Tag: social justice

• April 29, 2018

  DICTATORS AND OLIGARCHS

  Throughout history, there are no dictators without oligarchs.

  The dictator is the puss pimple on top of the acne of oligarchy.

  The system of war criminal justice is designed to deter a very specific kind of man who is inherently a narcissistic risk taker, who believes he is invincible, which means that some vague possibility of justice some day might become reality. But he always believes he will live on forever, or his family.

  The oligarch is not a risk taker but a calculator, a blood hound for money, and a preference for money accrued legalistically but immorally off the backs of the unsuspecting who believe in the rule of law.

  The laws of war crimes must evolve further. We need a guarantee based on international law that the vast fortunes of industrialists or oligarchs that supported war criminals, will in fact be given, to the last penny, over to …

• July 3, 2011

  And Beyond Cursing There is Absolute Love: The Portion of Balak

  I grew up in a world of blessings and curses, and I mean a world of radically elaborate blessings and curses. I speak of course of the Yiddish world, the world of Jews from Eastern Europe. It surrounded me and was in the air all the time. The incredible creativity in describing problematic people attests to the chief complaints about women and men. The sheer number of names for a useless person, a shlemiel, a shlemazel, a shmendrik, a pisk malocheh, and much worse, all very colorful. Jews never held anything back in their criticism of each other, which naturally psychologists might see as internalized persecution.

   

  Some people I knew had a very hard life with bitter disappointments and losses. They used to call many people “chaleria”, which later I would learn meant roughly, “a piece of Cholera”. Many people were requested to …