…but remember there has been a coup in Britain In the wake of Thatcher’s departure, I remember her victims. Patrick Warby’s daughter, Marie, was one of them. Marie, aged five, suffered from a bowel deformity and needed a special diet. Without it, the pain was excruciating. Her father was a Durham miner and had used all [...]

“She had a great sense of humor and freckles and red hair that brought her right to her Irish roots.” She was “a dream daughter.” I have a daughter, so maybe that’s why these words cut so deep.

After the bombings that killed and maimed so horribly at the Boston Marathon, our country’s politics and mass media are awash in heartfelt compassion — and reflexive “doublethink,” which George Orwell described as willingness “to forget any fact that has become inconvenient.”

The horrific bombings of the Boston Marathon produced inspiring images of a spirited, brave Boston refusing to be cowed. Some spectators surged forward toward the danger to apply tourniquets, offer first aid, share blankets, and later to give blood, for the victims.

The Swedish novelist Henning Mankell tells of an experience in Mozambique during the civil war horrors there 25 years ago, when he saw a young man walking toward him in ragged clothes.

Cuando uno contempla imágenes de las personas que han tenido que huir de Siria en sus miserables campos de refugiados y escucha sus súplicas de solidaridad, misericordia o la ayuda de Dios para poder poner fin a sus sufrimientos, se encuentra con espeluznantes similitudes entre sus experiencias y las de los palestinos, libaneses e iraquíes. [...]

“War’s lingering phantoms haunt every society.” As two hellish, costly and needless wars struggle toward collapse, this is the time — now, right this minute, before the next false alarm goes off — for us to look honestly at the cost and quality of national security based on militarism. It’s time to squeeze the romance out [...]

…and the People Suffer The entrance of the French military into the Malian civil war further complicates a descent into hell which that country has been experiencing for the last two years. Mainstream media attention has largely focused on the emergence of right-wing Islamists associated with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and the threat that [...]

El sistema de sufrimiento que Estados Unidos impone a los pueblos del mundo (1965-2014) Pham To tenía un aspecto estupendo para sus 78 años de edad (al menos, esa era la edad que él pensaba que tenía). Su cabello era fino, canoso, y le raleaba en las sienes, pero sus ojos eran vivaces y su físico [...]

Dear Children, I know that this world must often seem confusing to you. It’s noisy, dirty and filled with adults scurrying about their busy lives without noticing you all that much sometimes. It’s filled with rules and people telling you what to do, mostly without asking what you want to do. It’s also a world where [...]