Essays

Two hundred years after his death in May 1809, Joseph Haydn remains one of the least acclaimed of the great classical composers. Of course he faces stiff competition for recognition, especially from his immediate contemporaries. His friend twenty-four years his junior, Mozart, continues to engage us, and not only because of a fascination with extraordinary…

According to his own last words on the subject, just before his death, Orwell was a supporter of Socialism and of the British Labour Party which had swept to power in 1945. Before then, for most of his writing career, certainly from The Road to Wigan Pier in 1937 onwards, George Orwell was an avowed…

You open the newspaper on any day and you can be sure to find at least one front-page article related to the Middle East. It will be something ugly or depressing, something implicating the United States directly or indirectly — Israel and Palestine, the Iraq war, the standoff with Iran, the war in Afghanistan, the…

I) Ahmadinejad and Holocaust Denial On September 18th 2009 the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave a speech, in the form of a Friday sermon, on the occasion of Al-Quds, or Jerusalem Day in Iran. Based on a translation of the original radio broadcast (not the official Farsi version issued by the government) here is some…

In October of 1985, as a twenty-five-year-old graduate student, I went to East Germany for a nine-month study visit. I stayed in East Germany until the end of July, 1986. My visit was made possible by an organization called the “Liga für Völkerfreundschaft,” which can be roughly translated as “League for International Friendship.” This was…

I. Introduction:  A Night to Remember So that We Can Forget November 4th, 2008 was a night that African Americans will always remember.  It was also a night that most white Americans will also remember.  Unfortunately, it was also a night that allowed many Americans to forget that which should never be forgotten.  What have we…