intolerance in the name of tolerance.
The shooting yesterday of House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, several aides and capitol police officers serves as a chilling reminder as to the state of American politics. We are no longer a nation of civil public discourse. Perhaps it’s time we realized that the use of force to achieve political ends is inherently evil.
Eight weeks before the operation would take place, I was notified by phone about the match and the donation process. I was asked whether I was willing to donate. I said yes. A few weeks later, my blood stem cells were injected into a middle-aged man with myelodysplastic syndrome.
Fight Club is nearly spooky with regard to how much of the future it managed to anticipate. Made at the end of the second millennium it seems to anticipate a return of brutalism in the third millennium. Though it tells the story of a just a few people, gradually morphing into a tale of gang organization and violence, it serves as a prescient allegory for the rise of a new form of politics in the 21st century.
The new activism of a young generation in the US has largely come out of the multiplicity and consistency of a new media narrative confidently mushrooming from a new generation of educated Palestinians.
