Essays
“In the late sixties, we were so fed up we wanted to destroy it all. That’s when we changed the name of America and stuck in the “k”. The mood is different today and the language that will respond to that mood will be different. Things are so deteriorated in this society, that it’s not…
Read Full Article...Background In organizational terms the Palestinians have had a state for quite a long time. The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) began performing most of the duties of a state apparatus soon after Yasser Arafat took over the organization in 1969. Departments ranging from Health and Education to Internal Security were set up to provide services at first…
Read Full Article...Part I – The Historical Background The origins of modern Islamic Fundamentalism can be found in the clash of cultures that accompanied Western imperialist intrusion into the Muslim lands in the 18th and 19th centuries. That intrusion introduced Western and secular practices and outlooks into societies that had centuries-old Islamic roots. Depending upon the area,…
Read Full Article...Now that the 50th anniversary commemorations of C. Wright Mills’s sociological triptych of America in the latter half of the 20th century, The Power Elite, White Collar, The Sociological Imagination, have come and gone, there are still many reasons for continued interest in C. Wright Mills’s, The Power Elite. Before the end of Barack Obama’s…
Read Full Article...Introduction During the run up to the 2010 mid-term elections in the United States, the NAACP published a controversial report on “Tea Party Nationalism,” documenting what was perceived as racist elements within the emergent conservative grassroots organization.[1] The NAACP’s report became a lightning rod against which supporters and critics of the Tea Party vented their…
Read Full Article...I. Prologue The 2011 Arab revolutions have shaken the world, toppling three well-entrenched dictatorships – in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya — in a battle not only for democracy, but also one that raised issues of economic and social justice while attacking neoliberal capitalism. Moreover, they touched off a year of upheaval, from Wisconsin to Spain,…
Read Full Article...Preliminary Observations. While the meaning and possibility in modern times of democracy has been a central concern for Weber and Habermas, and both thinkers’ political theories have been the subject of several inquiries, there is a lack of comparative investigations on this particular subject. This may be surprising as Habermas is himself a Weberian scholar,…
Read Full Article...When one decides to take the trip into the jungle city of Iquitos – the largest city in the world inaccessible by road – there are two options. The first is a flight by one of Peru’s many domestic airlines, 5 to 10 times per day, with a flight time of approximately 2 hours. This…
Read Full Article...“If you believe in improvement you must weep, for the attained perfection must end in darkness, cold, and silence… Life knows us not and we do not know life—we don’t know even our own thoughts. Half the words we use have no meaning whatever and of the other half each man understands each word after…
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