How many species of (overwhelmingly male) power are exercised in one way or another by inflicting (not merely accepting) suffering on other people?  Actual examples. Follow-on:  When I was in the army, we had a strange practice of going to the rifle ranges at the end of each fiscal quarter to shoot up all the [...]

Polanyi Karl Polanyi, in his book The Great Transformation, said essentially that the so-called self-regulating market, far from being spontaneous or flexible, is only maintained by a despotic grid of money and politics – a Weberian colossus without which the entire social edifice of this so-called “free” system would fall into chaos. Polanyi said that [...]

Forgive the haste with which this is written.  I am tired, and sad, and disgusted. George Zimmerman and Robert Bales have secured themselves a place in history the same way many men do, by taking the lives of other human beings in ways that force us to rationalize furiously.  Women do, too, infrequently, but not [...]

The Text of a Lecture at Pennsylvania State University – School of International Affairs February 2, 2012 “The Roles of Finance, Food, and Force in US Foreign Policy” * Before I begin, I’d like to thank Jan Burnett and Casey Hilland of the School of International Affairs Student Government Association, as well as Dr. Tiyanjana [...]

An excellent article by Kathy Miriam from The Journal of Social Philosophy In the 1980s, U.S. feminism fractured along political fault-lines defined by conflicting views of prostitution and pornography and related conceptions of power, agency, and sexuality.1 The “sex wars”—as they were unfortunately, popularly labeled—were apparently settled by the end of the decade, with “pro-sex” [...]

“Sexualisation” has become a much-debated issue in recent years, and a noticeable feature is the assumption that feminists who oppose sexual objectification are generating a “moral panic”. Ever since sociologist Stanley Cohen introduced the term in 1972 it has been used as a shorthand way of critiquing conservatives for inventing another “problem” in order to [...]

I Love OWS and the Slogan “99%” It is a great slogan that puts in bold relief the immense power of the one percent of humanity that exists parasitically on the rest.  “We are the 99%.”  It is a declaration that in some significant way, people are more awake to their circumstances than they were.  [...]

In historiography, the Idea of Progress is the theory that advances in technology, science, and social organization inevitably produce an improvement in the human condition. That is, people can become happier in terms of quality of life (social progress) through economic development and the application of science and technology (scientific progress). The assumption is that [...]

Two new pieces from Kathy, with gratitude. Manifest(o)ing Feminism: Occupy Patriarchy! The New Now-Moment of Occupy Wall Street The whole world was erupting as we U.S Americans were watching.  Our noses pressed to the screen-monitors of history we watched as waves of mass rebellion rippled from Greece and Spain to Tunisia, Egypt, and Syria in the [...]

Soldier at 18, baptized when I was 56 years old, and born the day after Veterans Day in 1951, I am on this November 11, 2011, mere hours away from being officially 60 years old.  I was a soldier.  I am a Christian.  I am 60. This day began as a celebration of peace (Armistice [...]