Explaining my Blog Inconsistencies of Late
In the last two weeks I have received many messages asking me why I have been so long silent about the Jerusalem decision and doing so little to maintain my blog, inducing questions about my health and other possible explanations.
[Prefatory Note: This post is a slightly modified version of an article published in the global edition of the Italian newspaper, Il Manifesto, on December 8, 2017.]
Jerusalem Is (Is Not) the Capital of Israel
[Prefatory Note: This post addresses the need for dialogue with the political, economic, and cultural ‘other,’ that is, those multitudes acutely alienated from and angry with secular globalism and the Enlightenment legacy often equated with ‘modernity’ and ‘modernization.’ At the core is a search for closure on the nature of reality as well as feelings about equity (given many dimensions of inequality) and ethical innovation (revisionist approaches to gender, sexuality, marriage). Does reason or faith or tradition provide greater closure?
Failing the people of Syria during Seven Years of Devastation and Dispossession
[Prefatory Note: What follows is a wide-ranging interview in November 2017 that that concentrates on the failure of the UN and the world to rescue the people of Syria by a timely and effective humanitarian intervention. The interview was conducted by a Turkish journalist, Salva Amor, and is to be published in a magazine, Causcasus International. The text of the interview has been slightly modified.]
Trump as President makes us think as never before about viability of the American version of constitutional democracy, that is, the ‘republic’ that Ben Franklin promised the people at the time of Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.
We often forget that Franklin replied to the question by adding several words, “if you’ll keep it.”
[Prefatory Note: This post is a slightly modified version of my presentation to the Human Rights Commission of the Italian Parliament on October 11, 2017. The Commission is composed of members of Parliament, and chaired by Hon. Pia Elda Locatelli, representing the city of Bergamo.
Lunch alone in a trattoria in the San Lorenzo neighborhood of Rome, which is neither fashionable nor touristic. Noisy with students and young people at night, local places to hangout, some occupied spaces.
