Category: history

compliance or complicity?

Heavy talk with friends, lately – about the ethos of the age being caught up in urgency and crisis, possibly such that we fail to recognize the sweep of history and our complicity with trends we would ethically not choose if we were aware of the relation between our immediate, daily lives and how the simple things we do, moment-by-moment, … Read more...

Breaking Role to Serve Justice

“One could feel the moral fabric of society coming apart beneath it all.”

I will be interested to know how things unfold for Professor/Interpreter Eric Camayd-Freixas, “Immigrant of the Day“, for whistle-blowing on an oppressive criminal prosecution against agricultural migrant workers. My curiosity regards him as an individual, interpreting as a profession, and the complicated ways institutional meanings … Read more...

released!

Yesterday will be remembered fondly by many. I received the wonderful news from Maria Claudia:

8:24 AM maria: alf was released

Today there are photos on Facebook. Joy in the morning! I would say Alf does not appear any worse for the wear, but no doubt changes have been etched into his character after nearly five months in captivity. Although … Read more...

where I’m from

Tommy said to my friends: “You’re funny!” 🙂 This was after Kelly regaled us with the joke about a man returning to college and learning something about logic. She went on to talk about racial tensions in Kansas:
“Me and Steph went to a KKK rally in Topeka….”
I had to interrupt: “We went to protest the rally!”… Read more...

April 25, 1945

Godwin this

Posted by Eric Rauchway

Steph’s notes at bottom; lettered in [bold].

On this day in 1945, only three days after the occupation of their city by French troops, the remaining full professors of the University of Freiburg assembled to elect new officers and to restore the customs under which they had operated before 1933, when their faculty,

… Read more...

eugenics (sneak attack?)

“We would really like to speak to
somebody who feels they would
choose the deaf embryo given the choice, and
give them a chance to explain their reasons for doing so.”

A Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill is up for debate and passage in the United Kingdom which uses language about in vitro fertilisation (IVF) in which, critics charge, “a … Read more...

articulation: internal tensions and external dynamics

Some time back, in an email to participants of the Dialogue under Occupation conference in Abu Dis, Palestine, I made a statement comparing the (historically) recent fears of Palestinians with the millenial fears of Jewish people concerning identity-based violence. A response from an Israeli participatn indicated an interpretation that such Jewish fears need more support and validation.
No, that is … Read more...