What a spanner in the works of international relations he proved to be. The late King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al Saud of Saudi Arabia was always the spoiler in the morality plays of Western powers keen to back him. Oil was always the greatest deterrent against getting on his wrong side, but it also meant the most intolerable of inconsistencies. For most governments, however, these were tolerated.
I once lived in Peru’s southern Andes, in the majestic corn belt of the royal Inca. The dimensions of the surrounding sierra were enough to quiet my ambitious, over-sized and over-active American ego. Moreover, those rural and ancient environs were truly the agemates of eternity. The indigenous populace that stippled the earth there—my neighbors—kept it all alive. Andahuaylillas, my temporary hometown in the mountains, was a maize-growing hamlet of maybe three thousand people. Neighbors there were kind, and they constantly sought me out to share life with me.
Author’s note: This article was first published 20 years ago (October of 1994), during Marion Barry’s triumphant return from drug abuse, prison, and electoral oblivion. I reprint it now in light of his untimely death.
There are more born-again people in Ulster to the square mile than anywhere else in the world. This little province has had the peculiar preservation of divine providence.
— Ian Paisley, quoted in London Review of Books, January 22, 1987
Now let the reader’s own moral feelings decide as to whether or not suicide is a criminal act.
– Arthur Schopenhauer, On Suicide, in Studies in Pessimism
They can incarcerate my body but never my mind.
— Rubin “Hurricane” Carter
Just in case you think [lard] is unhealthy, don’t be put off by that.
— Clarissa Dickson Wright
Long before the Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment campaign inched slowly from the fringes of global solidarity with Palestinians to take center stage, Tony Benn had been advocating a boycott of Israel with unrestricted conviction, for years.
The fat cats’ media never reported it, naturally, so I heard about Pete’s passing from another folk singer. And that’s as it should be.
Pete was 94 when he died last month, but I first met him when I was barely thirteen.
The day he died, my organization got a hand-written letter from Pete Seeger, the 94-year-old iconic folksinger who departed last month after decades of inspiring us onward with his peace and justice ballads.
Now with his loss, we realize it is quite a gap to fill. Indeed, one political cartoon showed a hapless banjo player reading his paper’s page: “JOB OPPORTUNITY: New Pete Seeger needed. Must start immediately.”
